Daily news updates from CIS

November 16, 2009

Domestic News -- Click Here for Overseas News

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[For CISNEWS subscribers --

1. DHS chief announces push for amnesty (story, 9 links)
2. Enviro-laws render remote border areas vulnerable
3. Feds to extend Secure Communities to all agencies
4. DHS Operation Stonegarden scrutinized (4 stories)
5. Feds settle lawsuit over applicants' background checks
6. Feds deporting criminals before prosecution is possible
7. Immigration likely greatest challenge to Senate health bill
8. Senate bill would offer residency to service members' families
9. Mobile Mexican consulate caters to CA expatriates
10. TX governor assails feds over deportation program
11. MA leaders to consider new tuition bill (story, link)
12. CA stands to lose billions after Census count (story, link)
13. MA report slammed for shunning immigrant leaders
14. WA county: traffic offenses most common charge against illegals
15. GA county implements enforcement program (story, link)
16. CA city police chief denies accusations of profiling
17. MA town to vote over migrant labor housing
18. Chicago leaders appeal 'model student's' deportation
19. Tea Party coalitions focus energy against amnesty (story, 5 links)
20. OH activists pray for amnesty package
21. NY church remains welcoming center for immigrants
22. CA enforcement activists sue over littering charges
23. KY group aids with citizenship applications (story, link)
24. Foreigners depend more and more on 'reverse remittances'
25. Asians rally together and buck unemployment trends
26. CA city Mexicans, Vietnamese ease tensions
27. MD couple abandon U.S. gay marriage regulations
28. Atlanta Hispanics at higher risk of crime
29. CA law firm scam forces review of asylum cases
30. MA shipping companies scammed Brazilian residents
31. IA kosher meat plant exec found guilty of fraud
32. NY man killed in revenge over Honduran's deportation
33. TN family facing deportation en masse

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

-- Mark Krikorian]

1.
Immigration bill promoted for 2010
Napolitano says time is right
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times, November 14, 2009
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/14/immigration-bill-promoted-for-2010/

Declaring success in border security and immigration enforcement, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that the federal government has done its work and now it's time for Congress to pass a broad immigration reform bill.

Her speech signals President Obama will make good on his promise to push Congress to pass an immigration bill next year - adding yet another hot-button issue to an already long and contentious list.

Such a bill could be expected to streamline the laws for entry into the country and provide legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. Ms. Napolitano said citizenship should be available to those who meet certain conditions, including learning to speak English.

Ms. Napolitano said members of Congress and voters who balked at an immigration bill two years ago, fearing a repeat of the 1986 amnesty that only made the problem worse, can be assured this time is different. She said in those two years, the flow of illegal immigrants across the border has dropped dramatically and the government is doing more to catch fugitive aliens inside the U.S.

'The security of the southwest border has been transformed from where it was in 2007,' she said in a speech to the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. 'The federal government has dedicated unprecedented resources to the Mexican border in terms of manpower, technology and infrastructure - and it's made a real difference.'

But Republicans said her declaration of victory on border security was premature.

'How can they claim that enforcement is 'done' when there are more than 400 open miles of border with Mexico, hundreds of thousands of criminal and fugitive aliens and millions of illegal immigrants taking American jobs?' said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

The number of illegal immigrants being caught on the border has fallen - a measure Border Patrol officials say means fewer are trying to cross - and Ms. Napolitano said the government has hundreds of miles of fencing on the border, has boosted the number of Border Patrol agents to 20,000 and has begun to deport illegal-alien criminals being kept in U.S. prisons and jails.

The number of illegal immigrants apprehended by immigration authorities is down from 1.8 million in 2000 to 556,041 in fiscal 2009, which ended Sept. 30, and demography experts say the number of illegal immigrants remaining in the U.S. has actually begun to fall.

Ms. Napolitano said both a slowing economy and better enforcement account for the changes, which she said creates a window for Congress to act.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee, said Ms. Napolitano 'contradicted herself by claiming the downturn in our economy has reduced illegal immigration but then advocated for an amnesty policy that allows millions of illegal aliens to take American jobs.'

'This is exactly the wrong time to be giving a pro-amnesty speech since we just received news that the national unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent,' Mr. King said.

Immigrant rights groups say they've changed the debate in Congress, and Ms. Napolitano said the attitude among Americans has changed as well.

But when it comes to actual votes in Congress, there hasn't been a good test for some years, and earlier this year White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the 'votes aren't there right now' to pass a broad legalization bill.

Immigrant rights advocates said they'll be watching to see how much muscle Mr. Obama puts behind the effort. Some have said Mr. Obama betrayed them by embracing E-Verify, the voluntary employee verification system, and revamping but not ending local police enforcement of immigration laws.

On Friday, though, groups said they saw a 'real commitment' from Ms. Napolitano and the administration to try to pass a broad bill, which they argue would take care of many of the key problems that have led to stepped-up enforcement.

In 2007, President George W. Bush teamed with Senate Democrats and some Republicans to try to pass a bill that legalized most illegal immigrants, rewrote the rules for legal immigration and provided money for some border security.

The bill lost on an unusual majority filibuster that saw 15 Democrats and one independent join 37 Republicans in blocking the measure.

A year earlier, the Senate had passed a bill that had legalized some illegal immigrants, while the House passed an enforcement-only measure. Both bills died because they could not be reconciled with each other.

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Immigrant Bill Is Back on Table
By Melanie Trottman
The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125816110639347917.html

Obama presses Congress to rework immigration laws
By Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post, November 14, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111303995.html

Napolitano sees hope for immigration reform
The Homeland Security chief sees a shift in support of such an effort. She calls for a 'tough pathway' to legal status for undocumented workers.
By Joe Markman
The Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immigration14-2009nov14,0,5514444.story

US immigration reform is progressing says White House advisor
By Liam Clifford
Global Visas, November 16, 2009
http://www.globalvisas.com/news/us_immigration_reform_is_progressing_says_white_house_advisor1816.html

White House adviser says immigration reform advancing
Reuters, November 15, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/15/AR2009111501587.html

Immigration reform: Napolitano says change to law vital to homeland security
By Adriana Gómez Licón
El Paso Times (TX), November 14, 2009
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_13785382?source=most_emailed

Napolitano says border more secure
The Associated Press, November 13, 2009
http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=1231726

Napolitano says immigration reform next year
By Eric Zimmermann
The Hill (Washington, DC), November 13, 2009
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/67697-napolitano-says-immigration-reform-next-year

DHS chief: Time for immigration reform
By Dena Bunis
The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA), November 13, 2009
http://totalbuzz.freedomblogging.com/2009/11/13/dhs-chief-border-more-secure-so-time-for-immigration-reform/25235/

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2.
Environmental laws put gaps in Mexico border security
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times, November 16, 2009
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/16/national-park-service-putting-holes-in-border-secu/

In the battle on the U.S.-Mexico border, the fight against illegal immigration often loses out to environmental laws that have blocked construction of parts of the 'virtual fence' and that threaten to create places where agents can't easily track illegal immigrants.

Documents obtained by Rep. Rob Bishop and shared with The Washington Times show National Park Service staffers have tried to stop the U.S. Border Patrol from placing some towers associated with the virtual fence, known as the Secure Border Initiative or SBInet, on wilderness lands in parks along the border.

In a remarkably candid letter to members of Congress, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said her department could have to delay pursuits of illegal immigrants while waiting for horses to be brought in so agents don't trample protected lands, and warns that illegal immigrants will increasingly make use of remote, protected areas to avoid being caught.

The documents also show the Interior Department has charged the Homeland Security Department $10 million over the past two years as a 'mitigation' penalty to pay for damage to public lands that agencies say has been caused by Border Patrol agents chasing illegal immigrants.

'I want this resolved so border security has the precedence down there. If wilderness designation gets in the way of a secure southern border, I want the designation changed,' said Mr. Bishop, Utah Republican, who requested the documents. 'If it means you lose a couple of acres of wilderness, I don't think God will blame us at the judgment bar for doing that.'

The conflict between the environment and border security has raged for the past decade as better enforcement in urban areas has pushed the flow of illegal immigrants into Arizona and straight into some of the nation's most remote and fragile desert.

A major problem is wilderness - lands deemed so pristine that they should be maintained in that condition, free of man-made structures.

Wilderness is governed under a 1964 law that imposed strict rules that tie Border Patrol agents' hands, and there is a lot of that land along the border. According to the Congressional Research Service, California has 1.8 million acres of wilderness within 100 miles of the border, and Arizona has 2.5 million acres. New Mexico and Texas have smaller plots.

According to e-mails obtained by Mr. Bishop, Park Service officials at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and at the Denver office that oversees the park said they will not allow the Border Patrol to place electronic surveillance towers on parts of the park that are designated wilderness.

In one 2008 e-mail, officials tell the Homeland Security Department to 'pursue alternative tower locations.' In another 2008 memo, the superintendent of Organ Pipe says Park Service officials could reject towers even beyond wilderness areas if they deem the effects would spill over into wilderness.

Organ Pipe has 32 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border on its land, and 95 percent of the park is designated wilderness. Officials have shut down much of the western side of the giant park, saying the threat of encounters with illegal immigrants and drug smugglers makes that land not safe enough for visitors.

Homeland Security considers SBInet critical to gaining control of the border. The concept is to mix manpower, technology and infrastructure to form the 'virtual fence' that government planners say can curtail illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

The project is way behind its original schedule, having slipped from a 2009 deadline all the way back to 2016. The Government Accountability Office, in a report released in September, blamed both testing flaws and environmental rules for holding up the system.

A spokesman for the National Park Service Denver office, which oversees Arizona, didn't return calls for comment.

But Jane Lyder, deputy assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks at the Interior Department, said her agency tries to cooperate, though its mission does conflict with that of the Homeland Security Department.

'A proposal to build permanent structures within a wilderness area violates the Wilderness Act. The Park Service and DOI worked with Border Patrol to find places with Organ Pipe National Monument that were not part of the designated wilderness, where the towers could be placed,' she said.

She said acceptable alternate locations have been found.

A draft environmental assessment of the new sites released in September lists conditions ranging from common sense - such as designing roads that limit the impact on lesser long-nosed bats and Sonoran pronghorn, both endangered species - to the more unusual.

Towers cannot be constructed if Sonoran pronghorn are within two miles of the site, and the pronghorn's departure cannot be hastened by human interaction. Also, feed for patrol horses must be weed-free to prevent the horses from spreading nonnative seeds in their excrement.

Ms. Lyder also said she has found the Border Patrol willing to work with Interior on protecting endangered species, and said land managers recognize that the Border Patrol's mission also benefits public lands.

She said a 2006 memorandum of understanding specifically allows Border Patrol to go off-road, even in wilderness, in emergency cases that involve a threat to national security or to someone's safety.

After some initial friction, the Homeland Security and Interior departments did find agreement on the physical border fence, much of which stretches across public lands in Arizona. A letter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection's acting commissioner earlier this year praises Interior for working with border security officials to get the fencing done.

Still, Ms. Napolitano's letter to Congress, which was sent last month in answer to a series of questions, indicates that problems persist.

She said Border Patrol makes every effort to live up to the 2006 memorandum but that 'it may be inadvisable for officer safety to wait for the arrival of horses for pursuit purposes, or to attempt to apprehend smuggling vehicles within wilderness with a less capable form of transportation.'

She also said some public-lands managers are using a section of the Endangered Species Act to demand information about Border Patrol activities, which Ms. Napolitano said 'risks jeopardizing sensitive operational information.'

Ms. Napolitano also said that cracking down on illegal immigration actually helps the environment since the flow of millions of illegal crossers over the past decade has ruined some once-pristine lands with piles of trash, vehicle tracks and contaminated water.

Asked about the letter, Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said the department wants to work with the Interior Department and the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the Agriculture Department.

'We acknowledge that balancing the requirements of border enforcement and land preservation can at times present challenges, but we are committed to collaboration with Interior and the USFS to find workable solutions on special status,' he said. '[Homeland Security's] close working relationship with Interior and USFS allows DHS to fulfill its enforcement responsibilities while respecting and enhancing the environment.'

Mr. Bishop and Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, tried to free up the Border Patrol earlier this year, with each managing to pass amendments on different bills that gave the Border Patrol more leeway to circumvent environmental rules if border security required it.

The Senate passed its amendment by unanimous consent as part of a spending bill, while the House voted 259-167 to add it to a lands bill. But House and Senate Democratic negotiators watered down Mr. Coburn's amendment when they met to hammer out a final version of the spending bill.

According to a Congressional Research Service report, the new wording means that environmental laws can't block construction of the pedestrian fence on the border but still can block other activities, including regular Border Patrol operations and building the virtual fence of electronic surveillance.

'What we have done in this bill is prioritize the environment over the violation of our borders,' Mr. Coburn said in opposing the bill when it came through the Senate.

But Democrats defended the move on the House floor, saying the environmental laws must be obeyed.

'We were concerned that if it weren't focused on the fence area, it could overturn the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, the Native American Graves Repatriation Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the Endangered Species Act, NEPA and many other laws,' said Rep. Norm Dicks, Washington Democrat. 'We tried to focus this like a rifle shot.'

Mr. Bishop says he has had trouble getting accurate responses to his requests. For example, he asked Interior for the total amount of money the department had received from Homeland Security for mitigation of the effects of border enforcement, such as raking out roads or replanting plants.

Interior provided him with one figure - $811,000 since 2006, which it said had gone specifically to rehabilitate territory for the endangered Sonoran pronghorn. But Homeland Security says it has paid out $9,823,813 since September 2007 alone, including $200,000 over the course of 16 months to have a single Interior Department employee on site to provide 'subject matter expertise.'

'The taxpayer is getting ripped off, that's pretty clear,' Mr. Bishop said.

Ms. Lyder said the majority of the money went to a system being built to help the Border Patrol evaluate what threatened and endangered species might be affected by proposed actions.

As for specific mitigation money, such as the $811,000 paid to the Fish and Wildlife Service for the pronghorn, she said that was normal.

'It would not be unusual for Border Patrol to provide FWS with funding to mitigate its effects on an endangered species, such as the pronghorn, particularly if their activities would be such that the habitat disturbed is no longer suitable, and replacement habitat had to be acquired,' she said.

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3.
Search for illegal immigrants widens
By Chris Strohm
Congress Daily (Washington, DC), November 12, 2009
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1109/111209cdpm1.htm

Top Homeland Security officials on Thursday announced that by 2013 all law enforcement agencies across the country will be able to use a technology program aimed at identifying illegal immigrants held in jails and prisons -- assuming Congress provides the necessary funding.

Under the Secure Communities program, which is run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, state and local law enforcement agencies can compare the fingerprints of prisoners against FBI criminal databases and Homeland Security immigration databases.

The primary focus of Secure Communities is to identify illegal immigrants who have committed the most serious crimes, such as murder and rape, and deport them. The program began one year ago.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and John Morton, who heads ICE, announced at a news conference on Thursday that the program has identified about 11,000 illegal immigrants who committed serious offenses, of which about 1,900 have been deported. The rest are serving sentences or going through criminal prosecution proceedings before deportation action is taken against them, Morton said.

Ninety-five law enforcement jurisdictions participate in the program, and the Washington, D.C., police department plans to join in about two weeks. Napolitano said the program will be operating in every state by 2011 and will be available to every law enforcement agency across the country by 2013.

In an interview, Morton noted several challenges facing the program, including the need for more funding from Congress.

'The sheer volume of agencies and jurisdictions that we need to deal with is enormous and it's going to take some time to do that,' he said. 'Second, it costs money to do this kind of thing.'

'We are identifying increasing numbers of criminal offenders we were unaware of or didn't identify before, and that has very profound resource implications as we look to the out years,' he added. 'That means we need detention space and officers to remove those people from the country.'

Morton would not disclose how much more money ICE might need in the coming years, saying the agency is negotiating its budget with OMB. Congress allocated the agency about $1.4 billion in fiscal 2010 to target criminal illegal immigrants, of which Secure Communities is one part.

'It is my expectation that, if we are to implement Secure Communities fully as planned by 2013, we will have to have additional appropriations. There's no question on that,' Morton said. 'The cost of going nationwide is far greater than the agency's present budget can absorb.'

Morton also disputed claims that Secure Communities is being used in the racial profiling of Latinos.

'This is not about, has not been and won't be about conducting basic civil immigration enforcement for noncriminal offenders in the criminal justice system. It just doesn't work that way,' he asserted. 'We've seen absolutely no evidence of Secure Communities being used that way.'

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4.
Border program has vague goals, little oversight
No yardstick for success, failure of enforcement effort
By Brady McCombs and Stephen Ceasar
The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), November 15, 2009
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/317651

A federal program touted as a model for using local law enforcement to help control our borders is handing out $165 million — but with little tracking of how the money is spent, no clear objective and no benchmarks for success, an Arizona Daily Star investigation has found.

The Department of Homeland Security's 'Operation Stonegarden' gives border law enforcement agencies money to pay officers to work overtime shifts aimed at enhancing border security. The money also lets agencies buy equipment such as four-wheel-drive trucks, radios and night-vision goggles.

Star reporters examined more than 10,000 pages of documents and interviewed more than 50 people over the course of seven months as they analyzed how 10 Arizona agencies used the $7.3 million they have spent so far. They and 27 other Arizona agencies will spend another $25 million over the next two years.

The paper's investigation reveals a program so loosely managed that it's nearly impossible to determine its goals, much less measure whether those goals are being met. Among the findings:

* Homeland Security, which administers Operation Stonegarden, gives states more money each grant cycle — $15 million nationwide in 2007-08, $60 million in 2008-10 and $90 million for the next two years — based on the premise that the program has improved border security by putting more officers on the border. Yet the agency can't prove that because it didn't establish a standard of success.

* Homeland Security tracks how much each agency is reimbursed for overtime and equipment, but has no idea how that money is distributed among officers and doesn't keep a list of purchased items. Border Patrol officials work with agencies on a plan for spending their Stonegarden allocation but say that it's not their job to verify how the money is actually spent.

The lack of oversight leaves key decisions to local law enforcement, which resulted in the Bisbee deputy police chief getting paid more than $131,000 off Stonegarden alone in two years — including a one-year stretch when he worked nearly 40 hours of overtime a week on top of his regular 40 hours.

* With no definition of how officers should spend their overtime shifts, they do anything from patrolling known smuggling routes to targeting street gangs to controlling crowds at parades.

The U.S. Border Patrol, which oversees Stonegarden operations, says the diverse activities all have a nexus to border-related crime, but critics worry that with so much leeway, the program is susceptible to racial profiling and creating community distrust of law enforcement.

* The money has few strings attached, but it's hardly free for the cities and counties that receive it. Southern Arizona governments spent more than $900,000 combined in unreimbursed mileage, maintenance and other expenses during the first two-year grant cycle.

Also, the extra pay boosts officers' taxpayer-funded retirement checks, which are based on their three best-earning years. In the case of Bisbee's deputy police chief, Stonegarden overtime pay pushed up his salary so much that his monthly retirement check will increase by 53 percent, netting him an extra $433,000 over 20 years.

Arizona Homeland Security and Border Patrol leaders acknowledge Operation Stonegarden has no measurable benchmarks, but they say they've done what's been asked of them in running the program. Critics say that illustrates the program's flawed foundation.

'Stonegarden serves its purpose politically as soon as the money is given out. You can say, 'Here is what we are doing for border security.' And departments are more than happy to get the money,' said Raymond Michalowski, an Arizona regents professor in the department of criminology at Northern Arizona University. 'You are assuming that merely spending the money is effective.'

Loose objectives

Operation Stonegarden's stated objective has changed slightly in the guidance packets it gives to participating agencies for each new grant cycle, but one theme resonates: The program's intent is to increase coordination among federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to help the federal government secure the borders.

The last three guidance packets include bullet-point goals, but none is written in a way that makes it possible to measure if the program is helping to control of the border. For example:

* 'Achieving a greater capability to prevent, protect against and respond to border security issues.'

* 'Continuing the distinct capability enhancements required for border security and border protection.'

* 'Maintaining the established capabilities and other requirements promulgated in previous federal funding, guidance documents and related directives.'

'From a federal taxpayer standpoint, is this kind of broad, undifferentiated use of funding really moving the ball forward in terms of strengthening border law enforcement?' asked Doris Meissner, commissioner of the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000 and senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that advocates for comprehensive immigration changes. 'In order to make the assessment that it's being used wisely, you have to lay out what 'being used wisely' really is.'

The money isn't being wasted because extra resources help law enforcement, Meissner said. But she said it's tough to gauge the Border Patrol's claim that more officers make our borders more secure.

'If you have that many more eyes in a certain region, the more of a chance that you can identify any threats or even make arrests for various violations,' said Michael Chavira, assistant chief at U.S. Border Patrol headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Trying to prove their effectiveness is a daily challenge for law enforcement, said Robert Gilbert, U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector chief.

'How many banks in Tucson weren't robbed yesterday?' because police were on the streets, Gilbert asked.

'The cross-border threat, our vulnerabilities and the volume of what's crossing our border every day, in my opinion, justifies the program,' Gilbert said.

Police rave about Stonegarden, too, saying the extra money during tough economic times lets them maintain a presence that would otherwise be impossible.

'The funds that we are getting from Stonegarden are a godsend,' said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada. 'I think we are able to provide a lot more security, a lot more visibility.'

But to critics, Stonegarden is just another poorly managed, overpriced Homeland Security border security initiative that has little impact.

'We have seen billions of dollars going into expanding programs that sound great on paper — they make wonderful announcements from Homeland Security leadership — but they have not taken the time to put any of the measures in place to ensure they actually mean anything,' said Jennifer Allen, director of Tucson-based Border Action Network. 'You can't just throw money at a problem.'

Still, the federal government is eager to keep the money coming.

Agencies have not yet spent all of the $60 million allocated in the 2008 grant cycle. But they have permission to start spending the $90 million allocated nationwide for the grant cycle that runs through March 2011.

Variations per agency

Southern Arizona police have worked thousands of overtime hours under Operation Stonegarden.

How they spend those hours depends on the jurisdiction:

* South Tucson police target prostitutes as a way to bust drug dealers and users.

* Police in Wellton, east of Yuma, do crowd control at parades, soccer games and funerals in addition to working on DEA task forces or using night vision goggles looking for illegal border crossers.

* Tucson police hand out traffic, curfew and minor-in-possession tickets in addition to targeting gangs, watching south-side shopping centers for drug-load dropoffs and working undercover at gun shows.

* Pima County sheriffs mostly do 'zero-tolerance' highway patrols, meaning if someone passing through a designated zone breaks a law — any law — he or she is likely to be stopped.

* The Yuma County Sheriff's Office runs operations targeting Hell's Angels, in addition to patrolling the Colorado River and the desert, and working at Border Patrol checkpoints.

At the beginning of each grant cycle, the Border Patrol works with local agencies to develop plans for what they'll be doing on Stonegarden shifts. Agency officials make sure the plans are in line with Border Patrol goals, said Gilbert, of the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.

'Everything is tied back to border security and border safety,' Gilbert said.

But the government does little or nothing to ensure those goals are met. The Arizona Department of Homeland Security has not done any site visits to make sure equipment purchased with Stonegarden funds is actually there and being used properly. The department is required to visit any agency that receives more than $100,000 in grant funds, said Arizona Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Bolton.

Such limited oversight can be dangerous, said NAU's Michalowski.

'Whenever you have a large amount of money without clear oversight over how that money is going to be used, you can be fairly sure that some of it will be spent unwisely, some of it will be spent in ways that are appropriate, and some of it will be lost to fraud,' Michalowski said.

What is the goal?

The constant use of 'border security' as a goal rings hollow, said Tom Barry, senior analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., and director of the Center's TransBorder Project of the Americas Policy Program.

'There is no definition of what border security really is, no firm definition,' Barry said, 'only a politically formulated and changing definition and therefore, an inability to measure the effectiveness of those programs.'

Through daily activity reports that agencies are required to turn in, the Border Patrol tracks drug seizures, illegal-immigrant referrals, criminal arrests, vehicle stops and citations and seized vehicles. Narrative descriptions of the shifts also are included.

In the Tucson Sector — the busiest on the Southwest Border — Stonegarden accounted for 6,826 of 241,453 apprehensions and for 52,811 of the 1.2 million pounds of marijuana seized in the recently completed fiscal year 2009, Border Patrol figures show.

But the agency doesn't point to any of these totals when asked about the program's effectiveness. Instead, it shares anecdotes about the benefit of having more officers out in the designated high-traffic border areas.

'There are spotters on high points constantly watching us,' Gilbert said. 'The scout who is sitting on the side of the hill over there watching you through binoculars, he doesn't care if it's a trooper, a deputy, a Tohono O'odham police officer, a Border Patrol agent, that dope is not moving.'

The program allows the Border Patrol to get help immediately without waiting to hire and train new officers, build fences or develop technology, Gilbert said.

'The threat is today, the vulnerabilities are today, and this Stonegarden is a deliverable today,' he said.

Addressing those threats helps at the border and beyond, Arizona law enforcement leaders say.

'Anytime you put more cops on the street, you raise the odds of catching the bad guy,' said Lt. Jeff Palmer of the Pima County Sheriff's Department.

Police have made 741 felony arrests on Stonegarden patrols since October 2008 in the Tucson Sector, Border Patrol figures show.

Tucson police Lt. J.T. Turner said the funds allow them to attack two issues.

'The reality is we're the primary hub for marijuana distribution, which feeds all kind of peripheral crimes – home invasions, aggravated assaults, kidnappings, rip-offs of the drug houses,' Turner said. 'If we can both address those crimes as well as do interdiction efforts on the drugs moving into Tucson, we kind of kill two birds with one stone.'

In small departments, having cops on Stonegarden shifts sometimes doubles the number of officers out at a given time.

'You have twice as many people covering the county and looking out for each other,' said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Estrada.

But the extra manpower comes at a price to taxpayers — and as it stands, there's no way to tell if they're getting a good deal, said Michalowski, of NAU.

'There is no clear agenda for the use of the Stonegarden money. There is no clear guidance as to how it will, in fact, improve border security,' Michalowski said. 'You don't know whether you have done due diligence with the people's money or whether you have squandered the people's money.'


+++

Officers worked long shifts, accrued sizable pay
Lengthy days raise questions of safety, cost to taxpayers
By Stephen Ceasar and Brady McCombs
The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), November 15, 2009
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/related/317648

Bisbee, AZ -- To see what can happen when a multimillion-dollar program has limited guidelines and loose oversight, look no further than Bisbee.

During a 71-day stretch in the fall of 2007, Bisbee Deputy Police Chief Ed Holly, 58, didn't take a single day off, working Operation Stonegarden shifts seven days a week on top of regular patrols five days a week. He averaged more than 14 hours a day on patrol.

During a separate 92-day stretch that year, Holly took just two days off from Stonegarden shifts and had only one day completely off. His average was nearly 14 hours per day.

By the end of 2007, Holly had made $99,000 in Stonegarden overtime pay, in addition to $65,000 for his regular job. His colleague, Sgt. Benjamin Reyna, 48, wasn't far behind: He made $60,000 in Stonegarden overtime that year in addition to $55,000 in regular pay.

All told, Holly has made more than $131,000 and Reyna more than $86,000 since 2007, when the federal government began paying law enforcement officers to work border security overtime shifts. Five police officers from the little town of Bisbee have made more than $42,700 in Stonegarden money. Only three other officers at the 10 agencies the Arizona Daily Star investigated made that much.

This level of detail about how the overtime money was distributed among cops is news to Operation Stonegarden grant managers, who don't track the money beyond how much each agency received.

Law enforcement experts say it's dangerous to let an officer work the hours Holly and Reyna did from March 2007 to March 2008: 40 hours a week in overtime for Holly and 35 for Reyna. Such a grueling schedule, day after day after day, could leave an officer tired and not as sharp — critical shortcomings in a field where decisions can mean the difference between life and death.

The hours would have broken the rules at several other Arizona law enforcement agencies that limit overtime hours to 24 or fewer a week to ensure officer and community safety.

'When you go long periods of time with no rest or no relaxation, that's when you start to get errors in judgment,' said Raymond Michalowski, an Arizona Regents Professor in the department of criminology at Northern Arizona University. 'I don't think we want people who are authorized to carry lethal weapons to be tired on the job.'

Bisbee Police Chief Jim Elkins — who signed off on Holly's timecards and himself collected $17,000 in overtime in the program — defends the hours worked by Holly and Reyna and how the department divvied them up: first come, first served.

'It's not like they came in here and sat around and drank coffee and made $150,000,' Elkins said. 'They actually had to work, had to produce daily.'

Still, Bisbee Mayor Jack Porter acknowledges the schedules raise questions.

'Am I 100 percent sure he was out on the street when he was billing those hours; was he actually doing Stonegarden work? I have no idea,' Porter said. 'I don't think anyone but Ed Holly knows that.'

Holly declined repeated interview requests for this story, but those who know him say he's a workaholic and that long hours are the norm for him. Holly is on administrative leave for reasons not related to Stonegarden.

Bisbee capped officers' total annual compensation at $100,000 — meaning that's the most they can earn between their regular job and their Operation Stonegarden duties — after seeing Holly's and Reyna's 2007 earnings. But Bisbee taxpayers and city employees will pay for Holly's and Reyna's Stonegarden shifts for the rest of the officers' lives.

Their taxpayer-funded retirement pay — based on their highest consecutive three years of total compensation — will be drastically altered by Stonegarden. Holly's retirement will go up by 53 percent: $1,800 more a month, $21,700 more a year and an additional $433,000 if he lives 20 years. Reyna's will go up by 47 percent: $1,200 more a month, $14,600 more a year and $292,000 more over 20 years.

'This is what happens when you start throwing money around and there aren't guidelines on it with a government program — people take advantage of it,' said Bisbee Mayor Porter.

Honored as top performer

Despite turning in biweekly timecards to Bisbee officials, daily activity reports to the U.S. Border Patrol and reimbursement requests with officer totals to the Arizona Department of Homeland Security, nobody questioned Holly's or Reyna's hours while they worked them.

When asked about the long hours and money earned, officials with Arizona Homeland Security and the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector said they had never heard of it. Both said it wasn't their job to track how departments distributed the funds.

'It wouldn't be of concern, or it wouldn't be common knowledge in this office,' said Amy Bolton, spokeswoman with the Arizona Department of Homeland Security, which manages the grant's finances for the state. 'Somebody would have to be really, seriously looking at the files.'

In January 2008, the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector honored Holly as a top performer with a $50 gift card and gave Bisbee Police a commendation award for referring more than 2,000 illegal immigrants and leading the nation in traffic stops and citations issued on Stonegarden shifts. On April 3, 2008, the sector's Stonegarden coordinator at the time, Michael Tucker, started an e-mail to Bisbee by calling the police department 'superstars.'

The Border Patrol makes sure agencies are following the operational plans each one develops for using Stonegarden funds but doesn't get involved in the supervision of police officers, said Robert Gilbert, the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector chief.

'We are not in the money management business; we are in the operation-management side of this,' Gilbert said.

Gilbert has said before that, in border security, getting tired can mean getting hurt. But he declined to comment on whether having Holly and Reyna work that many hours was the best use of the funds.

'None of this is designed to make anybody rich,' he said, talking in general terms about the program.

Timecards show that Bisbee Police Chief Elkins signed off on Holly's hours and Holly signed off on Reyna's hours. Bisbee City Manager Steve Pauken didn't notice the timecards but said Holly's and Reyna's 2007 W-2 forms caught his attention, prompting him to institute the $100,000 total pay cap that went into effect in 2008.

'I thought their totals for the calendar year 2007 were an indication that they might be working more often than I felt that they could safely work both for themselves and the public we serve,' Pauken said.

But his decision does not mean he thought Holly and Reyna did anything wrong, he said.

'He (Holly) was out there doing what Stonegarden was supposed to be doing,' Pauken said. 'If Tucson Sector didn't think he wasn't doing his job, they certainly wouldn't have recognized him for it.'

'Different' work ethic

Although Holly wouldn't talk to reporters, Reyna said his military background and personality suit him to work long hours, and that the money earned is a testament to his ambition.

'My work ethic is different than others'; I don't have a problem with working a 12-hour shift,' Reyna said. 'I have been exposed to that type of police work, and I know where to draw the line.'

The shifts weren't always strenuous physically, he said.

'A lot of that is sitting. You know, a lot of it is watching vehicles go by, you stop and take a break, have a meal, that kind of thing,' Reyna said.

Reyna said that he wasn't working the hours for money but admitted that his plans to retire in March 2010 factored into his decision to take so many shifts.

'Once I realized that the end result would be higher retirement, that became a motivation,' Reyna said. 'But the money, not really.'

Bisbee police say they needed officers to step up and work enough hours to spend the $627,000 the state had allocated to the small department from November 2006 to October 2008. That was more than any other law enforcement agency in the state. The program is voluntary and each officer has the same opportunity to participate, said Bisbee Police spokesman Sgt. Taron Maddux.

'If they don't have problems working it and being out there and being active, I find it hard to tell somebody they can't go do their job,' Maddux said.

Bisbee City Councilman Boyd Nicholl feels otherwise.

'It's a corrupting influence: too much money and too little oversight,' Nicholl said. 'It's just like it was free money and a big bag. There is no connection to people who actually put that money in the bag at some point, which is you and me.'

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US border-security cash leaves towns on the hook
Taxpayers foot bills for mileage, bigger retirement paychecks for officers
By Brady McCombs and Stephen Ceasar
The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), November 16, 2009
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/317738

Federal grant money from Operation Stonegarden may seem like a windfall for the cities and counties that have eagerly accepted it.

But the funds have not been totally free — and in some communities taxpayers will be obligated for decades.

City and county governments had to foot the bill for mileage and maintenance — and employee-related expenses in some cases — during the first two-year grant cycle. Officials at the 10 state agencies included in the Arizona Daily Star's investigation couldn't provide actual costs and declined to estimate, but it likely cost an estimated $910,000 statewide, according to calculations done by the Star.

The money paid out in overtime — more than $7 million so far, with $12.5 million more expected in the next two years — won't be one-time payments, either.

The extra money will bump up taxpayer-paid retirement checks for hundreds of officers whose state retirement is based on their best three consecutive years of total compensation.

In the case of two Bisbee police officers who surpassed their base pay in Stonegarden overtime in 2007, their retirement will go up by half, resulting in a combined total increase to taxpayers of nearly $725,000 if each lives off his retirement for 20 years.

Cops can retire with full pensions after 20 years on the job regardless of age.

Fuel costs added up

When officers go on Operation Stonegarden shifts, they're in their regular uniforms and use their agency's patrol vehicles.

During the first two-year grant cycle — when gasoline prices hovered between $3 and $4 a gallon — the federal government didn't provide any reimbursement for mileage and maintenance.

Agencies acknowledge it was a burden to pick up the tab — and their suggestions prompted the grant to begin covering these costs in the following grant cycle. But city and county officials do not know how much it cost.

The Star estimated the costs by calculating 12 percent of each agency's total overtime allocation during the first cycle, which is how the grant now reimburses for mileage and maintenance.

Using that calculation, it cost the 28 participating Arizona cities and counties nearly $500,000 to pay for mileage and maintenance during that first cycle, which ran from November 2006 to October 2008. This does not include the $410,000 it cost to cover employee-related expenses.

'It hurt,' said Maj. Leon Wilmot of the Yuma County Sheriff's Office. 'The fuel cost was a significant impact to us. It was almost to the point that we could not do that with our budget.'

The Sheriff's Office was prepared to drop out of the program if the grant didn't start paying mileage, Wilmot said.

But it didn't have to quit because starting in the 2008 grant cycle — which began on Nov. 1, 2008, and runs through April 2010 — the grant provides reimbursement up to 12 percent of the total overtime allocation to pay for mileage and maintenance.

Even with the reimbursement, the wear and tear is noticeable, said Nogales, Ariz., Police Chief William Ybarra. 'It takes its toll on our cars, getting them out there in certain areas that are nonpaved,' Ybarra said.

Stonegarden does allow for the purchase of four-wheel-drive vehicles or all-terrain vehicles to patrol rugged areas, and five of the 10 agencies included in the Arizona Daily Star investigation have bought these types of vehicles with the funds.

To some, using city vehicles to work border security shifts is an unwise use of taxpayer money.

'This city has no money to spare,' said Angelika Johnson, a Bisbee businesswoman and resident. But city and county officials say they view the money as an investment toward their community's safety.

'The concept and the mission of Stonegarden, the way it's working for us, I think it's a perfect marriage,' said Capt. George Rodriguez of the Tucson Police Department.

Employee-related expenses

About four months after then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the launch of the first official grant cycle of Operation Stonegarden in December 2006, Arizona agencies began working overtime shifts.

The subsequent reimbursement process was littered with confusion and inconsistencies. In one example, not all agencies were paid for employee-related expenses, such as Medicare, Social Security and retirement, that employers are required to pay on any hours worked. These expenses can account for 20 percent to 43 percent of an officer's pay. Three of the 10 agencies included in the Star's analysis were not reimbursed: Tucson, Bisbee and Santa Cruz County. A fourth agency, San Luis, was partly reimbursed.

Finance directors at these agencies could not provide an exact total of how much it cost to cover expenses, but they did provide the employee-related-expense percentages during the time of the first grant cycle. Based on those, the Star estimates:

* It cost Bisbee $263,000 on the $627,000 it was reimbursed for overtime, more than any other Arizona agency in that cycle.

* It cost Tucson an estimated $66,000 on the $266,000 it was reimbursed.

* It cost Santa Cruz County an estimated $47,000 on $188,000 in overtime reimbursement.

* And it cost San Luis an estimated $34,000to pay for public-safety retirement on the $384,000 it was reimbursed for overtime.

The total of the costs accrued to these four agencies adds up to nearly $410,000. It doesn't include unreimbursed costs to any of the other 18 Arizona law enforcement agencies that received money during the grant cycle. The Arizona Department of Homeland Security does not know which agencies were reimbursed, and the Star investigation covered only 10 agencies due to the bulk of documents needed to be examined and delay in public-records requests.

Employee-related expenses were an allowable reimbursement during the first grant cycle, said Amy Bolton, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Homeland Security. But the grant guidance didn't provide instructions about them — for instance, that cities and counties needed to apply for them in their grant application as well as request them in reimbursement packets, Bolton said.

She could not explain why there was not more clear guidance about the expenses. The Arizona Department of Homeland Security declined to provide interviews with the director of the agency or the person most familiar with Stonegarden.

In the subsequent grant cycles, all agencies are being reimbursed for employee-related expenses, and Bolton's agency has representatives available during the grant process to explain such procedures, she said.

There has been confusion regarding equipment purchases, too. In 2008, the Tucson Police Department paid $3,500 for three people to get training on how to run a $22,000 telecommunications intelligence and analysis software system. Police did not know that training was not covered by the grant and were frustrated by the confusion, e-mails show.

'I'm not comfortable working this via e-mail approvals without a valid contract (copy or original) explaining exactly what expenditures are approved for us under Stone Garden,' wrote Rick Prater, management coordinator of the grants administration section for the Tucson police, in a Feb. 4, 2008, e-mail to Michael Tucker of the Border Patrol and other Tucson Police officials. 'Mike — can you give us a breakout of exactly what's covered under our allocation of this grant — overtime, training, equipment?'

At the time of the e-mail, the first grant cycle had been going for a year and a half.

In June 2008, the Nogales Police Department bought a Ford Expedition for $27,000 but was then told by Tucker of the Border Patrol in an e-mail that it would have to cancel the purchase. Two weeks later, an e-mail from the Arizona Department of Homeland Security approved the purchase.

In May 2008, San Luis police spent $60,000 on tactical equipment that included helmets, lights and weapons gear. The Arizona Department of Homeland Security denied reimbursement of $16,705 of the total because it was weapons-based gear not allowed under the grant.

Some departments have knowingly absorbed costs.

In February 2008, the Yuma County Sheriff's Department passed on $2,700 in costs for a radio system to the city of Yuma because it went over the grant allocation. In an e-mail explaining how that happened, Yuma sheriff's account clerk Michele C. Valdez wrote to Arizona Homeland Security: 'Sorry for the mess, but I'm doing the best I can with what I'm given.'

In 2008, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office covered nearly $9,000 over its $20,000 equipment allotment to buy 15 push-to-talk phone accessories, 15 hand-held GPS devices and 15 sets of night-vision goggles.

When asked if Operation Stonegarden was ready to be launched, Bolton said it depends on your perspective.

'Would you not roll it out until it was absolutely perfect? But then you might never roll it out,' Bolton said. 'Would you roll it out and then have some experience and revamp the program and revise the program? It's like a business question. I don't think anything is going to be absolutely perfect, because the conditions on the border change.'

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Other US projects have raised similar concerns
By Brady McCombs and Stephen Ceasar
The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), November 16, 2009
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/317733

The loose administration and 'anything-goes' mentality surrounding Operation Stonegarden has raised concerns that it might not be the best use of federal taxpayer money.

It's not the first time such concerns have been raised about programs involving the U.S. Border Patrol and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

The government's border security strategy has been plagued by high-priced initiatives rolled out with little oversight and no measures of success, resulting in big spending that produces little, reports by the Government Accountability Office and the DHS inspector general show.

* Border fences

Despite a $2.4 billion investment to build 264 miles of fencing and 226 miles of vehicle barriers in the last five years, the impact of these barriers on border security is unknown because it has not been measured, according to a September 2009 GAO report.

'Until CBP determines the contribution of tactical infrastructure to border security, it is not positioned to address the impact of this investment,' the report said, referring to Customs and Border Protection.

* Border Patrol checkpoints

A one-year evaluation of U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints by the GAO found that the agency's self-reported data are insufficient to determine if the inspection stations are efficient or effective.

A 147-page GAO report, released in September, also shows that the agency overstated checkpoint results in the last two years due to a lack of management oversight and inconsistent data-gathering and analysis throughout the agency.

* Virtual fences

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has paid Boeing Co. $1.1 billion since 2006 to create and build a border-long network of camera, sensor and radar towers. To date, only a flawed test system in Arizona is being used by the Border Patrol. The virtual fences were supposed to be completed along the Southwest Border by October 2009. Now, they are expected to be done by 2016.

* Tech solutions, spending

Homeland Security and its precursors spent $429 million between 1998 and 2005 on border surveillance systems that were set off by movement of animals, trains and wind, the department's Office of Inspector General reported in 2005.

Instead of getting a hold on the spending, the Obama administration has compounded the problem by sending more money to the Southwest border in reaction to the drug war in Mexico and the perceived spillover into the United States, said Tom Barry, senior analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., and director of the Center's TransBorder Project of the Americas Policy Program.

'These programs are based on political pressure, political opportunism,' Barry said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'and CBP have created an array of programs and initiatives without ever putting into place the regulations and benchmarks to assure that these initiatives are well-focused and effective.'

DHS has been panned time and again by the GAO and its own inspector general for not being able to effectively manage private contracts, said Barry, who is investigating that issue currently.

'So much waste and abuse, and this has been a pattern from the creation of DHS,' Barry said.

Homeland Security has been bursting with money since its creation in 2003 with no big-picture analysis, said Jennifer Allen, director of the Tucson-based Border Action Network.

'It's just falling where it may,' Allen said. 'We have to stop and come to terms that there is a lot of buildup along the border. We need to take stock of what's already there and what's effective.'

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5.
Settlement in lawsuit could accelerate citizenship applications
By Andrew Edwards and Stephen Wall
The San Bernardino County Sun (CA), November 15, 2009
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_13794780

Carmen Reyes is anxious to become a U.S. citizen.

But the 22-year-old Colton resident has not applied for naturalization because she believes the process takes too long and is too expensive.

The settlement of a lawsuit last week will make things easier for Reyes and many other legal residents waiting to become citizens.

Hundreds of immigrants residing in Southern California could soon escape a bureaucratic snare and attain citizenship after the settlement of a lawsuit based on delayed FBI background checks, lawyers say.

One woman, Maria Valedez of Pomona, was included among those whose naturalization process included a lesson in U.S. governmental delay.

Valedez, 39, said she first arrived in the United States from Mexico in 1989 and took her citizenship test in 2006 or 2007. She said she did not achieve become a U.S. citizen until October 2008 because her fingerprint check got stuck in the system.

'Have more people (process applications) or take it more seriously about the applications,' Valedez implored in a telephone interview. 'It's very stressful for us.'

The settlement requires U.S. Citizenship and Immigration services to adjudicate 90 percent of plaintiffs' citizenship applications within six months.

'I feel very happy because it won't take a long time,' said Reyes, who came to the United States from Mexico in 1995.

Reyes works at a women's clothing store and studies at San Bernardino Valley College. Her career goal is to become a lawyer. She lives with her parents to save money.

'I can vote if I become a citizen. We can change the country if we vote,' she said.

Immigrant advocates praised the settlement.

'It's great,' said Emilio Amaya, director of the San Bernardino Community Service Center, a nonprofit that helps immigrants with citizenship and other services.

'Many people have been waiting three or four years to finally become U.S. citizens,' Amaya said. 'People who don't have criminal backgrounds shouldn't be forced to wait so long.'

Amaya said he has 20 to 25 people waiting to have their citizenship applications processed.

'It affects and benefits anybody who has an application pending because of FBI security clearance or FBI security checks,' Amaya said.

Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman Mariana Gitomer said the deal affects about 500 immigrants living in the judicial district that includes San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles counties.

'There is no change in policy. People still have to go through a background check from the FBI when they apply for citizenship,' Gitomer said.

Linton Joaquin, general counsel for the National Immigration Law Center said in a telephone interview that a lack of sufficient FBI manpower resulted in a backlog of background checks.

The procedure required the FBI to not only research whether applicants had criminal records but whether their names were duplicated in any of the Bureau's documents.

The FBI has 120 days to complete the paperwork after an immigrant has met the requirements for citizenship and been interviewed. But many cases have been held up for years because of pending name checks.

In 2007, the FBI had 350,000 name checks pending but has since bolstered staffing and upgraded technology to reduce the backlog. Earlier this year, immigration officials said nearly all FBI name checks were being answered within 30 days.

The FBI states on its Web site that it receives about 75,000 name check requests per week from other agencies, and the Bureau is usually able to report within days that the name is not associated with any investigative files.

About 10 percent of name check requests require FBI employees to check investigative files, and the process sometimes requires personnel to retrieve paper files.

'The person's name might be similar to the name of a bad guy,' said San Bernardino immigration lawyer A. Sam Akintimoye.

Akintimoye added his opinion that the settlement would not force the government to grant naturalization to someone who doesn't deserve citizenship.

The backlog, Joaquin said, left thousands of plaintiffs unable to fulfill their aspirations of joining U.S. society and participating in basic civic activities like voting.

'It's kind of a limbo. They're permanent residents still until they get their cases decided,' he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Asian Pacific American Legal Center joined the case, which was filed against the federal government in late 2007.

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6.
Hundreds in Dallas County deported before their trials
By Jennifer Emily
The Dallas Morning News, November 14, 2009
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/111409dnmetnojustice.408d6ba.html

Hundreds of defendants awaiting trial for violent crimes in Dallas County have been deported by federal immigration officials and then set free in their home countries.

The practice goes back to at least 1991 and includes the release of murder, kidnapping and child rape suspects. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say they're required to deport illegal immigrants quickly but are now in talks with local agencies who are trying to resolve the problem.

Across Texas and the nation, defendants post bail and are immediately taken to immigration facilities, where they volunteer to be deported. Just how often this happens isn't clear.

One survey of prosecutors shows that since 1991 in Dallas County, nearly 1,000 illegal immigrants have not stood trial after being accused of felonies. That number also counts cases in which a wanted person fled before being arrested, but does not include all Dallas County cases - just ones that prosecutors judged to be of the highest priority.

Those who post bail and agree to then be sent home are taking advantage of the system to escape justice, said Terri Moore, top assistant to District Attorney Craig Watkins.

'Our No. 1 goal is to protect the public, to hold the individual accountable for crimes they commit,' Moore said. 'Defendants are using it as a means to avoid prosecution.'

No quick fixes

Officials from the DA's office, the Dallas County Sheriff's Department and ICE met this week to discuss the problem. No quick fixes were found, but they plan to meet again, officials said.

Ernesto Fierro, an investigator with the DA's office, said that about a year ago, he compiled a list of about 1,000 instances in which illegal immigrants weren't prosecuted after being accused of felonies.

Fierro, who spent much of his personal time collecting the information, estimates that most were deported but said many others fled to their home countries before being taken into custody. He did not have a breakdown of how many defendants fit into each category.

The roughly 1,000 cases represent only those that prosecutors reported to him on 'a wish list' of defendants they most wanted to take to trial - those accused of the most serious crimes. Many other incidents of illegal immigrants leaving the country without facing charges may not yet have been documented by Fierro.

A spokesman for ICE said its agents can't hold people while trials are pending.

'By law, we must process them and return them to their countries without delay,' said Carl Rusnok. 'We cannot hold them while a prosecutor develops charges.'

Rusnok said ICE would be willing to listen and see if there was a way to help local law enforcement. But he added that local agencies need to understand that ICE's priority is deporting illegal immigrants.

The agency's policies led to the deportation of one defendant, Jose Rico, who returned to Mexico before he could stand trial in the rape of two girls in separate incidents. DNA connected him to both sexual assaults, court records show.

Both girls, ages 12 and 14, were bound with clear duct tape. The attacker told one of the girls: 'I have a gun. I will kill you.'

Rico, 34, posted his $125,000 bond and was deported in August.

Problem isn't new

Dan Kowalski, an Austin-based immigration attorney, said the problem is no worse now in Texas or across the country than it has been in the past. He said the predicament is merely a lack of communication between prosecutors and immigration officials.

Kowalski said ICE scores more 'brownie points' if it deports illegal immigrants after they've been convicted. He said that he is unsure why agents wouldn't wait for a trial.

'If ICE knows they are getting custody from a county jail ... ICE is either really incompetent or they are going to deport them the easy way,' Kowalski said.

In Dallas County, judges this week took a step toward decreasing the chances that someone in the country illegally will post bond and be deported before trial. Judges began setting the bail at $100,000 per charge if a defendant is in the country illegally.

Under the new system, the bail for Rico, the child rape suspect, probably would have been $200,000.

This same measure has been used with success in other parts of the country to keep defendants from posting bond and being voluntarily deported. But that won't necessarily fix the problem. Those held at the Dallas County Jail are sometimes given a bail amount before officials know whether they are in the country illegally, said state District Judge Mike Snipes. Notification can take days, he said.

Snipes said officials need to more quickly identify illegal immigrants charged with crimes, possibly by having the arresting agency or Sheriff's Department check on suspected illegal immigrants' status as soon as suspects are brought to jail.

But Kim Leach, the sheriff's spokeswoman, said doing so could be construed as racial profiling. Authorities could not check someone's immigration status simply because they had a Hispanic last name.

Leach said someone from ICE used to be at the jail 40 hours a week to run immigration status checks. Having that position returned could be a solution, she said.

Currently, computers at the Dallas County Jail and ICE are synced to help identify those in the country illegally. This relatively new system allows fingerprints to be simultaneously run through a national database and a Homeland Security database to check the immigration status of someone under arrest.

It's not clear whether any of those deported committed further crimes or re-entered the United States. But Moore said those accused of some crimes probably believe they have no reason to stay away.

'I think it depends on what you did. If you committed a capital murder ... we'll have to hunt you down,' she said. 'But on some of these other crimes, they'll just lay low awhile.'

Watkins said in a prepared statement that investigators from his office first met with law enforcement officials more than a year ago to discuss the problem. He said that since he took office, his prosecutors and investigators have successfully kept some illegal immigrants from fleeing before trial.

'This issue is not new and it was not created by this administration,' he said. 'However, we are doing everything we can to solve it.'

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7.
Where two contentious issues intersect
Immigration and health House measure omits Senate panel's legal test
By David Montgomery
The Washington Post, November 16, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/15/AR2009111502625.html

The 31-year-old woman creeping gingerly into Adventist HealthCare's free-standing emergency department in Germantown was obviously in pain, and physician Orlee Panitch quickly diagnosed the problem: gallstones.

The case wasn't an emergency -- yet -- but the woman, who is an illegal immigrant, didn't know where else to go for care.

'Her inability to access care is a problem,' Panitch said. 'At some point, untreated, she'll need emergency surgery to deal with this.'

That question of access to care for some immigrants, and who should pay for it, could well become one of the most contentious sticking points in the coming weeks as members of Congress sit down to reconcile the health-care bill passed by the House on Saturday with the yet-to-emerge Senate version.

The controversy centers largely on whether illegal immigrants should benefit at all under a revised health-care system. Democratic leaders had vowed that only legal residents would receive subsidies to buy insurance. And after Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) famously shouted 'You lie' at President Obama when he made that vow to Congress, both the White House and the Senate Finance Committee went a step further. They pledged that undocumented workers would be barred not only from receiving subsidies but also from buying insurance through federally sponsored exchanges -- even if they used their own money.

Last week, when some House Democratic leaders pressed to match the Senate Finance Committee version, Hispanic lawmakers threatened to revolt and ultimately prevailed: Under the bill approved by the House, illegal immigrants would not be barred from the exchanges.

That stark debate, however, has largely obscured the distinct challenge raised by immigrant families as reformers try to provide coverage to as many Americans as possible. Because so many of the nation's 38 million immigrants -- legal and illegal -- live in households that include both categories, families must often rely on a patchwork of care and funding. And while the legislation could have a significant impact on how millions of immigrants obtain care, it is clear that large gaps in coverage will remain, not only across immigrant communities but also even within individual families.

Maria Salmeron, for example, is a legal resident from El Salvador who has insurance through her job in the kitchen of a nursing home. But her husband, a construction worker who is trying to legalize his status, has no insurance. Their youngest child, Isabella, a 2-year-old citizen in pigtails, requires a ventilator to breathe. Her medical needs are covered by state and federal programs.

On a recent fall day, Salmeron took Isabella to a pediatric clinic in Falls Church, where a bilingual pediatrician, Albert Brito, checked her for a cold and helped her mother make an appointment with a kidney specialist for the child.

Meanwhile, the nurse who comes to the family's home to help take care of Isabella has no insurance. J. Katan, a legal resident from Nigeria, said she cannot afford the premiums for the plan offered by her nursing agency.

'If I need to see a doctor,' she said, 'I go myself, and I pay.'

Locally and nationwide, roughly two-thirds of working-age immigrants who are legal residents are insured, and more than one-third of illegal immigrants also have insurance, according to a new study by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. The group estimates that as many as 2.8 million uninsured legal residents of working age could benefit from reform, by qualifying for expanded Medicaid or proposed subsidies to purchase insurance. Nearly 1 million uninsured legal immigrants also work at firms that could be required to provide insurance. And 1.8 million uninsured illegal immigrants work for firms that may be required to provide insurance, according to the institute.

Even as lawmakers remain divided over how far to extend the new safety net, some health providers already have fashioned multi-layered systems to match care with the mixed needs of immigrant families.

The Falls Church pediatric clinic that treated Isabella was created by the Inova Health System, part of a cluster strategy that includes a maternity clinic for uninsured women, a nutritionist, a low-cost pharmacy, a lab, classrooms and social workers to help families navigate the system.

'We're basically a community safety net as well as a medical safety net,' said Geoffrey DeLizzio, director of the clinics.

Ramiro Herbas, who came from Bolivia eight years ago, recently brought his son, Demothi, 2, for a checkup and a flu shot to the Falls Church pediatric clinic. American-born Demothi qualifies for Medicaid. Herbas said he has a work permit, but his construction jobs don't offer insurance. If he gets sick he visits a doctor's office in Seven Corners, where discount practices cater to immigrants, $40 a visit.

For some, the emergency department will remain the only option -- especially for patients like Susy, the illegal immigrant with gallstones, who would be excluded from subsidies.

'The pain is strong,' said Susy, a babysitter who came from Peru six years ago. Because of her immigration status, she spoke on the condition that her last name not be published.

As Susy lay on a bed, Marcos Pesquera, executive director of Adventist's center on health disparities, picked up the phone and made an appointment for her with a surgeon, who, two weeks later, removed her gallbladder at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital.

Susy said she was initially asked to make a deposit of $3,500 to the hospital. Ultimately she made a deposit of just $100, she said, but she added that she may be asked to pay more.

The surgeon declined to comment, but his colleague, Jason Brodsky of Inpatient Surgical Consultants, said in an e-mailed statement: 'We are pleased to provide this care regardless of a patient's insurance status.'

Most of the cost of Susy's care will end up being absorbed by Adventist.

Like Inova, Adventist HealthCare, a $1.2 billion nonprofit provider, has stitched together services on its Germantown campus with a cluster of clinics and emergency care, paid for by an array of public and private players.

Next door to the emergency department where Susy was treated, Monica Peñaherrera, 53, sat in an examination room at a clinic operated by the nonprofit Mobile Medical Care. Peñaherrera is an American citizen but has had no health insurance since her husband's construction business declined. When she felt a pain in her breast recently, she came to the clinic she had heard about at her church.

'I'm comfortable here,' Peñaherrera said after she was examined by nurse practitioner Marylynn Gonsalves. 'I think of her as my family doctor.'

For Peñaherrera's visit, she pays $30. Montgomery County pays $62. 'That is way less than half what our costs would be,' says Bob Spector, executive director of Mobile Med. The rest comes from cash and diagnostic support from Adventist, plus Mobile Med's own fundraising and reliance in some cases on donated medical expertise.

The patchwork of services is also paid for by taxpayers and people with insurance.

'We have to try to cover for those who can't pay or won't pay with the revenues that come from people who can and do pay,' says Bill Robertson, president of Adventist HealthCare, which provided about $51 million in uncompensated care -- to poor, uninsured patients like Susy -- in their two local hospitals last year. The hospital covers the gap with money from other patients' insurance plans that pay more than cost.

Downstairs from Mobile Med is a maternity clinic for uninsured women, where Socorro Almejo, 38, an immigrant from Mexico, brought her 17-year-old daughter, Reina, who is pregnant, for a routine prenatal exam. Reina is receiving a full range of pregnancy checkups for $450 through a county-subsidized program. Almejo herself has no insurance and goes to another clinic when she is sick. 'I'm glad at least my children have [coverage], even if I don't,' she said.

Dianne Fisher, the county health department's nurse administrator for women's health services, said the goal was to ensure healthy pregnancies and births. 'Otherwise,' she said, 'they would show up in the emergency room, with more problems.'

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8.
Senate Democrats want U.S. residency for kin of immigrant service members
By J. Taylor Rushing
The Hill (Washington, DC), November 14, 2009
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/67779-senate-democrats-want-us-residency-for-families-of-immigrant-service-members

Six Senate Democrats have introduced a bill to grant permanent residency to family members of immigrants actively serving in the U.S. military — even in cases where the service member has died.

The Military Families Act, by Sens. Robert Menendez (N.J.), Mary Landrieu, Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Kristin Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Russ Feingold (Wis.), isn’t expected to receive a floor vote anytime soon, with the Senate racing to pass healthcare reform by the end of the year. For now, the bill has been referred to the Judiciary Committee.

The idea isn’t new — Menendez introduced the same bill a year ago — but the issue of immigration has been largely dormant in the Senate since the bruising battles of 2006 and 2007. Inouye has also pushed before for a provision in the bill that would cover children of Filipino World War II veterans.

The bill has drawn together an unusual cross-section of Senate Democrats from the party’s various wings — for example, Feingold, one of the more liberal members of the caucus, and Landrieu, one of the more conservative. No Republicans have signed on in support so far.

The bill is already drawing the praise of immigration-rights advocates. Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, called the bill 'a reminder that our immigration system is badly broken.'

'The Senate has delivered a well-deserved tribute to our immigrant soldiers and their families. Those who serve our nation - and their families who also make great sacrifices - deserve the full range of what our nation has to offer, including a path towards U.S. citizenship,' Giovagnoli said.

Likewise, Bernard Wolsdorf, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, noted that immigrants comprise an increasing percentage of military service members. He said the bill 'will help ensure that families of those that have served our country with pride and valor don’t face unfair and unexpected deportation.'

Under the bill, Homeland Security officials would be authorized to grant residency to immediate family members — parents, spouses and children — of active-duty Armed Forces members. Immediate relatives of service members would also receive residency if the member died of an injury or disease due to his or her service.

A report released this month by the Immigration Policy Council cites a high, continuing need for immigrants in the U.S. military, not only for basic recruitment needs but also for translators and interpreters.

As of June 30, the report notes there are 114,601 foreign-born individuals serving in the armed forces, or almost 8 percent of the 1.4 million total military personnel on active duty. In the current fiscal year, the report notes more than 10,500 military service members were granted U.S. residency.

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9.
Mexican Consulate takes services on road to Northern California enclave
By Anna Tong
The Sacramento Bee (CA), November 16, 2009
http://www.sacbee.com/news/story/2327666.html

Hamilton City, CA -- Once a year this small hamlet midway between Chico and Orland doubles its population of 2,000.

Early Saturday morning, families began lining up to take advantage of one of the Mexican Consulate of Sacramento's mobile services.

The consulate has become a support network for Mexican immigrants, joining with other local associations to provide a range of social services at its traveling events.

Mexican day laborers, who make up the backbone of California's agriculture industry, often live in rural areas like Hamilton City, and don't have time on weekdays to make the trek to the consulate.

'It is very important for us to make sure that our services are where the Mexican communities are,' said Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, consul general of Mexico in Sacramento.

The Sacramento consulate serves 800,000 immigrants in rural and urban areas in 24 counties, from Modesto to the Oregon border. The consulate takes services to its constituents 18 times a year at different Northern California cities.

Saturday, families came for the consulate's signature service, same-day Mexican ID cards and passports. The Mexican ID cards, or matriculas, are important for opening bank accounts or sending money home. The Mexican passports are used for traveling home.

Families filled Hamilton Union High School's auditorium, waiting to get their photos taken and names called.

Juan Cervantes, 53, a farm worker from Woodland, came because his wife is going to Mexico for a family emergency. While he waited, he took advantage of the services offered by other community organizations there.

Del Norte Clinics Inc., a chain of community health centers that serves rural areas in Northern California, provided health screenings.

Cervantes, who does not have a doctor, had his blood sugar and blood pressure checked.

In the school library, volunteer immigration lawyers provided free consultations. Many immigrants do not have any idea of what their legal rights are, said Leslie Johnson, a lawyer with the Chico branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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10.
Perry: Immigrant program aimed at punishing Texas
By Jason Embry
The Austin American Statesman, November 13, 2009
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/2009/11/13/1113texaspolitics.html

Gov. Rick Perry has opened up a new front in his yearlong political war against the federal government, accusing the Obama administration this week of dumping thousands of illegal immigrants on a small, unsuspecting Texas border town.

He described the program in far more alarmist terms than those used by immigration officials on the ground who say they have returned immigrants to Mexico through Texas for years.

But the comments aren't likely to slow Perry down much as he tries to endear himself to the Texans who will vote in the March Republican primary, when Perry will face a challenge from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Perry has assailed Washington Democrats this year for their efforts to change the health care system and reduce global warming, saying those plans will cripple the state's budget and economic activity. He even expressed a bit of sympathy for those who want Texas to leave the United States, although he said that's not the option he'd choose.

It all appears to be working for him. Several public polls in recent months have shown Perry leading Hutchison, and his comments Wednesday in Midland that the Obama administration is 'hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country' landed him on Fox News and at the center of the Drudge Report Web site Thursday.

That comment came shortly after he assailed the newly launched Alien Transfer and Exit Program as the latest sign that the Obama administration is trying to punish Texas.

Under the program, Mexican men between the ages of 20 and 60 who are unaccompanied by wives or children and whose only offense is coming into the United States illegally are sent from Arizona to Presidio, a border town of about 6,000 west of Big Bend.

Bill Brooks, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the program began about three years ago and was used to transfer immigrants between California and Arizona. The launch of the Presidio effort on Nov. 1 was the first time immigrants have come through Texas under the program, but immigrants have been taken from Arizona to Eagle Pass for years under different programs, Brooks said.

Officials say the efforts help break the cycle of human smuggling.

'If somebody from Mexico hires a smuggler to bring them in through Arizona, and they get apprehended and then they are repatriated through Arizona, they go find the smuggler, and they keep doing it until they get past us,' Brooks said. 'We will move them to a different place so they're not going to go find the smuggler again.'

After arriving from Arizona, the illegal immigrants walk across a bridge to the Mexican town of Ojinaga, where Mexican authorities put them on a bus and send them to the interior of Mexico, Brooks said.

'It's not like we just push them out,' Brooks said. 'We give them some water, give them some food to take with them. They cross and then go to the Mexican immigration authorities. We're standing there. They're not going to be able to come back.'

The immigrants - as many as 94 a day - are in Presidio for about 10 minutes before they go across the bridge, Brooks said.

He said Mexican officials have told U.S. officials that the immigrants immediately get on another bus once they cross the bridge.

But in his Midland speech Wednesday, parts of which were posted online by the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Perry said the immigrants could cause the population of Presidio to double in a couple of months.

'This is a city that does not have the social services, does not have the law enforcement, does not have the ability in any form or fashion to handle that type of influx of people,' Perry said. 'And I say that about Presidio because you know what's going to happen. They're faced with the Chihuahuan Desert or Texas? They're turning around and going back to Texas.

'Do the math on that. In a year period of time, we're talking 28,000 people that are going to be turned loose on our border.'

Brooks said that nobody has tried to come back in through Presidio since the program began less than two weeks ago. He also said that federal officials chose Presidio because it is in a remote area where human smuggling is not known to be a problem, and because the number of border patrol agents there has tripled in recent years.

'We feel like we're quite capable of dealing with anything that might come up,' Brooks said. 'We've been doing this for years. And I'll point out to you that our agents and their families live in that same area, so we have a vested interest in seeing to it that Presidio remains safe.'

Presidio County Judge Jerry Agan, a Democrat, echoed Perry's comments that he was caught off guard by the program.

He said the program hasn't caused problems for Presidio residents, but in an area with high unemployment, he said he worries that a human-smuggling ring to bring the Mexican nationals back into Presidio will develop.

'We do have a very extensive drug-smuggling infrastructure in place in Ojinaga that's run out of Juarez,' Agan said. 'The terrain plays in our favor because you're going to have to do some work to get up to a road where you can be smuggled out. But it can be done.'

Asked about Brooks' comments that the immigrants are in Texas for only a matter of minutes, Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger responded: 'Turning the Presidio area into a way station for the repatriation of illegal immigrants adds responsibility to local authorities and holds the potential of increasing the strain on local and state infrastructure and resources. This plan will increase the likelihood that these individuals will immediately cross back into Texas.'

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11.
Mass. immigrant tuition bill to get new push
By Russell Contreras
The Associated Press, November 15, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gTcZWAsLpHuKr3C5T1JOTka1FXQQD9C04NFO5

Chelsea, MA (AP) -- It seemed like a given that Mario Rodas would go to college.

The Guatemalan-born student certainly had the academic credentials, going from English as a second language classes to taking advanced placement exams for college credit his senior year at Chelsea High School.

But paying for it was another matter. As an undocumented immigrant in 2005, Rodas would have had to pay out-of-state tuition fees to go to a public college in Massachusetts, and he couldn't afford that. If he had lived in Texas or Utah, states that allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates, Rodas, now 22, might have graduated already.

'Every year we have more and more students in limbo here,' Rodas said. 'And every year we have more and more students taking advantage (of in-state tuition) elsewhere. I don't understand.'

Nearly three years after Massachusetts House lawmakers soundly rejected a bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants to attend college at in-state tuition rates, lawmakers are preparing to revisit the issue.

Activists say 10 other states, some dominated by conservative lawmakers, have passed legislation with bipartisan support, and advocates see no reason why Massachusetts, a state controlled by Democrats, can't do the same.

That has been a frustration for advocates in this left-leaning state, which was the first to legalize gay marriage and the only so far to require health insurance for all its residents.

'Massachusetts is out in front of so many things,' said Harris Gruman, executive director of the Service Employees International Union Massachusetts State Council. 'But Massachusetts is behind on this.'

Undocumented students say they plan to launch a campaign by lobbying key lawmakers and sharing their stories in face-to-face meetings. Meanwhile, activists have cultivated a broader coalition of supporters that includes union members, business leaders and academics — something lacking in 2006.

State Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz, D-Boston, said the state's Higher Education Committee is expected to hold hearings on the matter later this year or early next. Chang-Diaz, a co-sponsor of the bill, says it stands a better chance this time, with increased lobbying efforts and support from Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick. Former Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, opposed the measure in 2006.

'Time is our friend here,' Chang-Diaz said. 'We've had more time to talk to more people collectively ... and get them more comfortable with it.'

On Tuesday, the governor is scheduled to release a list of recommendations from his Advisory Council for Refugees and Immigrants that is expected to include in-state tuition for undocumented students. Patrick sent the panel around the state last year to take public comment and to come up with suggestions for new immigration policy.

Currently, 10 states — California, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin — have such in-state tuition laws for undocumented students. Oklahoma repealed its law in 2008.

Meanwhile, four states — Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and South Carolina — have passed laws specifically banning undocumented students from being eligible for in-state tuition.

Steve Kropper, co-director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform, a group that seeks immigration restrictions, said Massachusetts residents have shown to be generally sympathetic to immigration. But he said the public remains resistant to granting illegal immigrants in-state tuition or driver's licenses.

'It doesn't make economic sense to us,' Kropper said. 'If they can't get a job when they're done (with college), then it doesn't make sense for the state to invest in them.'

Gruman said advocates are optimistic in Massachusetts because some of the more vocal opponents are now gone.

For example, former Rep. Marie Parente, D-Milford, who was an outspoken opponent of the bill in 2006, was ousted by John Fernandes later that year. Still, Fernandes has not committed to support the bill and questions whether it should also include provisions for assimilation or enforcement.

'It only speaks to one side of the issue,' said Fernandes, a Democrat. 'I think we need a balanced approached that speaks to comprehensive immigration reform.'

Others who voted against the measure last time also remain opposed. Rep. Demetrius Atsalis, D-Barnstable, still opposes the bill because he believes it will make the state's college fee structure meaningless and will take away the incentive for undocumented students to legalize their status, said spokesman Tom Bernardo.

Rodas, who was granted asylum in the United States after becoming a poster child for the bill in 2006, said most of the immigrant students who would benefit from the proposal arrived in this country when they were young and are culturally American already.

'Most of these students speak English better than their native language now,' Rodas said.

The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation estimates that 400 to 600 students might enter Massachusetts schools as a result of the bill and that it likely would result in $2.5 million of extra revenue.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, current average in-state tuition at state universities is $9,704 compared with out-of-state tuition of $22,157. Average in-state tuition at state community college is $4,305 compared with out-of-state tuition of $10,811.

Stella Flores, a professor of public policy and higher education at Vanderbilt University, said one of the reasons the bill has struggled in Massachusetts is because the foreign-born population is younger than in other states, and because a large percentage of the state's Latinos are Puerto Ricans who aren't concerned about immigration issues since Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory.

She said states that have adopted in-state tuition laws have seen a small number of immigrants take advantage of the opportunities, mainly at community colleges.

'It's usually a small jump,' Flores said, 'but over time, as news spreads through word of mouth, you'll see an increase.'

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Tuition Bill For Immigrants Back Up For Debate
By David Robichaud
The WBZTV News (Boston), November 16, 2009
http://wbztv.com/local/immigrant.tuition.breaks.2.1314581.html

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12.
State could lose billions over census
By Marisa Lagos
The San Francisco Chronicle, November 16, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/11/16/MN6R1AJJ9U.DTL

California has slashed the amount of money it will spend on the 2010 census, a move that experts warn could lead to a flawed count and cost the state billions in federal aid over the next decade.

The U.S. government hands out about $400 billion to states and local jurisdictions every year based on population counts made during the nation's decennial census. The money pays for local hospitals, schools, public housing, highways and unemployment insurance.

While the federal government pays census workers to take counts, states and local governments spend money on census outreach efforts to stress to residents - particularly those who may be wary - the importance of the census.

But because of deep budget cuts in the 2009-10 California spending plan, the state has earmarked less than $2 million for 2010 census outreach, down from nearly $25 million a decade ago. The cut in state census outreach funds is a problem that federal officials said is playing out across the country.

In California, the cut means many counties, which 10 years ago received grants from the state for outreach in addition to using their own money, will get little or no state funding for 2010 census outreach. Some counties struggling with their own fiscal problems also have cut local funding for census outreach.

Undercounts costly

Sonny Le, a spokesman for the U.S. Census Bureau, said outreach is critical to ensure residents fill out the census forms that will be delivered to every home in the United States in March. Many people don't understand the reason for filling out the form, while others are reticent to share information with the federal government.

Each uncounted resident could result in the loss of $1,000 a year in federal funding for a state, according to the nonprofit Grantmakers Concerned With Immigrants and Refugees.

Ted Wang, a census consultant working for the group, said state and local outreach efforts play a critical role in communicating with populations that historically have been difficult to count.

An undercount also could cost California a congressional seat for the first time in its 150-year history, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said.

In 2000, 70 percent of the U.S. census forms that were sent out in California were returned - though only 58 percent were expected, said Eric Alborg, a spokesman for the California Complete Count Committee, a group formed by the governor in June to oversee the state's census outreach.

Even with a higher-than-anticipated rate of response, Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, D-Sylmar Los Angeles County, estimated that California lost $2 billion to $3 billion in federal funding over the past decade because some people were not counted.

'If this year is a bad count, how many more billions could we lose?' Fuentes said.

The governor's office defended the cuts as necessary and pointed out that in 2000 - at the height of the dot-com boom - the state was flush with cash.

'Hard to count' groups

'Given the breadth of the recession and the toll on state revenues, we had to make cutbacks in virtually every area,' said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the Department of Finance, who added that state officials recognize the importance of the count. 'We're pleased we are able to commit resources for outreach efforts to reach individuals that are hard to count.'

California is home to 10 of the nation's 50 counties with the largest 'hard to count' populations, which include people of color, young adults, immigrants and low-income residents. Alameda and San Francisco counties are among the 10 counties, topped by Los Angeles County.

People harder to find

Further compounding the challenge is the economic and political climate, experts said. The financial crisis, including the waves of foreclosures, has forced people into homelessness or nontraditional housing, making them hard to find.

Officials said some immigrant populations are expected to be even more wary of the count than usual because of an uptick in immigration raids and anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent years - including an attempt by several Republican U.S. senators to exclude undocumented residents from the count and require respondents to disclose their immigration status. The amendment was defeated, but sponsor David Vitter, R-La., has vowed to raise the issue again.

To make up for the cut in state census funds, the state is working closely with elected, religious, nonprofit, community and educational leaders to develop plans to reach out to residents and get accurate counts via the California Complete Count Committee.

The state is also developing a Web site that will offer tool kits in census outreach to community partners.

Meanwhile, some local jurisdictions are trying to bridge the gap left by state cuts. San Francisco and Santa Clara counties ponied up money in their budgets to fund local efforts. For the first time, San Francisco created a 'complete count committee,' which includes community, business, labor and nonprofit leaders to help with outreach.

Still, serious challenges lie ahead, says Adrienne Pon, who is leading San Francisco's efforts.

'There are no state funds this time around, and populations are more dispersed and diverse ... so we're trying to be more street smart and direct outreach mobilization efforts,' she said. The largely African American Bayview-Hunters Point 'had the lowest rate of return in 2000. We know of eight neighborhoods like that one which we are targeting.'

Additionally, the U.S. Census Bureau - which recognized early that states wouldn't have as much cash on hand - is redoubling its efforts. For example, in 2000, 18 census outreach workers were dedicated to the Bay Area; this year, the bureau assigned 160.

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Political battle simmers on counting noncitizens in census
By Rob Hotakainen
The Sacramento Bee, November 15, 2009
http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/2326404.html

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13.
Report on refugees flawed, activist says
By Meghan E. Irons
The Boston Globe, November 16, 2009
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/11/16/activist_says_mass_report_on_refugees_excluded_immigrant_input/

As a panel prepares to release a report tomorrow on integrating legal immigrants and refugees into the state's economic and civic life, a local activist is slamming the committee for excluding the majority of Massachusetts immigrant leaders.

Torli Krua, chief executive of the Boston-based Universal Human Rights International, said the governor's New Americans Agenda includes input from government appointees, consultants, and paid members of government agencies. But it omits the voices of many refugees and leaders of faith-based and volunteer groups from the deliberation and creative process, he said.

``The New Americans Agenda in its current form is lacking in its legitimacy,'' Krua said during a church service yesterday in Boston's South End, ``because the participants, products, timing are not representative of the majority of Massachusetts refugees and immigrants.''

State officials could not be reached for comment yesterday. A member of the Governor's Advisory Council for Refugees and Immigrants, which helped produce the report, said no one was excluded.

Krua said he voiced his concerns in a letter to Governor Deval Patrick and other state officials. In it, he called for a recall of the New Americans Agenda, which he described as severely flawed. He also urged an overhaul of the state Office for Refugees and Immigrants, the state agency charged with compiling the report, saying the group was out of touch with immigrants.

Patrick created the New Americans Agenda initiative last year to develop policy recommendations on immigration.

A coalition of immigrant groups and the state agency spent the past year holding public hearings and policy meetings across the state. It also conducted research and gathered input from state agencies.

The Office for Refugees and Immigrants presented draft recommendations to the governor for his review July 1.

Tomorrow the committee is expected to unveil 131 recommendations, covering issues raised during the public meetings such as the need for English classes, in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants, and assistance for immigrants with college degrees who want to transfer their credentials.

Westy Egmont, cochair of the Governor's Advisory Council, said the six public hearings and 15 policy meetings for immigration professionals were well attended and represented by ``folks some might call disempowered.''

Many people also responded to the panel's website, which urged input and participation from immigrants. The Globe reported on at least one meeting.

``There is no basis in any imaginable way [for accusations] of exclusion,'' said Egmont, who also received a letter from Krua. ``The process has included immigrants as cochairs, writers, and folks listening. It's really been a heavily immigrant participant-led facilitated process.''

But Krua, addressing a group of about 80 people at the South End Neighborhood Church yesterday, said the process excluded many from the refugee community, who either were not told about the public meetings or when told could not attend because the meetings were held in the early evenings when many immigrants work.

Alex Mbianda, who is active in the Cameroon immigrant community, said he was never contacted about the meetings. He criticized the state's refugee agency for what he said is a disconnect with the people it serves.

``There is a miscommunication,'' he said yesterday of the agency. ``They think they know what we need. We know what we need, but we don't know what they are thinking.''

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14.
Traffic offenses top charge for Yakima noncitizens
By Melissa Sanchez
The Yakima Herald Republic (WA), November 15, 2009
http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2009/11/14/illegal-immigrants-unlawful-activities

Yakima, WA -- The Yakima County jail echoes with slamming steel doors and yelling prisoners as a federal agent sits down behind a computer with a list of inmates to interview.

Across the table is Julio Laguna Mendoza, a quiet 54-year-old arrested for drunken driving several days earlier. The computer shows he's no stranger to the system.

Laguna's been arrested a half-dozen times for illegally entering the country. Mug shots provide a time-sequence of Laguna aging after each arrest.

This time, he made it as far as Yakima. But it won't be long before he's deported again.

Few issues are more controversial or emotional than the impact illegal immigrants have on crime - or how local law enforcement officers deal with illegal immigrants.

Immigrant-rights advocates insist that most are hard workers no more likely to commit crimes than citizens. Others blame illegal immigrants for a large share of the Yakima Valley's serious crime.

But getting an accurate picture has never been easy. To date, authorities say no specific research has been done on the impact of illegal immigration on the criminal justice system in Yakima County.

Local police, deputies and prosecutors say they don't know what percentage of crime immigrants commit because they don't ask suspects about their immigration status. Jailers don't keep statistics on whether inmates are here legally. And to some degree, federal agents seeking to identify immigration violators among the jail population must rely on what suspects say.

But a Yakima Herald-Republic analysis of county jail booking records for the month of October sheds some light on how many in the facility are suspected of violating immigration law and what local charges they face:

-Six percent of the more than 630 people booked into the jail on local charges in October were suspected of breaking immigration law and placed on federal hold.

(Immigrants who are not U.S. citizens account for just under 13 percent of Yakima County residents, according to a 2008 U.S. Census estimate. The census report did not distinguish between illegal immigrants and those here on visas.)

-Citizens and those placed on immigration holds were booked on felony charges at roughly equal rates, 28 percent and 26 percent, respectively.

-More than 60 percent of inmates with immigration holds were booked on traffic violations, such as driving without a license and negligent driving.

-Drunken driving, a gross misdemeanor, was the No. 1 charge against noncitizens.

Without extensive study, it's difficult to tell whether October was a statistically average month at the jail.

But local police officials, while repeatedly emphasizing they don't ask suspects about their immigration status, said the numbers weren't unexpected.

'It's not surprising at all,' said Sunnyside deputy police chief Phil Schenck.

Authorities also agreed that jail bookings in October provide a fair snapshot of the Yakima Valley's demographics, which change with the agricultural calendar.

Exact comparisons are difficult, but the local rates are similar to those found in at least one study elsewhere on immigrants and criminality. A 2008 analysis by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California showed that while immigrants make up about 35 percent of that state's population, they account for 17 percent of the adult prison population.

Federal agents have been pulling illegal immigrants from local jails for years.

'We're focusing on the most egregious criminals or threats to the public,' said Bryan Wilcox, deputy field office director with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Seattle.

'Anyone we encounter in the jail, regardless of the circumstances of how they got to jail, if they're not a U.S. citizen then were going to look at them.'

The federal actions, however, are not without controversy.

Ann Benson, director of the Washington Defenders Association Immigration Project, said the federal program targeting inmates in local jails doesn't seek out the most serious criminal aliens.

It's an indiscriminate dragnet that rounds up as many immigrants as possible, she said.

'The overwhelming majority of the people being rounded up are fathers, sons and brothers who have families that rely on them and who are members of our communities,' she said.

Others, however, want to see far more aggressive enforcement.

Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin regularly gets asked why immigration status isn't questioned when deputies are investigating a crime.

'We concentrate on the criminals committing crimes, not those people violating immigration law, because effective law enforcement is based on trust of the community,' he said. 'And if we have a large segment of the community that does not trust law enforcement, then the community as a whole is less safe because crime is not being reported.'

Besides, police agencies have enough trouble keeping up with drug crimes and car thefts, he said.

'I've told so many groups I've talked to that if I could get rid of the stupid white people who are heavily involved in ... methamphetamine - wow, that's where we'd really see the reduction in crime,' he said.

'But the illegal immigrant is an easy target and a little too easy to blame for the ills that we have.'

His stance - echoed by other Yakima Valley law enforcement leaders, including Yakima police Chief Sam Granato - frustrates people like Bob West.

West is the president of Grassroots of Yakima Valley, an organization that wants local law enforcement agencies to verify the legal status of everybody they encounter - and to alert federal immigration authorities of possible illegal immigrants.

'Nobody checks up on it because it's not the politically correct thing to do,' West said. 'I'm not saying all illegal immigrants are criminals. But the illegals have broken at least one law. Who knows what percentage of illegal immigrants break other laws?'

Some of the Valley's most vocal opponents of illegal immigration recognize that immigrants don't commit a disproportionate amount of crime here.

But their U.S.-born children do, said Nick Hughes, a retired hops seller who has stood in front of Yakima City Council meetings to blame Hispanic immigrants for gang violence.

'Most of the gang members are (children of illegal immigrants),' he said. 'If we hadn't allowed the illegal parents here, we wouldn't have the children here causing the gang problems.'

Few - including those in law enforcement - will disagree with Hughes' assessment. Irwin called the trend a breakdown in immigrant families.

'They're hardworking people, for the most part, but the children ... are not being disciplined and parented as they should be,' Irwin said.

Illegal immigration brings its share of problems, even if crime is not a major one, Irwin said.

Overburdened schools, social services and hospitals are among reasons why the federal government should find a solution to the nation's immigration problem - whether it's a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants or mass deportation, he added.

'We've all been a part of this problem,' Irwin said. 'We're used to the services - landscapers, construction, hotels, all of that, especially our agriculture industry has benefited from illegal immigration to a certain extent.

'We all need to be a part of a solution, whatever it may be.'

EDITOR’S NOTE: CIS will release a study of crime and immigration this Thursday, November 19. Information is available online at: http://cis.org/Announcements/ImmigrationAndCrimePanel

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15.
Deputies finish immigration laws training
By Heath Hamacher
The Gwinnett Daily Post (GA), November 14, 2009
http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/home/headlines/70113747.html

Lawrenceville, GA -- Starting Monday, the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department will begin its limited enforcement of federal immigration laws.

The 287(g) program — named after the section of immigration law that governs it — has been in the works in Gwinnett since Sheriff Butch Conway applied for it in March 2008.

Department spokeswoman Stacey Bourbonnais said deputies are returning this weekend from four weeks of training in Charleston, S.C.

'(The training) was related to the federal immigration laws, procedures and rules involved in processing aliens,' Bourbonnais said in an e-mail.

Conway will hold a press conference Monday to discuss more details about the program and how it will be implemented in Gwinnett. He said previously that 18 deputies will be devoted to the program, which will allow deputies to check the immigration status of anyone booked into the jail. Deputies then, under the supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, can place an immigration hold on anyone found to be in the country illegally, Conway said.

Sheriff’s departments in Whitfield, Hall and Cobb counties, along with the Georgia Department of Public Safety, already participate in the program.

In Cobb County, illegal immigration activist D.A. King said Sheriff Neil Warren has reported about 7,000 illegal aliens to federal authorities.

'Foreign language newspapers and the ACLU regularly howl about illegals migrating out of Cobb because they now fear capture,' King said. 'That was exactly the intent.'

For Conway, the numbers say it all. In January, a 26-day ICE campaign resulted in detainers being placed on 914 foreign-born inmates, 54 percent of whom had a criminal history, Conway said, with a 'vast majority' of them having prior arrests Gwinnett.

Charges ranged from driving without a license and battery to serious felonies such as murder, rape, armed robbery and child molestation.

Sixty-eight percent of foreign-born inmates, according to Conway, are here illegally.

'Enforcement works,' King said.

But the program is not without its detractors, who say immigration is a complex issue best addressed at the federal level, and that 287(g) will only increase racial profiling incidents.

'A program originally intended to have its enforcers focus on hard crime and serious criminal behavior in communities has instead been misused by law enforcement as an instrument of hatred and bigotry for intolerant Americans,' said the Rev. Tracy L. Blagec of Atlantans Building Leadership for Empowerment

Blagec called the program a 'piecemeal' and 'ineffective' solution that tears apart families and communities.

King said the enforcement of immigration laws are not human rights violations.

'Illegal aliens should consider the consequences on their families before they commit the crime of illegal immigration, ID fraud and tax evasion,' he said.

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Gwinnett Begins Immigration Program
By Marc Teichner
The Fox 5 News (Atlanta), November 16, 2009
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/Gwinnett_Begins_Immigration_Program_111609

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16.
Fontana police chief denies profiling allegations
By Josh Dulaney
The San Bernardino County Sun (CA), November 15, 2009
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_13794769

Fontana, CA -- Accusations of racial profiling have stirred the Police Department's top cop to combat what he says is misinformation spread by local activist groups throughout the Hispanic community here.

'I don't think (the groups) speak for the community,' Chief Rodney Jones said Friday. 'It doesn't mean their message isn't important, but they speak for a portion of the community, not all of the community.'

The department has endured public criticism by members of ACORN, the San Bernardino Community Service Center and some residents at recent City Council and Fontana Unified School Board meetings who allege that officers have targeted Hispanic drivers for license checks near public schools during school hours.

Some say police are doing so under the banner of the so-called 287g Program, where foreign-born inmates booked into county jails have their booking applications marked by a sheriff's custody specialist trained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

If it is determined the person might be in the country illegally, the inmate is referred to federal immigration authorities and could face deportation.

'(The profiling) is happening from reports we have from members of the community,' said Emilio Amaya, executive director of the center. 'We also believe there is cooperation with the department and ICE.'

While he has heard unconfirmed reports of profiling near Fontana High School, Principal Sergio Flores said Friday he hasn't received any complaints in his office.

'We haven't seen anything,' he said.

Flores said there was a heavier police presence near the school earlier this year, but mainly because of a tagging problem and traffic issues.

Jones said often more officers are near school zones in response to complaints from parents about erratic drivers.

He also denied any connection with the 287g program.

'The information that the Police Department is involved in the enforcement of 287g is misinformation,' he said.

The department's written policy prohibits profiling and defines the practice as any police-initiated action that relies on race, ethnicity or national origin, rather than the behavior of an individual or information that leads to a person who has been identified as being or having been engaged in criminal activity.

Departments in other cities have similar codes.

'It all falls back to the Constitution and equal protection under the law,' said Dexter Thomas, a police captain for Ontario.

Officers here and in many other departments receive ongoing anti-profiling training after graduating from the academy, where they receive initial instruction on the topic.

The Redlands Police Department requires all personnel to visit the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

'Not only do we not accept the wrong behavior, we actively promote right behavior,' said Carl Baker, the department's spokesman.

In a city where roughly 65 percent of the population is Hispanic while 23 percent of the department's sworn officers are Hispanic, Jones said he doesn't see the issue affecting officers' relationships with the community because the complaints haven't come directly to the department from people on the streets.

But that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't happening, said an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Many Hispanics prefer calling groups such as Amaya's instead of police departments because they fear what officials will do with their information, said Belinda Escobosa Helzer.

'Folks are concerned about retaliation for the complaint they are making,' she said.

If a complaint can't be made anonymously to the police, many won't make it at all, Escobosa Helzer said.

Amaya agreed.

'I don't think people this up,' he said. 'It's actually happening.'

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17.
Town Once Known as Inclusive Is Riven by Housing Dispute
By Abby Goodnough
The New York Times, November 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/15milbridge.html

Milbridge, MA -- Down a rural road where wood smoke spirals from chimneys in the settling twilight, a five-acre lot thick with spruce trees is the unlikely site of a dream deferred.

This is the intended spot for a small apartment complex for farmworkers, a few hundred of whom are Hispanics living year-round in this remote corner of Down East Maine. They harvest blueberries, process seafood and assemble holiday wreaths, and most live in trailers near the fields and factories where they work.

A local nonprofit group won a $1 million federal grant last year to build the six-unit complex, a first step toward expanding housing options for the immigrant laborers, most of whom come from Mexico and Honduras.

But then ugly words were uttered, a petition was circulated, and voters in this town of 1,300 approved a moratorium on multifamily housing in June, blocking the project.

Now the group, Mano en Mano -- Spanish for Hand in Hand -- has filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination under the Fair Housing Act and the equal protection clause of the Constitution. And Milbridge, which once won acclaim for its efforts to welcome and integrate immigrants, is smarting from accusations of racism.

''We have always been very open and receptive and accommodating,'' said Lewis Pinkham, the town manager, police chief and code enforcement officer. ''In my personal opinion, this got blown out of proportion.''

According to the lawsuit and local newspaper accounts, some residents opposed the project on grounds that farmworkers' children overburdened the schools; others predicted it would be a drug haven. The petition, signed by 48 residents, said jobs should be saved for local lobstermen, whose industry is suffering, and not ''given out to minorities that may move into these units.''

Hispanics are a rare sight in Maine; more than 96 percent of the population is white, tying it with Vermont as the least diverse state. And while most immigrant groups here have clustered in cities -- Somalis in Lewiston, for example, and Sudanese in Portland -- Hispanics tend to scatter through smaller communities, making their ranks feel even thinner.

Not so in Milbridge, though, where Anais Tomezsko, director of Mano en Mano, said Hispanics made up perhaps 10 percent of the population or more. Washington County, which produces most of the nation's wild blueberries, draws thousands of them every summer to help with the harvest. And when a sea cucumber processing plant opened here in 1995, offering year-round jobs, some began to stay.

''It felt very isolated,'' said Edith Flores, 30, who came with her parents a decade ago to work at the sea cucumber plant. ''But it was sort of like the town where I come from in Mexico, where everyone knows each other. It was calm, peaceful.''

Beth Russet, a nurse practitioner and founding member of Mano en Mano, said their presence has shored up the town as the population of rural Maine has aged and dwindled.

''It's great that there are young families excited to stay here,'' she said.

But housing has been a constant challenge, Ms. Tomezsko said. The region's only subsidized apartment complex has a long waiting list, she said, and the few rental homes in Milbridge are usually too expensive for farmworkers -- about $500 a month for a one-bedroom. ''We have two or three people coming in every week asking about housing,'' she said, ''and we're usually at a loss.''

Ms. Russet said the town initially embraced year-round immigrants, even holding potluck suppers to help them fit in. Mano en Mano gave Spanish lessons -- to bank employees who were struggling to communicate with Hispanic customers, among others -- and the town won a grant to tutor immigrants.

But the constant drain of jobs has made native residents less receptive, others said, even though most shun the low-paying farm and factory work that immigrants do.

The county's unemployment rate is 10.4 percent, and 20 percent of its population lives in poverty. In a letter to a local newspaper, one resident pointed out that many native Mainers, not just immigrants, live in tumbledown trailers.

''When there is very little work,'' the letter said, ''bringing more people in does not solve the problem.''

In another letter, the resident, B. J. Seymour, wrote that multifamily housing complexes ''are popular as halfway homes for recovering addicts, transients, sex offenders, seasonal workers, parolees and those with limited mental abilities.''

The building moratorium was scheduled to expire last month, but at a town meeting in September, residents voted to extend it. They also voted down a proposal to exempt the Mano en Mano project from the moratorium and let it move forward.

Tenants at Mano en Mano's housing project -- the first of its kind in Maine -- would have to be American citizens or permanent residents who made a certain percentage of their income from agriculture or aquaculture under the terms of the federal grant, from the Department of Agriculture. They could be of any race.

But Mr. Pinkham said residents were more irked by the fact that Mano en Mano, as a nonprofit group, would be exempt from paying property taxes.

''Everybody feels that everybody should pay their own fair way,'' he said, estimating that the complex would pay $10,000 a year in property taxes if privately owned. ''That's what I've heard the most complaints about.''

As for the charges of racism, Mr. Pinkham said the town ''can't gag people.'' ''No matter where you go,'' he added, ''you can have one or two people stand up in a crowd and say some comments that aren't the sentiment of the entire town.''

Mr. Pinkham said the town imposed the building moratorium not to block Mano en Mano's project but to revise its land-use laws.

Residents will vote Monday on a zoning ordinance that would likely allow the project to move forward, he said.

Ms. Flores said that during a recent town meeting about the project, the hostility toward it -- and toward Hispanics, she said -- made her feel like ''a cat surrounded by dogs.''

''I'm brown, dark hair, and it doesn't matter if I'm a citizen of the U.S.,'' she said. ''Just like everyone else in the Latino community, I'm looked at as a newcomer who's taking away jobs or asking for more than what we should have.''

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18.
Illegal immigrant earns support of City Council committee to stay
By Fran Spielman
The Chicago Sun Times, November 14, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1884094,CST-NWS-immig14.article

After an emotional appeal from a straight-A student facing deportation in 33 days, a City Council committee agreed Friday to champion the cause of Rigo Padilla and others caught in the switches while awaiting immigration reform.

The Human Relations Committee unanimously approved a resolution urging the U.S. Homeland Security Department to stop deportation proceedings against Padilla and all other immigrant students who would be eligible for legal status under the so-called DREAM Act still pending before Congress.

'I've been here all my life. This is my home. All I have is my education. To be separated from my family, from my friends and from that education would be devastating to me,' said Padilla, a 21-year-old University of Illinois at Chicago student who dreams of becoming an attorney.

'Many students are scared and do live in fear that, if they do make a mistake or if they're at the wrong place at the wrong time and are unlucky, this might be them. . . . My struggle is their struggle,' Padilla said.

On Jan. 18, Padilla was driving home from watching a football playoff game on TV after having a few beers with friends when he was arrested. He was charged with driving under the influence after being accused of rolling through a stop sign.

There was a designated driver that night, but Padilla said he had dropped the friend off before getting behind the wheel for the eight-block drive to his own home.

He was taken to Cook County Jail. When a public defender found out that he was an undocumented immigrant, he was reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The damage was done. Although Padilla was released with an electronic monitoring device and given court supervision for the traffic violation, he was put on the fast track to deportation. That day of reckoning is 33 days away.

'It is a mistake that I made, and I do have to face the reality. I am sorry for it. I'm just hoping and seeking support to stay in this country,' said Padilla.

Padilla came to Chicago 15 years ago from Jalisco, Mexico, with his mother and sisters to join his father.

Human Relations Committee Chairman Helen Shiller (46th) responded: 'You're referring to a minor traffic violation as a mistake that you made. But you're being punished for something that occurred when you were 6, so I don't think you can be responsible.'

Marite Fregoso, a professor who taught Padilla at Harold Washington College, was moved to tears as she talked about her former student's outreach to others and his leadership in campus organizations.

'If citizenship was based on actions, he would be a citizen. He would be citizen of the year. Rigo, to me -- his perseverance, his drive to succeed -- he's my hero,' Fregoso said, her voice breaking.

Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th) branded Padilla's case a 'tragedy' that 'reflects how broken our immigration system is.' He said that under President Obama, 'We have seen more deportations and separation of families than we have seen under Republicans.'

'Shame on the Democrats. Shame on this administration. We really need to put the pressure on. Aside from helping the banks [avoid] bankruptcy and reforming health care, immigration reform should be a top priority,' Maldonado said.

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19.
Area residents fed up with illegal immigration take it to the street
By Tony Reid
The Herald Review (Decatur, IL), November 16, 2009
http://www.herald-review.com/news/local/article_cf5d1816-d2b0-11de-afb9-001cc4c002e0.html

Decatur, IL -- There was no tea but plenty of cold water Sunday afternoon as TEA Party protesters braved a steady rain to march silently through downtown Decatur to protest illegal immigration.

The event was organized by Restore Our Constitution, which calls itself the 'Decatur TEA Party Group, with TEA standing for 'Taxed Enough Already.'

Members say the TEA Party is a grass-roots movement composed of people who want low taxes, limited government and those in government to follow the Constitution. The group says one of the few things the Constitution does empower the national government to do is to protect the nation's borders, and it claims that is not being done effectively, leading to a flood of illegal immigrants.

Robert Moon, a regional coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, a national body that assists local organizers, says America must not put up with illegal immigrants who compete for jobs and resources with citizens and legal immigrants. 'We're just saying we're in such dire shape economically that we can't afford to have 15 million uneducated poor people in this country bottoming out our wages and taking our jobs,' said Moon, 33, who lives in Forsyth.

Preparing to lead the march at the head of about 50 people who ignored the rain, Moon wore a sign around his neck saying 'You Lie' in bold letters. This was a reference to the controversial words Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted at President Obama, who had denied proposed health care reform would cover illegal immigrants.

TEA Party members had been in Springfield on Saturday to protest what they call 'Obama Care,' and Moon says he doesn't believe the president, either, claiming health care reform will give illegal immigrants another way to drain American tax dollars.

'Joe Wilson was excoriated for yelling out ‘You Lie!' and I thought he was a hero for saying it,' he added.

Most of the people marching with Moon were his age or older, but not all of them. Chelsea Peters, 16, lives in Decatur and says some people her age are worried about the effects of illegal immigration on the future of their country. 'I have a friend who wished she could have come out here today, and she is like ‘Good for you,' ' Chelsea said.

'We're concerned that illegal immigrants are taking away jobs.'

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'Tea party' set vs. illegal immigration
By Daniel Gonzlez
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix), November 14, 2009
http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2009/11/14/20091114teaparty1114.html

Protesters in Fort Worth, elsewhere speak out against possible amnesty legislation for illegal immigrants
By Andrea Ahles
The Star Telegram (Fort Worth, TX), November 14, 2009
http://www.star-telegram.com/metro_news/story/1762659.html

Immigration 'Tea Parties' Held In Denver, Durango
The CBS4 News (Denver), November 14, 2009
http://cbs4denver.com/politics/Tea.parties.Denver.2.1312887.html

Immigration reform pitch morphs Tea Party protests
Acknowledging ‘overlap,’ Tea Party forces add anti-amnesty thrust. Tall order perhaps, but suddenly Tea Parties have respect.
By Patrik Jonsson
The Christian Science Monitor, November 14, 2009
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/11/14/immigration-reform-pitch-morphs-tea-party-protests/

Anti-amnesty theme draws crowd to local event
By Ross Courtney
The Yakima Herald-Republic (WA), November 15, 2009
http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2009/11/15/11-14-09-antiamnesty

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20.
100 pray for immigration reform
By Amber Ellis
The Cincinnati Enquirer, November 16, 2009
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091115/NEWS01/911160325/100+pray+for+immigration+reform

Downtown -- With flags from several countries blowing in the wind at the center of the International Friendship Park, about 100 people gathered Sunday to pray for immigration reform.

They represented different cultures and faiths. But they came together, they said, to raise awareness about an issue that has taken a back seat as Congress has turned its focus to health care.

'We cannot wait,' said Jason Riviero with the local League of United Latin American Citizens. 'Until we do something, (millions of) people will continue to live in the shadows.'

'Each one of these people has their own stories. It's a human rights issue, more than a political issue. Families are split apart every day. None of us,' the Over the Rhine resident said, 'should sit idly.'

The issue hits close to home for Cissy Lyangoba, a 39-year-old Westwood woman who is seeking asylum from her native Uganda, where she fears death awaits her, just as it did her first husband. He was killed for his political involvement.

She came to the U.S. in 1994 and, she says, was separated from her family and detained in five different detention centers in the U.S. in just as many months.

'There has got to be a simpler way to do this,' she said. 'We can't allow more people to go through what I did. Every day and every night, I worried about my girls, where they were and how they were doing.'

The songs and prayers shared Sunday afternoon are just one way, on a minuscule level, that they can spread their message, according to organizers. They urged the people who attended the event, which was sponsored by several organizations, including the American Jewish Committee, the Hispanic Church of God and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati Catholic Social Action Office, to contact their legislators.

The calls, and continued attention to the issue, could lead to reform.

President Obama, who made immigration reform a priority while on the campaign trail, has said he supports a system that would give undocumented workers a chance to go through the citizenship process after paying a fine and learning English. He also supported a system that would speed up the citizenship process and remove incentives for people to enter the country illegally.

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21.
Hempstead church celebrates 365th anniversary
By Laura Rivera
Newsday (NY), November 15, 2009
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/hempstead-church-celebrates-365th-anniversary-1.1591463

With a history spanning more than three centuries in Hempstead, Christ's First Presbyterian Church has evolved from a 20-foot-square sanctuary barricaded to protect against attacks from natives to a spacious house of worship hosting services in two languages.

Still, the church remains much like its founders in one salient way, said its pastor, Scott Williams. 'We began largely as an immigrant congregation,' Williams said yesterday. 'We're still an immigrant congregation. The only difference now is we're no longer mostly European.'

Founded in 1644 by the Rev. Richard Denton, an English preacher, the church is the country's oldest continuously named Presbyterian body and celebrated its 365th anniversary with a gala last night.

The church's membership, a microcosm of the community where it's rooted, has transformed with the demographics of Hempstead Village, which today is nearly 40 percent Latino and more than half black or African-American, according to Census figures.

Members hail from Caribbean islands, Latin America, Africa and Asia, as well as the United States, Williams said.

Just as their predecessors journeyed to America in search of economic and religious freedom, some of the church's current members voice stories of joy and struggle in striving for the same ends.

At a service yesterday, church member Doreen Yee, 60, of Westbury stood to give thanks. 'My son, who has been looking for a job for 17 months, was offered a job on Friday,' she said of her son Brandon, 34, an engineer. A man from Africa expressed gratitude that his immigration status is being resolved after years of uncertainty.

'How did we make it from 1644 to 2009?' Williams asked his audience of more than 60 people. And he answered: 'We've come this far by faith.'

Down the hall at a service in Spanish of the Iglesia Presbiteriana Hispana, Pastor Gustavo Sanchez led some of the ministry's 65 members, close to half of whom are under 18.

'Most of the members are Latino immigrants,' Sanchez said. 'They work even on Sunday, so there's a lot of people that don't come every Sunday, but they consider themselves members of the church.'

Since Williams became pastor last spring, he's held an outdoor service to reach out to community residents, and the church has hosted drives for food and school supplies, as well as Christmas parties with gifts for local children. 'We have that obligation to feed, to clothe, to visit,' Williams said. 'It's a little bit more than preaching.'

For Ron Moore of Coram, a 13th-generation descendant of Denton and himself a nondenominational minister, a visit to the church yesterday strengthened his connection to the past and his commitment to the future. 'It makes you feel humbled and small at the same time,' said Moore, 47. 'It challenges me to make the most of my life.'

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22.
San Clemente plans Supreme Court appeal in free-speech case
By Brittany Levine
The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA), November 14, 2009
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/court-219405-san-city.html

Handbills under windshield wipers are litter, not free speech, and San Clemente officials plan to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to prove it.

Illegal-immigration opponents recently sued the city over its ban on leaflets on parked cars.

A U.S. District Court sided with the city. But in early October, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges disagreed and ordered an injunction.

Now city officials have started petitioning the Supreme Court and plan to file an appeal as early as next month.

'The City Council is asking themselves: What are we to tell the citizens if we just eliminate our anti-littering ordinance because we don't want to be accused of violating someone's First Amendment right?' said Ed Richards, San Clemente's attorney. 'The city gets people complaining about litter all the time. It can't just abdicate its responsibility. It has to deal with this issue.'

The case affects all cities in California, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii and Washington that have this law. The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles is scheduled to apply the injunction Monday.

Orange County cities such as San Juan Capistrano and Laguna Woods have similar laws but have not decided on what they plan to do.

San Clemente officials must consider money as they make their case. Steve Klein, the leader of the illegal-immigration opponents, wants $4,000 in damages, according to court documents.

And the city's insurer may not cover court costs. The California Joint Powers Insurance Agency has agreed to pay for all costs so far but has yet to decide whether it will pay for San Clemente to go to the Supreme Court, said Paul Zeglovitch, an agency representative. If the agency decides more payment is not in the 'best interest of the risk pool,' taxpayers will have to carry the burden. Legal fees 'will be substantial,' Richards said.

Incidents

On June 2, 2007, sheriff's deputies ordered the illegal-immigration opponents to stop placing leaflets under windshields of cars on San Clemente streets. The group stopped after deputies told members they were breaking the law and would be cited if they continued.

That same day, a deputy stopped someone from placing a flier on cars that had arguments against the toll road, according to police records. About a week later, Klein's group filed a complaint in U.S. District Court.

At least one activist, Saul Lisauskas, is affiliated with the California Coalition for Immigrant Reform, according to the Huntington Beach illegal-immigration group's records. It is unclear whether the whole group was acting on behalf of a larger organization. Klein, who owns a home insurance company in Riverside County, and his attorney, Michael Kumeta of La Mesa, did not respond to requests for comment.

City officials say they have a responsibility to prevent trash. The litter ordinance does not prevent person-to-person leafleting: People can stand at an exit or entrance of a parking garage, in parking lots and in parks and hand out fliers. They can even approach cars at red lights.

When a U.S. District Court judge asked Klein whether there were 'lots of alternatives available to get the message out (other than placing leaflets under windshields) that are linked to people's usage of cars,' Klein said yes. But he called the alternatives 'exhausting and impractical,' according to court documents.

In one instance, two 'longtime political activists' who provided evidence said they had been 'angrily confronted by pedestrians who disagreed with their message and committed violence by pushing or shoving them.'

Free-speech expert Peter Sheer said just because speech is free doesn't mean people have to take it.

'The First Amendment is not a license to force people to be your captive audience,' said the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

This isn't the first time Klein and Kumeta have taken a city to court about free-speech concerns.

Two years before Klein was distributing leaflets in San Clemente, Klein was picketing in an unincorporated area of San Diego County. A government employee had made fun of a person with disabilities at a public meeting, and a group of people, including Klein, his wife and others who were not involved with the leafleting, demonstrated within 300 feet of a government official's home to encourage him to punish the employee.

That demonstration violates San Diego law, but Klein, represented by Kumeta, said that ordinance hampered his free speech. Both the U.S. District Court and 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, and the San Diego law remains intact.

A year earlier, Kumeta had a preliminary injunction placed on a Riverside County law preventing people from placing noncommercial posters on public sidewalks after code enforcement officers cited anti-abortion protesters and confiscated their signs.

Long odds

There's a slim chance the high court will accept San Clemente's petition.

'The Supreme Court hears about 1 percent of cases. The odds are always against it,' said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Irvine Law School and a constitutional law expert.

But he said the Supreme Court would likely review a case that would iron out inconsistencies in the law nationwide. Circuit courts' opinions differ on the issue, and the Supreme Court could interpret the law for the U.S., he said.

In its opinion, the appeals court said a city would have to prove handbills cause a substantial amount of litter in order to justify the ban.

Carlsbad plans on doing just that.

Ron Ball, Carlsbad's attorney, has suggested the city scratch its ordinance against leaflets because he doesn't think the Supreme Court will overturn the decision. At the same time, city officials are conducting studies to count the litter produced after leaflets are placed on cars.

'What we're going to do is collect evidence to show in court if we really need to that if 1,000 cars all get handbills, when drivers leave, there are 900 pieces of litter on the ground.'

When asked how San Clemente plans to prove the leaflets are trash, not litter, Richards said, 'We're working on it.'

In a 1939 case, the Supreme Court said cities that want to protect against trash should punish those throwing the leaflets on the ground, not those practicing their constitutional rights.

'If (the Supreme Court) says, 'No, we don't want to hear it,' then it'll be the end of the road,' Richards said.

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23.
Pursuing citizenship
Workshop to help immigrants
By Ronica Shannon
The Richmond Register (KY), November 10, 2009
http://www.richmondregister.com/archivesearch/local_story_314083421.html

Services provided by a Lexington-based program soon will be available in Madison County to help immigrants overcome the hassles often associated with pursuing U.S. citizenship.

The Maxwell Street Legal Clinic, a program of the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, in partnership with Eastern Kentucky University, will host a free workshop from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, in the EKU Perkins Building. The building is located on Kit Carson Drive south of the Eastern Bypass.

'In our area, there are very few places where people can get legal advice about issues related to becoming a (U.S.) citizen,' Powell said.

Being able to get a work permit, applying for a 'green card' to obtain permanent-resident status or becoming eligible to take the U.S. citizenship test are just a few examples of the hurdles facing immigrants, according to Venezuela native Sandra Anez Powell, director of Kentucky River Foothills' Hispanic Outreach Program.

'We are delighted (the clinic) are coming,' Powell said. 'This is a community effort to bring those resources to Madison County. This will help demystify the process of immigration.'

Workshop volunteers will assist eligible legal, permanent residents apply for citizenship by providing information and advice on the process. Free access to immigration attorneys who will assist in preparing the application and help to review the application upon completion also will be available.

'For many people, it is difficult to travel to the Lexington office for the workshops or to attend offered classes on a regular basis. For this reason, we propose to take the services to the clients,' Powell said.

The U.S. citizenship test is the most common challenge with pursuing legal U.S. status, said Abbey Poffenberger, EKU assistant professor of Spanish. 'The exam covers the fundamental concepts of American democracy, history and geography,' she said. 'A candidate for naturalization may only be asked 10 questions during the exam, but the list that they are responsible for memorizing contains over 100 questions.'

The free workshop is just the first step, however, as EKU students and faculty will continue to provide free tutoring in both U.S. civics and to assist immigrants with English proficiency, Poffenberger said.

'This is a long-term commitment led by EKU students and faculty,' she said. 'We plan to hold this workshop on a yearly basis, yet the tutoring in Civics and the English language will be available throughout the academic year.'

This workshop is sponsored by EKU’s foreign languages and humanities department, international education office, multicultural student affairs office, Latino Student Union and Spanish Student Association.

Other sponsors include Foothills Community Action Partnership's Hispanic Outreach Program and the Mujeres Unidas (Women United) group.

For more information about the workshop, call Powell at 624-2046, Ext. 222.

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Help offered to people seeking US citizenship
The Associated Press, November 14, 2009
http://www.wztv.com/template/inews_wire/wires.regional.ky/3bd3bcbc-www.fox17.com.shtml

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24.
Money Trickles North as Mexicans Help Relatives
By Marc Lacey
The New York Times, November 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/world/americas/16mexico.html?_r=1

Miahuatlan, Mexico -- During the best of the times, Miguel Salcedo’s son, an illegal immigrant in San Diego, would be sending home hundreds of dollars a month to support his struggling family in Mexico. But at times like these, with the American economy out of whack and his son out of work, Mr. Salcedo finds himself doing what he never imagined he would have to do: wiring pesos north.

Unemployment has hit migrant communities in the United States so hard that a startling new phenomenon has been detected: instead of receiving remittances from relatives in the richest country on earth, some down-and-out Mexican families are scraping together what they can to support their unemployed loved ones in the United States.

'We send something whenever we have a little extra, at least enough so he can eat,' said Mr. Salcedo, who is from a small village here in the rural state of Oaxaca and works odd jobs to support his wife, his two younger sons and, now, his jobless eldest boy in California.

He is not alone. Leonardo Herrera, a rancher from outside Tuxtla Gutiérrez in the southern state of Chiapas, said he recently sold a cow to help raise $1,000 to send to his struggling nephew in northern California.

Also in Chiapas, a poor state that sends many migrants to the United States, María del Carmen Montufar has pooled money with her husband and other family members to wire financial assistance to her daughter Candelaria in North Carolina. In the last year, the family has sent money — small amounts ranging from $40 to $80 — eight times to help Candelaria and her husband, who are both without steady work and recently had a child.

'When she’s working she sends money to us,' the mother said. 'But now, because there’s no work, we send money to her.'

Statistics measuring the extent of what experts are calling reverse remittances are hard to come by. But interviews in Mexico with government officials, money-transfer operators, immigration experts and relatives of out-of-work migrants show that a transaction that was rarely noticed before appears to be on the rise.

'It’s something that’s surprising, a symptom of the economic crisis,' said Martín Zuvire Lucas, who heads a network of community banks that operate in poor communities in Oaxaca and other underserved Mexican states. 'We haven’t been able to measure it but we hear of more cases where money is going north.'

At one small bank in Chiapas that used to see money flowing in from the United States, more money is going out than coming in.

'I’d say every month 50,000 pesos are sent from here to there,' said Edith Ramírez Gonzalez, a sales executive at Banco Azteca in San Cristóbal de las Casas. 'And from there, we’d receive about 30,000 pesos.' Fifty thousand pesos is $3,840.

With nearly half its population living in poverty, Mexico is not well placed to prop up struggling citizens abroad. Mexico could lose as many as 735,000 jobs this year and its economy may decline 7.5 percent, government economists predict, making the country one of the worst affected by the global recession.

Still, poverty is a relative concept. It is easier to get by on little in Mexico, especially in rural areas, allowing the poor to help the even more precarious.

In Miahuatlán, Sirenia Avendano and her husband may be more down and out than their two sons, both in their 20s, who wait tables at a Mexican restaurant in central Florida and have seen their hours reduced and their tips drop precipitously. But they live in their own home, on land they use to grow corn and other crops.

'We’re poor, but nobody can throw us out of this house,' Ms. Avendano said, wiping away tears at her kitchen table as she spoke of her sons’ economic travails. 'They worry about that. What happens if they can’t pay the rent?' To help make ends meet, she sells chiles rellenos, a popular delicacy, around the neighborhood.

'We have an obligation to help them,' said her husband, Javier. 'They’re our sons. It doesn’t matter if they are here or there.'

In other cases, the migrants are returning home, as the many passengers who hop off the bus that runs regularly from northern California to a gas station in Miahuatlán make clear. 'There’s nothing up there,' said a young man with an overflowing suitcase who returned one recent night.

Still, although a study by the Pew Hispanic Center from July showed a sharp decrease in the number of Mexicans heading north, there has been no sign of a mass exodus of migrants back to Mexico. Immigrants’ families say it took great effort to scrape together the thousands of dollars needed to send relatives to the United States, a sum that includes the fees charged by the people who help them sneak in.

'It’s expensive to cross, and it was a great sacrifice for us,' said Mr. Salcedo, 43, who has sent about five wire transfers to his son Alfonso, 18, who this year lost his job as a cafeteria dishwasher.

As expected during an economic slowdown, the money sent home by immigrants has fallen. The Bank of Mexico reported recently that remittances during the first nine months of this year dropped to $16.4 billion, a 13.4 percent decline compared with the same period in 2008.

The flow of money out of Mexico is believed to be a tiny fraction of the remittances still arriving. 'The evidence in this regard so far is anecdotal,' said Juan Luis Ordaz, senior economist at the Spanish bank BBVA Bancomer, who has begun investigating the reverse money flow.

Families of migrants speak proudly of their successful relatives in the United States and use the remittances they receive to do anything from buying livestock to replacing dirt floors with concrete. The importance of such money, which is among Mexico’s top sources of foreign currency, cannot be overstated. An estimated 5.9 percent of Mexican households, about 1.8 million families, receive economic support from abroad, studies show. For them, the money represents roughly 19 percent of total income for urban households and 27 percent for rural ones, according to government data analyzed by BBVA Bancomer.

For the Salcedos, the economic woes are intense on both sides of the border. The ones still here had moved to the outskirts of Mexico City seeking opportunity, but now they are on the verge of returning to Oaxaca because the owner of the land they are squatting on ordered them out.

For Alfonso, the situation has been just as difficult. He crossed into the United States in December with about $500 that his father gave him, supplemented with money he earned doing odd jobs in Tijuana. He found a job in San Diego paying enough for him to send home $170 the first month and $120 the next. The third month, he told his family he could afford to send only $40.

Then, like so many others, he lost the job and stopped sending anything.

Now his father has begun sending money the other way, usually about $60, less transfer fees. 'We’ve decided to tighten our belt until we’re all working again,' Mr. Salcedo said.

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25.
Cultural factors help limit recession's impact
By Haya El Nasser
USA Today, November 16, 2009
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-15-asians_N.htm

Raleigh -- Until this summer, Loc Tran, 59, was a technician at Nortel, a global communications company that has facilities at Research Triangle Park here. Then she left and opened Pho' Cali, a Vietnamese restaurant.

When her brother lost his job at another local electronics company, he didn't become unemployed. He joined the family business. 'My brother works here now,' Tran says.

The recession has been brutal for just about every segment of the population, but though the unemployment rate for Asian Americans has been inching upward, it has been far lower than the rates for whites, blacks, Hispanics or the nation as a whole. Among those groups, Asian Americans have had the lowest jobless rate every month since 2000, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking monthly unemployment among Asians.

The unemployment gap -- 7.5% for Asians in October, compared with 10.2% nationwide -- stems from a combination of education benchmarks and cultural traditions that foster family support when someone is out of work, researchers say.

'Asians in the United States, both native born Asians and Asian immigrants, have higher educational levels than other groups,' says Alan Berube, senior fellow and research director of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.

A recent Labor Department report on the work force shows a greater proportion of Asians than other racial or ethnic groups in management, professional and related occupations -- jobs that require more schooling and are high-paying. About 47% work in management or professional jobs compared with 35% for the U.S. workforce as a whole.

Asians account for 5% of U.S. workers but make up a disproportionate share of computer software engineers (29%), computer programmers (20%), computer scientists and system analysts (16%).

'The character of this recession and how it's affected groups by educational attainment shows that information technology has done better, health care has done better,' Berube says.

Asians also are 'tied in by a social network, a family network,' says Paul Ong, a professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA. 'Rather than lay people off, you will find them spread the work out, and there is lots of use of family labor.'

Work ethics and close family ties certainly are not unique to Asians. But when coupled with high educational levels, those characteristics contribute to a lower unemployment rate. Hispanics, for example, demonstrate similar work and family values, but their population as a whole is not as educated as Asians.

Cultural and family ties are strong in immigrant-dominated communities and are powerful when combined with income and education, says Robert Lang, sociology professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

'Despite their upward mobility, Asians are still a minority group and thus more closely connected to one another than a native-born Caucasian American,' he says. 'You're much more on your own if you're a middle-income, native-born white American, especially in a big city.'

Seema Agnani, executive director of Chhaya, a community organization in Jackson Heights, a South Asian neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., cautions that unemployment rates can be deceptively low because some immigrants work for cash and are not officially on a payroll.

'A lot of the folks who have lost income are not going to necessarily claim unemployment typically because they weren't working on the books in the first place,' she says.

A combination of factors

The demographics of Asian Americans -- from high educational levels to extended family networks -- and complex cultural nuances help create the disparity in jobless rates:

*More educated. About 30% of Asians 25 and older have a bachelor's degree, and almost 20% have a graduate degree, compared with 17% and 10% for the nation overall. All other groups have a smaller share of college graduates: 18% of whites have a bachelor's degree, and 11% a more advanced degree; 12% and 6% of blacks; 9% and 4% of Hispanics.

*Larger households. The median income for Asian households is higher -- $68,400 vs. $52,175 for all groups -- but Asians have larger households, with more workers, Ong says. 'If we look at per capita income rather than household income, it's another story.'

In the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside area, for example, median household income is more than $65,000 a year for Asians, exceeding that of non-Hispanic whites by more than $10,000, the Census Bureau reports. Per capita income for Asians in this community, however, is lower than for whites.

*Family ties and small businesses. Hans Huang, 36, was a partner in a Raleigh law firm until it merged with another company. They parted ways. He started his own consulting firm and opened two restaurants -- the hip 101 Lounge + Cafe and the Moonlight Pizza Company in downtown Raleigh.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Huang says investments his parents made also are in his and his sister's name -- typical of the cohesion and financial support within many Asian families.

'There is a propensity for active networking with the community and family,' says Hai Ly Burk, who came to the USA as a refugee from Vietnam at age 3. She is a social worker at Duke Raleigh Hospital and president of the local chapter of the National Association of Asian American Professionals.

That sometimes can be more easily done in small, family-owned businesses than large corporations. Whites and Asians -- and especially Asian immigrants -- are more likely to be self-employed than other groups, the Labor Department says.

*Less risky jobs. Many Asians gravitate toward jobs that carry greater job security. A large number of Filipinos, for example, work as nurses, teachers and postal employees. 'They are risk-averse ... and tend to stay longer (in the same jobs) so they have seniority,' Ong says.

Health care is one of only two economic sectors to grow in the recession. The other is education.

Many Asians are doctors, nurses or technicians. Since the start of the recession, health care has added 597,000 jobs.

'Asian Americans are far more into the area of science technology and business in the corporate financial banking sector,' says Larry Shinagawa, director of Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland. 'They are ensconced in government and education, though a significant portion are in small business.'

*Unemployment is frowned upon. There is a cultural resistance among Asians to being idle and collecting money for not working, Shinagawa says.

'Better to be underemployed than unemployed,' he says. 'They're working in jobs where they're overly qualified and that has a lot to do with small business and a family network where they can support one another.'

Working-class Asians, especially immigrants, are likely to accept any job to earn money, says C.N. Le, director of Asian & Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts.

'That's all it is for them, as opposed to a lot of Americans who see their jobs as a reflection of their own identity and self-esteem,' says Le, creator of a website that focuses on Asian Americans, asian-nation.org.

Difficulties for some

National numbers mask the struggles of low-income Asian immigrants, many of them refugees such as the large Hmong community in Minnesota. Many in those communities aren't well-educated and don't speak English well.

Unemployment claims filed by Southeast Asians in Minnesota jumped 150% from 2007 to 2009, says Lisa Hasegawa, executive director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development.

Meanwhile, Chinatowns and Little Saigons in several cities are hurting because people are cutting back on restaurant spending, Shinagawa says, and small family businesses are being pushed out by big chains.

'Look at dry cleaners,' he says. 'The Zip Cleaners (a chain) are taking over. In the past, bigger chain stores would never go into inner-city neighborhoods.' Now, 'there is a recognition that people of color are a significant portion of the economy.'

A region of opportunity

Here in the Research Triangle, a region anchored by Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, top-tier universities, high-tech companies and research centers have attracted Asian professionals.

Asians' unemployment rate here is even lower than their national rate, averaging just above 3% in the past year in Wake County, home of Raleigh. It was above 4% for non-Hispanic whites, almost 8% for blacks and above 5% for Hispanics, according to the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina.

Many highly educated Asians here have been recruited by companies and universities and granted special visas because of their expertise. If they're here, they have work. When the jobs disappear, they return home and never appear on U.S. unemployment rolls.

'With their American experience, they can leverage that and start their own company' back home, says Hector Javier, a native of Manila in the Philippines and a consultant in technology operations at Cisco Systems in the Research Triangle. 'The first generation is going back.'

Not everyone is prospering. Cyndy Yu-Robinson, 43, was a public affairs officer for the Environmental Protection Agency in Durham. She wanted to go into the private sector and took a job as manager of corporate responsibility for computer maker Lenovo in March 2008. This year, Lenovo started cutting jobs, including hers.

'At first, it was disbelief. It couldn't be happening to me,' says Yu-Robinson, a mother of two. 'I chose to go on unemployment because I want to take advantage of resources available to me to find the right job.'

She's active in Asian-American organizations and admits that hearing Asians' attitudes toward unemployment stings a bit. 'If I didn't care about the kind of career, I would've taken any job,' Yu-Robinson says. 'I don't want to just go back to government.'

While she lines up job interviews, she teaches up to eight karate classes a week at Triangle's Best Karate, the studio she owns with her husband.

Asad Abbasi, 54, came to the USA from Pakistan in 1973 and had never been without a job. He has a master's degree in engineering and was working for mobile phone manufacturer Sony Ericsson. When the tech bubble burst in 2002, he was laid off.

'In my life, just once,' Abbasi says. 'I never went back. The heck with corporate America.'

He opened Baba Ghannouj restaurant in Cary, a Raleigh suburb, turning his cooking hobby into a job. He creates recipes, shops at the farmer's market and gets to know his customers. 'It's less money, a lot of work but less torture,' Abbasi says.

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26.
Mexican and Vietnamese immigrants mix it up — peacefully — in San Jose
By Joe Rodriguez
The San Jose Mercury News (CA), November 15, 2009
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13795826?source=most_viewed

Do Vietnamese really eat dogs? Why are Mexicans so loud and noisy?

The questions reflect two stereotypes of San Jose's largest immigrant groups. And both questions came up in a special gathering Sunday of ordinary people of Mexican and Vietnamese heritage brought together to discuss something they share: trying to raise children using their cultural traditions in America.

'What we all have in common is that we came here to work,'' said Marisela Padilla, a young Mexican-American mother of three from Milpitas. 'We're so focused on work, paying the rent, that sometimes our children fall by the wayside.'

Across the room at the George Shirakawa Community Center just southeast of downtown San Jose, Lily Bui nodded her head. A single mother, she was working two jobs when one of sons came home from school crying.

'Some of the Mexican boys' shouted a profanity at him, Bui said, alternating between English and Vietnamese. 'I didn't know what to do, who to call at the school. I was so busy. I just told him that some people don't know what they're talking about, and I tried to teach him how to forgive.''

Padilla and Bui were two of the approximately 30 immigrants invited by two grass-root organizations to discuss their differences, discover what they have in common and avoid the racial tensions that sometimes erupt into violence in urban America.

'We're the face of California going forward Asians and Latinos,'' said Jaime Alvarado, director of Somos Mayfair, a community organization in East San Jose. 'If we don't deal with stereotyping and suspicions now, it won't bode well for the future.'

Seeing that thousands of new Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants now find themselves in the same working-class area, Somos Mayfair joined with Asian American Recovery Services to introduce them face to face.

Alvarado said such bridge-building forums usually happen after riots, gang killings and even schoolyard melees. The idea here, he said, was to 'build a community relationship so that stuff doesn't happen at all.'

The idea was new, and so was the program. The event started with a play performed by Teatro Familia Unidas, a troupe of 11 immigrant women from Somos Mayfair, none of them trained actors, about the difficulty immigrants face in raising children in this country. The play's theme touched on several points, including the emotional flare-ups between immigrant parents who can't speak English and children who can but don't want to speak the mother tongue.

In one didactic scene, Padilla plays a teenager who's having problems at school but would rather chat on the cell phone than talk to mom. The desperate and work-weary mother loses her cool.

'You are lazy!'' says the mother, played by Norma Chavez, in Spanish. 'Why do I work so hard and sacrifice so much for you and you only waste your time?''

The teenager screams back in English, 'You don't understand me. You don't understand anything.''

Then, in a fine bit of stagecraft, the two actresses twirl around and hiss like a rewinding tape recorder. Starting over, they run through the scene as it should in real life.

This time, they don't attack. They explain and support each other.

'I don't want you to forget or reject your language or where you come from,'' the mother says.

'OK, Mommy,'' says the girl. 'But I want you to understand that it's really hard to live in two different worlds. I have some problems with my studies.''

After the play, everybody sat in a big circle for a discussion that bounced between ponderous questions about cultural clashes from moderators and the spontaneous curiosity of the immigrants about each other.

'Is it true you cook dogs?'' Padilla asked, unable to overcome her giggling.

Tuyen Le, a Campbell woman, answered for the Vietnamese immigrants with a smile.

'It's true, but only a little in Vietnam,'' she said. 'Mostly it's men who eat it with beer.'' By no means, she stressed, is dog meat a family staple.

Another light moment unexpectedly led to a huge bit of history shared by both Vietnamese and Mexicans: throwing out the French.

'What's so big about Cinco de Mayo?'' Bui asked.

The Mexican immigrants squirmed over that one, but eventually explained how a victory in one battle over the French in 1862 became a bigger and commercialized commemoration in the United States than in Mexico.

'In the United States, history gets changed,'' said Maria Teresa Barcenas.

When the moderators asked which values the two immigrant groups have in common, the answers came back quickly and uniformly.

Le seemed to speak for everyone when she said: 'I've learned that the Mexican culture and Vietnamese culture have something in common and that is family and respect for elders. '... The most important value in our culture is to honor your parents.''

If they share a common social concern, the most immediate would be the tensions between Mexican and Vietnamese schoolchildren.

'There is a lot of conflict between our youths,'' Le said.

America Barcenas, at 15 the youngest involved in the discussion, spoke to the point.

'We're just like you, trying to survive,'' she said.

'We don't think we're better than you, and we're here to stay, to punch through those walls between us.''

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27.
Same-sex couples stranded between love and country
Binational partners in U.S. immigration bind
By Esteban Parra
The News Journal (Wilmington), November 16, 2009
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20091116/NEWS02/911160332

Elton, MD -- They met nearly 20 years ago in the Netherlands.

From the start, Jenny Phipps, a Delaware native, and Ottie Pondman said they forged a bond they never shared with their husbands.

When Phipps divorced her husband of 17 years, she moved in with Pondman, a native of the Netherlands, who was already divorced. The two lived as a couple in Zoetermeer.

But when the 52-year-old Phipps decided she wanted to return to the United States following her brother's death, Pondman, 61, agreed and came over on a visa waiver program -- essentially a tourist permit -- to legally remain here.

In September, though, immigration officials gave Pondman 60 to 90 days to leave the country. Her only chance of staying was to get married.

But the federal government would not recognize their marriage because they are both women. They have since decided to return to the Netherlands and will leave Tuesday.

'It's not fair,' Phipps said. 'We're not a couple of teenagers. We're dedicated to each other. We've been together for over 15 years. ... It's sad that just because we can't get married to stay in this country, I have to choose between my country and the person that I love.'

An estimated 36,000 same-sex couples, many with children, face similar separations under U.S. law, according to Immigration Equality, a New York-based advocacy group.

'The situation that lesbian and gay families are in is particularly acute because it's overlaid on unequal treatment for gay families,' said Rachel B. Tiven, Immigration Equality's executive director.

Though there is still discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, some change could come as lawmakers work to revamp immigration policies, Tiven said.

Three federal bills that would change how the U.S. government recognizes same-sex marriages for immigration purposes have been proposed -- one in the Senate and two in the House of Representatives. None of Delaware's congressional delegation has signed on.

Sen. Ted Kaufman said he supports the effort.

'Sen. Kaufman supports the ability of Americans to sponsor same-sex domestic partners for immigration purposes,' his spokeswoman Amy Dudley wrote in an e-mail.

Sen. Tom Carper said he was not familiar with the Senate bill.

U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, who came out against a proposed federal ban on gay marriage, said he was willing to 'evaluate the feasibility of a policy change' that would allow U.S. citizens to sponsor their same-sex partners for family-based immigration purposes only.

'The same strict legal standards currently in place for heterosexual couples would have to also apply to visa applications for same-sex partners who wish to be together,' he said in a statement.

Not everyone believes this is the best way to go forward.

'It's overreaching, and it's adding another major controversial issue to one that is already divisive,' said Kevin Appleby, director of migration and refugee policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

While the Washington-based conference supports immigration reform, the Catholic Church's opposition to gay marriage and homosexuality make the proposed changes unacceptable, it said.

The Center for Immigration Studies, also based in Washington, said it did not have an opinion on same-sex marriages but believes immigration changes should come only when Americans accept these kinds of marriages.

'Gay-marriage advocates are trying to use immigration as a lever to gain broader acceptance when that simply is not an appropriate use of immigration law,' said Mark Krikorian, the center's executive director.

Changed feelings

Phipps moved from her family's farm near Newark nearly 30 years ago to be an au pair in the Netherlands. That's where she met her husband, Eise Mulder.

They married and had two children.

One day, Phipps took her younger daughter to a children's play group, where she met Pondman -- Mulder's badminton partner. Pondman's youngest daughter also was in the play group.

The two women shared many interests. Pondman taught Phipps to play the guitar, while Phipps introduced Pondman to her painting group.

'After a while, we didn't want to be apart from each other,' Phipps said. 'It kind of pulled at our hearts.'

Pondman said she knew she was 'attracted to women more than men' and struggled with that though her 23-year marriage.

Phipps said she was not conscious of it and had to see a biological psychologist for 1 1/2 years. She went through depression as she struggled with having to break up her immediate family.

'It was just really hard,' she said, remembering how she pushed Pondman away. 'No one wants to tear up their family for any reason.'

But after two years, Pondman and Phipps became a couple. And like any other couple, they wondered how they would be received by the other's family.

'I was pretty nervous in the beginning,' Pondman said.

While Pondman's family accepted her choice, Phipps said her relatives in the United States struggled.

Phipps' older sister, Linda Cichocki, said at first she had reservations about her sister's new lifestyle and what that might mean to her younger sister's daughters. But she later realized that her sister and her daughters were happier.

'They would actually get to know their mother if she was true to herself and was with someone who loved her the way she wanted to be loved,' Cichocki said.

A yearning to back in the U.S.

Phipps returned to the states about four years ago to help her brother, who was diagnosed with lymphoma. She was the only sibling able to donate stem cells to help treat him.

But the illness got worse and her brother died after a year. That's when Phipps decided she needed to be close to her parents and siblings.

Pondman said it was difficult to leave her grown children, but she wanted to be with Phipps.

'It was a big decision to make, but I don't want to lose her,' she said as she looked at Phipps. 'I want to get old with her. She's my life.'

After about a year, Pondman was able to get a visa waiver allowing her to legally be here as a tourist. Under the visa waiver program, the federal government allows citizens of specific countries to travel to the U.S. for tourism or business for up to 90 days without having to obtain a visa.

With this, she was able to get a job caring for the elderly in an assisted-living home in Elkton, Md. Phipps got a job working at a retirement center in Hockessin.

The couple tried to change Pondman's legal status to permanent resident. But it wasn't until this year they were told she could no longer stay.

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a person in a visa waiver program cannot change or extend their nonimmigrant status.

Under the visa waiver, Milltown attorney Loraine A. Ryan, who helped Pondman, said there is an agreement that the person cannot fight deportation.

And because Pondman violated the visa waiver agreement, federal officials told her she would be barred from returning for 10 years.

Some suggested that Pondman remain here illegally or marry a man so she could stay. But the women brushed that off.

'We don't want to live looking over our shoulders the rest of our lives,' Phipps said.

No hope for immediate future

Proposed changes to U.S. law give a sliver of hope to those who have had to part with a loved one, such as Steve Orner, whose husband and partner of eight years, Joe, was deported last month when he lost his job at a construction firm. Joe, now living in Indonesia, does not want his last name used for fear of what could happen to him in that country, where homosexuality is frowned upon.

'I don't have a lot of hope for the immediate future that anything is going to change in this country as far as our status goes,' Orner said.

These losses are not only devastating to couples and their families, but can also hurt the United States when professionals are denied entry, Orner said. Joe came to this country nine years ago and earned a doctorate in structural engineering on a full scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh, which was financed by taxpayers, Orner said.

'In my case, it is lost-lost situation,' Joe said in an email. 'The U.S. can't utilize me as its investment and I can't contribute my knowledge to this country.'

Orner and Joe, who married in Connecticut in July, are working to emigrate to Canada, which recognizes same-sex marriages.

Tiven, of Immigration Equality, said there have been cases in which people have declined to move to the United States because they could not bring their partners.

For that reason, Tiven said, some business leaders have pushed for changes.

Since returning to Indonesia, Joe has been catching up with his family, exercising and sending out résumés. He's also been secretly communicating with Orner.

'I make sure that nobody is around when I communicate with Steve,' he said. 'I am worried if someone finds out and starts asking questions.'

An irrelevant relationship

The U.S. immigration system is filled with obstacles for seeking entry into the United States, according to Immigration Equality.

Any family may encounter injustices and bureaucratic barriers as they try to unify in the states.

But with rare exceptions, its is easier for heterosexual couples to get permission to live in this country if one partner is foreign-born and the other a U.S. citizen, Immigration Equality said.

They don't even need to be married, the group said. So long as they can show a U.S. consulate that they intend to do so and have met at least once before in their lives.

But a lesbian or gay couple does not have that right. Their relationship, even if they have lived together for decades, is irrelevant for purposes of entering the United States.

In these cases, Ryan, the Milltown attorney, said the partner has to apply for entry under one of the more restrictive qualifiers, which may include having the partner stay abroad for a long time.

Another option includes trying to get an employment category permit.

But in these cases, the partner would have to be in a high-demand line of work, such as a nurse.

An employer could also sponsor the partner by saying the job could not be filled by a U.S. citizen.

But these positions have quotas and if the number is met for the year, the partner would have to wait another year.

'When you sit and talk to them, you see they don't have the same options, and that doesn't seem right,' Ryan said.

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28.
Robbers target Hispanics as ideal robbery victims
By Kate Brumback
The Associated Press, November 13, 2009
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6719346.html

Atlanta (AP) -- In a quest for easy money, Derrick Gooden and Keith Dixon committed a string of robberies over a two-year period, mostly targeting Hispanic victims they believed were likely to have cash on hand.

Their crime spree turned deadly in March 2006 when Sejio Pineda, a Mexican immigrant and construction worker, was shot and killed during a robbery in the parking lot of his apartment complex. Both men pleaded guilty earlier this year to murder, assault, robbery and weapons charges in Pineda's death and six other armed robberies, most of which targeted Hispanics.

Law enforcement officials around the country say they have noticed a spike in recent years of robbers preying on Hispanics. They say Hispanics have become targets because they often carry cash, are less likely to report crimes, and witnesses and victims are likely to be tough to find or reluctant to testify.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, whose office prosecuted the case, said Gooden and Dixon were likely responsible for robbing dozens of people in similar incidents over two years.

'We have seen a really steady increase over the last 10 years particularly,' said Howard, who has worked as a prosecutor in Atlanta since 1976, when few Hispanics lived in metro Atlanta.

A report on crime victims released in September by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that in 2008 Hispanics were victimized by robbers at a higher rate than people of other ethnic backgrounds, a trend consistent with previous years. For every 1,000 Hispanics over 12 years old, 3.4 were robbed in 2008, and for every 1,000 non-Hispanics, 2 were robbed that year, according to the study.

Justice Department numbers show that 21 percent of all robbery victims in 2008 were Hispanic, while U.S. Census Bureau figures show Hispanics made up only about 15 percent of the total population in July 2008. In comparison, in 2003, Hispanics made up 16 percent of robbery victims and accounted for about 14 percent of the total population.

Some law enforcement officials believe the figures understate the problem since Hispanics are less likely to report robberies.

For Hispanics in the country illegally, calling police to report a crime could end up triggering deportation proceedings. Hugo Arnoldo, a 30-year-old restaurant worker from Guatemala, said he's not sure what he'd do if he were a crime victim.

'If someone just took my money and left, I probably wouldn't call the police,' he said in Spanish. 'But if someone stole my car or robbed my house, I might take the chance of calling the police.'

Arnoldo, who lives in suburban Atlanta, said he had a friend who was recently robbed and didn't call the police because he figured there was little they could do and he didn't want to risk deportation.

'It's a big problem,' Arnoldo said. 'But I don't know what we can do about it. If you don't have papers, you're probably going to be too scared to call the police.'

Though robbers are zeroing in on people who look Hispanic, law enforcement officials don't believe the muggings are racially motivated, but rather crimes of opportunity.

As more Americans rely almost exclusively on credit and debit cards and carry little cash, Hispanic immigrants frequently have money on them. Many who are here illegally don't have the proper documents to open a bank account, and others may mistrust banks.

Robbers stake out check cashing and wire transfer businesses on payday to snag victims who are getting their pay or sending money to relatives back home, law enforcement officials said. They also lie in wait outside bars and restaurants frequented by Hispanics or in the parking lots of apartment complexes with high concentrations of Hispanic residents.

Robbers typically come away with sums in only the hundreds of dollars, very rarely more than a thousand dollars, said William Petty of the Austin Police Department, in Texas.

But robbers who weigh the risks against the potential gain often still decide it's worth it. The reasoning is similar to that used by people who rob small businesses in poor neighborhoods even though the haul is likely to be smaller than elsewhere, Howard said.

'They believe that, first of all, the victims themselves won't report and, second, even if they do, law enforcement or prosecutors won't pursue those cases as vigorously,' he said.

In the Pineda case, Gooden's girlfriend said in a videotaped statement that Gooden went to apartments in Sandy Springs looking to rob 'Mexican guys.' She later told prosecutors that was because Gooden thought they would have cash. Gooden is serving a life sentence plus five years and Dixon is serving life in prison plus ten, each with the possibility of parole in 30 years.

Often law enforcement officers and prosecutors pursuing these cases become frustrated because of a lack of cooperation from the Hispanic immigrant community.

'We've had a number of cases where we had made arrests and the suspects confessed that they robbed Hispanics because they knew that if they don't have documentation, they aren't likely to call police,' said Blanca Kling, the Hispanic liaison for the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland, which has seen a rise in such robberies in recent years.

Around the country, many local law enforcement agencies, recognizing the importance of community cooperation in solving crimes, have made specific efforts to reach out to Hispanic immigrants. The efforts include hiring liaison officers, running ad campaigns in local Spanish-language media outlets and holding public information meetings.

An outreach campaign in Austin a few years ago called 'Basta Ya!' or 'Enough Already,' sought to warn Hispanic immigrants that robbers were targeting them and encouraged them to report robberies to police. Petty said the campaign was successful but that there's a steady stream of new immigrants, and thus new potential targets, flowing into Texas.

An effort in Atlanta was less successful. Howard, the district attorney, and Police Chief Richard Pennington organized a heavily publicized town hall meeting three years ago at a church in a Latin American community to educate people about crime targeting immigrants. Not a single person showed up. A minister at the church said people in the community were afraid the meeting was a front for an immigration sting.

Even those who are here legally may be unlikely to report crimes because of a mistrust of law enforcement developed after years of experience with corrupt authorities in their own countries.

'People coming from Mexico and Central America often don't have the same trust of law enforcement that Americans might have,' said Mary Odem, a professor at Emory University who studies Latin American immigration.

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29.
Law firm's scam reopens hundreds of asylum cases
By Stephen Magagnini
The Sacramento Bee, November 16, 2009
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2327682.html

For years, Sacramento's Sekhon & Sekhon law firm was renowned as a beacon of hope.

The firm, boasting a 95 percent success rate, helped more than 1,000 immigrants from a half-dozen nations get political asylum in the United States based on a fear of persecution.

Many of those new Americans now stand to be deported, because as many as 700 - coached by the firm's lawyers and interpreters - told phony stories of torture and rape to immigration judges and asylum officers.

In June, following a three-month trial in Sacramento's federal court, three of the firm's lawyers and two interpreters were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government. Prosecutors call it one of the most brazen immigration scams in U.S. history.

In the months since, those who work in the asylum system have had to confront serious questions about a time-honored process that is based largely on trust: How did the firm get away with the fraud for so long? And how vulnerable is the process to liars and con artists?

The firm's founders, brothers Jagprit Singh Sekhon and Jagdip Singh Sekhon, along with attorney Manjit Kaur Rai and Romanian interpreters Iosif Caza and Luciana Harmath, return to court Dec. 17 for sentencing. Each faces up to 10 years in prison.

Between 2000 and 2004, the defendants filed hundreds of claims for Romanians, Indians, Nepalis and Fijians. They made more than $1 million charging clients for bogus addresses, medical reports, notarized declarations and tales of rapes and beatings that never took place, court records show.

The case exposed a vulnerability that experts say is inherent in the system: With tens of thousands of refugees asking for asylum every year, overworked judges often rely on gut instinct about the evidence presented. That evidence frequently consists of little more than the applicant's testimony, so the detailed documentation presented by Sekhon & Sekhon swung the scales in their favor.

Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges and a veteran judge in San Francisco's immigration court, called the Sekhon case 'the worst-case nightmare come true for people who are cynical about the asylum process to begin with.'

'My colleagues have said it's very difficult to tell an asylum seeker with a good claim from a good liar,' Marks said. 'We're death penalty cases in traffic court settings. If somebody tells me he's going to be persecuted when he goes back home and I'm wrong, I'm sentencing him to death.'

One-sided stories

Marks said immigration judges typically have about 1,200 cases pending and need more time on each 'to allow the story to be fleshed out so you can catch inconsistencies and implausibilities.'

Often, she said, the applicant offers no supporting evidence.

'What makes asylum cases tricky for immigration judges is people don't get notes from their dictators,' Marks said. 'You're trying to decide cases without traditional documents that court cases often rely on. We usually get one story from one vantage point.'

That can work against some applicants who tell the truth but have no documentation, Marks said. 'People can be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that makes them terrible witnesses.'

The Sekhon firm became an asylum factory, court records show. Lawyers and interpreters crafted fictional stories of persecution they thought would fly - in some cases even when their clients had true tales of persecution.

The firm's statement on behalf of a 51-year-old Romanian Pentecostal claimed that when he tried to bury a member of his congregation he was arrested, cursed as a 'devil,' and beaten by police 'until I lost consciousness.'

A 36-year-old Sikh from Punjab said she watched police beat her father, who had helped hide a member of the Punjabi independence movement. She claimed 'police kicked me in my sides, stomach, back, buttocks and legs.'

Those stories were fabricated, prosecutors said, but the firm backed up its cases with phony medical records and government documents, which made the stories harder to reject.

The case 'reveals a systemic problem,' said McGeorge School of Law professor Raquel Aldana. 'The judges have heard so many sad stories, it's hard to say who's telling the truth and who's not. They may have liked these cases because they seemed well-substantiated.'

Marks would like to see more resources for investigations to ensure 'the courts can rely on the documents that are presented.'

In the Sekhon case, an alert asylum officer who had worked in Romania thought something didn't seem right about all the claims of religious persecution in the post-communist era. Investigators called doctors and officials in Romania and determined the documents were fabricated.

Some advocates would like to see the government do more investigations in applicants' home countries. But, in some countries, sending an investigator to substantiate claims of brutality could put the applicant's family at risk, said Benjamin Wagner, the Sacramento-based U.S. attorney who prosecuted the Sekhon case.

Camil Skipper, an assistant U.S. attorney who helped Wagner with the prosecution, said the Sekhon convictions in themselves should help strengthen the asylum system: 'We believe this case will serve as a deterrent.'

One harrowing tale verified

Unlike refugees who generally are granted legal status in the United States after they've fled their homeland to a third country, those applying for asylum ask for refuge after entering the United States.

Applicants must convince asylum officers and judges they've been persecuted or have a well-founded fear they will be based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group.

In a typical year, U.S. immigration courts receive upward of 50,000 requests for asylum. The percentage of requests granted has risen from about a third early in the decade to almost half from 2006-2008.

Nationwide, more than 420,000 people were granted asylum between 1990 and 2008. Many believe asylum saved their lives.

Among them is Senait Berekete Ghebremariam, a former Eritrean journalist. In one of several windowless immigration courtrooms in downtown San Francisco, Ghebremariam, 38, told her story recently to Judge Loreto S. Geisse.

The judge warned her that if she lied, she would be barred for life from getting asylum.

Ghebremariam nodded, then said she and her five sisters were circumcised as babies, as is the custom of the Tegrinya ethnic group. She described a country hostile for women. While in the army, she said, she was raped by a brigadier general.

She told the judge she was jailed for treason stemming from her dialect. Once released, she fled. Her odyssey took her through Africa and South America. She asked for asylum at the Arizona border and ended up in San Jose, where she has relatives.

She testified the circumcision scarred her emotionally. She has no desire for physical intimacy, she said, and wishes she could have children, but 'I'm so worried about my physical condition and the pain it creates.'

She said she would be killed if forced to return.

Judge Geisse quizzed Ghebremariam about other Eritrean journalists, and she knew them. Prosecutor Scott Gambill had her recall dates and details, and interviewed a midwife about the extent of Ghebremariam's genital mutilation.

Ultimately, the judge granted her asylum.

Gambill said the government's role isn't to block people like Ghebremariam, who are deserving of protection.

'Asylum is a sacred trust, and my role is to weed out the ones who are not deserving and don't have a well-founded fear of persecution,' he said.

In the wake of the Sekhon case, the San Francisco asylum office is interviewing each of the 700 people caught up in the scam to decide whether to revoke their asylum.

If the government ends up sending hundreds of cases back to immigration court, they're going to pose a tremendous challenge, Judge Marks said.

'These are going to be hotly contested cases as to whether or not the person who says he was prejudiced by an unethical lawyer deserves a second chance,' Marks said. 'We're going to have to work through them case by case, judge by judge, and it's the judge's job not to be cynical and burned out.'

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30.
Firms deliver only pain, immigrants say
Police investigate disappearance of parcels to Brazil
By Maria Sacchetti
The Boston Globe, November 16, 2009
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/11/16/firms_deliver_only_pain_immigrants_say/

Lowell, MA -- Izabel Gonsalves wanted her niece in Brazil to have the wedding of her dreams.

Gonsalves knew that Silvia could not afford even a modest affair, so she hired a company to ship a giant box filled with invitations, rhinestone-adorned shoes, and finally, Gonsalves's own wedding dress, with the beaded top and flowing skirt.

Except the box never arrived.

As the wedding day approached in April, Gonsalves's telephone calls to the Leicester delivery company, Manaim Express, grew more frantic until finally, the number was disconnected, the church wedding was cancelled, and Gonsalves was in tears. Nearly one year after Gonsalves packed it, the box is still missing and the company has disappeared.

``It makes me angry,'' said Gonsalves, 39, who worked her way up from a struggling single mother to become a US citizen with a spacious home in Lowell. ``I was supposed to go to her wedding. It was my wedding dress. I was devastated.''

She is among scores of Massachusetts immigrants who say they paid a string of companies thousands of dollars to ship boxes to Brazil that were never delivered. Many companies have since closed, leaving the im migrants incensed and authorities in Massachusetts struggling to track down the firms and find out what happened.

The state attorney general's office and police in Leicester and Marlborough have launched investigations into the companies. Stoughton police arrested a man last year after they discovered dozens of boxes intended for Brazil in a storage unit in town. Police said the boxes had been opened.

The situation has stirred a deep sense of betrayal among Brazilian immigrants, one of the largest immigrant groups in the state, who are following a long tradition of sending clothes, appliances, and other goods to relatives back home. Immigrants say the companies offered better prices than regular mail and catered to them by speaking their language, providing contracts in Portuguese, and picking up the boxes at their homes. Most of the workers were immigrants themselves.

Attorney General Martha Coakley's office would not confirm that she is investigating, but documents obtained by the Globe showed that her office has received about 150 complaints, mainly against Manaim Express; Adonai Moving and Transportation, a Framingham branch of a Georgia company; Express Moving International of Woburn; and Alexim Moving/ATC Cargo, which used to have an office in Massachusetts and is still operating in Florida.

Express Moving International's phones were disconnected, but a founding owner, Sergio Oliveira, said he was duped by a fellow investor who allegedly ripped off him and 5,000 customers nationwide. He said he has not been contacted by authorities.

Luciano Campos, owner of Alexim Moving, said in an e-mail that the company was defrauded by a contractor in Brazil and lost money that has hindered their ability to deliver the goods. But he pledged to continue working to bring all boxes to their owners.

Manaim Express and Adonai Moving did not respond to e-mails, and the company phones are disconnected.

Carlos A.F. Da Silva, executive director of Brazilian Total Assistance, a Quincy nonprofit, urged the attorney general's office to investigate. He said he has been helping immigrants file complaints to state authorities since last January, including at a recent meeting at an Everett church.

``It's a major nightmare,'' Da Silva said. ``Some sent their belongings home because they are moving back to Brazil. Some are waiting for those boxes back in Brazil in an empty house.''

In the dimly lighted church hall, dozens of cooks, baby-sitters, carpenters, and housecleaners clutched receipts as they glumly waited to fill out the paperwork.

Among them was Joao Oliveira, a 40-year-old carpenter who builds homes on Martha's Vineyard. His receipts showed that he paid Manaim Express $4,510 in May to ship $10,000 worth of goods, including his carpenter's tools, dining room set, dishwasher, and more. It was supposed to furnish a home he built by the beach in Brazil, with the money he made in America.

The boxes also contained gifts for a 14-year-old daughter he has not seen in years.

``I don't know what I'm going to do,'' he said.

Zulamar Acordi, 42, of Melrose, said she sent four boxes costing $1,770 with Adonai one year ago, including almost all of her mother-in-law's clothes because the woman planned to return to Brazil to see her grandchildren for the first time. Instead, her mother-in-law is still here, working to recover what she lost.

``Adonai always said the boxes were going to arrive,'' Acordi said. ``They said they were in the ports, there was a problem.''

Police say the cases are challenging because it is unclear whether a crime is being committed in the United States or Brazil, where US police do not have jurisdiction.

Stoughton police last year arrested Joseph Edwards, the owner of Massachusetts Enterprise, after they uncovered boxes in a storage unit that should have been shipped to Brazil, according to Detective Arlindo Romeiro. Edwards could not be reached for comment, but his lawyer, William Gillespie, said he has pleaded not guilty.

In Marlborough, Police Chief Mark Leonard said he has received at least six complaints over the past couple of months about missing boxes. In Leicester, Police Chief James J. Hurley said two women filed complaints against Manaim Express in September, but the office is closed.

The attorney general's office said customers should check companies' references before hiring them and determine whether they have any pending complaints on file with the Better Business Bureau.

Immigrants say they still hope that their boxes will be found.

Oliveira said he heard a rumor that somebody found some boxes in New Jersey and wondered if they might be his. He has been so distracted that this week he cut himself on the job for the first time, sustaining 13 stitches.

He had planned to return home this month, but he doesn't want to arrive empty-handed.

``Those boxes meant seven years of work,'' he said. ``I don't know if I'm going home now or if I should stay and start over, and work some more.''

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31.
Jury says former Iowa kosher slaughterhouse manager guilty on 86 of 91 financial fraud charges
By Nigel Duara
The Associated Press, November 13, 2009
http://www.sfexaminer.com/economy/ap/jury-reaches-verdict-in-fraud-trial-of-former-iowa-kosher-slaughterhouse-manager-rubashkin-69914672.html

Sioux Falls, SD (AP) -- A former manager of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse that was the site of a massive immigration raid was convicted Thursday on 86 financial fraud charges that could bring a prison sentence of hundreds of years.

Sholom Rubashkin still faces a second federal trial on 72 immigration charges.

Jurors returned the verdict against Rubashkin, 50, on their second day of deliberations after a nearly monthlong trial. Rubashkin had faced 91 charges, including bank, mail and wire fraud, and money laundering. He was found not guilty on five of 19 charges alleging he did not make timely payments to livestock dealers. A sentencing date was not immediately set.

'We respect the jury's hard work. It was a difficult case. We disagree with the verdict,' defense attorney Guy Cook said after the decision. 'There were many legal errors made by the prosecution in the trial of this case and following sentencing we will appeal.'

Prosecutors offered no immediate comment and referred all questions to U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Bob Teig, who did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday evening.

Prosecutors alleged that as a manager of the former Agriprocessors, Inc., plant in Postville, Iowa, Rubashkin intentionally deceived the company's lender. Former Agriprocessors employees testified that Rubashkin personally directed them to create fake invoices in order to show St. Louis-based First Bank that the plant had more money flowing in than it really did.

Cook argued Rubashkin never read the loan agreement with First Bank and tried to portray him as a bumbling businessman in over his head.

Rubashkin was detained after the jury was dismissed, despite a request from his defense team that he be allowed to remain free on bail. A hearing was set for Wednesday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to determine whether Rubashkin will be freed before his second trial, which is scheduled to begin Dec. 2.

The first trial was held in Sioux Falls after Rubashkin's attorneys requested a change of venue due to pretrial publicity.

Rubashkin turned around in court several times while Reade read the verdict and smiled at his wife, Leah, at one point passing her a note.

'We look forward to continuing this and getting the verdict he deserves,' Leah Rubashkin said after the decision. 'Obviously it's not a pleasant thing ... unfortunately not everything was allowed to be heard by the jury.'

After the verdict was announced, Cook renewed a previous motion for a 'directed verdict,' essentially asking for a dismissal of the charges, and specified the money laundering charges because the jury determined Rubashkin did not personally profit. Reade took the motion under consideration.

During closing arguments, U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan said Rubashkin was aware of the fraud at the plant and to assume otherwise was 'ridiculous.' Cook said Rubashkin may have practiced business unethically, but never committed a crime.

Over the protests of Rubashkin's defense team, Reade also allowed former employees to testify that days before the May 2008 immigration raid, Rubashkin scrambled to get new documents for his workers, at least 389 of whom were found to be illegal immigrants.

The plant filed for bankruptcy months after the raid and has since been sold. Prosecutors claim evidence of the massive fraud scheme was uncovered during an investigation by a court-appointed trustee.

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32.
Cops: Deportation led to stabbing
By Andrew Strickler
Newsday (NY), November 15, 2009
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/albertson-man-accused-in-roslyn-heights-killing-1.1589258

An Albertson man fatally stabbed a gas station attendant in Roslyn Heights last month because the victim's earlier report to police triggered the arrest and deportation of the accused man's girlfriend, Nassau police said yesterday.

Wilmer Linares, 23, a cabinetmaker, 'is believed to have taken out revenge on behalf of this woman,' Nassau police Det. Lt. John Azzata said.

Homicide detectives arrested Linares on Friday and charged him with second-degree murder in the brutal stabbing of Jony Acosta, 26, also of Albertson.

Acosta was attacked by a knife-wielding man as he worked the overnight shift on Halloween at the Gulf station just off the Long Island Expressway.

Police said Acosta previously had been in a relationship with a woman with whom he has a 3-year-old daughter. Later, the woman was in a relationship with Linares, police said, although it was unclear when that relationship began.

Last summer, Acosta reported a break-in at his Albertson home and some property damage. The woman, who police didn't identify, was subsequently charged with burglary and criminal mischief. Because she wasn't a legal resident, immigration officials were alerted and she was deported to Honduras, Azzata said.

Linares pleaded not guilty at his arraignment yesterday in First District Court in Hempstead. He was held without bail.

A surveillance camera at the gas station caught what Azzata described as 'a very short struggle.'

Acosta survived the multiple stab wounds but was too injured to be interviewed by police. He underwent surgery but died Nov. 3 at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset.

An Acosta family member said earlier that they also were from Honduras.

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33.
Wrestling champ, kin face deportation
By Perla Trevizo
The Chattanooga Times Free Press (TN), November 15, 2009
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2009/nov/15/wrestling-champ-kin-face-deportation/

Cleveland, TN -- Jorge Alvarado wanted to follow his brother Bryan's footsteps and wrestle one day at the state level for Cleveland High School.

But his dreams have been cut short and his family split apart. Jorge; his brother; his mother, Santina Rivera; and cousin Cristian Rodas are being deported.

Jorge's mother, brother and cousin are in an immigration detention center in Louisiana. Jorge, 14, was allowed to stay in Cleveland with his father, Jorge Sr., because of his young age, but must leave by Jan. 3.

'I feel mad, really mad,' said Jorge.

'I can't see my mom, my brother, my cousin,' he said, holding back tears. 'I used to see them all the time; my mom used to have food for me when I came home from school; now she doesn't. I used to play with my brother a lot. Now I can't.'

Jorge's father came to the United States from Honduras in the late 1990s and qualified for what's known as 'temporary protected status' because of Hurricane Mitch, which hit Central America in October 1998. His family joined him a year later, but they got only six-month permits.

'I hired a lawyer and went to immigration court six months after they arrived, but the lawyer didn't do anything,' Mr. Alvarado said during an interview in his Cleveland home, where the living room is full of wrestling medals and photographs of his sons.

'The judge gave them voluntary removal, but the lawyer didn't explain to us what it meant if they didn't leave in three months,' he added. 'We decided to stay, to remain together, but we didn't know this was going to happen.'

Almost 10 years after their first court appearance, Mr. Alvarado received a letter asking the whole family to go to Nashville with an immigration officer.

'We knew we had to go because you can't be hiding from the law,' he said, staring down at the floor. 'But we thought we would be able to fix it some way, pay a fine, ask for a pardon -- something.'

But instead they were immediately detained on Oct. 23.

'It's the worst thing that can happen to you,' said Mr. Alvarado. 'My family is the most sacred thing for me, and I had to leave them there.'

Only the support of his church, family and friends gives him and his younger son the courage to go forward, he said.

He has collected dozens of letters addressed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, speaking of Bryan's character and accomplishments, hoping that it can make a difference.

Heath Eslinger, head wrestling coach at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and one of Bryan's coaches at Cleveland High School, said he is saddened by the whole situation.

'I feel so strongly about the kid that, if he wasn't 18, I would adopt him. I really do think he's that great of a kid,' he said.

Bryan started out as probably one of the worst wrestlers in the state and left high school as one of the best, Mr. Eslinger said.

'He's my favorite athlete I've ever coached, without a doubt,' he said. 'He is a kid who did everything right.'

Lucretia Lupez, a family friend whose sons wrestled with Bryan, said it's frustrating not being able to help such a good family.

'They have the utmost respect; they work very hard. Bryan got himself into Lee University and, even in his spare time, he would help his dad (at work),' she said.

Bryan was in his first year at Lee studying international business. Jorge, who wants to be a police officer, is in his freshman year of high school and on the wrestling team.

Asked if he plans to continue wrestling, he says he can't.

'I'm going to have to leave soon,' he says.

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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. E.U.: Committee scouts Cyprus for asylum office
2. U.K.: Child-killing caretaker paid benefit to leave country (link)
3. Ireland: Gov't pays foreigners to repatriate
4. France: Egypt-Algeria soccer match sparks street violence
5. Sweden: Town limits number of 'foreign' weddings
6. Finland: PM frets over number of asylum seekers
7. Italy: Immigration hawks target foreign foods
8. Italy: Libyan bomber had intelligence on PM (link)
9. Egypt: Another African shot dead on Israeli border (link)
10. Israel: Immigration budget cut threatens coalition gov’t
11. Israel: Jewish Agency threatens end to airline contract
12. India: Thousands of women abandoned by overseas husbands
13. Japan: PM signals more open immigration policies
14. Hong Kong: Dozens arrested in asylum fraud crackdown
15. Indonesia: Sri Lankans given three months to process asylum claims

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

-- Mark Krikorian]


1.
Schengen committee visits Cyprus to look at illegal immigration problems
By Patrick Dewhurst
The Cyprus Mail, November 14, 2009
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=48812&cat_id=1

Cyprus may host the new European Asylum office to counter illegal immigration, according to an Italian Parliamentary committee that visited Cyprus this week.

The committee, set up to monitor the Schengen agreement, yesterday concluded a two-day visit to learn more about illegal immigration in Cyprus.

The visit was conducted as part of an agreement between Cyprus, Italy, Greece and Malta to develop an integrated strategy to counter illegal immigration. During the visit, the delegation met with House President Marios Garoyian, Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis and members of the foreign ministry.

Margherita Boniver, committee President, highlighted recent developments in the EU’s illegal immigration strategy.

'The EU has now started to listen to what our problems are, and is taking the matter of illegal immigration seriously. It realises southernmost frontiers cannot just be a matter for individual southern states. It has begun to provide more directives, for example on resettlement and burden sharing.'

Boniver added that the EU has established the EU asylum office and the Frontex agency, which coordinates the operational cooperation between Member States in the field of border security.

Reporting on her findings, Boniver said 'We have completed bilateral visits with Spain, Greece and Malta, and based on a steady stream of intelligence, the problem seems particularly acute for Cyprus.'

Asked about the problem of people illegally entering from the north Cyprus, Boniver said, 'The pursuit of criminal organisations is the most important issue.

This is firstly an issue for EUROPOL and FRONTEX. After that it is a matter of applying political and diplomatic pressure, and oblige Turkey to do its duty to prevent illegal border crossing.'

Regarding the possible entry of Cyprus into Shengen, Committee Vice President Ivano Strizzolo said 'At the end of our visit, we understood that the first priority is the resolution of the Cyprus Problem.'

'It is also in the interests of Italy to solve the problem, because even though Cyprus is small, its geography makes it important. The EU must now help further resolution of the Cyprus problem through further integration. It cannot leave southern countries to deal with this alone'

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2.
Killer carer paid to return home
The BBC News (U.K.), November 15, 2009

A childminder who killed a 16-month-old boy was given money from the government to return home to Malaysia after her release from prison.

Agnes Wong, 29, was convicted in January 2008 of the manslaughter of Hugo Wang at her Salford flat.

Manchester Crown Court heard she had picked him up by his ankles and flung him against either a bed or a sofa.

She was given the money, understood to be £4,500, under a scheme to encourage foreign inmates to accept deportation.

Bite marks

Wong was paid £120 a week to look after the boy as his parents worked long hours in a Chinese restaurant in Southport, Merseyside.

She had been looking after the child at her flat in Frank Cowin Court, Fitzwilliam Street, in January 2007 when he suffered severe head injuries.

Other injuries noted at hospital, where he died the next day, included bruising to his legs, bite marks and a burn.

Wong was released in July when, after time spent on remand was taken into account, she had served half of her five-year sentence.

She left the UK on a plane from London Heathrow about two weeks after applying for the one-off payment under a government assistance scheme for reintegration.
. . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/8361360.stm

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3.
Irish government to pay immigrants to go home
Recession-crippled Republic offers cash to non-EU nationals who agree to leave country
The Guardian (U.K.), November 14, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/15/ireland-pay-immigrants-go-home

Ireland is offering money to immigrants to leave the recession-crippled Republic. The Irish Department of Justice has confirmed that it is opening an EU-funded project to persuade foreign workers and asylum seekers to return to their country of origin.

A spokeswoman told the Observer this weekend that the scheme will only apply to non-EU nationals living in the Republic and would involve the department spending almost €600,000 this year to pay for immigrants and their families to return to nations outside the European Union.

'The grants will not be given to individuals but rather the scheme will operate through projects and organisations,' she added.

'They [immigrants] can apply for the fund only through organisations and community groups. It is the first time we have introduced the scheme.'

The department has made it clear it had no projected figure in mind as to the number of immigrants the government hopes will take up the repatriation grants.

Advertisements promoting the scheme were published in Irish national newspapers on Friday. Application forms will also be available for non-EU nationals in the main immigration centre on Burgh Quay, Dublin.

The voluntary repatriation programme comes at a time of rising fears about the cost of immigration into Ireland.

Last week the mayor of Limerick caused a political storm when he called for the deportation of EU nationals who were out of work for more than three months and were claiming social welfare benefits.

Kevin Kiely said: 'We are borrowing €400 million per week to maintain our own residents and we can't afford it.

'During the good times it was grand, but we can't afford the current situation unless the EU is willing to step in and pay for non-nationals.'

However the mayor was forced to withdraw his remarks after a storm of protests. His own party, Fine Gael, distanced itself from his comments.

In a subsequent statement, Kiely said: 'I still am of the opinion and so are others, who have approached me in recent days, that there is abuse of the Irish social welfare system.

'But in seeking to highlight this I inadvertently caused offence to others, which I very much regret.'

During the latter years of the Celtic Tiger boom Ireland underwent a demographic revolution in terms of its ethnic make-up. Up until the early 1990s Ireland was 95% white and Catholic.

However, according to the Republic's central statistics office, about 18% of Ireland's inhabitants are now non-nationals.

Most of them are from eastern Europe, China, Brazil and west Africa or are British citizens who have settled on the island.

Some academics, such as Dr Bryan Fanning of University College Dublin, estimate that the real figure is more than 20%, meaning Ireland's 'foreign' citizens make up over one fifth of the Republic's entire population.

The majority of the immigrants who arrived during the boom years were enticed to Ireland to fill vacancies in the construction, retail and tourist sectors – the main parts of the Irish economy to be severely hit by the current recession.

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4.
Violence erupts in Marseille over Algeria-Egypt football match
Reuters, November 15, 2009
http://www.france24.com/en/20091115-violence-erupts-marseille-over-algeria-egypt-football-match

Reuters -- Rioters smashed shop windows, hurled stones at police and set fire to several boats moored in the southern French port of Marseille after Egypt beat Algeria in a soccer World Cup qualifying match on Saturday.

A police spokesman said more than 500 officers were deployed in the centre of Marseille, an often volatile city with a large North African immigrant population and football supporters who are considered among the most passionate in France.

Egypt won the match, which was played in Cairo, 2-0.

Police said they had made eight arrests, mostly for throwing objects, while one man was arrested for setting fire to a rubbish bin.

At least six boats were damaged and two were sunk when a fire was sparked by a smoke bomb of the kind seen frequently in French football stadiums.

Police said the trouble began after youths of Algerian origin reacted in frustration when Egypt scored towards the end of the first half of match, in which the two teams were vying to qualify for next year's World Cup.

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5.
Swedish town restricts 'immigrant weddings'
The Local (Sweden), November 16, 2009
http://www.thelocal.se/23292/20091116/

A local politician from Landskrona in southern Sweden has decreed that only one 'immigrant wedding' can be held at the town’s local community centre every month.

'We don’t want to have too many,' Lars Svensson, the centre's manager and Social Democratic member of the Landskrona local council, told the local Helsingborgs Dagblad (HD) newspaper,

Svensson then went on to explain what he meant by the term 'immigrant wedding'.

'It’s those who live in the city. There are quite a lot of Kurds and Palestinians who get married. There's something about having an oriental background; there can be between 400 and 500 guests,' Svensson explained, adding that 'European immigrant groups' aren't included in the term.

According to Svensson, the policy comes following repeated complaints about the noise and untidiness associated with 'immigrant weddings' held at Landskrona’s Folkets Hus, translating literally into English as 'The People's House'.

But in Landskrona, Svensson’s policies have left members of some immigrant groups shut out of using the community centre.

Moreover, it seems that weddings thrown by some European immigrant groups are in fact included in Svensson's category of 'immigrant weddings'.

Local resident Habib Ramadani, originally from Kosovo, has lived in Landskrona for ten years and had hoped to hold a wedding reception for his son in the town’s community centre last year.

But Svensson rejected Ramadani’s request, citing the proud father’s immigrant background.

'If he had said, ‘no, it’s booked’, that would have been the end of it. But then he asked what country I was from,' Ramadani told the newspaper.

Ramadani told Svensson he was from Kosovo, still hoping to be able to rent out the community centre’s great hall.

'He said, ‘Not for you, you all throw cake on the floor instead of in your mouths,’' Ramadani explained.

'But the great hall was free that weekend. Others who worked there told us so.'

Having already sent out hundreds of invitations to guests around the world, Ramadani offered to pay professional cleaners to ensure the hall would be spotless following the event.

Svensson remained firm, however, prompting Ramadani to try another approach.

'Then I offered to pay for two days. But he said that this is the People’s House and as a result, people must be given access,' Ramadani told HD.

Even a promise to keep the party alcohol free didn’t help, leading Ramadani to question Svensson's explanation.

'Do I not count as a person? I pay taxes and I’m a part of society. But when we want to rent space for a wedding, suddenly I’m only an immigrant,' he said.

'It’s like Lars Svensson wants to get rid of parties thrown by foreigners. It’s called the Peoples’ House but it should be called the Swedes’ House.'

According to Ramadani, Svensson also claimed that 'immigrant weddings' require advance payment because people who arrange them don’t share 'our norms' when it comes to paying bills.

Svensson told the newspaper that the community centre has been criticized by accountants for accepting payments for 'immigrant weddings' in cash, often in large sums the day of the event.

'We’ve discussed this a lot. The accountants say ‘either send a bill or pay in advance’. But we probably wouldn’t have received any money. Those who arrange weddings don’t abide by our conditions, by our norms. They come with wads of bills in their pockets,' he said.

Per Holfve, a lawyer with Sweden’s Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen – DO) think’s Svensson’s policy of limiting the number of 'immigrant weddings' could violate the country’s anti-discrimination laws requiring everyone to have equal access to the facility, regardless of ethnicity.

'I think it sounds like they are on thin ice. It’s one thing if someone wants to rent the space and there are concerns about problems maintaining order, but then they have to be concrete; it’s not enough to say that it's something to do with ethnic affiliation. Then it’s nothing other than stereotyping,' Holfve told the newspaper.

But Svensson doesn’t see any problem with limiting the number of immigrant weddings, claiming he is simply doing his best to maintain a balance that reflects the makeup of the community.

'The board’s policy is that if 20 percent of Landskrona’s residents have immigrant backgrounds, have another ethnicity, then they have the right to express their culture. And they can do that at the People’s House,' he said.

'We try to avoid discrimination. But the alternative is prohibiting these parties altogether.'

Folkets Hus is the name given to municipal halls through Sweden created during the rise of the country’s trade union movement in the early 20th century.

According to the website of the National Federation of People's Parks and Community Centres (Folkets Hus och Parker), the community centres were originally created by groups of workers in order to allow them to have a place to organize and hold meetings at a time when property owners 'were afraid of the revolutionary ideas' that might be discussed at such gatherings.

The community centres represented a 'significant step on the path towards equality and democracy' and remain 'an important part of the social economic system' in Sweden where 'marginalized groups, such as immigrants, women and unemployed can find support and together work for a better future'.

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6.
Finnish PM raises concern over asylum seeker numbers
The Helsinki Times (Finland), November 12, 2009
http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/htimes/domestic-news/politics/8787-finnish-pm-raises-concern-over-asylum-seeker-numbers-al-.html

Matti Vanhanen (centre), the Finnish prime minister, was quoted as saying by regional daily Aamulehti on Thursday that he was worried about a scenario where Finland received as many asylum seekers as other Nordic countries did.

'Our asylum seeker figures have been perhaps a third of those in other Nordic countries,' Mr Vanhanen told the Tampere-based paper.

'For us, afraid as we are of costs, the risk is that we are discovered equally widely.'

About 4,000 people sought asylum in Finland, a country of 5.3 million, last year, with the figure forecast to rise to about 6,000 this year.

'One should not say this in public but if we were discovered as widely as the other Nordic countries have been there might be up to 20,000 asylum seekers [a year].'

Mr Vanhanen went on to shun a proposal by Astrid Thors (spp), the migration minister, to force local councils to admit refugees.

'The government's overall line is that we avoid placing new obligations on local councils. There have been a number of councils ready to take refugees.'

The prime minister was further quoted as saying that he wanted to shift the emphasis of immigration policy away from refugees to work-based immigration in order to stem the rise in the country's dependency ratio.

Mr Vanhanen urged the public to discuss immigration policy in a 'moderate' manner.

'Some members of the public have adopted a very emotional stance toward immigration. For them it is an either or question. That phase is over, for immigration is a fact.

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7.
Anti-immigrant Italians find a new foe: food from abroad
Kebab shops come under attack as the Northern League demands bans on foreign dishes
The Guardian (U.K.), November 15, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/15/italys-kebab-war-hots-up

On a cold, foggy lunchtime in Turin, Demir Ergulu is slicing hot wedges of glistening meat into oven-fresh pitta bread as hungry office workers queue up. 'This is local veal, bathed in milk and minced onion, then grilled with a touch of added veal fat,' said the Turkish kebab chef. 'We don't touch those frozen lumps of veal mixed with chicken and turkey that come in from Germany.'

Turin has backed Ergulu's six-year experiment in gourmet kebabs, turning his kiosk into a cult address and a beacon for those who believe multiculturalism, starting with fusion food, has a chance in Italy. But as the country's legal immigrant population swells to 7% it is touch and go, with anti-immigrant politicians on councils across Italy now seizing on the humble kebab as a symbol of the sort of cultural invasion they dislike.

Lucca in Tuscany set the ball rolling in January, followed by Altopascio nearby, where unknown assailants had already firebombed a kebab shop. Towns near Bergamo and Genoa followed suit, as did Prato in Tuscany, where 200 local people gathered this month to protest against the ban in the historic centre, not only of kebab shops, but also call centres and internet points, 'all of which are, not by coincidence, managed by foreigners', said protest organiser Marco Monzali.

An MP from the anti-immigration Northern League, which is behind many of the bans, forced French butter off the parliament's restaurant menu, while police in Tuscany uprooted and seized unauthorised Chinese vegetables planted by Chinese immigrants.

Italy's agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, a member of the Northern League, gave the raids his backing. 'We must continue to block the arrival in this country of all foods which have nothing to do with our extremely rich agricultural heritage, and protect the hard work of our farmers and the health of Italians,' said Zaia.

'Where would Italy be today if the Northern League had been around to block the first imports into this country of tomatoes and potatoes?' asked culinary journalist Vittorio Castellani.

Following the summer's kebab shop cull, Zaia did soften his tone. 'We have nothing against the kebab,' he said, 'but the frozen, imported ones are too much. Better to use Italian ingredients.'

Step forward Demir Ergulu, who was invited by Castellani to show off his all-Italian, fresh kebab meat stuffed into pitta bread, calzoni, focaccia and even spread on pizza with mozzarella at a food convention in Milan last week. Also on the bill was Sardinian chef Luigi Pomata, who opened a sushi bar in Cagliari using only Sardinian tuna. 'When we started in 1996 we were discreetly mixing sushi dishes in with the usual Italian carpaccio – raw fish strips with lemon juice. Now Cagliari is awash with sushi bars,' he said. Moroccan chef Bouzhar Abderrahim, who studied in France and now works in Turin, uses couscous manufactured in Ferrara from local wheat. 'Thanks to climate change, a lot of exotic foods are also about to become Italian,' said Castellani. 'Okra is now grown in northern Italy and guava and lychees are produced in Sardinia.'

Councillors in Lucca insist that the last thing tourists want to see are wall-to-wall kebab shops. 'Ideally we should be eating food grown on our own soil – that huge gastronomic resource everyone envies and which is the symbol of Italy around the world,' said Zaia.

But Castellani warned that xenophobic Italians were finding the defence of Italy's culinary heritage a convenient cause to adopt. 'If you go to the Facebook page 'Yes to Polenta, No to Couscous', you will find some violently racist comments,' he said.

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8.
Italy: Libyan bomber 'targeted' Berlusconi and other politicians
ADN Kronos International (Italy), November 13, 2009

Rome (AKI) -- The Libyan man who partly detonated his explosives at an army barracks in the Italian city of Milan in October, apparently had a dossier containing information on Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and other politicians, Italian media reports said on Friday.
. . .
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3990284314

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9.
Egypt police shoot African dead at Israeli border
Agence France Presse, November 14, 2009

Cairo (AFP) -- Egyptian police shot an African migrant dead at dawn on Saturday when he was trying to sneak illegally across the border into Israel, a security official told AFP.

The man, of unknown nationality, was with an Eritrean and two Ethiopians at the frontier south of the Rafah border crossing when police came across them, the official said.
. . .
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jW51RZPt9ST6Mcqs2jnHUUWQQ2KQ

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10.
Coalition Crisis: Lieberman Angry Over Aliyah Cuts
By Gil Ronen
Arutz Sheva (Israel), November 16, 2009
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134445

Binyamin Netanyahu's coalition experienced its first crisis Monday when Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called a press conference and announced that the Israel Our Home faction would no longer support the government in any Knesset votes, including no-confidence votes.

'The straw that broke the camel's back,' Lieberman said, 'was when I found out that out of the cut [in the government budget] that was approved, they took out the cut in the yeshiva funding while they are cutting the Aliyah [funding].'

'Yesterday I informed Netanyahu's bureau chief, Natan Eshel, that if we do not receive a positive answer about Aliyah budgets we will not participate in any vote.'

The foreign minister told reporters that he is not against funding for any sector but 'if there is money for the hareidis there will also be money for immigrants. It is inconceivable that a party with six Knesset seats issues an ultimatum and the government retreats, and a party with 15 Knesset seats demands one third of that amount.

'Liars, scoundrels and idiots '

An angry Lieberman denied media analysis that said that his move was revenge for Prime Minister Netanyahu's position on the splitting of the Attorney General's post. 'There is no shortage of liars, scoundrels and idiots here,' he said. When asked by reporters whether he meant parliamentarians or reporters, he said he was mostly talking about reporters, but also in the parliament. 'It's the entire spectrum,' he said, 'from [Maariv reporter] Shalom Yerushalmi to [Labor MK] Shelly Yechimovich.'

The Prime Minister's Office announced on Monday that Netanyahu met with Lieberman regarding his demands for funding for the Ministry for Immigration and Absorption. The two are scheduled to meet on Tuesday in an effort to reach a solution by next Monday. Lieberman said at the press conference that hopes to solve the problem 'very soon.'

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11.
Jewish Agency threatens to end its contract with El Al on olim flights
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Ha'aretz (Israel), November 13, 2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1127938.html

The Jewish Agency may this month cease using El Al for its immigrant flights if Israel's largest carrier raises its prices, Agency officials said this week. An El Al official defended the hike as necessary, accusing the Agency of 'unacceptable and chronic payment failures.'

El Al, Israel's national airline, is seeking a five-percent price hike from the Jewish Agency for transporting new immigrants effective November 22, the deadline for signing an updated agreement.

Sources in the Jewish Agency told Anglo File that their institution, which is responsible for facilitating the immigration of Diaspora Jews, is considering replacing El Al if prices are raised. According to El Al, the firm supplies the Jewish Agency with services to the tune of $2.5 million annually.

An official involved in the negotiations spoke of 'an unsubstantiated arrogance' on the part of the airline' in its approach to the Jewish Agency, which he said 'no longer matches the current reality, where there are many fine alternatives to El Al's services.'

The source said that American airlines, including Delta and Continental, offer services that 'match and even surpass' those offered by El Al, which is the only Israeli airline with regularly scheduled flights to North America. 'El Al has no reason for displaying such arrogance,' he said. 'The days when it was a monopoly are over.'

But a senior El Al official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, accused the Jewish Agency of an 'arrogant attitude,' by chronically withholding due payment. 'In dealing with a non-Israeli airline, the Jewish Agency would never dream of taking the license it does with El Al,' the senior airline official said. 'The Jewish Agency has a problem with payment discipline, placing El Al in an impossible situation vis-a-vis its shareholders during periodic reports,' he added.

Jewish Agency officials did not respond to this accusation when asked about it before press time.

'The bulk of airfare which the Jewish Agency buys from El Al is not for immigrants, but for the Jewish Agency's own staff,' the El Al official also said.

Jewish Agency Spokesman Gil Litman said these statements 'connect to a struggle that El Al has been conducting against the Jewish Agency by unilaterally raising prices.' Another Jewish Agency spokesperson said that 'because the Jewish Agency is dealing with donor money, it has a special duty to keep overhead low.'

But the executive from El Al, which privatized in 2003, said that the price increase was a necessary step for his firm, which he said was 'struggling to survive in today's competitive world.' He noted that 'airlines across the world are raising prices because of oil,' adding that customers of El Al and other airlines are facing hikes far exceeding the one which El Al is seeking to introduce into its contract with the Jewish Agency.

'We want to be accommodating in our relationship with the Jewish Agency because after all we are the national carrier and they are the Jewish Agency, but we will not be suckers either,' the senior airline executive said.

However he would not specify the special discount his firm was willing to offer the Jewish Agency. 'The bottom line is that we are undercharging the Jewish Agency by double-digit percentage points, and in a way that is out of proportion with the volume of trade we do with the Jewish Agency,' he said.

The Jewish Agency uses El Al for almost all of its flights. But in 2007, the Jewish Agency and the organization Ami brought new immigrants from France aboard a non El Al plane. This move 'caused an uproar in El Al' and also 'helped the Jewish Agency secure a better deal with El Al in subsequent negotiations,' according to one person who was involved in organizing that flight.

Dana Hermann, an El Al spokesperson, said: 'El Al is committed to bringing new immigrants and returning Israelis to Israel because of the immense national importance attached to this endeavor.' But the airline's senior official added that his company can achieve this 'with or without' the Jewish Agency.

'Through the Absorption Ministry, El Al is offering a 50-percent reduction in airfare to any returning Israeli,' he noted. 'This, for El Al, is a losing deal. But we do it because when we donate money, we want to do it directly.'

Although the Jewish Agency still funds most immigrant flights to Israel, other groups have taken over responsibility in certain countries, such as Sweden, and it has outsourced some immigration processing services to Nefesh B'Nefesh.

One observer with thorough knowledge of El Al's relationship with the Jewish Agency and other clients said he believed the Jewish Agency would not replace the airline. 'The Jewish Agency may have an interest in making noise to pressure El Al into lowering prices, but in the end I don't see how these two can part ways,' he said.

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12.
Lost brides: When arranged marriages go quickly awry
Thousands of women in India's Punjab say they've been left behind by overseas husbands
By Rick Westhead and Raveena Aulakh
The Toronto Star (Canada), November 15, 2009
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/726066

Flipping through her wedding album, a 30-page collection of glossy photos with sugary captions such as 'Perfect Match,' Sandeep Kaur grimaces as she recalls her wedding last year to a young man from Brampton.

There was no problem with the celebration itself, mind you. There was more than enough mutton, fish and chicken for several hundred guests.

Kaur's father, a real estate contractor from the small city of Batala, India, had ensured her marriage to Canadian Sahil Luthra was held in an expensive, air-conditioned wedding hall.

He also provided gold rings for all of Luthra's relatives and gold bangles, rings, earrings and necklaces for him and his parents.

It was a blowout evening with a $90,000 price tag. A year on, Kaur, 24, weeps as she looks at photos of her husband holding her in his arms.

'This is a book of lies,' she says.

Two weeks after their April 30, 2008, wedding, Luthra returned to Brampton. Kaur says the only contact he has had with her since then has been phone calls demanding a sports car and cash from his new in-laws in exchange for bringing her to Canada.

But Luthra says he is the one who has been harassed and that Kaur's family only married him to obtain his ancestral home in Batala, a home now occupied by his 87-year-old grandfather.

'The only thing that family wanted is our house, money and Canadian immigration,' Luthra said from his home in Brampton.

Petite with long brown hair and a pleasant smile, Kaur is among the latest of India's women to be trapped in marital purgatory. In India's northern state of Punjab, local leaders say there are at least 15,000 abandoned brides like Kaur – instances where families with Indian roots living overseas have arranged marriages for their sons to local Indian women.

Police in Ludhiana, the largest city in Punjab, registered 447 abandoned-bride complaints from January through October. Last year, there were 404 cases in the full calendar year. Out of the police force's 700 constables, 50 have been assigned to deal specifically with dowry and abandoned bride cases, says Harinder Singh Chahal, the senior superintendent of police.

'This has become a huge social problem,' he says, 'and people aren't dealing with it. We only see a fire if it's in our own home.'

Typically in these cases, after a dowry is paid and marriage consummated, the new husbands return to their homes abroad and in many cases, only bring their wives with them if their in-laws agree to cough up more money.

That leaves their wives hamstrung since Indian judges usually refuse to grant women a divorce without their husbands present for court hearings.

While Luthra says he was granted a divorce in a Canadian court in September, Kaur says an Indian court has refused to recognize the dissolution of the marriage.

'You can threaten your husband that you will file a case, but most laugh and say they will tie it up in the courts for years,' says Varinder Kaur (no relation), 28, whose Canadian husband left her to return to the Toronto region within days of their January 2006 marriage.

The surge in abandoned bride cases comes even as women have made remarkable strides in Indian politics and business.

The country's top politician is Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi. Several Indian states have female chief ministers while the CEO of ICICI Bank, one of India's largest financial institutions, is also a woman.

The dowry system was officially outlawed in 1961 and prenatal gender identification is illegal, an attempt to prevent female foeticide.

But the success of the country's female leaders seems far removed in the villages and cities of Punjab.

One morning this week, Sandeep Kaur and her father, Gurmeet Singh, travelled to Jalandhar to discuss her case with police and Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, a former Indian cabinet minister who has been advocating a reform of Indian laws to prevent abandoned bride cases.

In Jalandhar, a haze-enveloped city crowded with sputtering diesel rickshaws, 20 new cases of abandoned brides are registered every day, a police inspector said. While firm statistics aren't available, Canadian-based families are said to be among the worst offenders.

As Sandeep Kaur and 18 other Punjabi wives gathered in the police station's grassy courtyard – all of them were abandoned brides – it was difficult at first to follow their conversation. It became easier when the women began trading stories about the whereabouts of their Canadian husbands.

'Downsview,' says one woman, above the din of the chatter and a wheezing ceiling fan. 'Scarborough,' says another. More chime in with 'Etobicoke' and 'Toronto' and one embittered woman wearing a bright pink sweatshirt and tights even mentions 'Jane St. and Finch St.' A half dozen say 'Brampton.' Most of the women wipe their eyes with a tissue. A few older women, aunts and mothers, nod their heads and cluck their tongues as they listen to the stories of shattered lives.

As Ramoowalia's staff serves a lunch of lentils and chapati, Minakshi, a 26-year-old who uses just one name, discusses how her husband in Toronto, Sanjeev Chabrotra, has returned to the dating scene – even though his wife says he's still legally married.

The two met in October 2007 and were married just days after Minakshi's father scrabbled together $11,000 for a cash dowry and another $2,200 to pay for gold rings and bracelets for Chabrotra's family. By February 2008, Chabrotra had returned to Canada and re-entered the dating scene.

Minakshi laid out printouts from online dating Internet sites such as plentyoffish.com. Chabrotra had posted a photo of himself online under the username 'DJSanj The Shark' and listed his status as single. 'Got the title of `most eligible bachelor' at my workplace,' he wrote. 'Rest I will tell u later on contact.'

'It's not that I want to go to Canada now, I just want him to come back and settle this with a divorce so I don't have this stigma,' Minakshi says.

Despite the wedding photos Minakshi provides – they show Chabrotra in a white wedding kurta with red, orange and white garlands around his neck – Chabrotra says the two never married because Minakshi's family asked his parents for '$100 million.'

'There are millions of issues and I'm not ready to share my bedroom stories with you,' Chabrotra says. In a subsequent email to the Star, he wrote: 'There were issues of her infidelity before marriage and after engagement and hence the engagement was called off. I believe that is the way of life and there might be thousands of cases similar to that.'

Like Minakshi, Sandeep Kaur was married to her husband Sahil Luthra within days of their meeting.

Luthra's family, which arrived in Batala in early April, had lived there years ago before emigrating to Brampton.

One night, the Luthra family showed up unannounced for tea and suggested Kaur would be a good match for their son. They insisted on a fast wedding, Kaur's father Gurmeet Singh recalls.

'He was nice and he was attractive,' he says.

The next day, the families held a ceremony to exchange rings and within weeks, the couple was preparing for a wedding and a honeymoon in the mountainous Indian state Himachal Pradesh.

'That's when the abuse started, when he started demanding that my family give him even more money,' Kaur says, pausing as she looked at a page in her wedding album with the caption, 'I wait all day just hoping for one more minute with you.'

Within two weeks, Luthra had returned to Brampton. But he didn't stop demanding more money, Kaur says. In an interview, Luthra denies demanding a car but he later changes his story.

'It doesn't matter ... I used to say so many things to her, she used to say so many things with me. You fight with your wife, right? ... I was angry.'

It's not as if there isn't an awareness over the risk involved with an arranged marriage to a non-resident Indian. The problems of domestic abuse and abandoned brides – the two often go hand-in-hand, authorities say – have been well known here since the early 1990s. The troubles of abandoned brides have been recounted in live theatre, poetry and traditional music and local newspapers here provide extensive coverage of cases.

'Yes, there are problems and dangers,' says Sukhjeet Kaur Sandhu, 29, whose husband returned to Toronto shortly after their wedding in April 2008.

Sandhu's father, a retired army officer who worked on the India-Pakistan border, raised $58,000 for a dowry for his daughter's husband, Jatinder Paul Virk, a 39-year-old truck driver who lives in Toronto. Sandhu said Virk last phoned her last summer to say he was ready to bring her to Canada – if her family paid $25,000 to cover the costs of her visa application (a visa and related fees actually cost about $800) and a further $58,000.

Virk insists he married Sandhu in good faith.

'She only married me to come to Canada,' he says. 'She was planning to leave me as soon as she landed here.'

While her wedding soured, Sandhu says marrying men from overseas is often worth the gamble for young women.

'We know in Canada there are great opportunities,' Sandhu says, wearing a pale yellow kurta and scarf. 'Here, our children go to school and get their degrees, their B.A. and M.A., and even then wind up protesting in the streets because there are no jobs. Canadians need to understand we do what we have to do for our kids.'

It's a compelling and passionate argument.

Still, some cases here underscore how complex the abandoned bride crisis has become. There can be greed on both sides of the ledger.

Gurmit Kaur Sanyha's 43-year-old father Chand Singh sold his tractor and his 2.4 hectare (six-acre) ancestral farm to help pay for his daughter's wedding in October 2006. When he struggled to come up with the money, his friends urged him to beg and borrow.

'They said, `You have worked so hard for so little and once she goes to Canada she will be able to repay you,'' Singh said, tears welling in his eyes.

Sanyha's fiancé, introduced to the family through a priest near their home in Amritsar, stoked Singh's ambition. 'He told me I had to find the money to pay a $35,000 dowry. He said if I did that, my daughter would be able to bring her brother to Canada. Then we could turn around and get a dowry of $93,000 from someone else for their daughter.'

Another woman explains how her family worked out an intricate arrangement where she was scheduled to marry a Canadian citizen and in exchange, her uncle's niece in Canada would marry her fiancé's cousin, an Indian.

Local Punjabi newspapers such as Ajit are full of ads advertising potential arranged marriages. 'One Canadian citizen, a Jatt Sikh boy, 22 years, needs a girl,' one such ad says. 'Only those should contact who can arrange a Canadian marital relations to his cousin, 23 years.'

Manish Tewari, an Indian member of parliament representing Ludhiana, Punjab, says the government is flummoxed over what to do about abandoned brides. The problem is akin to someone losing their money by betting on bad stocks.

'Our people need to be more vigilant and they need to check credentials extremely carefully before they enter into these alliances,' says Tewari, the ruling Congress Party's national spokesperson.

Some Indian politicians suggest India needs to push countries such as Canada to adopt a treaty where husbands who abandon their brides could be extradited to face family court hearings here. But Tewari says that's simply not practical.

'First you'd have to establish abandonment as a crime in Canada and how are you going to do that?' Tewari says. 'What has to be done is people have to get over the fascination of getting to Canada and other countries at any cost.'

Tewari says he plans to ask India's National Committee for Women to investigate the issue of abandoned brides and come up with some legal advice.

Whatever changes are made to Indian law are likely to come too late for Kaur. She concedes there's virtually no chance that Luthra will return to India to appear before a family court judge.

According to court documents, Luthra's father, Raj Kumar, was designated as a 'proclaimed offender' on July 17. Arrest warrants were pending for Sahil Luthra and his mother. (Luthra says the arrest warrants have been stayed pending a Nov. 27 court hearing and that his family has submitted $34,000 to an Indian court to settle the dowry issue.)

'Who will have us now?' Kaur asks, glancing at her companions. 'We now have a stigma and we are done for.'

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13.
Japan PM says nation should embrace migrants
Agence France Presse, November 14, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iVmFoMmC9CGTNe-bgP9pvt0HjFRA

Singapore (AFP) -- Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Saturday that his country, which is battling low birth rates and an ageing population, should make itself more attractive to migrants.

Japan has some of the world's strictest controls on immigration, and Hatoyama admitted that he was broaching a 'sensitive issue'.

But he said that as well as introducing pro-family policies, Japan should attempt to encourage migrants to live and work there.

'I think Japan should also make itself a country attractive to people so that more and more people, including tourists, hope to visit Japan, hope to live and work in Japan,' he said on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit.

'I am not sure if I can call this 'immigration policy', but what's important is to create an environment that is friendly to people all around the world so that they voluntarily live in Japan,' he said.

Japan has relatively few resident foreigners, although in recent years it has cautiously opened up its job market to nurses and care workers from some Southeast Asian countries.

'First, we will improve support for child-rearing by offering cash allowances for families with children,' before thinking about immigration to address the country's low birth rate, the premier said.

Japan's population has been shrinking since 2005. Despite efforts to raise the birth rate, a woman's average number of offspring now hovers around 1.3, well below the 2.07 needed to maintain the population.

Japan rejected the prospect of mass immigration under the conservative government led by the Liberal Democratic Party. Hatoyama's centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ousted them in September.

Some politicians have argued that an influx of immigrants would lead to lower wages for Japanese workers and a higher crime rate.

Hatoyama's DPJ has not detailed its immigration policy.

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14.
Dozens arrested in Hong Kong crackdown on asylum seekers
Deutsche Presse Agentur, November 15, 2009
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1513407.php/Dozens-arrested-in-Hong-Kong-crackdown-on-asylum-seekers

Hong Kong (DPA) -- Dozens of undocumented migrants have been arrested in Hong Kong in a crackdown on asylum seekers in the wealthy former British colony, officials said Sunday.

Police arrested seven employers and 22 workers on Saturday alone during the latest push to stem the tide of people entering the city from south Asian countries seeking employment.

The crackdown followed the adoption of a new legal provision prohibiting people without valid visas from working.

Hundreds of undocumented migrants from countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh have poured into Hong Kong since a High Court ruling in March allowing asylum seekers to work while their applications are considered.

The number of non-Chinese undocumented immigrants arrested in Hong Kong jumped from around 40 people a month at the beginning of the year to more than 150 a month in recent months.

An immigration department spokesman said the crackdown would continue and warned that migrants without proper working papers could expect 'stringent enforcement measures and criminal sanctions.'

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15.
S.Lanka refugees can stay for 3 months: Indonesia
Agence France Presse, November 15, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gACOGbeauViPAbc1Zes3SFUdyNFw

Jakarta (AFP) -- A group of 22 Sri Lankan asylum seekers who left an Australian customs ship to come ashore in Indonesia will be allowed to stay for up to three months, according to an official.

'We've given them a time frame of four weeks to at most 12 weeks to stay in Indonesia to process their refugee status. They must leave after that,' foreign ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah told AFP.

The group was among a total of 78 ethnic Tamils on the Oceanic Viking anchored off Bintan island near Singapore who had refused to leave the ship after being plucked from the sea by the Australians in Indonesia's search-and-rescue zone last month and taken to Indonesia.

They agreed to leave by ferry for immigration detention in Tanjung Pinang on Friday reportedly in exchange for resettlement in Australia within four to six weeks.

Indonesian Deputy Foreign Minister Triyono Wibowo on Saturday said those who have already had their refugee claims accepted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees would be resettled to another country in four weeks.

'For those who failed to get a refugee status, Australia should take them out of Indonesian waters or deport them to their home country,' he added.

The Oceanic Viking with 56 remaining asylum seekers on board had been granted permission to stay in Indonesian waters until Friday, Wibowo said.

'The remaining 56 migrants are still being persuaded by the Australians to come ashore,' he added.

The standoff has caused a political headache for Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has been under pressure over increasing arrivals that have seen more than 1,600 boat people this year seeking asylum from countries such as Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

Indonesia, which sprawls across 17,000 islands to Australia's north, has been a key staging point for migrants being taken by people smugglers on the perilous sea journey to Australia.

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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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