Daily news updates from CIS

November 10, 2009

Domestic News -- Click Here for Overseas News

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[For CISNEWS subscribers --

1. Feds report continuing decline in border arrests
2. Feds settle name-check delay on applications (story, 3 links)
3. Fed immigration audit leads to 1,200 firings (story, link)
4. Analysis: Illegals to define health care debate
5. Senate candidate from FL dubious on issue
6. Irish bishop presses for amnesty program
7. Surveys finds Americans against House health bill
8. San Fran. board of supervisors to override mayor's veto (story, link)
9. MD county fending suit over enforcement program (story, link)
10. WA county implements sanctuary policies
11. Pakistani man poised to become WA town mayor
12. IL activists struggle with new jail rules
13. Students rally for DREAM Act
14. Workshop to address foreclosures on Latino homes
15. OR group aids application process
16. H-1B workers returning home in droves
17. Immigration drives popularity of soccer in TN
18. Philly paper documents daily life of an illegal
19. Trial of IA kosher meatpacking exec reaches closing arguments
20. Smuggler gets 14 years for death of illegals
21. Illegals arrested while working on FL courthouse
22. Initial hearings for Iraqi father in 'honor' killing delayed (link)
23. Illegal accused of molesting eight year old NY child (link)
24. Israeli illegal arrested on firearms charges (link)

Subscribe to CIS e-mail services here: http://cis.org/immigrationnews.html

-- Mark Krikorian]


1.
Border Arrests Decline Again
Weak Economy and Tighter Security Dissuade Illegal Entrants; Drug Seizures Jump
By Cam Simpson
The Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125781594948540097.html

The number of people caught illegally entering the U.S. dropped by more than 23% during the past year, continuing a longer trend, federal data shows.

The struggling U.S. economy and rising joblessness are major factors behind the decline. But government officials say investment in border security since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, also has deterred illegal immigration.

Drug seizures along the border, meanwhile, rose over the same period, according to the government. Authorities say tougher enforcement has forced smugglers to try such methods as flying ultra-light aircraft over border fences.

U.S. border apprehensions dropped to 556,041 in fiscal year 2009 -- which ended Sept. 30 -- compared with 723,825 in the 2008 fiscal year. Border apprehensions have fallen nearly 67% decline since fiscal year 2000, when the border patrol made 1,675,438 arrests.

The Obama administration will use evidence of tougher border enforcement as part of its strategy to win support for a congressional overhaul of the U.S. immigration system next year. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is scheduled to give a speech about the administration's plans Friday at the Center for American Progress, a Democrat-affiliated think tank in Washington.

Some state and local officials along the U.S.-Mexico border, including Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have said federal enforcement needed to be tougher. Mr. Perry recently said he would send teams of Texas Rangers to beef up security along the frontier.

The U.S. has nearly doubled the number of border-patrol agents in the past five years and uses a combination of patrols, fences, electronic sensors and pilotless drone aircraft. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, is expected to release its 2009 data this week.

The government and independent experts say there is a strong correlation between apprehensions and the number of people attempting to cross the border, especially with the sharp increase in enforcement in recent years.

David Aguilar, the border-patrol chief, says the newest data show U.S. investments in personnel, equipment and technology are creating a strong deterrent. 'We have the right mix at the right places and in the right time,' he says.

There are now more than 20,000 border agents, compared with about 11,000 in 2004. The agency has built fences and vehicle barriers along large swaths of the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

Funding for the border-patrol agency jumped to more than $10.9 billion last year from about $6 billion in fiscal-year 2004.

Economists say the souring U.S. jobs market is a driving force behind the decline in illegal crossings. The U.S. unemployment rate last month passed 10% for the first time since the early 1980s. Fewer jobs -- especially in trades such as construction, where migrant workers fare well -- mean fewer people are willing to risk a journey that has become more perilous and more expensive, experts say.

If the U.S. were experiencing the kind of job growth it enjoyed in the 1990s, 'I would be very surprised if there would be these kinds of reductions, even with the investments that have been made,' says Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

The U.S. government will point to other indicators to bolster its view that tougher enforcement is paying dividends. Higher spending on more agents and equipment kicked into gear under former President George W. Bush following the 9/11 terror attacks.

Mr. Aguilar and Thomas Winkowski, who runs the more than 300 legal border-crossing stations in the U.S., say they will show record drug seizures in 2009.

Fewer illegal crossers allows the government to shift more resources to illicit trafficking, they say.

Marijuana seizures at ports increased more than 19% -- as measured in weight -- while cocaine seizures were up 53%, the agency will report this week. On land, marijuana seizures increased 37% from the previous year, while cocaine seizures were up 15%. Heroin seizures fell at ports, but they increased about 15% between the crossings, data will show.

Mr. Aguilar says his agents were finding tougher enforcement has resulted in bolder attempts to smuggle drugs and people.

There were 118 efforts detected last year to send people or drugs into the U.S. via makeshift aircraft that fly above border fences but below the 500-foot radar-detection level.

There are also growing numbers of people trying to burrow below the border and crash through fences, according to Messrs. Aguilar and Winkowski.

'They're desperate,' Mr. Winkowski says. 'They're desperate to ram through vans loaded with illegal aliens.'

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2.
Legal pact to speed path to citizenship
By Susan Abram
The Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA), November 10, 2009
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_13751457

Jim Moorhead keeps an inch-thick stack of documents nearby as proof.

He calls them a pile of lies.

These are letters from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, repeatedly assuring him that his application for citizenship was being processed.

In fact, it wasn't. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had held on to his file for two years with no plans to review it anytime soon.

'I originally filed for my citizenship in '05, so I was dillydallied for three years,' said Moorhead, 58, a plaintiff in a recently settled lawsuit that sought to expedite the naturalization process.

The settlement, announced Monday, will put an end to delays caused by routine FBI name checks of applicants for citizenship, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs. It also gives the USCIS six months to process hundreds of citizenship applications from people living in Los Angeles, Santa Ana, and San Bernardino. Similar cases were settled in New York and Seattle recently.

After a person qualifies to apply for citizenship, the process can take roughly a year.

'When we filed the lawsuit, there were thousands of people who were affected,' said Linton Joaquin, general counsel for the National Immigration Law Center, a 20-year-old immigrant rights organization that joined in the suit along with the ACLU of Southern California, the AsianPacific American Legal Center of Southern California, and the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Joaquin said thousands of applications 'disappeared into an administrative black hole,' as a result of time-consuming FBI name checks, which were mandated by the USCIS in 2002.

He also said it's unclear whether the settlement will ultimately determine whether the FBI will find a better method to review names manually. But he said the FBI hired more staff to clear names after the suit was filed in 2007.

'We think this is a victory, and it's certainly positive that the government put in resources to address this problem,' he said. 'I don't want to leave the impression that people won't have delays, but we're encouraged that the government addressed this problem.'

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

While the settlement will expedite applications, it is a bittersweet victory for some.

Plaintiff Sonali Kolhatkar, who frequently discusses government policies on the radio show she hosts on KPFK-FM (90.7), said processing delays prevented her from participating in last year's historic presidential election.

Born in the United Arab Emirates, Kolhatkar said she waited more than three years for her citizenship application to be processed. She was granted citizenship in March, after she placed her name on the lawsuit, she said.

'It was way unnecessary,' she said of the long delays in name checks. 'How long should it take to run a name through a computer? We felt like we were trapped in a black hole. They didn't give us a deadline, or any information or any answers.'

While proud to now call herself an American, Kolhatkar said she remains discouraged by the citizenship process.

Moorhead, who moved to the United States in 1975 from England, agreed. The North Hollywood man became a citizen last year, but remains angry about the process.

He said his name appeared in FBI files because he was recruited by the agency in the 1980s. He didn't go to work for the agency, which failed to clear his name from its files.

'Now that I hear it has been settled, I personally don't think it will be different,' he said of the citizenship process. 'The creepiest thing of the lot is that thousands and thousands of dollars are being spent on the immigration and FBI to defend their position.'

'The critical point that nobody gets is that if I were Joe Terrorist, I can come to America on a visitor's visa, knowing that they are not doing the background checks,' he added. 'If they are not doing the background checks, they are endangering the public. They are enabling the terrorists to stay in this country.'

Moorhead said immigration reform and the path to citizenship need to change.

'I'm confident and pushy,' he said. 'Just think of all the people out there who are incompetent and scared.'

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California: Promise to Speed Naturalization Applications
By Julia Preston
The New York Times, November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/us/10brfs2-PROMISETOSPE_BRF.html

Deal allows hundreds to gain U.S. citizenship
By Cindy Carcamo
The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA), November 9, 2009
http://www.ocregister.com/news/applications-218406-lawsuit-citizenship.html

Immigrant groups settle FBI name check lawsuit
By Amy Taxin
The Associated Press, November 9, 2009
http://www.fresnobee.com/state/story/1704392.html

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3.
1,200 janitors fired in 'quiet' immigration raid
By Sasha Aslanian
The Minnesota Public Radio News, November 9, 2009
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/11/09/immigrants-fired/

Minneapolis -- One of the largest immigration crackdowns under the Obama administration to date took place in the Twin Cities last month, when 1,200 undocumented janitors were fired from their jobs, according to immigration lawyers.

The janitors worked for ABM, a San Francisco-based contract company that cleans many downtown office towers in the Twin Cities.

The Obama administration has shifted away from the dramatic workplace raids that were a hallmark of the Bush administration's enforcement strategy. Under President Obama, the Department of Homeland Security says it is putting pressure on employers who break the law.

One of the fired janitors has agreed to talk with MPR News about his situation. MPR has agreed not to use his name because he is undocumented and at risk of deportation. He has three U.S. born children, and a wife who is also undocumented.

His story begins in 1992, when he entered the country illegally from Mexico. He and his wife lived in New York and Chicago. He worked in car washes, restaurants, a McDonald's, and as a cleaner before coming to Minneapolis in 2001. He landed a job with ABM.

'We cleaned the whole buildings, from bathrooms to kitchens, carpeting, offices,' he said. 'On the outsides we cleaned glass, whole floors at a time depending on the time we were given.'

This janitor says he cleaned for the Plymouth Building in downtown Minneapolis. He says it was hard work, but the pay was good. He made nearly $13 an hour.

Then, in June, his supervisor handed him a letter.

'Letter said we had to bring in documents, our Social Security cards, green cards, state ID, or be immediately fired,' he said.

The letter on ABM letterhead, obtained by MPR, informed the workers that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, had found problems with their paperwork.

The nonprofit Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota was called in by the janitors' union, SEIU, to give legal advice to the frightened employees.

'There was a lot of fear that even showing up to talk about your documents that you were going to be arrested and detained by ICE,' said the center's John Keller. 'People thinking that they shouldn't go to work, extremely concerned about their children. Almost always the first concerns in these circumstances -- even when your children are US born -- is, what if I go to work and don't come back?'

'We have spent a lot of time working with people in these circumstances, and it is sometimes some of the best work we do -- just to inform people what is real, what is rumor,' said Keller.

The most important rumor to dispel was that the workers were arrested. Unlike raids at the Swift meatpacking plant in Worthington in 2006, and the Postville, Iowa raid in 2008, the ABM janitors would not be rounded up or arrested.

The union worked with the company and ICE to give employees more time to show proper documents. They had until October. Then, each Monday, another batch of workers who failed to show correct papers was fired.

ABM won't reveal the total size of its Twin Cities workforce, or any information at all, but the scope seems large. This janitor says of the 120 workers who cleaned at the Plymouth building, only three were able to stay on the job.

Another janitor we spoke with is a legal resident who's still on the job, cleaning bathrooms at the Ameriprise building. She estimates 80 percent of her co-workers were let go.

ABM is a Fortune 1000 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Its headquarters is in San Francisco, and according to its Web site, it employs more than 100,000 people. In 2008, its revenues were $3.6 billion.

ABM would not make staff at the Minneapolis office or the corporate headquarters available for an interview. Tony Mitchell, ABM Industries vice president of corporate communications in New York, issued this two line statement via e-mail.

'Federal law prescribes specific procedures by which employers conduct employment verification activities. Our policy is full compliance with the law,' Mitchell said.

The janitors' union, SEIU, is prohibited from talking about the enforcement action. The ABM janitor jobs make up one-quarter of SEIU's membership.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement also won't comment. Tim Counts, spokesman for the Bloomington Office, wrote via e-mail: 'For operational security reasons, we don't discuss ongoing enforcement activity, including confirming or denying that we are looking at a particular person or entity.'

Counts says ABM has not been fined.

'It's a sticky legal issue of, 'What did you know and when did you know it?'' said Counts.

Mark Cangemi is a retired ICE official. He used to do these kinds of workplace investigations and he's practiced immigration law.

Cangemi can't talk about this specific case or the employer involved, but Cangemi says the patterns in these workplace investigations are always the same.

'Could be a record-keeping error, civil or criminal in nature. We just don't know,' he said.

Cangemi wrapped up his work with ICE in 2006. His last month on the job included the Swift meatpacking raids, including the one in Worthington. Cangemi says that style of enforcement is incredibly expensive, but the point is the same -- to bring employers into compliance with the law.

ABM has been a silent raid. But the number of workers involved is almost as large as all those arrested in the six Swift raids. And it's three times bigger than Postville.

Cangemi wonders how effective this enforcement will be, considering the workers are free to move into other jobs.

'Why give people an opportunity to leave the employment without taking any action against them as individuals?' said Cangemi. 'Put them into proceedings. Let them argue their case. If they have a case that allows them to remain in the United States under the law, so be it. If they don't, then the law stands to be enforced.'

The Obama administration has been aggressive in removing undocumented workers. In fiscal year 2009, which ended in September, ICE deported 6,300 people from the region represented by Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska. That's 1,000 more people than during the last year of the Bush administration.

As for the upheaval at ABM in the Twin Cities, the 1,200 jobs held by the janitors have apparently been filled.

The company posted job openings in late September, 10 days before the first 300 workers were fired. A message on its answering machine says in English and in Spanish that ABM is no longer hiring.

The janitor who spoke with MPR says he's found another job. He calls himself one of the lucky ones. He's got a driver's license, and a connection that led to another job cleaning houses for a smaller company. It's part time, pays less money, and gets no breaks. And he's still paying taxes.

The tougher immigration enforcement has prompted three of the janitor's four siblings to return to Mexico, taking their U.S. citizen children with them. But as crushed as he was to lose his janitor's job, he says he still won't return to Mexico.

The janitor says he's still afraid ICE agents could round him up because they have all his data from ABM. And he's frantic to find more work.

'I really want people to hear -- and if possible even get to the ears of President Barack Obama -- that we don't come here for anything other than to work' said the janitor. 'And if anyone could see the places we come from and were in our shoes, they would do the same thing.'

John Keller of the Immigrant Law Center says of the 1,200 fired janitors, about 10 might have a path to citizenship under existing laws. The rest, he says, will probably try to wait it out, hoping for the laws to change so they can work here legally.

+++

Over 1,200 janitors fired in immigration audit
The Associated Press, November 9, 2009
http://www.wqow.com/Global/story.asp?S=11473293

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4.
Illegal immigrants divide discussions on health care reform
By Jared Janes
The Monitor (McAllen, TX), November 9, 2009
http://www.themonitor.com/articles/immigrants-32426-care-mcallen.html

McAllen, TX -- Immigration advocates shouted support for health care reform Monday afternoon as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was ushered away from the airport during a campaign stop in the Rio Grande Valley.

As health care reform takes center stage in the U.S. Senate, the shouting over one divisive and complicated issue won’t stop soon.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are grappling with how to handle illegal immigrants — an issue, along with abortion, that at times threatened to derail reform efforts in the House — in the health care bill.

While both chambers seem to agree that taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize health insurance coverage for illegal immigrants, a consensus hasn’t been reached on whether immigrants will be allowed to buy coverage using their own money.

The reform bill passed in the House prevents illegal immigrants from accessing subsidies available to low-income Americans.

But the Senate bill goes further by preventing them from purchasing at all on the health insurance exchange, the system set up for those who don’t receive health care coverage through employers to purchase coverage at group insurance rates.

Hutchison, who blasted the House bill passed with only one Republican vote as a 'government takeover' of the nation’s health care system, said immigrants shouldn’t access the subsidies.

'If this bill passes, which I hope it doesn’t, I don’t think there should be subsidies for illegal immigrants that American taxpayers would pay,' Hutchison said during her stop in the Valley at McCreery Aviation Co. 'We need to step back from this government takeover and instead offer more choices for people to buy affordable health care coverage.'

Sen. John Cornyn, a staunch advocate for immigration reform who has pressed for Congress to take up the issue, also said in a statement Tuesday that 'taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the health care benefits of illegal immigrants.'

Illegal immigration and health care reform were hotbed issues even before Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., gained national attention for shouting 'You lie!' during President Barack Obama’s health care address to Congress in September.

The outburst came after the president denied that health care legislation would provide free coverage for illegal immigrants.

The White House officials have sided with the Senate by insisting that illegal immigrants be excluded from buying their own coverage on the insurance exchange.

But in South Texas and other areas where there is a large population of undocumented residents, what the bill does to handle illegal immigrants is critical for emergency rooms that are forced to foot the bill for treating illegal immigrants who show up at their doors seeking medical care.

Anywhere from 6 million to 8 million illegal immigrants — or one-third of the total left uninsured — would be left without coverage in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, recent estimated by the Congressional Budget Office show.

U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, said he’ll watch how the House and Senate differ on handling illegal immigrants.

Ortiz said he supports allowing anyone to buy coverage on the exchange with their own money, adding taxpayers already pay for care that hospitals give to undocumented residents.

U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa also said he supports putting a plan in place that allows illegal immigrants to buy insurance.

'Allowing all people who are residents here to buy heath insurance will only save tax payers money,' he said. 'It will also reduce the high volume of visits to the emergency room by illegal immigrants, which raises the cost to all taxpayers.'

Like his colleagues from the state in the Senate, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, said non-legal residents should be prohibited from receiving federal subsidies.

However, demonstrators who chanted 'Health care reform now' while waiting for Hutchison’s arrival said immigrants shouldn’t be blamed for the nation’s health care woes.

Juanita Valdez-Cox, executive director of La Union del Pueblo Entero, an immigrant advocacy group based in San Juan, said up to 80 percent of the uninsured in Texas are U.S. citizens.

'Everybody should be included,' she said after the senator arrived in McAllen. 'Health care issues don’t recognize whether you are undocumented or not.'

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5.
Fla. Senate candidate Rubio takes tough stance on immigration
By Beth Reinhard
The Miami Herald, November 10, 2009
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/1325602.html

As an underdog U.S. Senate candidate courting the GOP's conservative wing, Marco Rubio takes a hard-line position against illegal immigration: no amnesty.

But as the powerful speaker of the Florida House, presented with a slew of bills aimed at curbing illegal immigration, he didn't put a single proposal up for a vote.

'A lot of us are mad at him because he did block those bills,' said David Caulkett, a founder of Floridians for Immigration Enforcement. 'Rubio claims to be anti-amnesty, but the question is, 'Do we trust him?'.'

Rubio says he hasn't wavered in his opposition to granting citizenship to illegal immigrants but that the issue should be dealt with by the federal government, not the states. The Legislature was focused on tax and insurance reform on his watch, he said.

'We picked one or two key issues,' Rubio said in a recent interview. 'States can't solve illegal immigration.'

Rubio's record on immigration is under scrutiny now that the issue is on his agenda and his bid against Gov. Charlie Crist for the Republican nomination is gaining ground. Immigration was nowhere to be found in the book of 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future he compiled as House speaker; now it's among nine issues addressed on his campaign website.

The son of Cuban exiles born in Miami says he opposed the proposal spearheaded in 2006 by former Sen. Mel Martinez -- whose early retirement triggered Rubio's 2010 campaign -- that would have allowed illegal immigrants to work toward citizenship. Crist supported the bill.

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6.
Bishop of Derry fights for immigration reform on US visit
Emigrant Online (NY), November 9, 2009
http://www.irishemigrant.com/ie/go.asp?p=story&storyID=5468

Bishop of Derry Seamus Hegarty provided a much needed lift to the plight of the undocumented during a busy visit to the United States last week. Bishop Hegarty, a pioneer in the fight for immigrant rights in this country, held masses in Boston and Philadelphia before traveling to Washington, D.C. for meetings with clergy and politicians to discuss reform.

To coincide with the celebration of All-Saints and All-Souls Days, Bishop Hegarty celebrated a Mass at St Brendan’s in Dorchester for the deceased in the Irish community. The purpose of the mass, which was attended by 500 people, was also to afford closure to undocumented Irishmen and women who had suffered loss back in Ireland but couldn’t return to Ireland in order to attend funerals.

Bishop Hegarty then met with Consul General to Boston Michael Lonergan as well as representatives from the Irish Pastoral Center and their Board of Trustees where he thanked them for the terrific work that they had undertaken on behalf of the Irish community throughout the years.

After a similar stop-off in Philadelphia, Bishop Hegarty, armed with a strong message in support of comprehensive immigration reform, traveled to Washington DC where he met with Chaplains, members of Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform and Congressmen Neal, Walsh, Gutierrez and Crowley of the Friends of Ireland group.

Bishop Hegarty stressed the importance of keeping the message alive and of remembering the 50,000 or so undocumented Irish people in the United States. Bishop Hegarty is the Chairman of the Irish Episcopal Council for Emigrants and has been a strong and constant voice for comprehensive immigration reform throughout the years.

For over 50 years, the Irish Episcopal Council for Emigrants (IECE) has sought to provide pastoral support to emigrants in cooperation with various apostolates, sister organizations and volunteers.

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7.
Polls: Majority oppose House health plan, inclusion of illegals, abortions
By Mike Sunnucks
The Jacksonville Business Journal (FL), November 10, 2009
http://jacksonville.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2009/11/09/daily15.html

A new poll shows Americans oppose the health care reform bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives over the weekend. Another survey by the same pollster, Rasmussen Reports, shows that Americans tend to oppose covering abortions or illegal immigrants in a new government health system.

Democrats in the U.S. House passed the bill Saturday. It includes creation of the government-run health option favored by President Barack Obama, which would operate alongside private insurance companies. The bill that passed the House also restricts government health spending and coverage for abortion – a provision that was key to its passage. The bill now moves to the U.S. Senate, where the public option faces more opposition.

The Rasmussen poll conducted Nov. 7 and Nov. 8 shows 52 percent of the 1,000 voters surveyed opposed to the House bill and 45 percent in favor.

Other recent Rasmussen polls show only 13 percent of those surveyed supporting coverage for abortions and 48 percent in opposition.

On the immigration issue, 83 percent of those questioned by Rasmussen said applicants for government health coverage should be required to prove they are U.S. citizens, while 12 percent oppose such a requirement. The immigration and abortion surveys were conducted in September and also questioned 1,000 voters.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Rasmussen results are available online at: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform

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8.
Feds, courts may step in if supes shield youths
By Bob Egelko
The San Francisco Chronicle, November 10, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/11/10/MNMQ1ABIR1.DTL

San Francisco supervisors' effort to shield immigrant youths from deportation when they're arrested on felony charges comes to a head today when the board votes on an override of Mayor Gavin Newsom's veto - a vote Newsom says he'll disregard because the ordinance would violate federal law.

Supervisor David Campos' legislation has enough votes to pass. At that point, San Francisco will be at the center of a simmering nationwide legal debate over state and local government authority to depart from federal immigration policy, said Jayashri Srikantiah, a Stanford law professor and director of the school's Immigrants' Rights Clinic.

At one end of the spectrum, she said, are officers like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Ariz., who round up suspected illegal immigrants. At the other end are cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, which claim authority for protective policies.

The San Francisco dispute centers on a 1996 federal law that says state and local governments cannot prevent their employees from contacting U.S. authorities about a person's immigration status. That's just what Campos' ordinance appears to do by allowing the city to report juveniles to immigration officials only after they have been convicted of felonies.

Newsom-Herrera view

Newsom says Campos' measure is unenforceable, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera says there's a strong chance that a court would strike it down. But some law professors disagree, noting that the federal law doesn't actually require cities to turn in suspected illegal immigrants. The law, they say, wasn't intended to limit a local sanctuary policy like San Francisco's.

San Francisco's 1989 sanctuary ordinance bars police from arresting, stopping or questioning people based solely on their national origin or immigration status. The ordinance also forbids the use of city money to help enforce federal immigration law, except as required by U.S. or state law.

As recently as early 2008, city staff interpreted the policy as a prohibition on all reporting of minors to immigration officials, even after a conviction. But after The Chronicle reported that San Francisco was protecting youthful drug dealers from deportation, Newsom ordered juvenile court officers in July 2008 to turn suspected illegal immigrants over to federal authorities after they were arrested on felony charges.

Possible conflicts

Campos' ordinance, if passed, 'imposes a new restriction on the authority of city employees to communicate with federal authorities about a juvenile's immigration status,' Herrera's office said in an Aug. 18 memo to the mayor.

Although the issue is still unsettled, the memo said, there is a 'serious risk' that a court would overturn the Campos ordinance, and perhaps the 1989 sanctuary law as well.

The city attorney said Campos' measure also could hamper efforts to settle a private lawsuit accusing San Francisco of violating a state law on reporting drug suspects to immigration officials. It might also expose city officials to criminal charges in a federal grand jury investigation into whether they knowingly transported or harbored illegal immigrants, the memo said.

To reduce the risk of a federal conflict, Herrera recommended that the city refrain from punishing employees who disregard Campos' ordinance.

Defending measure

On the other side of the debate, UC Davis law school Dean Kevin Johnson said he thought Campos' measure was consistent with federal law, which 'has not imposed any reporting requirements on cities.'

Johnson said the federal law was designed to let the federal government demand information from state and local authorities about specific individuals' immigration status, and not to require a city to report the information on its own.

'State and local governments don't necessarily know what someone's immigration status is,' and by requiring such reports, 'you open the door to racial profiling,' Johnson said. The federal government has never challenged policies in Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco that limit disclosure of immigration information, he said.

Srikantiah, the Stanford professor, said the city would have a strong case for refusing to volunteer information on the immigration status of juveniles, whose records are confidential.

'The city routinely keeps juvenile information confidential,' Srikantiah said. 'Requiring the city to turn over those records to the federal government would run afoul of those confidentiality protections.'

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Refuge policies clash in San Francisco
By Susan Ferriss
The Sacramento Bee, November 10, 2009
http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/2316308.html

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9.
Woman to sue sheriff over immigration program
By Nicholas C. Stern
The News-Post (Frederick, MD), November 10, 2009
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=97600

A former Frederick County resident is taking Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, the county's board of commissioners, sheriff's deputy Jeffrey Openshaw and current and former immigration officials to federal court for allegedly violating her civil rights.

The complaint started when two sheriff's deputies, one of whom has yet to be identified, took her into custody last year concerning her immigration status.

Roxana Orellana Santos and her lawyers with LatinoJustice PRLDEF, CASA de Maryland and Nixon Peabody LLP will file the $1 million suit in the U.S. District Court at Greenbelt today.

According to a copy of the complaint, the suit is over Orellana Santo's alleged unlawful and unconstitutional interrogation and detention by sheriff's deputies based solely on her race or ethnicity.

By doing so, the defendants violated the Fourth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the complaint states.

The complaint states Openshaw did not have the authority, as he had not been trained to participate in the 287(g) program, to detain Orellana Santos at the time.

The board of commissioners is being sued because it funds the sheriff's office.

County attorney John Mathias said Monday he could not comment on this particular case.

Mathias said under state law, the sheriff is an elected official and that the county does not generally have liability for the sheriff's actions.

Other officials and agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are being sued for their responsibilities under an agreement with the sheriff's office that allowed its trained deputies and corrections officers to enforce federal immigration law.

Complaint allegations

Orellana Santos is from El Salvador. She entered the United States in October 2005 and has lived with her husband in Frederick County for about four years, the complaint states.

The complaint alleges Orellana Santos was eating lunch as she sat on a curb behind a food co-op near Evergreen Square on Buckeystown Pike on Oct. 7, 2008.

The deputies asked her for identification and at first, she told them she did not have any. After a few minutes, she remembered she had a national ID card and gave that to the deputies, the complaint states.

Because she did not speak much English, and the deputies did not speak Spanish, she did not understand why she was being detained, the complaint states.

After about 15 minutes, she tried to stand up and collect her things to leave, but officers cuffed her and took her to the Frederick County Adult Detention Center, the complaint states. She was then transferred to other immigration detention centers in Maryland.

She was not deported. Rather, on Nov. 11, 2008, authorities granted Orellana Santos supervised release for humanitarian purposes, the complaint states.

The complaint includes claims that federal law does not allow state or local police to enforce federal civil immigration laws and prevents these officers from making civil immigration arrests beyond narrow circumstances not relevant to Orellana Santos' arrest.

Deputies authorized?

Jenkins said he became aware of the complaint Monday. He said he's looking into the circumstances of the encounter and the arrest. He said LatinoJustice left out some of the facts surrounding the arrest.

Jenkins has repeatedly denied any deputies have engaged in racial or ethnic profiling in the past and maintained that immigration status under the 287(g) program is checked only after a person is arrested for committing a crime.

Jose Perez, one of Orellana Santos' lawyers at LatinoJustice, said her only apparent crime was eating a sandwich while looking Latina.

'The only reasonable conclusion anyone can draw is that they were profiling,' he said.

Perez said the case emphasizes a potential problem with allowing local law enforcement to handle what should be the responsibility of the federal government.

'Since 287(g) agreements went into effect, clearly Latinos are being profiled, stopped and arrested for no other reason than the color of their skin and their appearance,' he said.

A 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which gives local trained police to enforce federal immigration laws, became effective in Frederick County in April of 2008. To date, it's the only such agreement with a county law enforcement agency of its kind in Maryland.

According to a sheriff's office press release, about 500 criminal aliens have been processed in Frederick County from April 2008 to mid-October.

Perez said Orellana Santos now lives at an undisclosed location in the United States with her family and has an immigration lawyer.

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Groups Plan Frederick County Immigration Lawsuit
The Associated Press, November 9, 2009
http://wjz.com/local/frederick.county.immigration.2.1301581.html

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10.
KingCo deputies don't ask immigration status
The Associated Press, November 10, 2009
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_king_county_aliens.html

Seattle (AP) -- The King County Council has adopted an ordinance ensuring that county services are available to all residents regardless of citizenship.

The measure approved Monday codifies current sheriff's policies that deputies cannot make stops or ask for information only to check a person's immigration status.

The sheriff's office says it couldn't do its job if people worried about coming forward as victims or witnesses.

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11.
Muslim immigrant in line for Granite Falls mayor
By Lynn Thompson
The Seattle Times, November 9, 2009
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010231585_haroon09m.html

Among the more improbable scenes in Granite Falls in the days following Tuesday's election was a burly man in an insulated trucker cap giving a bear hug to the elegant Pakistani-American restaurant owner who appeared poised to become the town's new mayor.

'I love you, man,' the local gushed.

Saleem Haroon, 54, sporting a flag lapel pin that blinked frenetically in the dimly lit lounge of his Timberline Cafe, returned the hugs of a steady stream of well-wishers.

In this former mining town of about 3,400, where ethnic diversity might be described as not so much, Haroon was leading the mayor's race with 60 percent of the vote to incumbent Mayor Lyle Romack's 37 percent, although the mayor remained defiant.

'It ain't over till it's over,' Romack said from his office at City Hall where he has filled the mayor's post for six years.

The apparent election of a Muslim immigrant who 30 years ago overstayed his visitor's visa and went on to become a citizen and business owner, surprised even friends and supporters.

'It knocked my socks off that he could get elected up there,' said James Schermer, a Seattle attorney for the Washington Restaurant Association who has represented Haroon's business. 'I mean, this is an old mining and timber town.'

To the locals, the campaign wasn't about race or ethnicity, but about who had Granite Fall's best interests at heart.

A state audit earlier this year found that Mayor Romack had double-billed the city for almost $400 in mileage reimbursements and couldn't provide documentation to support more than $2,000 in travel expenses. The city also was faulted for missing records, failure to seek competitive bids for city equipment, and failure to record utility payments in a timely manner.

'The reimbursement issue upset people,' said Carol Hutchinson, a former city treasurer who supported Haroon. 'It sounds petty, but other mayors didn't bill the city at all.'

At a crowded candidates forum in October, Haroon stood before the audience waving the audit and saying that Romack had broken the law.

The mayor struck back, calling attention to violations of liquor laws at Haroon's lounge including five verbal and written warnings since 2002 for continuing to serve intoxicated customers. Earlier this year, Haroon was fined $300 for serving a 20-year-old in a sting operation by the state Liquor Control Board. Two other Granite Falls bars were cited the same night.

The city police, who had once been regulars at the cafe, stopped patronizing the restaurant and the Police Chief, Tony Domish, told residents that he would resign if Haroon were elected.

The police chief's campaigning against Haroon, including going door to door with Romack supporters, prompted Haroon's lawyer to send a letter to the city warning against possible ethics violations.

'We questioned the appropriateness of a public official seeming to engage in active campaigning to the point of intimidating citizens,' said Schermer.

Domish said he couldn't comment, but Mayor Romack defended his chief, saying, 'He can do whatever he wants on his own time.'

In a booth of the Timberline's cocktail lounge last week, Haroon said he tried to extend an olive branch to the police chief after the August primary election, when Haroon emerged the surprise victor in a close three- way race.

'I told him that the cost of replacing people is enormous, that we should let bygones be bygones,' Haroon said.

Domish, he says, did not reciprocate. Of the police chief's threat to resign, Haroon says in mock seriousness, 'That would break my heart,' and then reels back in laughter.

Haroon tells a classic immigrant's tale of coming to America in 1979 as a young man seeking wider opportunities. He candidly admits to overstaying his visitor's visa and at one point, moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles to stay ahead of immigration officials. In 1987, when then-President Reagan extended amnesty to undocumented immigrants, Haroon became a legal resident and won his citizenship in 1995.

He married his wife, Bushra, in 1992. Their daughter, Nida, 11, was born in Federal Way.

During these same years, the Pakistani native worked his way up to management positions at a series of fast-food chains and was working for Shari's Restaurant in Renton in 2000 when he decided he wanted to be his own boss.

He saw an ad for the Timberline Cafe in Granite Falls and that August drove up to take a look.

'I saw this place and fell in love with it,' he says.

'This place' is a warren of rooms. The front cafe features a tall pie case and windows overlooking the street. A hallway leads past pull-tab and lottery machines, past a sunken restaurant area to the cocktail lounge with a long mirrored bar and a stage for live bands. The afternoon air smells of stale beer and bathroom deodorizer.

Haroon is the genial host, greeting customers by name, moving between the rooms, signaling to a waitress when a customer's drink runs low.

He talks about arriving in town almost a decade earlier, knowing no one, a stranger with a foreign accent. He took his car for an oil change to Pilchuck Automotive, across the street from the Timberline.

'I shouldn't stereotype,' he says from his seat in the lounge, 'but the mechanic looked like a redneck.' When Haroon came back to pick up his car, he said the mechanic refused payment and instead extended his hand and said, 'Welcome to Granite Falls.'

Again after 9/11, Haroon said, he worried about how he would be viewed. He says that residents repeatedly came up to him and said, 'You're one of us. Let us know if anybody causes trouble.' No one did.

Haroon acknowledges that serving liquor is at odds with his Muslim religion and says that his 82-year-old mother 'would like to spank me.' But he says he is not devout, and even has an occasional glass of wine.

'We're in the United States,' he says, gesturing to his restaurant. 'It's a legitimate business.'

Although the results of Tuesday's election won't be finalized until later this month, Haroon is already thinking ahead to his new role as mayor. He wants to reopen the Boys & Girls Club that closed during the current mayor's term. He'd like to attract new businesses to town and to capitalize on the estimated 250,000 tourists that each year travel the scenic Mountain Loop Highway between Granite Falls and Darrington. He wants the town to belong to its citizens again.

'I have some great plans,' he says.

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12.
New McHenry Co. jail rules hinder group aiding immigrants
By Charles Keeshan
The Chicago Daily Herald, November 9, 2009
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=335065

For more than a decade, David Warren and his colleagues with the Secular Franciscan Order have given immigration detainees at the McHenry County jail $10 apiece to spend on candy, snacks, toothpaste and any other items they wish from the facility's commissary.

It's a service, the Crystal Lake man says, that shows compassion to people often frightened and confused while locked up in a foreign land seeking asylum and the freedoms they do not have in their native countries.

But it's also a service Warren and the lay Catholic order may not be providing much longer.

A new set of jail regulations controlling how detainees receive funds in their commissary accounts, Warren said, places undue time and financial burdens on his organization, putting him on the brink of pulling the plug on the commissary donations.

The change, made official Nov. 1, bars the jail from accepting lump sum payments from the Secular Franciscan Order, doing away with Warren's routine of collecting $10 for each new detainee and then writing the jail one check to cover them all.

Instead, under the new policy, the order must either use one of two computerized methods for making $10 deposits for each individual -- with a $5 fee per transaction tacked on -- or mail in a separate $10 money order for each detainee.

'It's just onerous and unnecessary,' said Warren, who also ministers and provides counseling to the immigration detainees. 'It would be impossible for me to do it this way.'

Deputy Corrections Chief Patrick Firman said the change was necessary for the jail to abide by state regulations governing how it handles inmates' money.

The jail handles commissary accounts for hundreds of inmates, both the county's and federal immigration detainees held under a deal between the county and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As of late last week, the jail had 204 immigration detainees from around the world within its walls, Firman said.

Oftentimes under the previous arrangement with Warren, he said, detainees would be out of the facility by the time the donation arrived, leaving the jail with hundreds of unaccounted-for dollars.

'Our main concern is accounting for the funds,' he said. 'We certainly don't object to what they want to do, but we have to figure out some way to have accountability.'

Firman noted that the new rules for immigration detainees are no different from those imposed on others being held in the jail.

But with about 1,500 detainees receiving a donation each year, Warren said, the latter option would cost the order about $2,100 -- $1 per money order, plus a 44-cent stamp for each mailing. Paying the $5 fee per transaction is not an option either.

It would not, he said, be an acceptable way to use funds received from churchgoers' tithings.

'It would be unethical to take money from the collection boxes and give it to the postal service,' he said.

Firman said he reached out to Warren late last week and hopes the two can meet soon to forge an arrangement that serves both their needs.

'We understand where he's coming from,' he said. 'I'm sure once we sit down with Mr. Warren, we'll be able to work something out. We don't want to prevent them from doing what they're doing.'

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13.
Undocumented students mobilize to win legal status
By Katie Rogers
The McClatchy Newspapers, November 9, 2009
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/78587.html

Washington, DC -- As her fellow college graduates busy themselves with spamming every available e-mail inbox with resumes, 25-year-old Lizbeth Mateo keeps to the same Los Angeles coffee shop she's worked in for the past five years.

A native of Mexico and an undocumented immigrant who's lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, Mateo earned a bachelor's degree last year from California State University, Northridge. Though she said she'd like to find a job that would allow her to give back in some way to the low-income community where she grew up, Mateo's immigration status has put a cap on what she's able to achieve.

One could say that she's still waiting for a dream. 'You're not allowed to work where you grow up or have a job that's related to your field,' Mateo said of her undocumented status.

It's been just more than two years since the last version of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act failed to pass the Senate. Reintroduced in both chambers of Congress in March, the most recent incarnation of the DREAM Act would provide a path toward legal U.S. residency for students such as Mateo.

To mobilize supporters, Mateo and others in her situation have taken to the Internet's social media to spread their message. Using the Web to invite other supporters into the fray, undocumented bloggers and Tweeters across the country have formed a coalition called United We Dream. The group rolled out the countrywide 'Back to School DREAM Act Day of Action' demonstration in September. Floridians hosted 13 demonstrations across the state in September, half of them in Miami.

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, updates a 'Corruption Chronicles' blog that tracks the progress of undocumented immigrants through higher education. He said that the DREAM Act threatened to draw even more immigrants to the United States illegally than immigrations bills that offered amnesty.

Matias Ramos, 23, a recent University of California, Los Angeles, graduate and Washington resident, said that undocumented people of his generation were becoming less afraid to speak out against what they saw as injustice. On the Web, as he is in person, Ramos is an unafraid activist, maintaining a blog on the topic and reaching out to his Twitter following to spread news.

Ramos and others hope that policy work on the DREAM Act will begin in earnest next year, either as part of more comprehensive immigration revisions or as a standalone bill.

'I think a lot of us are coming together and say enough is enough,' said Ramos, who's a native of Argentina. 'We're ready to lead this debate and say, 'This is what the undocumented population is about and what it's not.' '

Undocumented and born abroad, Mateo and Ramos defeated steep odds for their degrees. As a group, Latinos historically trail their classmates of other races, according to Pew Hispanic Center data, and being foreign-born widens the gap.

Though not necessarily undocumented, only 29 percent of young, foreign-born Latinos interviewed in Pew's 2009 National Survey of Latinos planned to pursue bachelor's degrees. That's compared with 60 percent of those who are native-born. After age 18, only one-fifth of foreign-born young adults surveyed remained enrolled in school, representing a presence that's half that of native-born enrollees.

Cinthya Alvares, an undocumented 22-year-old, hasn't been able to find time to get her GED after nearly a decade in the U.S. Smuggled with her parents by human traffickers from Honduras when she was a teen, Alvares is making her third attempt at earning a GED since she dropped out of high school at 17. She said she saw no way out of her two jobs, one at a cleaning service and the other at a restaurant.

Conservative groups such as Judicial Watch protest the progress of undocumented immigrants throughout the higher education system.

'There are people who are waiting to get into this country because they've patiently abided the law,' Fitton said, 'and those who cheat get these proposed benefits. Why would someone who is not a citizen be able to get resources that might otherwise be devoted to helping citizens?'

Qalim Cromer thinks there should be a better path. Cromer teaches a GED class at the Latin American Youth Center in Washington and works with first-generation and undocumented students.

He calls his work 'plugging the dam,' not fixing the problem of helping the undocumented access higher education but biding time until immigration legislation proceeds.

Unlike Ramos or Mateo, Alvares sees no path to college. If she thinks too long about her limitations, she panics. She doesn't dream; instead, she tells of the deportation nightmares that plague her.

'What if this is all I can do?' she asks Cromer in perfect English. 'This is the max I can move on without papers.' (The Medill News Service is a Washington program of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Rogers, a graduate student in journalism from Elkhart, Ind., covers business and education.)

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14.
Workshops for Latino immigrants focus on preventing foreclosure
By Darrell Smith
The Sacramento Bee, November 10, 2009
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2316053.html

For California's Mexican immigrants, homeownership is patrimonio, an inheritance passed down to the next generation.

'(It's) what you leave to your kids,' Carlos González Gutiérrez, consul general of Mexico in Sacramento, said Monday. 'That word means a lot in Spanish.'

Preserving and protecting that investment is the focus of a pilot program launched this week to help Mexican and other Latino immigrants in Sacramento and the northern San Joaquin Valley avoid foreclosure.

Losses of jobs and income are common problems affecting many immigrants in Sacramento, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, González Gutiérrez said.

'No one gains by people failing to pay their mortgages - not the bank, not the family,' he said. 'But the ones who suffer most are the kids, the second generation.'

To help those in his jurisdiction avoid falling into foreclosure, González Gutiérrez teamed with the Catholic dioceses of Sacramento and Stockton, the state Department of Consumer Affairs and nonprofit ClearPoint Credit Counseling Solutions to offer free workshops and counseling.

The foreclosure prevention workshops, open to Mexican and other Latino immigrants, run through Friday at three Catholic churches in Sacramento, Stockton and Modesto. Next week, mortgage counseling will be offered to the general public at the consul general's office, 1010 Eighth St., in Sacramento. All sessions will be in Spanish and English.

The workshop project comes as Latino homeownership nears historic highs: about one of every two Latino households owns a home, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

The project focuses on a region and a state hit hard by the housing crisis.

According to the Pew center, Latino and black homebuyers in 2007 were far more likely than whites to borrow in the higher-priced subprime market. They also carried more debt relative to income.

In 2007, the Pew center said, 27.6 percent of home loans to Latinos and 33.5 percent to blacks were higher-priced loans, compared with just 10.5 percent of loans to whites.

Speaking to The Bee after a news conference Monday, González Gutiérrez says he got the idea for his foreclosure program while talking with Mexican-born service workers at his own home: the cable TV installer from Jalisco and the air conditioner repairman from Zacatecas.

Unaware of González Gutiérrez's post, both workers told him they were at risk of losing their homes for financial reasons. The Zacatecas immigrant declared he was living 'the American dream,' González Gutiérrez said, 'but the only thing he regretted was that he was losing his home.'

Like many homeowners everywhere, Latinos have been hurt first by the subprime lending crisis, then by the recession. Some lost their jobs, and others are earning far less than they once did. In both cases, the mortgage payment gets harder to make.

Language barriers and a reluctance to seek help add to the financial problems. Many fall victim to mortgage scams.

'Our community has special needs,' González Gutiérrez said. 'It doesn't ask for help, and a significant number are undocumented, so they're subject to predators who take advantage of their situation.'

That's why partnerships with local clergy, credit counseling groups and state agencies are important, he said.

'We're making sure that consumers aren't being ripped off,' said Brian Stiger, director of the state Department of Consumer Affairs. ' ... People are desperate. They're looking for help and don't know where to turn.'

González Gutiérrez hopes the new programs can be an answer.

'Behind each house (facing) problems there is much sacrifice and much work from a working family,' González Gutiérrez said. 'To avoid foreclosure is a way to protect the patrimony of the following generation.'

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15.
Workshop eases the path to citizenship
Free seminar at NE Salem center open to those who are eligible
By Thelma Guerrero Huston
The Statesman Journal (Salem), November 9, 2009
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20091109/NEWS/911090324/1001/news

A U.S. resident for the past six years, Jesus Avados is just about ready to navigate the legal process that will allow him to become an American citizen.

To make sure he doesn't hit a bump in the road, Avados sought help in filling out the naturalization application from Mano a Mano Family Center in northeast Salem.

'This is a great service they're offering people who want to get citizenship,' he said. 'It's very helpful.'

Avados was one of 10 people who attended an inaugural citizenship workshop Saturday at Northgate Community Learning Center.

The free seminar offered help to people who are eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship. It was the first of several going on through June.

'This year, the citizenship test is more comprehensive,' said Levi Herrera, the nonprofit's director. 'It's a lot more complicated and more costly.'

In July 2007, officials with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, increased citizenship application and processing fees to $675 per person from $400, a nearly 70 percent increase.

Mano a Mano partnered with the law office of Muntz and Ghio in Salem and James Davis, a local attorney recently certified in immigration law, to address applicants' legal questions.

'Working with people who want to become citizens but don't have the money to pay for help is something that's needed,' Davis said. 'It's something that Mano a Mano should be doing.'

To qualify for citizenship, people must have held a U.S. residency card for no less than five years or must have been married to a U.S. citizen for three or more years.

To get assistance from the nonprofit, those who qualify must live in Salem, Independence or Woodburn. Registration is not required.

Appointments also are available for those who prefer to meet one-on-one with a staff member or attorney. A small fee may apply.

Feeling confident as he left the workshop, Avados expressed gratitude for the help he had received.

'I'm very appreciative to them for doing this,' he said, 'especially since they're doing it at no cost.'

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16.
Homeward Bound
By Mona Sarika
The Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125782421975040485.html

Sudhir Kapoor, 25, got the call from his employer late last year. It was bad news: The economic downturn meant the technology company had to let him go.

He had arrived on an H-1B visa for highly skilled workers—but the layoff left two options: quickly find another job or go back home. In a few weeks, he was on a plane to Mumbai.

''I do feel bad for anyone losing a job, whether it's an American or an H-1B foreign worker. But for H-1B foreign worker, if we don't get a job, we have to go back to our home countries,' said Mr. Kapoor.

As The Wall Street Journal reported late last month, this years marks the first time in a long while that H-1B visas are going unused. As of Sept. 25 -- nearly six months after the U.S. government began accepting applications for H-1s-- only 46,700 petitions had been filed. Last year, all 65,000 were spoken for on the first day.

In February, President Obama signed legislation placing certain restrictions on companies that received government bailout money, such as ensuring they did not displace American workers with H-1B visa holders. While Bank of America rescinded offers to some MBA graduates of U.S. universities as a result, it appears layoffs are more often to blame for the lack of visa renewals. As their fate becomes increasingly uncertain, a growing number of Indians in America — both temporary workers and permanent residents who only a few years ago fought to win lucrative jobs from Wall Street to Silicon Valley--are now packing up and heading home to India.

In many cases, their exodus is a bitter one. Laxmi Aiyar, who is returning to India after she was laid off by her company, says, 'It is Indian talents who made America rich and prosperous. Now, they are throwing us out like a can of Pepsi.'

Since nearly 40 percent of all H-1B visa holders are from India, the mounting layoffs are hitting Indian professionals particularly hard.

An estimated 16,000 to 20,000 Indian nationals have returned home, says Arvind Panagariya, an economics professor at Columbia University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

H-1B visa holders say they feel they are in a state of limbo, ready to pick up and move wherever the economy or work takes them. Lives have been disrupted, and some said they were under tremendous stress to pay back mortgage loans for buying houses and cars. Many had children born on U.S. soil and wonder how their children will adjust to Indian schools and a different way of life.

It is one of the major vulnerabilities for professionals on the H-1B visa. 'The moment you don't work, you're out of status, you have no grace period,' said immigration attorney Tahmina Watson. Workers can either leave the country within a matter of days, or convert to a B1/B2 tourist visa, which doesn't allow them to work, but buys them a few months to sell their homes and cars, make travel arrangements or find a new school for their children.

Some are grateful for the U.S. experience nonetheless. Niraj Sharma, a New York City consultant, was forced to pack in his entire life in the U.S. and return to India within a month. 'The H-1B process was clear and we knew its limitations,' he reasons. 'But the work experience in the U.S. was tremendously valuable and it provides us with leverage in Asia to prosper.'

Unlike previous generations who permanently settled in U.S, Mr. Sharma thinks of himself as part of a new Indian nomadic class: 'If the next opportunity is in the U.K. or Africa, we will go there. …People have always moved to places of opportunity. While the U.S. will always be a beacon of opportunity, other countries have also started competing with it.'

There is a difference between choosing to go back home and being forced to. H-1s have been reluctant to publicize their plight, for two reasons: They fear that most Americans are unsympathetic to their predicament, and many do not want their family and friends in India to know that their American dream didn't quite work out.

Moving back to India is unsettling for immigrants after spending years living and working in U.S. Both they and India have changed during their stint abroad. 'We knew this wasn't going to be a smooth ride or piece of cake for us. The biggest worry for us was not about moving here (to Bangalore), but about what we would do after this. Would we have to go to a different city in the U.S.? Could we go back to the Bay Area?' said Sweta Mehta, who moved last year from California, to Bangalore.

She had immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 18 to attend college. After graduating, she went to work for Intel, got married, and settled in Sacramento. However, when she and her husband got laid off, they had to leave US and move to Bangalore. Her six year-old misses her life in America. 'She was asking about her friends and teachers,' said Ms. Mehta.

To smooth the transition, Ms. Mehta and her family moved into an apartment complex that's popular among returnees from the US. Aside from the amenities that remind them of the U.S., it provides a community with whom they can share stories and experiences. 'It makes a difference that people have lived in U.S.,' she said. Mindful of the uncertainty, the Mehta still have their eye on returning to the U.S. -- when the economy improves.

Returnees, too, are finding it harder to get a job at an Indian company than just a few years ago. If someone has worked abroad for more than seven years, they are often found unfit to work in 'resurgent India.' And managers have to tread carefully between paying them more than 'locals.'

Still, for the first time, the depth of the recession and bleak labor market are forcing Indian immigrants still in the U.S. to ask a question their predecessors never would have: Why stay?

'What America 's basically saying is, 'We've educated you, we've trained you, we've taught you all about our markets,'' says Vivek Wadhwa, a successful Indian-born tech entrepreneur turned Duke University professor. ''Now you have to get the hell out of here.

Mr. Wadhwa estimates the U.S. will lose at least 100,000 Indians in the next three to five years. Ironically, he says, 'they're exactly the kind of people we want to be here to fuel the economic recovery.'

The typical Indian professional's journey to the U.S. used to begin in one of two ways—the student visa or the H-1B.

'Our generation has benefited because America has welcomed us and we have learned so much here,' said Himanshu Khare, a software professional in Boston on a H1B visa, but thinking of going back to India.

'But now the H-1B has become a distant dream, ending our great American dream. It's time for us to say goodbye to America, and hello to India '

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17.
Nashville's immigrant community is excited about World Cup bid
Many played soccer in their home countries
By Chris Echegaray
The Tennessean (Nashville), November 10, 2009
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091110/SPORTS11/911100340/-1/NEWS01

The Somalis, Nigerians, Argentines, Colombians, Mexicans, Peruvians and Kurds - among the many here - are united by a common sport in Middle Tennessee: fútbol, better known as soccer.

These soccer aficionados are watching as Nashville makes its pitch to bring the World Cup in 2018, wanting their adopted country to witness the sport that draws record crowds globally.

'We want everybody to understand our game is the most popular game in the world,' said Andy Chea, a Brentwood resident who runs soccer leagues. 'It's the most popular on the planet. Nashville already has fútbol, and we speak that international language.'

Nashville is among 27 cities nationwide making a push to bring in the World Cup, an international competition, in 2018 or 2022. A selling point is the state record for a soccer match - 27,959 spectators when a World Cup qualifier was played at LP Field in April.

Large Tenn. population

In Middle Tennessee, soccer leagues have sprouted. Chea runs soccer tournaments and events through his company Golazo, which means 'tremendous goal' in soccer vernacular.

'There are a lot of Africans, South Americans, Europeans and American fans here,' said Chea, who was born in South America. 'It would be great as we would be representing the international community.'

Indeed. Nashville boasts a large foreign-born community, many from places where soccer is the national sport. Tennessee is home to nearly 248,500 foreign-born residents, according to the Migration Policy Institute's 2008 estimates. That moves the state's ranking from 31st to 23rd for the number of immigrants and refugees since 1990.

The fan base exists as the business community and city leaders back the bid to bring games to Nashville.

There would be wide interest, and not only from the immigrant communities, said Teresa Vazquez, president of Tennessee Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

'The World Cup would put Nashville on the world map,' she said. 'It's a very positive thing for immigrants and non-immigrants. It brings people from the outside, which means economic development.'

Vazquez said she's supporting the effort made by Nashville's chamber of commerce. She thinks if the World Cup is brought to the U.S., the game will have an impact the same way it did for Latinos.

'We grew up with it, watching it,' Vazquez said. 'People here have not been fully exposed. It's a fantastic sport, it's an art and there's a lot of soccer being played in Tennessee.'

Some of the growth of soccer leagues in Middle Tennessee coincides with the resettlement of Somalis, Kurds and other groups.

Abdirizak Hassan, director of the Center for Refugees & Immigrants of Tennessee, said decent soccer players from around the world were among the resettled.

Bringing the World Cup would have an added element, introducing Nashvillians to different people of different backgrounds on a large scale.

'It's a big cultural impact,' Hassan said. 'That point of view will help. Nashville is not your typical gateway city, like a Boston or New York, for immigrants. Some people are not exposed to the outside world. This will give them more of an international understanding.'

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18.
The lonely, illegal world of 'Mr. Cheng'
Like thousands of others, he wants to work. But he has to hide under Immigration's radar.
By Julie Shaw
The Philadelphia Daily News, November 10, 2009
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/top_story/20091110_The_lonely__illegal_world_of__Mr__Cheng_.html

AT 4:15 A.M., 'Mr. Cheng' gets a call on his cell phone, signaling him to head outside to the light-blue van that will take him and other illegal workers to a mail-packaging factory in Montgomery County, to jobs that pay just above the minimum wage.

It's dark and quiet on the streets of South Philly as the van drives around, picking up other workers, who greet each other in Indonesian. Cheng is ethnically Chinese, but was born in Indonesia and lived there until he came to the United States about eight years ago.

'I was dreaming of a better life,' he says, when asked why he came here - and stayed.

Cheng (not his real name) is one of the estimated 103,000 illegal immigrants living in Philadelphia and its four suburban counties - who often live in the shadows, working low-paid jobs, with the fear of deportation as they try to make a way for themselves here.

This is his story - an inside glimpse into how one illegal immigrant has been surviving in the city.

In some ways, Cheng's life rings with a sense of normalcy - he works five, sometimes six, days a week, has learned to navigate parts of the city, has friends among the immigrant population and likes reading news and surfing the Internet.

In other ways, his life is anything but normal.

In the past six years, he's had about 15 jobs, lived in about 10 places, has been laid off numerous times and has no medical insurance. Daily, he fears that he will be discovered and deported. He has not seen his wife and daughter since 2002, when he left Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, and has no idea when he will.

Sitting in the kitchen of a South Philadelphia rowhouse that he shares with three other adults - all illegal immigrants - Cheng, 44, recently explained how he makes it.

He lives comfortably because he lives simply. His latest job, in the beauty-supply industry, pays his $230-per-month rent, which includes utilities. He has a room in the basement and shares the kitchen and the living room, sparsely furnished with a worn brown rug and no sofa.

His bedroom, with its 6-foot-high ceiling, is a small space with a narrow, frosted-glass window that looks out onto the concrete side of another house, and has just enough room for a twin bed, a desk, two chairs and a clothes rack.

He stores clothes in plastic bins that he found on the sidewalk - someone else's garbage.

'The Americans, when they buy things, they don't keep them very long,' he said, in one of a series of interviews over the past couple of years. 'So many things we can use from the street. I thought, why not? We still can use them.'

He keeps cards with inspiring sayings and posts them in his room. One, which arrived in a piece of junk mail, quotes Aesop: 'No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.'

South Philadelphia and the Point Breeze neighborhoods have grown to accommodate their bustling immigrant population. Indonesian grocery stores and restaurants have sprouted up, serving beef stew, chicken satay and spicy tofu.

Temporary-employment agencies - serving as middlemen - help immigrants obtain jobs in factories and warehouses.

St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church offers English-as-a-second-language classes and has Masses in Spanish, Vietnamese and Indonesian.

Stores catering to immigrants have set up wire-transfer services so that people like Cheng can send money back home. Cheng sends about $700 to $800 a month to his wife and daughter in Jakarta.

Cheng hasn't had any serious health problems. He has been able to get free checkups at a city health center. But this will change soon. The city's Board of Health in September approved a fee system, in which the uninsured will have to fork over anywhere from $5 to $20 a visit.

Pursuing a better life

Many illegal immigrants overstay a tourist visa to the United States. Cheng overstayed a business visa.

In Indonesia, he had worked for a chain of department stores, importing merchandise from China, until he was laid off as part of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. For the next few years, he did 'anything I can to earn a living,' such as teaching English and trying to set up his own business.

In May 1998, he, like hundreds of ethnic Chinese people living in Indonesia, was brutally assaulted in Jakarta, targeted because of his ethnicity. An estimated 1,200 people were killed.

Cheng had been riding his motorbike when 'I saw smoke everywhere' and a 'few people pushed me off' the bike and attacked him with a sword, he said.

'They try to kill me,' he said. 'I was one of the victims. I was lucky I am alive.'

In hopes of pursuing a better life, he made plans to come to the United States. His wife and daughter agreed that he would go first, then try to bring them here.

He bought a round-trip ticket and flew to California in 2002. 'If you only have one-way ticket, they will be suspicious,' he said of U.S. officials. 'I also booked a hotel in Los Angeles.'

After spending about a year-and-a-half in L.A., where he worked some, but couldn't secure a work permit, he met someone who told him about the possibility of jobs in Baltimore.

He flew to Baltimore, where he spent three weeks. While there, he found out about rooms for rent in Philadelphia. He didn't know anyone here, but boarded a Greyhound bus in 2003 and has been living in the city since then.

Cheng has applied for political asylum. It has most recently been denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in California, which found that the injury he suffered during the May 1998 riots did not necessarily amount to persecution.

The court also found that because his family has continued to live unharmed in Indonesia, Cheng's 'fear of future persecution is not objectively reasonable.'

Life in the shadows

It was an April 2007 day when Cheng got the 4:15 a.m. cell-phone call from an employment-agency worker, who drove him and others to a mail-packaging company in Montgomery County. This reporter furtively accompanied him and also worked for the day.

He arrived with 10 others at the warehouse as the light began to break, as birds began chirping. Inside the plain building, on a flat, green campus, the workers punched in time cards, but didn't have to show ID.

They were given various work duties. Some were assigned to mail- insertion machines, which inserted pieces of paper in envelopes.

The machines glued and sealed the envelopes, then sent them on conveyor belts to workers who packaged and rubber-banded them by ZIP code and put the packets onto orange pallets.

Cheng used a handtruck to move the pallets away from the work stations when they were full and to put new pallets in their place. He also opened wooden boxes containing the junk-mail inserts.

The workers did these simple, rote jobs all day long.

There were no windows in the warehouse. Sunshine streamed through an open garage door at the far end of the room.

The big, open warehouse smelled of wood - wooden boxes, wooden pallets. There were stacks of paper everywhere - so many pieces of paper to be inserted into so many envelopes to be mailed to so many addresses.

Cheng said that he and other immigrants call this type of work 'paper.' When they aren't needed anymore, the agency middleman will tell them to 'stay home,' meaning they've been laid off.

They got two 10-minute breaks, the latter for lunch. They could use the bathrooms when needed.

In the van ride back home, with the hot sun filtering through the windows, some people fell asleep. Others checked their cell phones. A few chatted in Indonesian.

The driver, who also worked in the factory, brought the laborers back to South Philly about 3:15 p.m. On the bustling streets, parents picked up their schoolchildren. It was like any normal day.

Cheng was later paid in cash by the agency - $7 an hour at the time, or just above the minimum wage, which translated to $56 a day or $280 a week.

No taxes were taken out.

About a month later, Cheng got laid off from that job. He then worked at a factory in Bucks County assembling electrical transformers.

In an October 2007 e-mail, he expressed how he wanted to get a job in a deli, store or dry cleaner's, so that he wouldn't have to commute to a factory in a van:

'Two weeks ago two vans carrying workers were stopped by the [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency] on the way to work and all the 25 passengers were arrested and sent to immigration jails in Texas. I know many of the workers because I used to work with them for almost three years.

'I am lucky I quitted from that company a year ago, otherwise I will be in Texas now! There have been several house raids in South Philly as well, and now I would not respond to the knocks on the door without any phone calls.

'Sooner or later, I will have to leave this country but I do not want to board the plane with both hands chained.'

He now works for a company that supplies beauty products to salons. He makes just below the minimum wage.

'I appreciate I have a job,' he said in a recent interview. 'I realize millions of Americans are unemployed.'

'My last hope to be able to stay legally here,' he wrote in a recent e-mail, 'is waiting for [President Obama's] immigration reform. . . . Otherwise, I will face the reality that the American people do not think I am a [worthy] individual to be given the opportunities contributing to' society.

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19.
Different views of slaughterhouse manager offered
The Associated Press, November 9, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/09/AR2009110903864.html

Sioux Falls, SD (AP) -- Prosecutors and defense attorneys for the former manager of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse offered starkly different portraits of the man accused of defrauding a bank Monday in the closing arguments of his nearly monthlong financial fraud trial.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan Jr. said Sholom Rubashkin, the former manager of Iowa kosher meatpacking plant Agriprocessors, masterminded a fraud scheme and harbored immigrants at the plant.

But Rubashkin's defense attorney, Guy Cook, told jurors Rubashkin never read the loan agreement with St. Louis-based First Bank and tried to emphasize that Rubashkin was a bumbling businessman who was in over his head.

Rubashkin is on trial on 91 financial fraud charges in U.S. District Court in Sioux Falls, S.D. He has pleaded not guilty.

'This case is very much about control,' Deegan told jurors. 'The defendant's control over money from customers. The defendant's control over money for cattle providers ... the defendant's control over his workers. And finally, control over the bottom line.'

It was a theme the prosecution emphasized throughout the trial: Rubashkin knowingly defrauded First Bank by offering false invoices for orders that never existed and running a plant that hired illegal immigrants in violation of the loan agreement.

The Postville plant was the site of a major immigration raid in May 2008, when 389 workers were arrested. A second trial on 72 immigration charges is expected to follow the fraud trial.

Cook said Rubashkin never oversaw financial decisions. He also said First Bank knew about the alleged fraud but continued to lend to Agriprocessors anyway.

Cook equated the loan arrangement to a date set up on a Web site in which one party makes false claims, but the other party agrees to a 'date' even after discovering the untruth.

Deegan took issue with the assertion that Rubashkin never knew about the fraud, referencing the testimony of former plant controller Yomtov 'Toby' Bensasson, who pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge in August and testified that Rubashkin helped create the false invoices.

'It's ridiculous,' Deegan said. 'It's a child's excuse. He says: 'Toby (Bensasson) made me do it, and I didn't know it was illegal, and even if I did know it was wrong, I didn't think the bank would care.''

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20.
Man gets 14 years in immigrant smuggling case
By Juan A. Lozano
The Associated Press, November 9, 2009
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6712173.html

Houston (AP) -- A Texas man was sentenced Monday to more than 14 years in prison for his role in what became the deadliest human smuggling attempt in U.S. history.

Abelardo Flores was part of a smuggling ring that packed more than 70 illegal immigrants into the back of a stifling tractor-trailer in May 2003 and tried to transport them from southern Texas to Houston, prosecutors said.

The immigrants, from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, were found after the driver, whom Flores had recruited, abandoned the trailer at a truck stop in Victoria, about 100 miles southwest of Houston.

Seventeen people were found dead in the trailer, and two others died later, all of dehydration, overheating and suffocation.

Erik Sunde, Flores' attorney, said his client, before being sentenced, acknowledged what he had done.

'He expressed deep remorse for the loss of life in the case and in open court he apologized to the families, one by one, of the decedents,' Sunde said.

Flores, 40, from the southern Texas town of Harlingen, was also fined $3,000 by U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore.

He had previously pleaded guilty to a smuggling conspiracy charge and was given a reduced sentence as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors. Flores had been indicted on 58 counts and had faced up to life in prison.

As part of the plea deal, Flores testified at the trials of seven co-defendants.

Sunde said prosecutors had recommended that Flores receive a sentence of 10 years, but Gilmore decided to impose a sentence of more than 14 years.

'We felt Gilmore's sentence was thoughtful and reasonable under the circumstances. Mr. Flores has indicated he will not be appealing the sentence,' Sunde said.

Twelve people, including Flores, have been convicted for their roles in the smuggling attempt and are serving prison terms, prosecutors said. The final sentencing in the case is set for January.

The driver of the trailer, Tyrone Williams, was sentenced in January 2007 to life in prison. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty against him.

Authorities said the temperature in the trailer reached 173 degrees. Survivors testified the immigrants took off their sweat-drenched clothes for relief and crowded around holes they punched in the truck so they could breathe. They also kicked out a signal light to try to get the attention of passing motorists.

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21.
More Immigration Busts at Courthouse Project
By Rich Jones
The WOKV News (Jacksonville, FL), November 10, 2009
http://wokv.com/localnews/2009/11/more-immigration-busts-at-cour.html

Are your tax dollars paying illegal immigrants who are building the new Duval County Courthouse?

Immigration officials tell the Times Union that four undocumented workers were arrested Monday at the construction site. That makes 19 arrests since September.

And the feds now say at least 100 people working on the site provided fake identification documents after a recent crackdown. That's a quarter of the total workers.

Now Mayor Peyton's office is looking at whether the contractor running the $350 million dollar project, Turner Construction, may have breached it's contract by hiring illegals.

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22.
Hearing delayed again
Dad accused of killing 'Westernized' daughter still on suicide watch
By Dustin Gardiner
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix), November 10, 2009

A Glendale father's arraignment on charges that he killed his daughter for being too 'Westernized' has been delayed again as he remains on suicide watch in a Maricopa County jail, court officials said Monday.
. . .
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/11/10/20091110wvalmaleki1110.html

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23.
Brewster man accused of sexually abusing 8-year-old
By Rob Ryser
The Lower Hudson Journal News (White Plains, NY), November 10, 2009

Brewster, NY -- A 24-year-old village man suspected of being in the United States illegally was arrested on a felony charge after he was accused of sexually abusing an 8-year-old boy, police said.

The boy told a doctor during an Oct. 30 appointment that he had been sexually abused, according to a release from the Putnam County Sheriff's Office.
. . .
http://www.lohud.com/article/20091110/NEWS04/911100324/-1/SPORTS/Brewster-man-accused-of-sexually-abusing-8-year-old

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24.
Immigrant arrested in Myrtle Beach sentenced for possession of a firearm
The Myrtle Beach Sun-News (SC), November 9, 2009

An Israeli immigrant who was arrested in Myrtle Beach has been sentenced in federal court for possession of a firearm by an illegal alien.
. . .
http://www.thesunnews.com/news/breaking_news/story/1158043.html

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Overseas News

Support the Center for Immigration Studies by donating on line here: http://cis.org/donate

ATTN Federal employees: The Center's Combined Federal Campaign number is 10298.

[For CISNEWS subscribers --

1. Italy: Population of Filipino workers grows by 8,000
2. Lebanon: Watchdog voices concerns over deaths of foreign workers
3. Israel: Interior Min. linked to record levels of immigration (story, 2 links)
4. S. Korea: Foreign population booms, but country remains low on immigrants' list
5. Japan: Gov’t to expedite asylum appeals process
6. China: Workers protest proposed tax on foreign labor
7. Malaysia: State leader calls for solutions to immigration problems
8. Indonesia: Detainees aboard Australian vessel spurn resettlement plan (story, 2 links)
9. Philippines: Pols throw weight behind ban on domestic workers to Middle East (story, link)
10. Philippines: 3,000 'languish' in foreign jails (2 stories, link)
11. Australia: Regional summit to press for fewer restrictions (story, link)
12. Australia: Sri Lankan deal targets people smugglers (story, 2 links)
13. Australia: Gov’t under fire for detention policies (story, link)
14. Australia: PM endures ongoing scrutiny over asylum stance (2 stories)
15. Australia: Gov't urged to cede imm. policy to independent arbiter
16. Australia: Pol promises probe of cash-for-visa scandal (story, link)
17. Australia: Poll finds Aussies split on immigration levels (story, link)
18. Australia: PNG illegals 'flooding' Torres Strait territories
19. Australia: Foreign students demand gov't response to collapsed schools
20. Australia: Record number of expatriates abandoning U.K.
21. N.Z.: Gov't unlikely to offer refuge to Sri Lankan detainees
22. N.Z.: Police expand outreach through language program

Subscribe to CIS e-mail services here: http://cis.org/immigrationnews.html

-- Mark Krikorian]


1.
80,000 more Filipinos in Italy in 2008
The ABS CBN News, November 8, 2009
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/pinoy-migration/11/08/09/80000-more-filipinos-italy-2008

Manila -- Newly-released data on Italy’s migrant population by that country’s census registry showed that the number of documented Filipinos grew by 8,011 more in 2008.

ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica), Italy’s statistics office, said in its October 8 release that there are 113,686 documented Filipinos living in Italy in 2008. This is compared to the 105,675 number ISTAT estimated in 2007.

This makes Filipinos the sixth largest foreign population group in Italy, behind Romania (796,477), Albania (441,396), Morocco (403,592), China (170,265), and Ukraine (153,998).

Females outnumber males (66,080 versus 47,606), ISTAT data show. But among the 12 countries of origin that have the most numbers of migrants in Italy, the Filipinos have biggest percentage (79.6% or an estimated 90,267) of migrants living in capital cities, or capoluoghi. Among the renowned capital cities are Milan and the Italian capital of Rome.

Milan, considered Italy’s financial capital, hosts 28,735 Filipinos according to ISTAT’s 2008 data, while Filipinos in Rome number to 25,323. Other Italian cities with visible numbers of Filipinos are Bologna (4,068), Firenze (3,668), and Torino (2,713).

The rest of the Filipinos in Italy (20.4 percent or an estimate of 23,419) live in the country’s altri comuni or other communities.

Italy is the second-biggest destination country of Filipinos in Europe (behind the United Kingdom) if one looks at the Philippine government’s 2007 stock estimates of overseas Filipinos.

Covering both documented and irregular or undocumented migrants, data from the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) showed that there are 82,594 temporary migrants, 24,598 permanent migrants, and an estimated 13,000 undocumented migrants in Italy as of 2007.

CFO gets its estimates using data from host countries’ census and immigration registers (such as ISTAT), data that CFO and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) produce. Likewise, data is also culled from information on Filipinos who registered with the Philippine embassies in consulates –in particular the embassy in Rome and the consulate in Milan.

Italy has 20 regions, or comunes, and Lombardia region (where Milan is) has the biggest Filipino concentration with 40,989 Filipinos. The region of Lazio, where Rome is situated, follows next with 27,819.

Emilia-Romagna region, where the city of Bologna is, has the third biggest regional concentration of Filipinos with 10,593 (4,068 of whom live in Bologna alone).

But in terms of percentage share to a region’s total migrant population, Filipinos in Lazio region make up 6.2 percent —a far second behind the Romanians with 35.2 percent.

Romanians, by percentage share of migrants in Italy’s different regions, have the biggest share of migrants in 15 of Italy’s 20 regions.

Italy is a renowned destination country for female domestic workers from the Philippines. POEA data reveal that the 2,839 deployed to Italy last year as domestic workers is the sixth largest country group of those deployed overseas as household service or domestic workers.

Meanwhile, caregivers who went to Italy in 2008 were the ninth biggest country group in terms of deployed overseas caregivers.

A 2009 paper by Italian researcher Giuseppi Sciortino wrote that the Philippines, both during the years 2007 and 2008, has the third biggest number of workers required by Italy’s migrant quota system with 5,000. In both years, Italy asks for 8,000 workers from Egypt and 6,500 workers from Moldova.

The Philippines is among 14 countries that the Italian government set quotas for number of workers.

Just recently, the Italian government encouraged irregular or undocumented domestic workers and caregivers to apply for amnesty. During the June to September 30 application period, the Italian government said it has received 180,408 applications representing domestic workers and 114,336 for caregivers. No data by nationality are currently available.

Migration analyst Filomeno Aguilar of the Ateneo de Manila University told the OFW Journalism Consortium he sees this amnesty measure benefiting Filipinos more than other nationals.

POEA data show that deployment of Filipino workers to Italy was up by 22.6 percent in 2008 (22,623 versus 17,855 in 2007, the latter figure the lowest deployment to Italy in the current millennium).

Remittances data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas show that Italy is the fifth-biggest source of remittances in 2008 with US$678.539 million (behind the United States, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and the United Kingdom).

The 2008 figure is higher than the US$635.994 million coming from Italy-based Filipinos in 2007.

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2.
Alarming trend of domestic worker deaths persists
By Josie Ensor
The Daily Star (Lebanon), November 9, 2009
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=31&article_id=108457

Beirut -- At least six domestic migrant workers are believed to have committed suicide in the past month in Lebanon. But rather than being anomalies, their deaths are the most recent in an alarming trend. According to Human Rights Watch, more than one female migrant worker dies a week on average, and many more are injured trying to escape harsh working conditions in the country.

Last month, 26-year-old Ethiopian Matente Kebede Zeditu, was found hanged from an olive tree in Harouf, southern Lebanon. Ram Embwe, a 23-year-old Nepalese national, fell from the building where she worked in the Beirut suburb of Shiah a few days later, and Kassaye Atsegenet, 24, reportedly jumped from a seventh floor balcony in the neighborhood of Gemmayzeh in an attempt to free herself from the home in which she felt a prisoner.

'There is a clear pattern here and it can’t be ignored,' says Nadim Houry, a migrant rights researcher with the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). 'People try to pass off suicides among migrant workers, particularly the Ethiopian community – saying that they are crazy and have higher suicide rates anyway, but you cannot attribute this to national characteristics.'

Human-rights advocates in the region believe these women are either pushed to suicide by poor working condition and abuse from with their employers or fall while attempting to escape. It is not uncommon practice for these migrant maids to have their passports taken away, or to be locked inside for years at a time by those who employ them.

There are believed to be over 200,000 domestic workers in Lebanon, many of whom are smuggled from Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Philippines and Ethiopia. In the last year, both Ethiopia and the Philippines took the step of banning travel to Lebanon due to the high number of suspicious deaths among the domestic worker community.

The ban has only pushed the trade underground, however, and agencies in the two countries are now sending women through third countries like Yemen.

Lebanon’s Labor Ministry attempted to tightened legislation on foreign workers in January this year by introducing a standard contract, but Houry says they have failed to enforce the new rights with commissioning bodies and watchdogs.

But, as Houry points out, the deaths of these female workers are the effect, not the cause. 'It is the tip of an iceberg- a manifestation of the real underlying problem and this problem runs deep in our society.'

Houry says a culmination of isolation from the outside world, the lack of privacy the women experience, coupled with the feeling there is no way out, leads women to take these drastic steps.

'Most of them sign a two to three year contract, where the employer pays up to $2,000, so when they realize they are unhappy after a couple of months and want to leave they can’t as they cannot afford to pay the money back. That is how they get trapped.

'They end up taking enormous risks to escape and it results in death.'

The growing pattern has not gone unnoticed, and one concerned Lebanese citizen has even set up a blog, 'Ethiopian Suicides,' to catalogue incoming reports of deaths in the migrant community. The blog calls for Lebanese to treat their domestic workers 'more humanely to stop them from killing themselves,' and has received support from human-rights groups in the region.

But, Lebanon cannot take all the blame for these women’s deaths.

Houry says agencies in the countries supplying workers go into the rural areas to lure recruits by knowingly giving them false impressions of work in the Middle East.

'For these [recruiters] the logic of profit outweighs the well-being of the person, and they will tell them anything to get them to come,' Houry says. 'They forget there are people involved and it isn’t just a business.'

The site that reported the deaths of two Madagascan girls, Madagascar Online, even describes the situation tragedies as a paradisiacal holiday gone horribly wrong.

'The Lebanese adventure ended in a graveyard for Vololona and Mampionona,' the author writes. 'The Lebanese paradise promised by recruitment agencies to Malagasy workers proves to be closer to hell than expected.'

One of the girls, a young 21-year-old mother named locally only as Mampionona, left Madagascar to work for a Lebanese family only a month before her death. In that short time she worked here, she wrote home saying she was forced to work long hours, often until 2 a.m, and was rarely allowed outside the house.

In almost all of the cases, including Mampionona’s, the police verdict has been suicide. However, both Migrant Rights, a group campaigning for migrants working in the Middle East, and Human Rights Watch, are questioning the cause of death.

Fatima Gomar, editor of Migrant-Rights.org, told The Daily Star that 'the immediate course should be to investigate suicides of migrant workers as possible homicides, with the employer as the main suspect. If the investigation shows that the maid was mistreated by her employer, [they] must face consequences.'

Gomar and Houry agree that authorities need to conduct more thorough investigations into these cases in order to first rule out the possibility of murder.

Police should hold employers, agencies and embassies to account for domestic workers, Houry says, and 'until there are proper investigations into these incidents, these needless deaths will continue.'

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3.
Yishai holds record for bringing in foreign workers
By Dana Weiler-Polack
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 10, 2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1127045.html

Interior Minister Eli Yishai holds the record for importing foreign workers, despite his sharp criticism of the fact that foreign workers are being let into the country.

The largest number of work visas for foreigners was issued during the years when Yishai's party, Shas, controlled the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry, which was responsible for setting the quota for foreign workers until recently.

The data was compiled by the Hotline for Migrant Workers in Israel, and covers 10 years.

One of the peak years was 2008, when 118,000 new work visas were issued to foreign workers. At that time, Yishai was industry and trade minister.

Last year, responsibility for visas was transferred to the Interior Ministry, which is now led by Yishai. As interior minister, Yishai has publicly declared his intention to cut the number of new work visas issued.

However, by September, 120,000 already had been issued this year.

Earlier this month, Yishai sharply criticized the fact that foreign workers were being allowed into the country.

'Will any Israeli citizen accept foreigners being allowed in at this pace?' Yishai said during an interview on Channel 2 television. 'All this pretentious goodwill, does it not endanger the Zionist enterprise of the State of Israel?

'If hundreds of thousands of foreign workers come, they will bring with them many diseases: hepatitis, measles, tuberculosis, AIDS, drugs,' he warned, adding that foreign workers would be a disaster.

But the facts speak for themselves: For many years, Shas has controlled the work visas, and the number of visas has steadily grown.

The number of visas decreased in 2003, when Ehud Olmert was industry and trade minister, but it increased again in 2005, when Yishai took over the ministry.

Alongside issuing visas, the government set forward a 'revolving door' policy, refusing to renew existing visas, while continuing to issue new ones.

Paradoxically, it is the legal foreign workers who are the most exploited. They pay $3,000 to $30,000 in fees to an agent, and many have to work many years just to pay them. Moreover, research has shown that many of the legal workers earn the lowest wages, much lower than minimum wage.

+++

Yishai Fights Back: Left Exploits Foreign Workers
By Maayana Miskin
Arutz Sheva (Israel), November 9, 2009
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134313

Report: Peak in 'import' of foreigners during Yishai's term
By Yael Branovsky
The YNet News (Israel), November 9, 2009
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3802502,00.html

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4.
Korea Records Bottom in Global Openness
By Kim Tae-gyu
The Korea Times, November 8, 2009
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/11/123_55103.html

The number of expatriates staying here has rocketed over the past several years, but the country still ranks rock bottom in openness to the outside world, according to a private think tank.

The Hyundai Research Institute (HRI) claimed Sunday that the nation needs to come up with proactive and preemptive measures to prepare itself for the more globalized era.

'Since 2000, the number of foreigners here has more than doubled to break through the 1-million mark. Overseas students make their presence felt and migrant workers play a crucial role,' HRI said in a report.

'However, the country's global openness is still disappointing ― the recruitment rate of foreign talent is very low and it struggles to deal with new hitches associated with multicultural households,' it said.

Back in 2000, expatriates in Korea totaled just 490,000 but the tally jumped to 1.2 million this year. Approximately 10 percent of marriages are inter-racial, mostly Korean husbands in rural areas and foreign brides from Asian countries.

In addition, the influx of North Korean defectors has been on the rise as hundreds of people from the Communist regime seek asylum in the South every year.

As far as openness to foreign ideas and immigrants, however, Korea was one of the worst-performing countries among the 57 surveyed, according to the 2009 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook.

Although an increasing number of overseas workers flow into the local labor markets, their proportion was a mere 0.8 percent. This compares to 15.2 percent in the United States and 9.3 percent in Germany.

The HRI pointed out that Asia's fourth-largest economy must make efforts to build up social and economic infrastructure in order to better embrace the multicultural features of society.

For example, children from multiracial families can be nurtured as global talent since they are used to both languages and traditions.

'Foreigners will account for a bigger proportion of our population in the future. We cannot live on our own any longer in this fast-globalizing world where 175 million people migrate every year,' an HRI researcher said.

'We should brace for them with better infrastructure. Otherwise, social tensions are feared to rise due to conflicts between ethnic Koreans and foreigners, which would be bad for both sides,' he said.

The tensions already seem to be on the rise. The number of foreign criminals amounted to 9,103 in 2004, but the figure climbed to 20,623 last year.

HRI warned that social conflicts will cause costs to rise. 'The country might be forced to pay more for security. Plus, talented overseas workers might not join our workforce,' it said.

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5.
Ministry to increase advisers for refugees seeking appeals
The Kyodo News (Japan), November 11, 2009
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20091111a9.html

The Justice Ministry will double the number of third-party advisers it uses to examine the objections of people seeking refugee status whose applications have been turned down, Justice Minister Keiko Chiba said Tuesday.

Currently, the ministry takes an average of more than two years to reach a final decision from the time an application for refugee status is filed. The upgrade in staff numbers is designed to speed up the process.

Chiba said her ministry will appoint about a dozen new advisers in January and more in April with the aim of eventually doubling the number of so-called refugee examination counselors from the current 28.

'I'd like to increase the number of the advisers so as to speed up the examination process,' Chiba said, noting that the ministry is currently unable to reach swift decisions because has been inundated with petitions from people seeking refugee status.

Authorized in May 2005 under the immigration control and refugee recognition law, the counselors have the task of advising the justice minister on applicants' objections to ensure that the procedure is fair and even-handed.

Usually lawyers, academics and experts in various fields, all outside of the Justice Ministry, are appointed as counselors.

The number of people in Japan seeking refugee status rose more than 10-fold to 1,599 in 2008 from only 133 in 1998, mainly because of a sharp increase in applications from people fleeing the junta in Myanmar.

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6.
OFWs keep up protest vs. proposed Macau tax
By Jerome Aning
The Inquirer (Philippines), November 8, 2009
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20091108-235039/OFWs-keep-up-protest-vs-proposed-Macau-tax

Manila, Philippines -- Migrant worker groups in Macau said on Sunday they would continue their campaign against a bill imposing taxes on the deployment of foreign domestic helpers and a six-month reentry ban on foreign workers who would pre-terminate their contracts.

The Macau Migrant Rights Network said the bill published in the Legislative Assembly’s official gazette on Oct. 27 still retained 'major anti-migrant provisions.' They scored Macau Secretary for Economy and Finance Francis Tam for not fulfilling promises to address concerns about the bill raised earlier by the migrant labor sector.

These developments leave no option for the migrant workers and advocates but to intensify the campaign against the bill, including raising the issue with the International Labor Organization, United Nations Committee on Ending Racial Discrimination and UN special rapporteur on human rights of migrants, MMRN spokesperson Ma. Rosa Viloria said in a statement from Macau.

The MMRN includes overseas Filipino worker (OFW) groups such as Filipino Migrants Ministry, Filipino Fellowship of the Morrison Chapel, Migrante–Macau Quezonian Macau and Jesus Is Lord Movement-Macau.

Viloria said while the six-month reentry ban would allow migrant workers to terminate their contracts as long as they give a just cause for this, this 'is rather vague and the burden of proof might lie solely on the migrant worker.'

The reentry ban and levy would only be applied on non-resident workers and those who employed them, respectively, she said.

MMRN said Tam rejected appeals to exempt employers of foreign domestic workers, majority of whom are Filipinos, from paying a tax on the hiring or deploying of foreign maids in the Chinese territory.

The coalition said Tam also did not honor a promise to include regulations on the practices of placement agencies in the bill.

'A lot of these agencies charge exorbitant placement fees; confiscate identity documents especially of domestic workers; some even engage in illegal recruitment practices,' Viloria said.

She said there was also a provision for mandatory regular medical check-up of non-resident workers. But the bill did not state who would shoulder the cost for the medical tests.

Unless voided or withdrawn, the new bill would become law in the last week of April 2010, giving 'enough time' for migrant workers and their advocates to campaign against it, MMRN said.

More protest actions and advocacy work could be made, said Viloria, who raised the possibility of challenging the new law 'in a judicial review.'

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7.
Pairin calls for end to Sabah's problem with illegal immigrants
BERNAMA (Malaysian National News Agency), November 7, 2009
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/articles/20091107220422/Article/index_html

Kota Kinabalu (BERNAMA) -- Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) president Datuk Seri Joseph Pairin Kitingan has called for a definite solution to the state's illegal immigrant problem, saying the issue has been going on for so long.

So far, he said, there had been no concrete solutions or serious actions taken to address the problem.

'The measures taken previously are only temporary. We still see illegal immigrants prowling about in towns and rural areas.

'They act as though Sabah is their home country. Numerous business opportunities have also been taken over by these groups who also compete with the locals for jobs,' he said.

Pairin, who is Deputy Chief Minister and Infrastructure Development Minister, said this in his speech at the opening of the party's 24th Congress here tonight.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak opened the congress.

Pairin said PBS understood the need for foreign workers in the construction and plantation sector but 'what we cannot agree to is the employment of illegal workers.'

'I therefore would like to appeal to YAB Datuk Seri (Najib) to find the best way forward to solve the problem once and for all,' he said.

Pairin suggested the setting up of a special committee comprising at least three Sabah cabinet ministers to tackle the issue.

The committee would show the government''s seriousness in solving the problem, he added.

'The single largest issue in Sabah, in which all Barisan Nasional (BN) component parties and opposition parties will be supportive of, is the solution to the illegal immigrant problem,' he said.

'I would also like to suggest that we set a time frame to solve the problem, that is in 2012. I am confident that if all of us are willing to work together to address this problem,' he said.

On 1Malaysia, Pairin said the concept mooted by the prime minister was timely, strategic and a bold move by a leader who wanted to see the people achieved progress together.

'PBS welcomes the rise of the 1Malaysia spirit and will continue to give our full support towards the government''s agenda, namely strengthening unity among the people,' he said.

Pairin also suggested that officers in Sabah and Sarawak, who had the right qualification, to be given the opportunities to head important federal departments and agencies.

He said that such an appointment was important to ensure that inputs and ideas from both states could be incorporated in the formulation of policies, particularly those concerning the two states.

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8.
Rapid settlement for Oceanic Viking refugees
By Paul Maley and Stephen Fitzpatrick
The Australian, November 10, 2009
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/rapid-settlement-for-oceanic-viking-refugees/story-e6frg6nf-1225795930168

The 78 asylum-seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking have been promised rapid resettlement in Australia, Canada or New Zealand but have refused to leave the Customs vessel if it means going back into immigration detention.

As Foreign Minister Stephen Smith held talks in Colombo yesterday with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, sources told The Australian the Tamils, who had spent the past three weeks off Indonesia's Bintan Island wanted to live in the community until their claims were processed.

Any such proposal will meet stiff opposition from Jakarta, as senior Indonesian officials yesterday ruled out allowing the 78 into the community.

As 10 Sri Lankans among 255 aboard a second asylum-seeker boat at the Indonesian port of Merak begun a hunger strike in protest at their situation, Kevin Rudd warned he would not be diverted from pursuing his border protection policies by threats of self-harm and protests.

'Let me be absolutely clear that that policy of ours, in the Australian national interest, will not be changed in response to any protests, any threats, any threats of harm, any threats of self-harm,' the Prime Minister said.

Mr Smith was expected to appeal to the Sri Lankan government to tighten its maritime security to stem the growing numbers of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers attempting to reach Australia by boat.

In Canberra officials are understood to be increasingly optimistic a deal will be brokered this week, ending the Oceanic Viking stand-off, which has become an irritant in relations between Canberra and Jakarta.

Those whose refugee claims have been approved will likely be offered resettlement within a year -- probably much sooner -- to a handful of countries, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand, The Australian has learned.

If realised, the deal means many, if not most, of those aboard the Viking will get their wish to be resettled in Australia -- their original reason for refusing to leave the boat.

A spokeswoman for New Zealand Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman refused to deny talks were taking place to resolve the issue. 'Ministers are aware of developments but have not been in a position to give full consideration to the issue at this stage,' the spokeswoman said.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor refused to discuss timeframes, saying Canberra and Jakarta had expressed 'an abundance of patience'

One senior Indonesian negotiator has described the proposal for community living as 'imagination'.

Indonesian Foreign Ministry diplomatic security director Sujatmiko said: 'As far as I'm concerned we have made it clear to the Australian government that if the Sri Lankan refugees are ready to disembark from the vessel, we will accommodate them in the immigration detention centre in Tanjung Pinang.'

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Taxpayer bill for Oceanic Viking refugees is set to soar
By John Ferguson
The Australian Associated Press, November 10, 2009
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26329096-421,00.html

Asylum seeker reveals gangland past
By Geoff Thompson
The ABC News (Australia), November 9, 2009
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/09/2736790.htm?section=justin

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9.
Solons now convinced of DH ban to Mid-East
By Carmela Fonbuena
The ABs CBN News (Philippines), November 9, 2009
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/pinoy-migration/11/09/09/solons-now-convinced-dh-ban-mid-east

Manila -- After getting a first-hand exposure to the plight of domestic helpers (DH) in the Middle East, three congressmen on Monday called for a total deployment ban on these workers there.

'It's the consensus of our three-man delegation. Let's ban the deployment of domestic helpers, especially to the Middle East. We asked them a common question, 'Kayo ba kung makakauwi sa Pilipinas, inyo bang irerekomenda ang magpadala ng katulong dito?' 100% ang sabi nila, hindi na po dapat magpadala,' said Nueva Ecija Rep. Carlos Padilla in a press conference on Monday.

'Sila na mismo ang nagsabi. Kami ay sumusuporta. We are seriously taking note of that strong recommendation. Bagamat hindi pa final ang report namin. Meron na kaming consensus,' he added.

'Pwede huwag na tayo magpadala ng DH doon. They are treated as modern-[day] slaves. We were overwhelmed by the huge problems faced by our workers. The problems we saw are mostly among the domestic helpers. Meron din naman mga success stories. In hotels, for example. Filipinos are doing well,' added Gabriela party-list Rep. Luzviminda Ilagan.

'It is based on the mentality, if not culture, of their employers. In our visit to the Middle East covering five cities, we were able to interview more than 400 OFW domestic helpers in their respective shelter houses,' Padilla added.

Padilla and Ilagan said the deployment ban will be one of the recommendations they will make in their committee report.

The three-man team of the House Committee on workers affairs--Padilla, Ilagan, and Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez--visited shelter homes in the Middle East last week from November 2 to 8. They interviewed 400 runaway OFWs--mostly domestic helpers--taken in shelter communities in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Jordan, Riyadh, and Jeddah.

No protection

Padilla hit the government for its lack of bilateral agreements with the Middle East countries to protect the rights of the Filipino workers. He said this is a violation of Republic Act 8042 or the Migrant Workers Act of 1995.

'Government has to see to it that Republic Act 8042 is fully implemented and the provisions are complied with. We found [violations] out in three countries--Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. If I were to quote Section 4 of the law, it says that our country must have existing social and labor laws protecting their rights. Our ambassadors admitted walang bilateral agreement or arrangement with the governments protecting the rights of OFWs,' Padilla said.

'Government mismo unang hindi sumusunod. There are 1.4 million Filipinos in Saudi Arabia alone. Walang bilateral agreement. But we have to admit, while the domestic helpers constitute 30 percent of the OFWs, 70% of the problems are brought about by them,' Padilla added.

Many of them are victims of illegal recruiters who are facing various charges in the Middle East. Others are runaway OFWs who were sexually or physically abused by their employers.

Padilla said many of them do not get to eat three times a day and are not given days-off. Their salaries are lower than what are stated on their contracts. Some of them get raped, too.

Ilagan said it's very difficult to bring home these OFWs because laws in the Middle East require them to obtain exit visas signed by their original employers.

'Hindi alam ng OFW ang kanilang employers. Walang number ang kalsada. Puro P.O. box. How do you process documents na kulang ang information? These are among many things that we discovered,' said Ilagan.

Remittances not substantial

Banning the deployment of Filipino domestic helpers will not dramatically affect the remittances sent to the Philippines, said Padilla.

'While we appreciate the remittance sent by Filipinos all over the world, insofar as domestic helpers are concerned, mukhang deficit tayo,' he said.

Padilla said many domestic helpers are not paid the amount in their contracts. They are usually the victims of physical of sexual abuse. In the end, the government pays more for the repatriation of victims.

From January to September 2009, Padilla said the government repatriated over 8,000 OFWs. Out of this number, around 400 ended up dead.

'Zero ang remittance. Government is spending more. In fairness to OWWA [Overseas Workers Welfare Administration] POLO [Philippine Overseas Labor Office] officers, they are providing assistance to our domestic helpers. While may pagkukulang ang POEA at OWWA agencies dito sa Pilipinas, nakita namin ang pagtra-trabaho nila abroad. On a scale of 10, I'm giving them 8 or 9,' Padilla said.

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Solons mull OFW ban in the Middle East
By Lira Dalangin-Fernandez
The Inquirer (Philippines), November 9, 2009
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20091109-235197/Solons-mull-OFW-ban-in-the-Middle-East

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10.
3,000 Filipinos abroad languish in jail, DFA says
The GMA TV News (Philippines), November 10, 2009
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/176673/3000-filipinos-abroad-languish-in-jail-dfa-says

Three thousand Filipinos abroad are either in detention or currently facing criminal prosecution, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said.

Of the total figure, seventy percent – who include those who work overseas – are embroiled in immigration-related offenses and are expected to be deported after serving their brief sentences.

The rest are in custody for common crimes, including theft and drug trafficking, the foreign affairs department said in its semi-annual report to both houses of Congress.

Although Philippine embassy and consulate officials conduct monthly jail visits, these still depend on host governments, said the same report which contains a list of Filipinos detained in other countries.

Together with the Department of Labor and Employment-Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, Philippine Foreign Service posts also maintain a Filipino Workers Resource Center (FWRC) in countries with a large concentration of Filipinos.

In Saudi Arabia, the DOLE also maintains four Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (POLOs) located in Riyadh, Jeddah, Al Khobar, and Buraida.

Saudi Arabia court to release verdict on jailed Filipino

In the meantime, a Saudi Arabian court is expected to release its final verdict on a drug-related case involving a Filipino jailed in Dammam since 2008, the DFA said.

Jason Mallorca Pineda confessed to receiving 21.2 grams of methamphetamine and later selling it his fellow Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, said a report made by the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh.

The case was endorsed by the General Prosecutor to the Grand Court of Dammam and later followed up by the jail, the DFA said, citing the Embassy’s report.

'The presiding judge informed that the case is still under the Court’s study and review,' the DFA said.

Since bail is disallowed for drug-related cases under local laws, Pineda remains in detention.

In a related development, the DFA’s Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs said final arrangements are being made for the repatriation of Jose Jonathan Botor Bigas.

Bigas was also imprisoned for a drug-related offense in Saudi Arabia.

'Funds are being made available for the repatriation of Mr. Bigas who was originally sentenced to one year imprisonment and 250 lashes in August 2007. Mr. Bigas finished serving his term in August 2008 but due to administrative procedures between the Saudi court and the Governor’s Office, he remained in jail for a time,' the DFA said.

The DFA said there are 62 Filipinos incarcerated in nine countries in the Middle East on drug-related cases. Of these, 43 are in Riyadh and majority are women.

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500 Pinoys jailed on drug charges worldwide
By Joseph Holandes Ubalde
The GMA TV News (Philippines), November 10, 2009
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/176676/500-pinoys-jailed-on-drug-charges-worldwide

Around 500 Filipinos are in various jails around the world due to drug smuggling, with 210 of them detained in China alone, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Tuesday.

Joselito Jimeno, Philippine Consul General in Guangzhou, China, said 95 Filipinos are currently languishing in various jails in Chinese territories – four of whom are on death row.

Jimeno said unsuspecting Filipinos are usually duped by foreign drug syndicates, even sometimes through fellow Filipinos, into smuggling illegal drugs for $500 to $2,000 a trip.

In comparison, other Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam have only about 10 to 20 jailed nationals each.

The DFA also noted that in the Middle East, more women are languishing in jails on drug charges than males.

Of the 62 Filipinos jailed on drug-related cases in the oil-rich region, about 43 are female overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) incarcerated in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The DFA said that it is closely monitoring these cases but warned Filipinos against drug trafficking in the Middle East since these countries have strict laws against the possession of prohibited substances.

Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency spokesperson Derrick Carreon earlier said that Filipinos are vulnerable to drug syndicates because of certain good traits such as 'kindness.'

Often, drug syndicates would lure unwitting Filipino workers to transport a package to another country in exchange for cash. In a desire to remit more back home, these OFWs would tuck the contraband package along with their legitimate luggage, only to be found out by customs and anti-narcotics agencies in the destination countries.

According to the DFA, about 3,000 Filipinos are currently in detention centers or are facing criminal prosecution overseas.

'Of these, about 70 percent involve immigration-related offenses and these overseas Filipinos, including OFWs, are expected to be deported after serving their brief sentences,' the DFA said.

'The rest are in custody for commission of common crimes, including theft and drug trafficking,' it added.

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3,000 Filipinos in jail overseas—DFA
By Jerry E. Esplanada
The Inquirer (Philippines), November 10, 2009
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20091110-235374/3000-Filipinos-in-jail-overseasDFA

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11.
Push at APEC to open up borders
By Katharine Murphy
The Age (Melbourne), November 7, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/push-at-apec-to-open-up-borders-20091107-i2f6.html

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is preparing to fly out of the bruising asylum seekers debate at home, but he will fly into another contentious migration debate next week at a summit of APEC leaders in Singapore.

Business leaders attending the APEC gathering will launch a concerted push to put global people movements firmly on the political agenda, and convince leaders to throw open their borders.

The business delegation - which includes high-profile Melbourne lawyer John Denton, trucking magnate Lindsay Fox and company director Mark Johnson - has commissioned new research pointing to looming labour shortages in APEC economies if migration laws are not liberalised.

The paper, obtained by The Age, acknowledges the political sensitivities that surround immigration - particularly in the wake of the global financial crisis.

''Few subjects make politicians, policy makers, and citizens more uncomfortable than the issue of migration, in general, and temporary workers in particular, especially in times of recession,'' the paper says.

But it argues APEC economies will face lower growth if more rational immigration policies - which allow highly skilled and low-skilled workers to move more freely within the region according to demand - are not implemented by political leaders.

The business delegation will call on APEC leaders to develop a serious labour mobility agenda to combat shortages, as well as urging the grouping to reject a new wave of protectionism.

The push to throw open borders for all categories of workers - from the lowest skilled, to people with elite qualifications - will come as Mr Rudd is expected to discuss border protection and people movements with his Indonesian counterpart, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The APEC summit will be held next weekend. The US is sending President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

The summit is likely to adopt a broad-ranging communique endorsing economic stimulus packages as a means of promoting recovery after the global financial crisis. It will also deal with trade and climate change.

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APEC urged: Add labor mobility to summit agenda
By Dario Agnote
The Kyodo News (Japan), November 7, 2009
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/11/07/09/apec-urged-add-labor-mobility-summit-agenda

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12.
Sri Lanka deal aimed at smugglers
By Matt Wade and Brendan Nicholson
The Age (Melbourne), November 10, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/sri-lanka-deal-aimed-at-smugglers-20091109-i5d6.html

Australia and Sri Lanka have signed an agreement that both countries say will make it easier to investigate and prosecute people smugglers.

The agreement follows a meeting between Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapksaas as Australia tries to stem the tide of Tamil people leaving Sri Lanka.

The agreement will harmonise laws on people smuggling between the two countries. One of the aims is to make it easier for both governments to extradite those charged with people smuggling and to seize the proceeds generated by people smuggling.

The agreement was signed in Colombo by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's special envoy to Sri Lanka, John McCarthy, and the secretary of Sri Lanka's Ministry of Justice Law Reform, Suhada Gamalath.

Meanwhile, strong support for the Federal Government taking a tough position on asylum seekers has come from Britain's special envoy to Sri Lanka, Des Browne. Mr Browne, who has served as defence secretary and immigration secretary in the British Labour Government, was made Prime Minister Gordon Brown's special envoy to Sri Lanka in February.

He said in Canberra that it was important to get the message back to Sri Lanka that those who risked the dangerous voyage to Australia were likely to be sent home. ''We take the view that it is safe to return people, including Tamils, to Sri Lanka,'' Mr Browne said.

Five Sri Lankans were challenging that decision in the British courts, Mr Browne said. ''We are fairly confident we will win those cases and that those people will return,'' he said.

Mr Browne said people smugglers were heartless people who sent hundreds of asylum seekers to their deaths in the world's oceans and deserts.

He argued it was important to send back people who would tell their communities they had been duped by people smugglers and sent home. The message also had to be delivered that there were legal and legitimate ways to seek asylum.

He said it was also important to persuade the Sri Lankan Government to deal fairly with its people.

Mr Browne said refugees should seek asylum in the first safe country they reached.

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Sri Lankan deal to stop asylum boats
By Amanda Hodge and Paul Maley
The Australian, November 10, 2009
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/sri-lankan-deal-to-stop-asylum-boats/story-e6frg6nf-1225796066367

Minister heads to Sri Lanka for asylum crisis talks
The ABC News (Australia), November 8, 2009
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/08/2736606.htm?section=australia

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13.
Storm erupts over detention cells at Christmas Island
By Paige Taylor
The Australian, November 10, 2009
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/storm-erupts-over-detention-cells-at-christmas-island/story-e6frg6nf-1225795930113

The Rudd government's decision to isolate difficult asylum-seekers has sparked outrage among refugee advocate groups, with revelations that a block of Guantanamo Bay-like cells is being used to house troublemakers inside the packed immigration detention centre at Christmas Island.

Refugee advocates were last night scathing of 'the last straw', Labor's broken promise to keep as many asylum-seekers in the community as possible.

The six protesters are fenced in the centre's Red Block and sleep in small metal cells built by the Howard government to hold the most dangerous or unstable detainees.

Resource centre co-ordinator Pamela Curr was among refugee advocates who were shown the Red Block before it opened last year but recalls being told it would not be used. 'This is the last straw -- they promised us; they said this unit belonged to the past, it will never be used,' she said.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship said the block was being used for the safety of the men and the safety of others. The department said it had been adapted and now had an 'open-plan living environment'.

The group's protest began at 9.30am on October 30 when one of the men climbed a light pole, believed to be more than 12m tall, and stayed there until he was talked down at 5.10pm.

The men are trying to fight their imminent removal back to Sri Lanka; they were on their way to New Zealand when they were intercepted in early April in the Torres Strait and wanted to claim asylum there.

Yesterday there were 37 asylum-seekers living in the community on Christmas Island. The remaining 1130 were in the detention centre or under guard at a family compound or an adjacent facility.

Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre lawyer David said Labor was failing to implement its own detention reforms because it was impossible to do so on Christmas Island.

'The detention reforms are unworkable on Christmas Island . . . where on the island are these people supposed to live in the community? There is no room.'

Yesterday the 38th boatload of asylum-seekers intercepted this year was delivered to Christmas Island. On board HMAS Bathurst were 13 asylum-seekers and three crew.

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Six Sri Lankan detainees held in Christmas Island 'red block'
By Paige Taylor
The Australian, November 9, 2009
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/six-sri-lankan-detainees-held-in-christmas-island-red-block/story-e6frg6nf-1225795696498

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14.
Howard unleashes on Rudd over immigration
The ABC News (Australia), November 8, 2009
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/08/2736307.htm?section=justin

Former prime minister John Howard has lashed out at Kevin Rudd's handling of asylum seekers and accused his Government of wasting the nation's cash.

Mr Rudd's approval rating dropped considerably last week as the impasse continues over what to do with hundreds of Australia-bound asylum seekers who remain in limbo.

Mr Howard used an interview with The Sunday Telegraph to attack the Federal Government's so-called Indonesian solution and defended his own record on immigration.

'We stopped the boats coming. The facts speak for themselves. The Indonesian solution? Well, there doesn't seem to be one,' he said.

'The current handling of the 78 people aboard the Customs ship? I'll refrain from comment on that ... but speaking robustly in defence of our policy - we stopped the boats.

'People knew where we stood. We didn't try and be all things to all men. The net result was support for immigration and a humanitarian refugee program increased.''

Mr Howard also claims the Government has achieved very little since defeating him in 2007 and took credit for Australia keeping its head above water during the global financial crisis.

'I can't think of a major thing it has done, except spend the bank balance that Costello and I left behind. Nothing else,' he said.

'In our first two years we put our funds into surplus after a huge deficit, radically changed our gun laws and we got ready for the huge reform of the waterfront.

'We changed our industrial relations system and brought in individual contracts. We privatised 30 per cent of Telstra and we had announced a comprehensive review of the tax system.

'So I'm scratching ... even with the emissions trading system, what Mr Rudd is proposing is not all that different from what I took to the last election.

'Mr Rudd will say he had the global financial crisis to handle. Well, courtesy of us he was well endowed with money in the bank.'

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Student presses PM on asylum stance
By Danny Morgan
The ABC News (Australia), November 10, 2009
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/10/2738056.htm?section=justin

Opinion polls show many Australians disagree with Kevin Rudd's handling of the asylum seeker debate, and last night the Prime Minister came face-to-face with a few of those critics.

Mr Rudd hosted a community cabinet meeting at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst and ended up on the receiving end of a lecture from a young university student.

After weeks of intense focus on his border protection policies, Mr Rudd might have expected to momentarily escape questions on the issue when he and his ministers journeyed to Bathurst.

Mr Rudd has led 19 of the community cabinet meetings around the country and last night there were the usual questions on local health, education and transport services.

But 22-year-old journalism student Elysha Hickey was determined to keep asylum seekers at the forefront of debate.

'Look Kevin, enough is enough when it comes to asylum seekers. For the last six weeks it's been going around and around in circles,' she said.

'Why don't you take the opportunity to completely change the discourse, the way Australians think about asylum seekers and stop this around in circles business and just stop this fearmongering.'

Mr Rudd's response mirrored those he has given in more than a dozen interviews and press conferences over the past week.

'Everything that we are implementing at present is entirely consistent with what we put to the Australian people before the last election,' Mr Rudd said.

'[The] second point is this: It's a responsible policy in the national interest. It seeks to be hardline on people smugglers. It seeks to be humane in dealing with asylum seekers.'

But Ms Hickey was not satisfied with the answer. She says the Prime Minister dodged her question.

But Mr Rudd did have supporters in the crowd.

'I think he's dealing with an extremely delicate and difficult issue and he's a man of principle and he seems to me to be sticking to his principles,' one person said.

'Compared with the previous government there is a much more humane and more conciliatory approach and much more reconciled approach to these sorts of problems,' another said.

Carol Rogers from the small community of Meadow Flat does not envy Mr Rudd's task, but like Ms Hickey she thinks he needs to show more leadership.

'The Labor Government are about the lot of social policy and they need to start saying 'look, these people aren't threatening. Look at what immigrants have done for this country'. We are all immigrants except for the first Australians,' she said.

She would also like to see the Prime Minister less driven by opinion polls.

'He must have sleepless nights, but I would think humane maybe is not that word anymore. It's been overused, but how to get over that problem with the people and deal with them as people yet by not treating those people really well, not encourage more to come, I don't know how you do that,' she said.

'I don't know how he can do that. It is very tough.'

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15.
Let independent arbiter decide immigration levels, says Flannery
By Jason Dowling
The Sydney Morning Herald, November 11, 2009
http://www.smh.com.au/national/let-independent-arbiter-decide-immigration-levels-says-flannery-20091110-i7lq.html

Australia's immigration intake should be reviewed and an independent board, similar to the Reserve Bank, should be established to set immigration policy, says a former Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery.

''Immigration has always been a tool of economic policy, economic development, or else it has been set as a result of scare campaigns by people who don't like foreigners,'' he said.

There had been no estimation of the rate of immigration that allows for the protection of the environment, he said, but immigration was ''far too important to be left to government''.

''Government will always want more taxpayers, and business will always want more customers - so put them together and you'll get a recipe for endless population growth.''

Mr Flannery said a body completely independent of government, one that could not be bullied, should be in charge of immigration.

''Just like the Reserve Bank, it would set [the level of immigration] in the interest of the nation.''

He said the independent committee should have a proper charter ''just like the Reserve Bank or just like the electoral commission''. ''A full justification would have to go with each annual intake, exactly why from an environmental perspective, social and economic - done transparently,'' he said.

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16.
Baillieu weighs in on Vanstone visa case
By Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie
The Age (Melbourne), November 11, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/baillieu-weighs-in-on-vanstone-visa-case-20091110-i7kh.html

State Opposition leader Ted Baillieu would refer the cash-for-visa scandal involving former Howard government immigration minister Amanda Vanstone and three sitting federal Liberal politicians to the anti-corruption commission he has promised to establish if elected premier next year.

Mr Baillieu's office has also confirmed he was at a June 2006 Liberal Party fund-raiser attended by supporters and relatives of the man at the centre of the cash-for-visa affair, alleged Italian crime figure Francesco Madafferi.

The Age yesterday revealed an Australian Federal Police inquiry had quizzed Ms Vanstone, now Australia's ambassador to Italy, over her 2005 decision to revoke a deportation order against Madafferi after his supporters and family donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Liberal Party. Several of those who donated to the Liberals are suspected of having Mafia ties.

Three federal Liberal politicians, including two from Victoria, were also recently interviewed by the AFP over the donations after they lobbied Ms Vanstone and the Immigration Department not to deport Madafferi, who was an illegal immigrant wanted by Italian authorities.

A spokesman for Mr Baillieu said Ms Vanstone and one of the federal Liberal MPs questioned by the AFP, Russell Broadbent, were at the 2006 fund-raiser. It is believed Francesco Madafferi's brother, Antonio Madafferi, was among the many Italian-Australian figures at the event.

Since being granted a visa by Ms Vanstone in late 2005, Francesco Madafferi has been arrested and faces charges of conspiracy to murder and drug trafficking.

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Vanstone quizzed in 'Mafia' case
By Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker
The Age (Melbourne), November 9, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/vanstone-quizzed-in-mafia-case-20091109-i5d1.html

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17.
Poll shows deep unease on 35 million people by 2049
By Mary Anne Toy and Michelle Grattan
The Age (Melbourne), November 10, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/poll-shows-deep-unease-on-35-million-people-by-2049-20091109-i5d5.html

Four in 10 Australians believe Australia's projected population of 35 million by 2049 will be too many people, according to an Age/Nielsen poll.

As Prime Minister Kevin Rudd talks up the idea of a ''big Australia'', the public is more dubious about the expansion. Australia's population recently passed 22 million due to near-record levels of net migration and the highest birthrate since the 1970s.

Only 30 per cent think 35 million would be about right; 26 per cent have no opinion, while 2 per cent say it would be too few people.

People are evenly split, on 43 per cent each, between those who say present immigration is too high or about right. Just 9 per cent said immigration is too low. The numbers are little changed from 2001.

In the current poll, those over 55 and Coalition voters are more likely than average to think present immigration too high; the same groups are worried about a population of 35 million.

Women (46 per cent) were more likely than men (41 per cent) to regard current levels as too high. Those outside capital cities (46 per cent) were more likely than those in the cities (42 per cent) to believe immigration is too high.

In the year to March, Australia's population grew by at least 439,000, or 2.1 per cent - roughly double its average growth in recent times.

Net immigration of 278,000 - up from 100,000 five years ago - accounted for the majority of the increase.

Asked to comment on the poll, a spokesman for Mr Rudd said the Government believed that a bigger population was relevant in a national security context because Australia's national security includes its capacity to grow and prosper as a nation.

The spokesman said high population growth was not necessarily incompatible with reducing carbon emissions: ''The Government believes that a well-designed carbon reduction pollution scheme can break the link between emissions and economic growth by putting a price on carbon to reflect the true cost of economic activity.''

But Mark O'Connor, co-author of Overloading Australia, said talking of tackling climate change was meaningless while the Federal Government was encouraging record population growth. ''The 35 million figure is rubbery. It's the Government getting us used to the fact that growth is going up even more and they know that this is going to be unpopular,'' he said.

Andrew McNamara, the former sustainability minister in the Queensland Government, said if the current growth rate continued, Australia would have 43 million people by 2049.

Former NSW premier Bob Carr said it was a disgrace that a population increase of this magnitude was not subject to an environmental impact assessment, likening it to playing ''Russian roulette with water security''. ''There's no consultation of course. The immigration targets are set by bureaucrats in Canberra [with] … not a hint of an environmental assessment.''

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Poll shows split on 35m 'big Australia'
The Australian Associated Press, November 10, 2009
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/poll-shows-split-on-35m-big-australia-20091110-i5no.html

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18.
PNG 'illegals' flooding Torres Strait
By Michael McKenna
The Australian, November 9, 2009
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/png-illegals-flooding-torres-strait/story-e6frg6nf-1225795569991

Papau New Guineans are pouring into islands in the Torres Strait, flouting immigration laws, running drugs, terrorising people and overwhelming local health and basic services.

Community leaders, including the chairman of the federal government's Torres Strait Regional Authority, John Kris, have accused the Department of Immigration of turning a blind eye to the worsening problem north of Cape York, with the political debate instead focusing attention on boat arrivals in the Indian Ocean.

'They are not policing the border . . . . it is difficult to know how many people are coming across,' Mr Kris told The Australian.

'There has been too much focus put on the boat arrivals and not enough attention on the Torres Strait, where more people are moving into these waters.'

Some communities have recently taken matters into their own hands by 'closing the borders' to visitors - some of whom they claim roam islands armed with machetes and who are either not eligible for or have overstayed free movement provisions extended to some villages in the Western Province of PNG.

The Torres Strait Treaty, signed 30 years ago, allows traditional activities to continue between specified villages on both sides of the border.

But documents obtained by The Australian early last year showed that the government was already aware that thousands of PNG citizens were illegally crossing the border. The Torres Strait Island Regional Council, which represents 14 islands, says little has been done, with some communities having 'in excess of 500 PNG nationals turn up' without warning, draining the local water supply.

'Immigration turns a blind eye to the fact that 'overstayers' are on the island; their inaction in dealing with the problem makes a mockery of the treaty,' Mayor Fred Gela told a Senate inquiry.

'Immigration must start to do their job.'

Mr Gela told the Senate that PNG nationals were stealing, running drugs and sly-grogging, and had even been suspected of abducting local women.

The Senate inquiry has also heard warnings of biodiversity and health risks to Australia, with some figures suggesting one in five PNG villagers who cross the Torres Strait have tuberculosis.

There were 59,000 recorded movements between the two countries last financial year.

Queensland Liberal senator Sue Boyce, who sits on the inquiry committee, last week wrote to Kevin Rudd, saying the federal and state governments were ignoring the problem.

'Ignoring these Australians and leaving them to their fate is not an option and, in fact, it would be an international disgrace if no action was taken to secure their safety and protection,' she wrote.

In its submission, the federal Department of Health said it was providing services to visitors on humanitarian grounds despite travel not being permitted for health purposes under the treaty.

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19.
Lots of questions, no answers for angry students
By Sushi Das
The Age (Melbourne), November 10, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/lots-of-questions-no-answers-for-angry-students-20091109-i5dd.html

Overseas students left out on a limb by the sudden closure of their colleges at Melbourne Town Hall yesterday. Frustrated, bitter and angry, they demanded answers.

They came searching for answers but found only uncertainty. Hundreds of foreign students, mainly Indian and Chinese, packed into Melbourne Town Hall hoping the Federal Government, which had called the meeting, would explain why their colleges had collapsed and what the future now held.

But there were no such explanations and no certainty about the future. It took barely 90 minutes for immigration and education officials to explain students' rights and the forms that had to be completed - about the same time it took for the students' fury to rise.

With their English sometimes tatty and broken, they subjected the officials to a torrent of questions, some of them virtually screaming with rage into the roving microphone.

Would they get their fees refunded? How could they apply for a new student visa if they were not actually attending a college? And even if the Government did find them other colleges to attend, what's to say those wouldn't collapse too?

And if there was anxiety lacing the questions, there was even more anxiety apparent in the answers. ''I understand your frustration,'' said Lynn Glover, director of the state's education regulator. ''You'll just have to bear with us.''

The man who came in for the most jeering and heckling was the representative from the Australian Council for Private Education and Training. ''We've been caught in this as much as anybody else,'' he said limply.

''Thank you very much for being here but you've solved nothing,'' shouted a female student to rapturous applause.

The meeting came to a close after 1½ hours, but the anger would last longer. ''They have no answers,'' said Krenda Pan, 28, from China.

''The society here is treating us like walking ATMs. We have spent two years working as cheap labour for this society while we have been paying very high fees. Then our college closes just before we finish. Nobody cares about us.''

Sebastian Farias, from Colombia, said: ''Some students just had two weeks left on their course and their visas are nearly expired. If we start a campaign against Australian education we will take the [country's] reputation down.''

And this from Anika Kapoor, 22, from India: ''We cannot get into good colleges in our country because we are mediocre students. [Australia] is the only country where the mediocre students can come to study.''

The collapse of a total of nine colleges in Melbourne and Sydney affecting nearly 3000 students at 13 campuses last week has left education authorities scrambling to manage the crisis in international education, Australia's third largest export earner.

The collapse was sparked by the owner of the Meridian group of colleges, Global Campus Management Group, going into voluntary administration. The company was owned by Cayman Islands-based Chinese group SinoEd.

The State Government yesterday accused the college owners of showing ''blatant disregard for the welfare of their students''.

To make the students' lives easier the Department of Immigration will, from January 1, waive the $540 student visa application charge.

Most students are not telling their parents back home what is happening.

As one student said: ''We don't want to worry them.''

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20.
Aussie expats chucking Old Dart
The Sunday Telegraph (Australia), November 8, 2009
http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,28318,26317787-27977,00.html

In the past it was typically the gloomy weather that drove Australians home from extended working holidays in the UK.

But the economic sunshine being enjoyed in Australia over recent months has seen a record number of expats return home for good.

Caroline Rafferty first noticed the trend at the start of the year when tough new changes to the UK's Highly Skilled Migrant Visa laws came into effect.

Ms Rafferty, the general manager of Track Me Back, an online jobs agency that links ex-pat workers in the UK with firms in Australia, was inundated with requests to help with a smooth work transition home.

'We more than tripled our business since January, with a huge influx of expats wanting to make the jump home,' Ms Rafferty, whose clients include NAB and ANZ, Telstra and state education departments, said.

'These aren't people necessarily being made redundant, but people seeing opportunity.

'There is a lot more positive opportunities again in the Australian jobs market and they are taking advantage of that, as are Australia companies now actively looking for talented Aussies wanting to come home.'

Unemployment in Australia has been at a 33-year low and, over recent months, the dollar has hit at an 11-year high against the sterling.

Ms Rafferty said many had decided to return home with the new UK visa laws, introduced in April, requiring Australians living in the UK to hold a Masters Degree and earn at least $40,000 in order to qualify for the Highly Skilled Migrant Visa.

Digital marketing project manager Lisa Taylor, who was born in Melbourne, has spent five years in London, but is relocating to Brisbane next month to take on another work challenge.

She said better weather was a factor, but she was also buoyed by economic prospects.

'I haven't had a problem working here, but a lot of my Australian friends have, so I know quite a few people who are now out of work here going back,' she said.

'Four of my friends have left or are leaving - it just seems so much more positive over there.'

Sasha Carter, of the London-based recruitment firm Australasian Talent Company that hires Australians to work in Britain, said the number of Aussie temps on the firm's books had halved in the past 12 months.

The drop was noticeable in January when the recession kicked in.

But she said many Australians were prepared to ride out the economic storm, and British firms were actively looking to hire Aussies for various positions.

On average, 2500 Australians a month return home from the UK during the northern winter.

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21.
NZ offer to asylum seekers 'unlikely'
By Lincoln Tan
The New Zealand Herald, November 11, 2009
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10608531

New Zealand is unlikely to offer refuge to 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers plucked from a stricken boat, Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman said yesterday.

Australian authorities have been trying for three weeks to persuade the asylum seekers to leave customs vessel Oceanic Viking, which picked them up, and enter a detention centre on the Indonesian island of Bintan.

They have expressed concerns about being shut up in camps there for years, but there have been reports Australia is negotiating with Indonesia for any asylum claims to be processed faster and resettlement fast-tracked.

Those found to be refugees could go to New Zealand, Canada, or Australia, with Tamils already deemed refugees to be resettled first.

Dr Coleman confirmed there had been informal discussions with Australia, but New Zealand did not believe 'an ad hoc approach dealing with individual cases like the Oceanic Viking' would send the right message.

'We're wary of rewarding actions that seek to jump the queue for entry to New Zealand. Sending the wrong message won't help solve similar situations that may arise in the near future,' he said. 'For that reason the New Zealand Government would be unlikely to offer settlement to asylum seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking.'

A visiting Sri Lankan Catholic priest yesterday joined the call for New Zealand to accept the asylum seekers.

Father Pan Jordan, who works with refugee resettlement in Brisbane, is urging New Zealand to have 'mercy and compassion' because these asylum seekers would rather die than be sent back to Sri Lanka.

A meeting is being held in Auckland tonight for members of the Sri Lankan community who may have family members in camps or among the asylum seekers in Indonesia.

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22.
Police say 'welcome' in 14 languages
By Lincoln Tan
The New Zealand Herald, November 10, 2009
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10608392

Being greeted with a simple 'How are you today?' is now only one of the options at Auckland's central police station.

Chances are, it will also include 'namaste', 'nihao' or even 'annyeong-haseyo'.

Yesterday, police started a project under which they have engaged 23 volunteers who between them speak 14 languages including Mandarin, Hindi, Tamil, Korean, Tagalog and Russian.

They will man the reception counter at the central police station in an effort to foster trust among migrants.

'We can't say for sure if there is under-reporting of crime from ethnic communities, but we are certain that many do not have the same level of trust in our police because their views are shaped by what they think of police back where they came from,' said police Asian liaison officer Jessica Phuang.

'Language is the biggest barrier, but there's also culture and background. We hope to build that trust and make them less nervous when dealing with the police.'

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It was also an attempt to make the station less intimidating for immigrants and visitors.

Volunteers were trained in customer services skills, and were taken on a tour of prison cells and given an insight into police work.

Catherine Gardner, who is in charge of the file management centre, said the secondary objective was to give people from ethnic communities an opportunity to experience police work, and perhaps consider a career with the force.

The Auckland region had 97 Asian police officers, but needed hundreds more to be representative of the diverse communities, she said.

'It has been a challenge to look for people from ethnic communities to become sworn officers, and this is one way we are hoping to enlarge our pool,' Ms Gardner said.

'We know that in the Auckland City district, we have large numbers of people from Asia and Southeast Asia, and it is good for them to be able to speak in their own language.'

Although police did not record the ethnicities of those making reports, they believed that among the immigrant groups, refugees were most likely to be reluctant to come forward because of the hard time they had faced with police back home, she said.

Speakers of foreign languages have to use Language Line - a service managed by the Office of Ethnic Affairs - to get translations over the telephone when making a report to police.

Police customer services manager Tony Geldenhuys said that although the telephone service served its purpose, it was impersonal.

'If you've got someone speaking your language in person, it personalises your whole experience with the police.'

It would help to put at ease a person who had been affected by an incident, said Mr Geldenhuys.

Ethnic volunteers will be at the station from Monday to Saturday between 10am and 6pm.

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Center for Immigration Studies
1522 K St. NW, Suite 820
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076
center@cis.org www.cis.org
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