Daily news updates from CIS

December 7, 2009

Domestic News -- Click Here for Overseas News

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[For CISNEWS subscribers --

1. Obama admin increasingly concerned about home-grown terror
2. Fed report admits border weakness a terror threat
3. Feds waffle on prosecution of WA raid detainees
4. US attorney signals San Fran sanctuary at odds with fed. law (story, link)
5. Thawing Cuban relations lead to musical visitors
6. Trusted Traveler Program incorporates Spanish language
7. Sen. Reid hedging future on Hispanic support
8. MA senate candidate pledges amnesty support (link)
9. Report attacks detainee transfers
10. OH law to restrict illegals' access to vehicles
11. CA state tuition law under scrutiny
12. CO ballot would require employee verification
13. CA lieutenant governor candidate enjoys Latino support
14. MD county faces off with police union over arrest policy
15. IL police dept. reaches out to foreigners
16. Second generation Latinos struggle to advance
17. Limited computer access hinders immigrant students
18. African activist seeks union with Chicago Hispanics
19. TX charity serves unaccompanied minors
20. Chicago activists rally around illegal alien student
21. Boston ethnic festival fizzles
22. MO MLB team woos Cuban defector (link)
23. Applicants attend CA USCIS info session
24. Mexican cult takes root in Los Angeles
25. Racial tensions at Philly school boil over
26. Indigenous Mexicans struggle in WA
27. Illegals detained in IA plant raid face likely expulsion
28. Cartels focusing on youth recruitment
29. Two face smuggling charges in FL (link)
30. Brother of would-be TX bomber deported (link)

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

-- Mark Krikorian]


1.
U.S. sees homegrown Muslim extremism as rising threat
This may have been the most dangerous year since 9/11, anti-terrorism experts say.
By Sebastian Rotella
The Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-us-radicalization7-2009dec07,0,3941551.story?track=rss

The Obama administration, grappling with a spate of recent Islamic terrorism cases on U.S. soil, has concluded that the country confronts a rising threat from homegrown extremism.

Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims, driven by a wave of English-language online propaganda and reflected in aspiring fighters' trips to hot spots such as Pakistan and Somalia.

Europe had been the front line, the target of successive attacks and major plots, while the U.S. remained relatively calm. But the number, variety and scale of recent U.S. cases suggest 2009 has been the most dangerous year domestically since 2001, anti-terrorism experts said:

* There were major arrests of Americans accused of plotting with Al Qaeda and its allies, including an Afghan American charged in a New York bomb plot described as the most serious threat in this country since the Sept. 11 attacks.

* Authorities tracked other extremism suspects joining foreign networks, including Somali Americans going to the battlegrounds of their ancestral homeland and an Albanian American from Brooklyn who was arrested in Kosovo.

* The FBI rounded up homegrown terrorism suspects in Dallas, Detroit and Raleigh, N.C., saying that it had broken up plots targeting a synagogue, government buildings and military facilities.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued her strongest public comments yet on the homegrown threat.

'We've seen an increased number of arrests here in the U.S. of individuals suspected of plotting terrorist attacks, or supporting terror groups abroad such as Al Qaeda,' Napolitano said in a speech in New York. 'Home-based terrorism is here. And, like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront.'

Officials acknowledged that her tone had changed, though they said terrorism has been her focus since becoming Homeland Security chief.

In some of the 2009 cases, extremist leanings are suspected but motives are not known.

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- accused of killing 13 people in a Ft. Hood, Texas, shooting rampage last month -- has apparently suffered emotional problems. But in interviews, officials and experts have also raised his Muslim beliefs as an alleged motive.

A previous attack on the U.S. military, a shooting in June by an American convert who killed a soldier and wounded another at an Arkansas recruiting center, was apparently a case of a lone wolf radicalized in Yemen, according to Homeland Security officials.

'You are seeing the full spectrum of the threats you face in terrorism,' former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

'Radicalization is clearly happening in the U.S.,' said Mitchell Silber, director of analysis for the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department. 'In years past, you couldn't say that about the U.S. You could say it about Europe.'

Europe has suffered a militant onslaught: transport bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, an assassination in the Netherlands in 2004, and close calls such as the fiery failed attack on the Glasgow airport in 2007.

Hard borders have helped the U.S. ward off the threat. But experts also said that Islamic radicalization is more widespread in Europe. Crime, alienation and extremism roil Muslim immigrant communities in places like tiny Denmark and the vast slums of France.

In contrast, American Muslims are wealthier, better educated and better integrated because the United States does a good job of absorbing immigrants and fostering tolerance, experts said. During the last decade, Americans have been a rare presence in the Al Qaeda-connected camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan that have trained hundreds of Westerners and thousands of recruits from Muslim-majority nations.

Nonetheless, recent investigations have run across Americans suspected of being operatives of Al Qaeda and its allies who were trained overseas and, in several cases, allegedly conspired with top terrorism bosses. They include a convert from Long Island, N.Y, who was captured in Pakistan late last year; a Chicago businessman accused of scouting foreign targets for a Pakistani network; and at least 15 Somali American youths from Minneapolis who returned to fight in their ancestral homeland.

'A larger trend has emerged that is not surprising, but is disturbing,' Chertoff said. 'You are beginning to see the fruits of the pipeline that Al Qaeda built to train Westerners and send them back to their homelands. . . . This underscores the central significance of disrupting the pipeline at its source.'

A campaign of U.S. airstrikes launched last year has pounded Al Qaeda hide-outs in Pakistan. But the flow of trainees gathered momentum in 2007 when Pakistani security forces ceded turf to militant groups, officials said. The suspect in the New York plot, Najibullah Zazi, and the Long Island convert, Bryant Neal Vinas, allegedly met in Pakistan in 2008 and discussed attacks on U.S. targets with Al Qaeda chiefs.

Vinas and Zazi are the first Americans to be accused of joining Al Qaeda in several years.

Meanwhile, Silber said in recent congressional testimony: 'There have been a half-dozen cases of individuals who, instead of traveling abroad to carry out violence, have elected to attempt to do it here. This is substantially greater than what we have seen in the past, and may reflect an emerging pattern.'

Some feel radicalization in the United States has been worse than authorities thought for some time.

'People focused on the idea that we're different, we're better at integrating Muslims than Europe is,' said Zeyno Baran, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington. 'But there's radicalization -- especially among converts [and] newcomers, such as the Somali case shows. I think young U.S. Muslims today are as prone to radicalization as Muslims in Europe.'

In proportion to population, extremism still appears less intense in the United States. But the Internet functions as the global engine of extremism. Websites expose Americans to a wave of slick, English-language propaganda from ideologues such as Anwar Awlaki, the Yemeni American described as a spiritual guide for the accused Ft. Hood shooter and other Westerners.

And socioeconomic success will not necessarily prevent Americans' radicalization. Studies suggest that a quest for identity and the bonding process among small groups often drive militants more than personal hardship does.

'The profile in Europe is in general quite different [from U.S. extremists]: more working-class or even underclass,' said a European intelligence official who requested anonymity for security reasons. 'But it's a bit simplistic to make assumptions. We have seen everything in Europe -- educated people, doctors involved in terrorism. The underclass argument is not enough.'

The Obama administration began the year with gestures to the Muslim world. President Obama promised to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and made a historic speech in Cairo.

The Homeland Security Department leads the administration's counter-radicalization effort. The Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which works with Muslim leaders, held summit meetings with Somali communities this year in Minnesota and Ohio, said David Heyman, assistant Homeland Security secretary for policy.

But that office still lacks a director, critics point out, and the department has yet to fill other key posts as well.

'We don't do enough about fostering a counter-narrative,' said Matthew Levitt, a former anti-terrorism official for the Treasury Department now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 'Competing for space with the radicalizers and challenging their radical ideologies is the key.'

In contrast to the heightened extremist activity in the United States, Europe has remained relatively calm this year. But the West needs to keep up its guard on both sides of the Atlantic, said Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian French scholar who interviewed jailed extremists for his book 'Inside Jihadism.'

'You can be middle-class and have bright prospects but become a jihadist,' he said. 'We have to broaden the analysis. This idea of American exceptionalism, the comparison with Europe, should not blind us to the fact that we are going toward a broader participation in jihad.'

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2.
Documents identify terrorism threat in border gaps
Congressman Rob Bishop -- He wants congressional hearings; Sen. Bob Bennett concurs
By Thomas Burr
The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City), December 6, 2009
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13936032

Washington, DC -- Shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a secret government report highlighted a way terrorists might easily enter the United States carting weapons of mass destruction.

It wasn't by air or sea.

The classified analysis pointed to an arid and sparsely populated stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona teeming with drug runners.

'This area has become very active with smuggling and encrypted radio traffic,' says the report titled 'Threat Assessment for Public Lands' completed by the Interior Department in late 2002. 'This would be an ideal area to smuggle a weapon of mass destruction.'

The report, marked 'sensitive,' surfaced recently in a load of documents uncovered by Utah Republican Rep. Rob Bishop.

Officials with the federal departments of Interior and Homeland Security insist the report is outdated, but refused to release updated assessments.

Porous stretches. Moreover, while officials stress a huge investment in fencing and border patrols has cut down smuggling traffic, one of Interior's top cops acknowledged portions of the border are still porous.

'I don't want to suggest that the concern has completely dissipated and I can't go any further without straying into classified materials,' said Larry Parkinson, Interior's deputy assistant secretary for law enforcement. 'Anytime you have the ability for bad actors to come across the border, the Mexican border, the Canadian border or you know, flying into an airport, that concern will be there and I think we would be kidding ourselves if we suggested that all of those holes have been filled.'

There's little disagreement that federal officials have made great strides since 2002 in shoring up high-traffic areas along the southern U.S. border.

Congress set up the Homeland Security Department and retooled the Immigration and Naturalization Service into the Customs and Border Patrol. Its top mission is preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States, and there are now nearly 20,000 CBP officers on the job.

But as noted in the 2002 Interior report, and subsequently in a 2006 forecast by Homeland Security, the heightened security around entry points may funnel more smugglers -- moving drugs or worse -- through more rural, unpopulated areas.

Bishop, along with several other Republicans in Congress, say that one region of the U.S.-Mexican border -- a miles-long expanse abutting federal wild lands -- is a prime national security lapse that needs fixing.

'The fact is that we have had for several years large parts of our border areas ... controlled by human traffickers, potential terrorists, and especially, drug cartels,' Bishop says.

Terrorist threat. Bishop, the ranking Republican on a House subcommittee that oversees federal public lands, says he is concerned that wilderness laws are impeding the ability to secure the nation's borders.

He cites as an example Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument along the U.S.-Mexico border. In that situation, Interior officials said federal law forbids placing surveillance towers in wilderness areas but the department found alternative sites that are compatible with Homeland Security's needs. Some 95 percent of the monument is protected wilderness.

As part of several requests the congressman has made to Interior and Homeland Security, he unearthed the threat assessment from 2002. The section on terrorism, while only a small portion of the overall report, is blunt.

Terrorists who want to smuggle nuclear, biological or chemical weapons into America, the report says, could use 'well-established smuggling routes' over Interior-managed lands and in fact, those routes 'invite' that type of activity.

The crackdown on border entry points, shipping ports and airports will create 'additional incentives' for terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas to use public lands to enter and bring in weapons to U.S. soil, the report states.

Along the specific stretch mentioned in the 2002 Interior report, Homeland Security has erected a combination of fencing, vehicle barriers or pedestrian impediments, and a virtual fence of surveillance towers with radar and monitoring equipment is expected to be completed next year.

Homeland response. 'U.S. Customs and Border Protection is always focused on preventing any terrorists and their weapons from entering the United States,' Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler says.

The department did not respond to specific questions about the stretch of border mentioned in the 2002 report. But a department planning guide from September 2006 shows it was still a concern then.

'Long-established, criminal smuggling networks, particularly in Mexico, may become increasingly attractive for exploitation by terrorist groups attempting to cross U.S. land borders,' states the document produced by the border patrol.

Chandler says that between October 2006 and this last fiscal year, the border patrol has boosted personnel, physical structures and technology along the southwest border, and has doubled the number of border patrol agents since 2001, now up to 17,000. This year alone, the department tripled the number of intelligence analysts working in that border region.

Parkinson, Interior's deputy secretary for law enforcement, says he's unsure why the area around the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was highlighted in the 2002 report but that there have been quarterly reports since showing progress in protecting the U.S.-Mexico border.

'Rarely do we go another three months without having another southwest border threat assessments,' Parkinson said. That clashes, however, with a letter to Bishop from an Interior attorney last month that said the original 2002-2003 threat assessment and an amended version of the same report were the only ones that existed.

Still, Parkinson maintains that assessing threats is a constantly evolving process and investments in physical barriers and manpower along the border is having a significant impact.

Coordination or disarray? While Bishop claims interdepartmental strife and turf battles are impeding the ability to secure the border, Jane Lyder, Interior's deputy assistant secretary over national parks, says a 2006 agreement between her department and Homeland Security has improved coordination.

'I'm pretty pleased right now between the relationship between Interior and [Homeland Security],' she says. 'I think it's as good as it's ever been.'

Sen. Bob Bennett, a Utah Republican who sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, says Bishop's investigation into the issue has prompted him to start asking questions, too.

The senator said one positive, natural protection the border provides is the remoteness of big swaths of the political line between the United States and Mexico or Canada.

'But if you have the profit motive of a drug cartel who says we are willing to put up with all the difficulty of that and establish a regular route of getting through in those places then all of a sudden there is a carrier, if you will, that a terrorist could latch on to and move in,' Bennett says.

He says he wants Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to tell his committee if the area is secure.

If so, says Bennett, 'Fine. Just demonstrate to us there is no problem now.'

Bishop has also requested a hearing and says he doesn't buy the two departments' assurances that the threat has been nearly neutralized in the border region.

'When I see it; when I get stopped by it; I'll be happy,' he says.

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3.
Washington Raid Brings Deportations, Mixed Signals
The Associated Press, December 5, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/05/us/AP-US-Worksite-Raid.html

Bellingham, WA (AP) -- First they were arrested and faced deportation under what has proven to be the Obama administration's only workplace raid. Then they were given work permits, and told they could stay in the United States while their employer was being prosecuted.

Now, the more than two dozen undocumented workers arrested during the February raid here at Yamato Engine Specialists Ltd. are again facing deportation.

''Well, what can you do? You can't run, that'd be worse,'' Gerardo Arreola Gonzalez, one of the 28 workers arrested, said about the raid. ''I had to face it. Yes, I felt fear, thinking, 'The dream is over.'''

Gonzalez's unusual journey through the immigration system symbolizes just how much immigration policy has changed under President Barack Obama -- and how it's still a work in progress.

The deportations and likely removals are a conclusion to a case that displeased both advocates for illegal immigrants and those who lobby for stricter immigration enforcement.

In this case, the company, the workers, and even the Seattle U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office that conducted the raid came in for some sort of punishment or special scrutiny.

Two days after the raid, ICE officials traded urgent e-mails going over answers to questions sent by an apparently miffed White House, according to e-mails obtained by the Associated Press through a federal records request.

In all, 28 men and women -- mostly from Mexico -- were arrested that February morning. One man opted to leave the country shortly after the raid. The 27 who remained were given work permits until the case against Yamato ended.

Now, five of the 27 workers have been deported. Seven have been allowed to leave the country voluntarily and 15 await court dates with an immigration judge, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lorie Dankers.

Dankers declined to comment further on the case.

''We're disappointed. We really did think that things would be different under the Obama administration,'' said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica, a Seattle-based immigration advocacy group. ''It's very mixed signals ... we thought we were getting an administration that was supportive.''

Immigration advocates were elated when Obama took office, thinking he'd bring immigrant-friendly enforcement policies. The raid shocked them, and they protested loudly.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano then ordered an internal review of the raid. The workers arrested were given work permits, and the company became the focus of the investigation.

But those who favor strict immigration enforcement saw Napolitano's review as a signal for lax enforcement, and a rebuke to the Bush administration's immigration policy.

For William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, Obama's approach to targeting involved employers is no better than the Bush administration's targeting of those here illegally. Both are incomplete policies, he said.

''I am for the actual enforcement against all parties involved in illegal immigration,'' Gheen said. ''Obama is an arbitrary enforcer, just like Bush, on immigration.''

The Obama administration's approach became clearer in the months after the raid: a focus on employers. Hundreds of audit forms were sent out to businesses nationwide, notifying employers to certify that their workers have valid Social Security numbers and other forms of identification proving eligibility to work in the U.S. The administration has also sought to maintain workable enforcement agreements between ICE and local police agencies, and has sought to improve conditions for immigrants detained by the government.

The government's audits of employment status have led to significant job losses. In Los Angeles, American Apparel fired 1,500 workers in September. In Minneapolis, another 1,200 janitors were cut in November.

In order to level charges against employers who hire illegal immigrants, federal prosecutors need the testimony of those workers, and that requires the arrest, confinement and questioning of employees to obtain evidence.

''The most convincing part of that proof comes from illegal aliens,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Reno said after the Yamato case. ''It's going to be just as disruptive to the illegal aliens. That's not going to change.''

That new reality doesn't sit well with either side of the immigration debate.

''How could you trust their testimony if you bribed them for it? These people will say anything you want them to say,'' Gheen said.

''They're saying they're not actively going after the worker, but the workers are a casualty when they have lost their jobs,'' Jayapal said.

Meanwhile, ICE officials were heartened by some of the response they received to the raid, according to the e-mails obtained by the AP.

Seattle-based Special Agent in Charge Leigh Winchell forwarded an e-mail to his staff from Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, a vocal immigration enforcement advocate, who said Napolitano's call for a review was ''backwards.''

''I cannot control the politics that take place with these types of situations, but I can remind you that you are great servants of this country and this agency,'' Winchell wrote to his troops.

Days after the raid, Winchell told his office to convey that ICE is going after the employer, not the workers, according to the e-mails.

The case against Yamato concluded in September with a $100,000 fine being leveled. Members of the immigrant family that owns the company issued a public apology. Yamoto's owners fled Uganda four decades ago when dictator Idi Amin's regime drove out the country's entrepreneurial Indian minority.

Messages left with Yamato management for this story were not returned.

With the case wrapped up, notices of court appearances for the workers began to appear. ICE agents had warned the workers of it.

Gonzalez, who is from Mexico, had entered the country in 1998 at the age of 19, first living in Arizona, where he started his family. He came to Washington seeking a better job, becoming a welder at Yamato, making $10 an hour. For now, a local lawyer is helping him but he knows he could face deportation.

''If I have to go to my country, I have to go to my country,'' Gonzalez said. ''...it'll be a challenge for (my family).''

At Yamato, under a basket of employment applications, a poster now warns that Yamato is a company that uses E-verify -- the federal program that checks a worker's eligibility to work in the United States.

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4.
US Atty Poised To Prosecute SF Sanctuary Providers
The Bay City News, December 4, 2009
http://sfappeal.com/alley/2009/12/us-atty-poised-to-prosecute-sf-sanctuary-providers.php

U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello on Thursday, responding to an inquiry by San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, said he couldn't guarantee city employees who implement the city's revised sanctuary ordinance would be immune from federal prosecution.

The new law, passed by the Board of Supervisors after overturning a veto by Mayor Gavin Newsom on Nov. 10, amends the sanctuary ordinance to prohibit undocumented youth accused of felonies from being reported to federal immigration authorities until conviction.

The city has for more than a year been reporting adults and juveniles suspected of being in the country illegally to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the booking stage after a felony arrest.

The new legislation is set to go into effect next Thursday. After that, the Juvenile Probation Department has 60 days to change its policies and practices to comply with the ordinance.

Herrera, who approved the drafting of the ordinance authored by Supervisor David Campos but at the same time warned it might put the city at risk for lawsuits, wrote Russoniello after the veto overturn asking for assurances that city law enforcement and employees will not face federal prosecution by implementing it.

Herrera's office was also quick to post Russoniello's response Thursday on its Web site.
Russoniello wrote in the letter that 'it probably will come as no surprise to you that I have no authority, discretionary or otherwise, to grant amnesty from federal prosecution to anyone who follows the protocol set out in the referenced ordinance.'

He went on to say that 'not every case' in which there is evidence a federal crime has been committed and belief a conviction can be obtained do prosecutors file charges, for a variety of reasons, including the 'limited resources' of his department.

Russoniello mentioned that all illegal immigrants, including juveniles accused of serious crimes such as selling drugs or being gang members, 'are subject to deportation regardless of whether they are convicted or not.'

He added that 'enforcement priority is directed toward those persons whose arrests evidence probable cause to believe they pose a threat to their communities.'

'Of the numerous proposals advancing immigration law reform, none that I am aware of provide for or hint at, for that matter, creating a mechanism whereby illegal aliens who have or are engaged in dangerous criminal misconduct will be entitled to adjustment of their status or any other favorable treatment, which is why shielding them from detection by federal authorities now is not only potentially illegal but probably futile,' Russoniello said.

Herrera also wrote in his Nov. 10 letter that if Russoniello could not provide assurance he would not prosecute, he 'may be compelled to explore with City policymakers other options regarding the implementation and enforcement' of the amendment.

One option includes the possibility of Herrera's office filing its own federal lawsuit seeking a ruling from the court on the validity of the amendment.

+++

Sanctuary law 'futile,' US Attorney says
By Joshua Sabatini
The San Francisco Examiner, December 3, 2009
http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/under-the-dome/Futile-sanctuary-law-US-Attny-says--78481627.html

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5.
Friendlier Obama Tune on Cuba Brings Musical Detente
Reuters, December 4, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/12/04/arts/entertainment-us-cuba-usa-music.html

Havana (Reuters -- Cuban musicians are returning to perform in the United States after a long freeze on such visits, seizing the opportunity of friendlier overtures toward Havana from U.S. President Barack Obama.

Well-known Cuban musicians are being granted visas to perform at U.S. venues in a sign that Obama's administration is quietly promoting cultural contacts as part of a strategy of warmer 'people to people' ties with the Communist-run island.

The more relaxed atmosphere between the Cold War era enemies is perhaps most evident in the arts, which in the past has provided a bridge between the two neighbors which have not had formal diplomatic ties for close to half a century.

Omara Portuondo, the 79-year-old diva of the legendary Buena Vista Social Club group, was invited to help host the Latin Grammy awards last month in Las Vegas, a ceremony off-limits for Cuban artists during the hardline relationship that marked the Bush administration years.

After taking office in January, Obama promised to 'recast' U.S.-Cuban ties and softened some sanctions, although the 47-year U.S. trade embargo remains in place and Cuba is still on a U.S. list of 'state sponsors of terrorism.'

Obama's easing included lifting restrictions on family visits by Cuban Americans to the island, and has now been followed by a string of U.S. visas for cultural exchanges.

Portuondo's visit was soon followed by one by the Septeto Nacional, another legend of Cuban 'son' rhythm that has just returned from touring New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and even Miami, a stronghold of die-hard Cuban exiles that in the past has often been hostile to such appearances.

Another well-known Cuban singer-songwriter, Carlos Varela, is currently on a three-week U.S. visit.

Varela, whose songs have captured the disenchantment of many young Cubans, met a White House official for lunch at a Washington restaurant, according to the organizers of his trip, He also met two members of Congress.

'Everywhere we played it was packed. The main newspapers in the U.S. wrote about our work. The atmosphere was very positive, even in Miami,' Ricardo Oropesa, manager of Septeto Nacional, told Reuters.

While still far apart ideologically, the U.S.-Cuban relationship seems to have warmed enough for Los Van Van, Cuba's most famous salsa band ever, to be planning a 70-stop tour in the United States next year.

David Calzado and his Charanga Habanera, another big name in Cuba's salsa scene, is getting ready for a year end concert in Miami.

Despite a general U.S. ban on travel by Americans to Cuba, except with special licenses, there are signs too of U.S. bands putting Havana on their schedules. Rhythm and blues band Kool & The Gang will play concerts in Cuba on December 19-22 and their publicist, David Brokaw, said they had permission for the trip.

'Quiet Opening'

Dan Erikson, a Cuba expert with the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, calls this a 'quiet opening' in culture.

'Although it is still too early to tell whether this amounts to a significant shift in policy, it indicates that the U.S. and Cuba are continuing to reduce bilateral tensions in subtle but important ways,' he said.

With more than 44 million Hispanics, the United States is the biggest market for Latin music. Appetite for Cuban rhythms was already evident in Buena Vista Social Club's past success in the United States in selling over 1.5 million CDs there.

Plans to have Cuban artists such as Portuondo and folk singers Silvio Rodriguez or Pablo Milanes play in the United States were drafted as soon as Obama emerged as a presidential candidate.

Yet booking a Cuban artist remains a complicated task, says San Francisco-based promoter Bill Martinez, who organized the recent tour by Septeto Nacional.

'It is difficult to book Cuban groups because of the lack of confidence from the venues, cultural centers and potential collaborating presenters. They don't believe the visas will be issued and this makes it very difficult to get commitments or confirm logistics,' he said.

State Department officials have to be begged for visas and under U.S. regulations Cuban artists are entitled to receive only transport, lodging and a per diem but not performance payments as they would anywhere else.

'U.S. policy continues to make this brief 'breakthrough' a rather ephemeral, shallow victory of sorts,' said Martinez.

'Miami Has Changed'

Cuban musicians previously toured the United States during times of detente such as under Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s, but stopped after George W. Bush took over in 2001.

After winning a Grammy in 1999, Los Van Van had to watch the ceremony on TV the following four years they were nominated for awards because Washington didn't grant them visas. All five nominees for the Best Traditional Tropical Album in 2004 were Cuban and none of them were allowed to attend the ceremony in Los Angeles.

American producer Ry Cooder, the man behind the world success of Buena Vista Social Club, was even fined by the U.S. Treasury Department for traveling to Cuba without a license.

The real test for the new wave of cultural diplomacy will be Miami, center of a 1.5 million-strong Cuban exile community that has not always welcomed musicians from the island.

A performance by Los Van Van in Miami in 1999 required protection from SWAT teams.

But recent opinion polls suggest many exiles are warming to closer people-to-people contacts across the Florida Straits. After initial opposition, many exiles ended up applauding a September 'Peace without Borders' concert staged by Colombian singer Juanes in Havana's Revolution Square.

'Miami has changed a lot in the last 10 years,' said Juan Formell, Los Van Van's leader, announcing the U.S. tour.

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6.
Spanish-speaking travelers can now apply for Trusted Traveler Program in their language
The El Paso Times (TX), December 4, 2009
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_13928878?source=most_viewed

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced today the Global Online Enrollment System (GOES) web site has been enhanced to facilitate the Trusted Traveler Program application process for Spanish-speaking travelers.

Trusted traveler programs provide expedited CBP processing for pre-approved, low-risk travelers and include NEXUS, SENTRI, FAST and Global Entry, a spokeswoman said.

Travelers interested in becoming a Trusted Traveler Program member can apply by submitting their application online through GOES at https://goes-app.cbp.dhs.gov/. Applicants must voluntarily undergo a biographical background check against criminal, law enforcement, customs, immigration and terrorist indices; a 10-fingerprint law enforcement check; and a personal interview with a CBP officer at a program enrollment center. Program fees apply and must be paid at the time of application.

Approved Trusted Traveler Program members can now also update their passport or Lawful Permanent Resident card information on GOES at https://goes-app.cbp.dhs.gov/, officials said in a statement.

Also, the agency announced today that members of its Free and Secure Trade (FAST) program will not be able to use their old FAST card in passenger lanes, effective January 5, 2010.

CBP has been issuing new cards for current FAST members since March 16. The new cards have enhanced security features that allow U.S. citizen cardholders to comply with the documentary requirements under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI). All members are requested to activate their new cards within 30 days by going to https://goes-app.cbp.dhs.gov/ and destroying their old ones, CBP officials said in a statement.

If members have not received their new cards, they should go immediately to their local enrollment center to either pick up their new card or to apply to have a new card issued, which will take approximately 10 to 14 days to receive.

All old FAST cards will be deactivated January 5, 2010. CBP officers will allow a one-time entry into the U.S. to travelers with old FAST cards, but will seize the card from the traveler and refer the member to the Enrollment Center.

For more information, please visit www.cbp.gov.

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7.
Reid Sees Votes in Immigration
By John Stanton and Tory Newmyer
Roll Call (Washington, DC), December 7, 2009
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_65/news/41185-1.html?type=printer_friendly

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) may not have a chance of passing an immigration reform bill next year, but that’s not going to stop him from keeping the contentious issue on the chamber’s front burner as he tries to rally Hispanic voters behind what’s likely to be a brutal bid for a fifth term.

Reid has repeatedly said that enacting comprehensive immigration reform is one of his top priorities and at one point even suggested the issue could be tackled in 2009. Although little movement has been made so far, those close to the Majority Leader say he will use his powerful perch in the months ahead to continue championing the issue and talking about the need to get reform enacted as he heads into next November.

Reid spokesman Rodell Mollineau said Friday that Reid remains committed to passing legislation during this Congress. 'Sen. Reid has been publicly vocal for some time that an immigration overhaul that is tough and fair, secures our borders, and brings undocumented people out of the shadows is a top priority. It’s good for Nevada, and it’s good for this country,' Mollineau said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said that while Senators recognize they have a responsibility to address the issue at some point, he isn’t sure 'there’s broad Senate-wide appetite to take it on next year.'

At the same time, however, Whitehouse said there are some indications that Democratic leaders may be serious about moving the issue forward in 2010. He pointed to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who as the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security has made comprehensive reform a near-term priority. Reid separately tapped Schumer, the Conference vice chairman and a loyal lieutenant, to spearhead the issue in the Senate.

'That’s a very significant step because Chuck is an unusually energetic and bold legislator,' Whitehouse said of Schumer’s role on the Judiciary Committee. 'He can see a way to get things done before other people can.'

'With proper leadership, if folks are shown a way, it’s much more appealing,' Whitehouse added.

Indeed, Schumer continues to hold ongoing talks with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on a potential compromise bill, and GOP aides said Friday that he has reached out to several other Republicans in the past several weeks. However, those efforts to find broader buy-in from Republicans have been unsuccessful thus far — and the fact that the health care debate has dragged on this long has pushed back Schumer and Graham’s timeline.

While the pair had originally hoped to have legislation ready by early next year, it now appears that the earliest a comprehensive package will be made public is in early spring, Democratic aides said.

And even if those efforts are successful, it is far from certain that Reid will be able to bring it to the floor. With a forthcoming war supplemental, jobs legislation, financial regulatory reform and possibly a climate change bill all on deck, immigration reform may ultimately be crowded out.

But those close to Reid said that regardless of whether he has a realistic chance of moving a bill, he still plans to make immigration a high-profile issue. While Reid has had a long history of supporting immigration reform, it has become an even higher priority — thanks to the growth of the Hispanic vote in Nevada.

'This is an issue Reid has believed in for years ... even before political advantageousness became involved,' said Andres Ramirez, senior vice president and director of hispanic programs at the New Democrat Network. Ramirez, who worked on immigration issues for several years in Reid’s office, argued that while Reid’s interest in immigration reform may have actually hurt him in previous elections, the changing face of Nevada has turned the issue into a critical one for the Democratic leader.

With abysmal public polling numbers, Reid’s re-election is far from secure. Former GOP state Chairwoman Sue Lowden and attorney Danny Tarkanian are the leading candidates to unseat him.

'Certainly, yes, there is a lot of benefit that will help him with the Hispanic electorate in Nevada,' Ramirez said.

Ramirez pointed out that over the past three electoral cycles, Hispanic registration and voter turnout have continued to rise. In fact, the Latinos, who make up 13 percent of the state’s population, accounted for 15 percent of the voters in the 2008 election, in part because immigration reform sparked their interest in political participation.

'Immigration is somewhat of a litmus test issue' for Hispanic voters who may not otherwise decide to vote, Ramirez said.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the pro-immigrant National Immigration Forum, said a highly energized base of reform advocates will help make the case that immigration is a winning issue for politically vulnerable lawmakers, Reid included.

'Sen. Reid has been great on this issue for years, and looking at his re-election and the strength of his party, you see the incentive,' he said.

Reid’s calculus is also shaping expectations in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has put her leadership team on notice that House action on a bill is likely next year, given her belief that the Senate will move first.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who takes the lead on the issue for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he plans to drop a comprehensive immigration reform package in the next two weeks that will set a liberal standard in the debate. But he said the Senate needs to go first, and he thinks it will. 'Why would we want to foster a sense of hope when we well know that without any action from the Senate, our actions here would be futile?' he said. 'Let us first go where there is difficulty.'

The issue came to a head in the House last month during last-minute wrangling over how a sweeping health care overhaul would treat undocumented workers. Members of the CHC threatened to vote down the measure if leaders added hard-line Senate language banning illegal immigrants from buying their own coverage through new health insurance exchanges. Democrats decided against the tougher approach, then dodged a bullet on the floor when Republicans opted not to force a vote on it.

House Democrats will likely have to swallow stricter Senate language in conference negotiations. But Pelosi has privately argued that a broader immigration reform bill will largely render the provision moot by giving legal status to those it targets.

But moderate Democrats in the House do not seem inclined to take up the difficult issue. With the economy still sputtering and a challenging midterm election around the corner, aides to several centrists said taking another tough vote on such a divisive issue would amount to political suicide — even if the Senate manages to pass a bill first.

'If we’re dumb enough to put immigration on the floor next year, I’m calling a headhunter,' one senior Democratic aide said.

A senior GOP aide in the Senate also argued that despite his rhetoric, Reid, too, may find immigration unpalatable for his vulnerable Members after this year’s contentious health care reform fight.

'It would be awful for him because he’s already making his moderates take tough votes on health care,' the aide said.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) agreed, saying that while Reid may want to 'talk' about doing immigration reform, the political risks for his incumbents may be too high.

'I have a hard time believing they’re going to want to add immigration on top of that when its potentially one of the most contentious issues you can deal with,' Cornyn said.

But Ramirez, who works in Nevada, said that in the end, Latinos in the state will be less concerned about whether he passes legislation next year and more interested in with whether Reid shows the courage to take it on.

'Voters in Nevada are going to look for his leadership on this issue. ... [Reid] has to show that he is still with our community and supportive of this issue,' he said.

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8.
In Final Weekend Push, Capuano Says He’s ‘Within The Margin Of Error’
By Fred Thys
The WBUR News (Boston), December 7, 2009

Boston -- Friday night found Rep. Michael Capuano in East Boston, at a Christmas dinner held by Latinos United in Massachusetts. The group asked him to promise he would get immigration reform passed next year if elected to the U.S. Senate.

Capuano told the audience he is happy to stand with them on the issue but warned it would be tough to get it through Congress in 2010, because it’s an election year.

'I’ll tell you one thing,' Capuano told banquet hall of mostly empty tables, 'I am one of the few people around who I know who I am. I’m the grandson of immigrants, who actually came to East Boston first, before they moved to Somerville.'

Lucy Pineda, founder of Latinos United in Massachusetts, said her organization can’t endorse anyone, but she did predict a winner:

'Capuano,' Pineda said. 'Capuano, he’s in Washington. He’s the person that is there, and he knows what’s going on with immigration reform. He knows what’s going on with the problems with the immigrant community, and we have a survey with the four candidates, and when I read the survey, Martha, she never answered nothing about immigration reform in the survey.'

The next morning, at the South Coast forum at UMass Dartmouth, Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca talked about his own immigrant roots.

'My grandfather was a shoemaker,' Pagliuca said. 'He came from Italy in 1922 with nothing, worked on a factory floor.'

When the candidates there were asked about higher education, Capuano emphasized the importance of vocational schools instead.
. . .
http://www.wbur.org/2009/12/07/candidates-weekend

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9.
Immigration detainee transfers: a costly game of musical chairs
By Laura Tillman
The Brownsville Herald (TX), December 5, 2009
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/immigration-105944-practice-game.html

The elaborate practice of shuffling hundreds of thousands of immigration detainees between the nation’s detention centers deprives these individuals of access to legal counsel, places them in more rigid court systems, and results in wrongful deportations, according to a new report released by Human Rights Watch.

The report, released last week, also found that the practice of transferring detainees is rising dramatically, with 53 percent of the decade’s 1.4 million immigration detainee transfers occurring during the past two years alone.

A second report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, also last week, echoed many of the concerns presented in the Human Rights Watch report. Inspector General Richard L. Skinner found that ICE officials frequently did not follow the agency’s own standards when transferring detainees. Detainees, ICE officials confirmed, are frequently transferred away from their attorneys with no notification, even though they often have a high probability of posting bond or, conversely, despite having active arrest warrants in the area where they were previously held.

A third report, by The Constitution Project, shows that immigration detention centers are overutilized, and that immigrants are held for long periods unnecessarily.

Together the three reports show that the problems local immigration attorneys consistently contend with are both increasing and widespread. Texas received the most detainee transfers in the past decade, according to the Human Rights Watch report, with detention centers in Port Isabel and Raymondville making the list of top facilities receiving transfers.

The report’s author, Alison Parker, says the impact of transfers can’t be overestimated. There is no public database to track detainees, so they are sometimes 'lost' for days or weeks before family members and attorneys are able to find them. Attorneys are not always allowed to represent their clients telephonically, and most detainees can’t afford to fly attorneys long distances.

'The law is literally changing beneath people’s feet,' Parker said, referring to the different immigration circuits that divide the country into a patchwork of outcomes for detainees. In South Texas, which falls under the jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the judges follow legal precedents that are particularly unsympathetic to immigrants, Parker said.

Jodi Goodwin, a Harlingen immigration attorney, says many of her clients are transferred to a region with no relationship to the crimes they committed or the lives they’ve built in this country. Offenders in the criminal justice system are afforded the right to a trial in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. Although immigration detainees are not necessarily guilty of any crime, they are held for extended periods without the right to stand trial in the area where they are apprehended, she said.

Four of Goodwin’s current clients illustrate the predicament.

'These were young kids, coming to the U.S. when they were 2 to 4 years old,' Goodwin said of her clients, who are from Guyana, Jamaica, India and Haiti. 'All of them grew up in New York and are now 21 to 28. For all intents and purposes, they’re as American as American can be, with those big Brooklyn accents,' Goodwin said. 'Then they get a misdemeanor, two counts of possession of marijuana.'

The offenses happened when they were teenagers. For an American teenager they would be a forgotten part of adolescence — being caught with a joint during a traffic stop. Years later they were all picked up and detained.

In New York, Goodwin said, these men would have been able to demonstrate to the court their eligibility for discretionary relief. The crime would be considered a misdemeanor, and with the testimony of their family members and professors, they’d have a good chance at staying in the country.

But soon they were shipped to South Texas, to the Fifth Circuit. Suddenly the misdemeanors became aggravated felonies.

'The only thing here is their body,' Goodwin said. 'The only reason they’re here is because ICE brought them here.'

At least in the case of these detainees, they were able to locate Goodwin and hire her. For many others, without family connections or a clear understanding of the U.S. legal system, a transfer can mean their ties are cut off to whoever might have helped them.

Goodwin is one of a handful of immigration attorneys in the Rio Grande Valley, which has one of the worst ratios of attorneys to detainees in the nation. Before she had children Goodwin was working 120 hour weeks, always with the presence of mind that if she helped one less person, that person would most likely be deported, sometimes to a perilous fate.

'ICE knows there’s not a lot of lawyers down here,' Goodwin said. 'The system is built to break somebody down. The system will crush a person’s spirit, until they just give up. Until they say, ‘Get me out of this madness.’ '

In fact, the Human Rights Watch report shows that asylum seekers with lawyers won asylum in nearly 50 percent of cases, while those without a lawyer won just 16.3 percent of the time.

The Human Rights Watch report did not find evidence of intent on ICE’s part to deprive detainees of legal council. However, Parker said that ICE’s primary reason for transferring people doesn’t necessarily hold water.

ICE says that detainees are transferred for bed space, for health treatment and, principally, for cost effectiveness. Bed space may be a good argument. There are 4,000 beds in South Texas, and plenty of those lie waiting for people transferred here. But Human Rights Watch could not find a single detainee transferred for medical reasons.

Cost, the principal reason provided, is disputable, Parker added. Does it cost more to keep someone in one area, or pay the cost of a flight from, say, New York to Texas, or Chicago to Hawaii? Parker said she could not find public accounting that would explain the costs saved when a detainee is transferred. But she said there are considerable costs involved in the transfer process.

'At a minimum it costs a plane fare for the detainee and ICE officials, as well as ground transportation and administrative costs, like having them re-examined for medical issues,' Parker said. 'All those things cost quite a bit.'

The Rio Grande Valley’s Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, or ProBAR, recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary. Meredith Linsky, the director of ProBAR, said there are few practicing immigration attorneys in the area. ProBAR’s attorneys are among this small number.

Though Parker could not establish that the transfers are intended to block detainees from justice, she says ICE is obviously aware of their actions.

'It’s crystal clear that that’s the effect (of transferring detainees),' Parker said. 'They know that transfers make getting representation more difficult. Given the widespread nature of this policy, I would be shocked if they were to argue that they don’t know it.'

The Inspector General’s report indicates that the impact of transfers is understood. And now that the information is out there, Parker says that just a couple of simple legislative changes could solve the problem.

'If they had a checklist of people who it’s okay to transfer and those who it’s not okay to transfer, that would be a simple solution,' Parker said. 'Those detainees with local attorneys, witnesses or evidence, shouldn’t be sent far away, but those without ties to this country who have not been here a long time, or who are not seeking asylum, could be sent further.'

Above all, Parker says, constructing new ICE owned and operated facilities close to major urban centers like New York and Baltimore would prevent the agency from constantly moving people around.

So far, ICE has agreed with both recommendations set out by the Office of the Inspector General. First, ICE agreed to review the files of each detainee before any transfer. Second, ICE agreed to implement a policy to create procedures for court administrators and officers to communicate about hearing and transfer schedules.

Although ICE has been receptive to this criticism, Human Rights Watch found that internal standards have failed to produce results in the past. Instead, Parker says, Congress must legally bind ICE to these and additional standards.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The HRW report is available online at: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/11/30/us-remote-detainee-lockups-hinder-justice

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10.
Magistrate won't stop BMV from revoking vehicle registrations
By Randy Ludlow
The Columbus Dispatch, December 7, 2009
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/12/07/Latino-BMV-ruling.html?sid=101

A magistrate declined this morning to prevent the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles from canceling the registrations of nearly 45,000 vehicles largely driven by undocumented immigrants.

Franklin County Common Pleas Court Magistrate Pamela Browning declined to grant a preliminary injunction against the BMV sought by the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Effective at midnight, it will be illegal for thousands of immigrants to drive Ohio's roads. The BMV is canceling their vehicle registrations for failing to prove they are legal U.S. residents.

Police can stop those driving with revoked registrations and issue tickets and seize license plates. Drivers who cannot provide adequate identification risk going to jail, with undocumented immigrants potentially facing deportation.

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11.
In-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants questioned
By Stephen Wall
The San Bernardino Sun (CA), December 6, 2009
http://www.sbsun.com/ci_13939732?source=most_viewed

At a time of unprecedented peril for the state's education system, a growing number of school districts are going the extra mile to promote a law that allows illegal immigrant students to receive subsidized tuition at California colleges and universities.

The move is viewed by some state lawmakers and others as wasting scarce tax dollars on a program that benefits illegal immigrants at the expense of legal residents and U.S. citizens.

Last year, state Republican lawmakers proposed abolishing the nearly 8-year-old law as part of a package of spending cuts to balance the budget. Repealing the law would have saved $75 million, according to Republican legislators. The attempt to get rid of the law failed, but some still want to eliminate it.

'I think it's a misuse of resources,' Sen. Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, said of the law. 'A lot of school districts aren't doing a very good job with the kids they have now. They need to focus their limited resources on the fundamentals, not reaching out to illegal immigrants.'

The law is also being challenged in the courts.

In 2005, students who were legal residents of other states filed a class-action suit against the California public college and university systems. The students maintain they were unfairly denied a benefit that was granted to illegal immigrants.

Last year, the state appellate court agreed, saying the law 'thwarts the will of Congress.'

The University of California appealed the decision to the California Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. The law remains in effect until resolved by the courts.

Meanwhile, Latino activist Gil Navarro, a member of the San Bernardino County Board of Education, is leading a renewed push to get the word out about the law known as Assembly Bill 540.

The law enables undocumented students to pay the same college tuition fees as California residents if they meet the following criteria:

Attend a California high school for at least three years;

Graduate from a California high school;

Register or enroll at a higher education institution in California;

File a form with the college or university stating they will apply for legal immigration status as soon as they are eligible.

There are about 15,000 to 20,000 students in the state's community colleges receiving the tuition break. The UC system has about 1,600 students using the benefit. The Cal State system does not track the number of students who take advantage of the law.

The San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools last year put out a 'Know your Rights' brochure explaining the law. It is available through the department's Parent Information Resource Center.

The San Bernardino City Unified School District also published a similar brochure for the families of immigrant students.

In recent weeks, Navarro has pushed two other districts with large immigrant student populations to do additional outreach.

The Colton Joint Unified School District in September unanimously approved a student intern program to inform high school students about the law.

Under the program, which is expected to start Jan. 1, the district will hire qualified Colton and Bloomington high school students as well as college students who graduated from those schools. The students will serve as mentors for their peers and educate them about college opportunities.

The intern program will cost about $25,000, with the money coming from district and grant funds, said Colton school board member Mel Albiso.

The program will be open to all students, not just those without documents, he said.

'Our legal mandate by the federal government is to educate all children,' Albiso said. 'We cannot say if they're legal or illegal here. We're not the immigration service.'

Albiso said the program is another way to help the district meet a state mandate to improve test scores for English Language Learners, who make up about one-quarter of the student population.

'We should have targeted programs for those that are hurting the most,' he said. 'Some of these students wonder what the motivation is to stay in school if they know they can't go anywhere after they graduate.'

Luis Galicia is one undocumented student who is not easily discouraged.

When he arrived in the United States seven years ago, the 17-year-old Mexican immigrant said he knew four words of English: Hi, bye, cookies and juice.

Today, he is a high school honor student taking advanced courses in economics, political science, physics and French.

The Colton High School senior had a 4.3 grade point average last semester. Luis wants to attend a top-notch university next year and become a computer engineer.

'My parents always told me that education is the most important thing,' he said. 'The more you educate yourself, the less trouble you're going to have economically or in other aspects of your life later on.'

Navarro told Luis about the law enabling him to pay discounted tuition at a state college or university. His two older sisters, who are also undocumented, attend San Bernardino Valley College.

The Galicia family is helping spread the word about the law to other students in similar situations.

'Most of us didn't have the chance to decide whether we wanted to come here,' Luis said. 'We were little and did what our parents told us. We didn't come to steal jobs or education or all that. We want to be part of the culture and be treated as such.'

The Rialto Unified School District is also taking an extra step to promote the higher-education options available to all students.

The district plans to print and mail brochures about the law to parents of the nearly 1,800 immigrant students in the district. The cost hasn't been determined, but it isn't expected to be more than a few hundred dollars, officials said.

'We truly believe in providing the most opportunities for our students,' said Lupe Andrade, the district's director of English learner programs. 'We're about helping people be successful. Some of these students are incredibly bright and talented and have a lot to offer our society.'

But some wonder whether the state can afford to continue educating illegal immigrants. California State University and University of California campuses are straining under student fee hikes, staff and faculty furloughs and deep cuts in enrollment.

The 22 campus Cal State system is slashing its budget by $584 million this year and reducing enrollment by 40,000 students in the next two years.

Critics say allowing illegal immigrants to pay discounted college tuition means fewer opportunities and less financial aid for U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. They also say it costs taxpayers substantially more to educate illegal immigrants who pay the same amount as California residents.

The value of tuition waivers granted under the law likely exceeds $100 million a year, according to the state Legislative Analyst's Office.

'There's only a fixed number of college admission slots and in-state tuition costs are rising,' said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which strives to end illegal immigration. 'Every time you admit an illegal alien to college, an American student and legal resident is turned away. It's fundamentally unfair.'

College officials hold a different view.

'There is no evidence to show the law is impacting the system,' said CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow.

Although some illegal immigrants may benefit, officials note the law also applies to documented students who do not qualify for California residency.

Students from other states attending boarding school in California fit that description. Graduate students who attended high school in California, went to college out of state and returned to California to pursue graduate studies are also eligible.

'The misperception is the law was intended to help non-citizens,' said Potes-Fellow. 'That is not true. The law was intended to help students who completed the last three years of high school in California but were not California residents.'

In the UC system, about 70 percent of students who take advantage of the law are legal immigrants or U.S. citizens, said spokesman Ricardo Vasquez.

'We admit students based on their academic record, not on anything else,' Vasquez said.

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12.
Tancredo proposes law that would require immigration-status checks of new hires
By Lynn Bartels
The Denver Post, December 5, 2009
http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_13931157

Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo wants every Colorado business to verify that new hires are U.S. citizens, a proposal that prompted cries of racism from critics.

Tancredo filed a ballot proposal Friday that would force the 2011 Colorado legislature to pass a law requiring businesses to use a federal program to check the immigration status of all newly hired workers.

The proposal is aimed for the 2010 ballot.

'I can't think of a better time to bring this forward,' Tancredo said. 'The fact that we've got high unemployment is enough to make people more sensitive to people working here illegally.'

He added that getting the measure on the ballot and defending it will be a 'very expensive undertaking.' If fundraising doesn't go well, he said, he might discontinue the effort.

The measure must pass a number of steps before Tancredo and supporters can begin circulating petitions to have it placed on the ballot.

The proposal was criticized by several top Democrats, including state party chairwoman Pat Waak. She said the federal program, known as E-Verify, 'is extremely flawed and full of discrepancies' and could be a barrier for Coloradans 'in these tough economic times.'

'At this critical time, E-Verify may further jeopardize the economic recovery,' she said.

State Rep. Edward Casso, D-Commerce City, called the proposal 'race-bait politics' intended to get the 'far right' to the polls.

'This does nothing but inspire a racist agenda,' said Casso, a fifth- generation Coloradan.

Tancredo, whose grandparents emigrated from Italy, said he is not a racist, but he gets called that during the debate.

He made immigration reform the centerpiece of his 10-year career in Congress, and his unsuccessful run last year for the Republican nomination for president.

'It has been my experience in this debate that when you cannot come up with a substantive argument against my position, people start calling me names, and that is the one that most often comes to their lips,' he said.

'This has nothing to with race. I don't care if they're from Switzerland.'

Tancredo pointed out that the city of Denver announced this week it might perform random checks on the immigration status of contract workers after a construction company was found to have used more than a dozen illegal immigrants to work on city projects.

He said his ballot proposal is modeled after an Arizona law that has survived court challenges and stiff opposition from the local business community.

The law requires all employers to utilize the federal government's online E-Verify program, which is operated by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. It verifies the immigration status and employment eligibility of all newly hired workers.

The Tancredo proposal states that the legislature 'shall include provisions for penalties and fines, responsibilities for enforcement and audit, timetables for phase-in of the law over three years for companies with fewer than 50 employees, and prohibitions on the use of independent contractors to intentionally avoid compliance with the law.'

The ballot measure is co-sponsored by Charles Heatherly, Tancredo's longtime friend and former congressional aide.

The pair also has proposed a ballot measure based on the Obama administration's intent to participate in negotiations on an international small-arms trade treaty. Fearing the treaty could lead to gun controls, the measure recommends that Colorado's top elected officials oppose gun restrictions.

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13.
Abel Maldonado puts both Dems, GOP in quandary
By Carla Marinucci
The San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/12/05/MNPU1ATRKM.DTL

State Sen. Abel Maldonado found an unexpected fan club at breakfast this week in San Francisco: immigrant waiters who lined up to get photos taken with the former farmworker, who has been nominated to be the state's next lieutenant governor.

The scene of adoration is unusual for a politician in a state where lawmakers' ratings are in the tank. But it is especially eye-opening that the politician so liked by a group of Latino workers is a Republican.

Maldonado, 42, is the son of a Mexican-born bracero - guest worker - in California's strawberry fields and who grew up working in the fields of Santa Maria (Santa Barbara County) as his family built up a lucrative agribusiness.

As Latinos have become the fastest-growing portion of the state's electorate, he says the GOP has paid a price for limiting its Latino outreach to hiring mariachi bands at campaign events.

'Do you think they care if I'm a Republican or a Democrat?' Maldonado, who still lives in his hometown, said at the San Francisco event after shaking hands with the Latino workers who sought him out. 'They want to know they've got jobs, that they can make the house payment. We're all Californians.'

The senator's stop in San Francisco was part of a full-court press as the moderate Republican, whose Democratic-leaning district stretches from Santa Barbara County to Santa Clara County, formally announced he will be running for lieutenant governor next year.

Maldonado's surprise move came after GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated him for the spot. If confirmed by the Legislature in the next 90 days, he'll take the seat vacated by Democrat John Garamendi, elected to Congress in November in the Bay Area's 10th Congressional District.

'If I'm good enough to be nominated, I'm good enough to run,' Maldonado said of his intention to compete with two conservative Republicans, state Sens. Jeff Denham of Atwater (Merced County) and Sam Aanestad of Penn Valley (Nevada County), for the GOP nomination. 'I'm in it to win it.'

Maldonado insists he is ready to work with the next governor, Republican or Democrat. 'If it's Jerry Brown, the governor is the CEO, and I'm not there to put bumps in the road,' he said. 'That's what people are tired of. We're going to create jobs.'

But Maldonado's sunny determination to become the first Republican Latino in statewide office in more than a century has created headaches and political challenges for Republicans and Democrats in California.

With six months until the June primary, progressive Democrats eyeing a shot at his 15th District Senate seat support Maldonado's confirmation. Conservative Republican activists oppose it, enraged at his vote that provided the two-thirds majority needed to pass this year's budget, which included tax increases.

The differing positions of three Republican candidates for governor underscore the GOP's quandary:

Former South Bay Rep. Tom Campbell strongly backs Maldonado's confirmation, saying, 'he'd be an excellent lieutenant governor and most importantly an excellent partner' for Schwarzenegger.

State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner opposes Maldonado's confirmation, his spokesman Jarrod Agen said, adding, 'They have a total disagreement on taxes, given that Abel supports tax increases and Steve Poizner wants to cut taxes.'

Sarah Pompei, Meg Whitman's campaign spokeswoman, said Friday that 'Abel Maldonado is Gov. Schwarzenegger's choice. Meg believes the Legislature should move forward and confirm him.'

Democratic Party activists and leaders are split as they debate possible fallout among Latino voters. State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, pressured not to give in to Schwarzenegger's pick and to consider Democrats seeking the statewide post next year, said he has 'grave doubts' about a Maldonado confirmation.

Adds California Republican Party Vice Chairman Jon Fleischman, publisher of the popular Flashreport.org: 'Abel Maldonado believes in big government. He believes there is no issue upon which you can't compromise. If he wants to call himself a Republican and embrace the philosophy of the other party, it's the height of hubris.'

But Maldonado, who says he's a proud Republican, shrugs off such criticism, saying political infighting masks the real issues and the concerns of California's voters.

'I grew up in a town where Ronald Reagan came every weekend to the Western White House, and he always had a smile for people. But Ronald Reagan would not be welcomed in my party today. Ronald Reagan raised taxes three times. I'm not saying he liked to do that. But he put California first.'

Other Republicans say Maldonado's family success story may be just what California needs to mend its partisan bickering - and could mark one of Schwarzenegger's best moves in years.

'I'm tired of seeing the Orange County and Placer County axis try to run the Republican Party in this state,' says GOP consultant Patrick Dorinson. 'They should be happy to get a Latino Republican in that job.'

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14.
County, police union in showdown over illegal-immigration policy
By Alan Suderman
The Washington Examiner (DC), December 7, 2009
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/County_-police-union-in-showdown-over-illegal-immigration-policy-8630658-78564932.html

Montgomery County and the Fraternal Order of Police union could be headed to court over the county police department's policy for handling illegal immigrants, according to the union's lawyer.

FOP attorney Paul Stein said the county's policy was 'unconstitutional' and dangerous to the county's police officers and residents.

In a letter to County Attorney Leon Rodriguez, Stein asked for justification of the policy, which limits officers' ability to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Union officials have complained that the county's immigration policies are politically motivated and hamper efforts to gather information on suspected criminals.

In February, the county changed its policy so ICE would be contacted when police arrested anyone, including illegal immigrants, in a violent or handgun-related crime. The policy came in response to a string of high-profile violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants in the county.

In September, the police department sent out a memo to officers emphasizing that federal immigration authorities should not be contacted after arresting someone based on solely gang affiliation or immigration status.

The September memo also indicated that officers needed to first get approval from the department before assisting ICE agents.

That memo came after an illegal immigrant, who said he was a former gang member, accused police of assaulting him and turning him over to ICE after he complained about the department.

Rodriguez told The Examiner he believed the county's policy was legal, but has not responded directly to the union. County Executive Ike Leggett and police department officials have said the policy helps foster a sense of trust between the police officers and the county's illegal immigrant population.

Stein said the union wanted to avoid a legal showdown, but if there were issues that couldn't be resolved, then 'a court might have to resolve it.'

He said his officers felt handcuffed in doing their jobs, which include regularly communicating with other government agencies.

The policy 'on its face and in application limits our police officers from communicating with ICE until some horrible or horrendous crime occurs, such as first-degree murder, multiple murders, abduction of a 16-year-old for immoral purposes, first-degree sex assault,' Stein said.

Stein also pointed out that federal law prohibited the county from 'restricting communication' from its officers to ICE 'regarding immigration status of any individual.'

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15.
Police program for immigrants going strong in Round Lake Park
By Bob Susnjara
The Daily Herald (Chicago), December 4, 2009
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=341801&src=3

Round Lake Park police say much good has been accomplished in a seven-month-old program designed to provide assistance to immigrants who don't speak English.

Officers Tony Colon and Hector Lepe say they've helped primarily Spanish-speaking area residents on issues such as how to obtain an order of protection or noticing signs of drug use by a child since the effort launched at Mano a Mano Family Resource Center in Round Lake Park.

Colon and Lepe also say they've built much trust in the community in the past seven months, to the point where they've received tips about crimes that led to arrests.

'It's all confidential,' Colon said. 'It's not like we discuss their issues and concerns with somebody else.'

Under the initiative that started in May, officers fluent in Spanish and other languages have been made available at Mano a Mano. The original plan called for the cops to be at the center every Monday, but Police Chief George Filenko said the effort has shifted to an appointment-only model.

'I think it's been successful,' Filenko said.

Lepe said a recent visitor came to him after receiving a traffic ticket outside of Round Lake Park. He said the individual didn't speak English and wanted to know more about what had happened.

Colon said the officers have made it known that those who see them don't need to fear being reported to immigration authorities if they are in the U.S. illegally. Lepe said even legal immigrants who don't speak English often can be uncomfortable around police because of bad experiences from their home country.

'In Mexico,' Colon said, 'the police handle things differently there.'

Word about the Round Lake Park police program has spread. The officers said they have had appointments from residents in Mundelein, Round Lake Beach, Waukegan and North Chicago.

On average, the officers received 10 in-person visits a month. Colon said he also receives follow-up phone calls.

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16.
Struggles of the second generation
U.S.-born children of Latino immigrants fight to secure a higher foothold
By N.C. Aizenman
The Washington Post, December 7, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/06/AR2009120602775.html?hpid=topnews

Javier Saavedra slumped his burly frame into a worn, plaid couch in the cramped basement room he shares with his girlfriend and their 2-year-old daughter, his expression darkening as he ticked off all the wrong turns that had gotten them stuck below the economy's ground floor.

Raised by Mexican immigrant parents, Saavedra was a gang member by 13, a high school dropout by 16 and a father by 21. Now 23, he has been trying to turn his life around since his daughter, Julissa, was born.

But without a high school diploma, Saavedra was unable to find a job that paid enough for him and his girlfriend, Mayra Hererra, 20 and pregnant with their second child, to move out of her parents' brick home in Hyattsville.

Even the dim, wood-paneled room piled with baby toys and large plastic bags of clothing was costing them $350 a month.

'I get so upset with myself,' Saavedra said. 'I should have a better chance at a job [than our parents]. I want to be helping them with their bills, not them still helping me.'

Millions of children of Latino immigrants are confronting the same challenge as they come of age in one of the most difficult economic climates in decades.

Whether they succeed will have consequences far beyond immigrant circles. As a result of the arrival of more than 20 million mostly Mexican and Central American newcomers in a wave that swelled in the 1970s and soared during the 1990s, the offspring of Latino immigrants now account for one of every 10 children, both in the United States and the Washington region.

Largely because of the growth of this second generation, Latino immigrants and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren will represent almost a third of the nation's working-age adults by mid-century, according to projections from U.S. Census Bureau data by Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer with the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

Not since the last great wave of immigration to the United States around 1900 has the country's economic future been so closely entwined with the generational progress of an immigrant group. And so far, on nearly every measure, the news is troubling.

Second-generation Latinos have the highest high school dropout rate -- one in seven -- of any U.S.-born racial or ethnic group and the highest teen pregnancy rate. These Latinos also receive far fewer college degrees and make significantly less money than non-Hispanic whites and other second-generation immigrants.

Their struggles have fueled an outcry for stricter immigration laws, with advocates saying that the rapid increase in Latino immigrants and their children has strained the United States' resources and social fabric.

'The last 30 years of immigration have made our country more unequal, poorer than we would have been otherwise, more fractious and less cohesive,' said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which favors tighter restrictions on immigration.

Supporters of Latino immigrants say that the newcomers and their children have spurred economic growth and contribute far more to society than they take from it. They also note that even a complete halt to future immigration would not change the footprint of the 15.5 million U.S.-born offspring of Latino immigrants already in the country.

Perhaps the only yardstick by which the second generation has achieved unambiguous success is the one that has stirred the most public controversy: English proficiency. Despite fears among some people that English usage is diminishing in the Latino community, census data and several studies indicate that by the second generation, nearly all Latinos are fluent in English and that by the third generation, few can even speak Spanish.

The second generation's lack of success on educational and economic fronts is largely explained by their immigrant parents' extremely low starting point. Forty percent of second-generation Latino children are born to parents who never completed high school. Only 12 percent have a parent with a college degree or higher.

Saavedra's parents, who entered the United States illegally but later obtained legal permanent residency, didn't get beyond the third grade in Mexico. They were often at a loss when it came to helping him with homework. 'They didn't even know how to get you the stuff you needed' for science projects, he said.

Although adding on a year or two of education beyond high school can boost their incomes, to be truly guaranteed a middle-class lifestyle, second-generation Latinos need at least a bachelor's degree -- a feat that the last major wave of immigrants, from Eastern and Southern Europe, took three or four generations to achieve.

'The second generation is doing way better' than their parents, said Ruben Rumbaut, a professor at the University of California at Irvine and a leading scholar on second-generation Latino immigrants. 'But way better can still mean they are high school dropouts with 11 years of education, as opposed to their parents, with six years. And in this economy, an 11th-grade dropout is not going to make it.'

Rage and remorse

Saavedra is determined to be the exception, although he knows it won't be easy.

The sun was burning down from a late-April sky, and Saavedra's brow filled with sweat as he mixed cement with a shovel at a Northern Virginia construction site.

When he was a child, his father would sometimes take him to sites like this in hopes of motivating the boy to stay in school.

'He used to say to me, 'What do you think is heavier: the pencil or the shovel?' ' Saavedra recalled.

Still, this was the first work he had gotten in a month, and he seemed eager to show his gratitude to his girlfriend's Mexican-born father for taking him along. He sprang quickly to lug the heaviest equipment and joked in Spanish with the slender immigrant working alongside him.

'Somos como 'El Gordo y La Flaca' ' -- We're like 'The Fat Man and the Skinny Lady' -- said Saavedra, referring to a popular TV talk show.

Yet for all his cheer, Saavedra knew that the one-day, $12-per-hour assignment to build a trash lot behind a hotel wouldn't cover his and Herrera's $106 cellphone bill.

And even Saavedra's outfit -- sparkly stud earrings, a basketball jersey that fell to his thighs and baggy pants that ballooned around his ankles -- broadcast his gnawing sense that he didn't belong among the crew of Mexican immigrants.

Technically, he is what researchers call a '1.5-generation' immigrant, because he was born in Mexico and moved to the United States as a 4-year-old. But with no memory of living anywhere other than Maryland, Saavedra considers himself, and tries to dress like, a member of the second generation.

He hauled an 80-pound bag of cement onto his shoulder and cracked a grin that was half-smirk, half-wince.

'It's times like these,' he said, 'that I think, 'Oh, man! Why didn't I finish high school?' '

The short answer is that he joined a gang and was kicked out of Bladensburg High School for fighting in his sophomore year. The long answer, Saavedra said, is that he was too filled with rage to put much stock in school.

The youngest boy in a family of seven children, he said he grew up fearing his father's temper and often felt ignored by his parents. 'You know, like they'd buy [my older brother] Air Jordans but say there wasn't enough to buy them for me.'

School offered little solace. As his family moved around Prince George's County, Saavedra passed through five elementary schools. Each time he started a new school, he said, 'people tried jumping me and saying, 'Oh, you're the new guy.' . . . The hate started building up in my heart until I just got so tired.'

By the time he got to William Wirt Middle School in Riverdale, Saavedra was an eager recruit for the Latino gangs that held sway there. He soon started his own clique of the gang Sur 13, transforming himself from his family's invisible youngest son to Casper, the nickname he chose as leader of some of the toughest guys in the neighborhood.

'All my life,' he said, 'I've always wanted to be known for something.'

Hererra, who met Saavedra at a family party and started dating him in high school, said she wished the rest of the world could see the kind, thoughtful side of his personality he reserved for her. 'Towards me he'd show emotion,' she said. 'He was always so attentive. . . . But towards everyone else, he'd just show anger.'

Although Saavedra listened respectfully to her pleas to leave the gang, he didn't start reconsidering his choices until months after he had left high school. Without a diploma, he was cycling through low-paying, occasional jobs: cleaning carpets, driving for FedEx, working construction.

Friends started getting killed, including Edward Trujillo, a gang leader whom Saavedra had looked up to as a boy. He was gunned down on a residential street in the Riverdale area.

Saavedra himself narrowly missed being shot on four occasions. And he was constantly in brawls. 'Some guy would call at 2 in the morning about a fight, and he'd be off,' Hererra said.

Although Saavedra was not convicted of any crimes, he was picked up multiple times on suspicion of vandalism, assault and theft. Sgt. George Norris, a member of the Prince George's police gang unit, said he made a point of pulling Saavedra over for questioning and locking him up when possible. When Saavedra moved, Norris surprised him by turning up at the new address.

'I wanted him to know that wherever he went, whatever he did, I was going to be there,' Norris said.

But after Saavedra decided to get free therapy from a local youth group, Norris also offered support, inviting him to speak at conferences and berating him when he showed signs of slipping back into gang life.

The hour-a-week therapy sessions helped Saavedra get more of a handle on his temper.

Perhaps most significantly, Hererra became pregnant and threatened to leave him if he didn't put the safety of their child first.

All in all, 'it took him a good year to come around,' she said. 'He wasn't really changed until he saw the baby being born.'
Progress and setbacks

Some weeks after the construction job, Saavedra lay on an operating table in Bethesda, tensing his torso as a doctor traced a laser over a tattoo of a teardrop just below his eye.

With funding from a local youth group called Identity, he had already had a number of his old gang tattoos removed, including the large, black SUR in gothic letters on his right arm, and the 13 written on his left. The teardrops would be the last to go.

'Without this on my face, I can probably get a better job,' he said as he walked out of the doctor's office carrying Julissa's sippy cup in one hand and her pink diaper bag in the other. 'I won't be getting pulled over for looking suspicious. People won't be thinking, 'Oh, he must've murdered someone.' '

Still, Saavedra said, he sometimes misses the status of being a gang leader. But he had recently hit on what seemed a perfect way to fill the void: a club of mostly former gang members who trick out lowrider bicycles with velvet seats, chrome wheels, twisted metal handlebars and plaques decorated with the gothic letters and fearsome imagery popular with Latino gangs.

Saavedra said he also hopes the club, called Street Nations, will offer his nephews and other young boys an alternative to joining a gang. 'They like the gang lifestyle. But I be trying to tell them, 'It's not cool. If you want to be in gangs, later on you'll regret it.' '

A few days later, Saavedra took extra-small T-shirts printed with the Street Nations logo to give to his nephews at the club's first official meeting in a Riverdale park.

Hererra chuckled at the sight of the couple's youngest nephew posing for photographs next to the group's heavily tattooed, pierced older members. 'Chris!' Saavedra shouted at the 8-year-old. 'Stay in school and you get a bike!'

Saavedra and Hererra were trying to make their own educations a priority as well.

Despite her pregnancy, Hererra had continued to take classes toward a business degree at a Northern Virginia vocational college. Now 21, she hopes to graduate next year and get a job in human resources.

Saavedra had subscribed to an online course to work toward a high school diploma. His plan was to do a lesson a week on the computer next to his and Hererra's bed in the basement.

But Saavedra ended up whiling away his time updating the Street Nations Web site and chatting with other members on its message board -- 'your Twitter,' Hererra called it.

By summer's end, the online course was all but forgotten. FedEx had come through with a steady delivery job, and between the 12-hour workdays and evenings taking care of Julissa and his newborn son, Anthony Javier, so Hererra could go to class, Saavedra said, 'I'm not even focused on my GED right now.'

At $500 a week, his wages still aren't enough for the couple to get a place of their own. There are nights when Saavedra wonders whether they ever will.

'I try to stay positive,' Saavedra said. 'But sometimes inside me, I just feel like giving up and running away from this. You know, just getting lost. Honestly, sometimes that's just how I feel.'

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17.
Lack of computer access hampers some students
Even wealthy Fairfax is forced to contend with a digital divide
By Annie Gowen
The Washington Post, December 6, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/05/AR2009120501746.html?hpid=sec-education

Julija Pivoriunaite's heart sinks when one of her teachers at Glasgow Middle School announces that students must go online to do a homework assignment. It happens almost every school day.

The 11-year-old's mind whirls with the complicated and stressful options available to get her assignments done, since her family has no reliable Internet service at home. She could work after classes in her Fairfax County school's computer lab, but it is open just two days a week. The library has free computers, but time online is limited if it's busy. Finding rides is tough.

'I see my friends do their work, and I struggle to get the access I need. It makes me sad,' said Julija, a hoodie-wearing blonde whose fluent English gives little hint that she emigrated from Lithuania a few years ago. She asks her parents for high-speed Internet, and the answer is always the same: Soon, soon, but money's tight.

The digital divide has narrowed dramatically in the past decade. About two-thirds of American households report using the Internet at home, according to the U.S. Census. In affluent Washington suburbs, the numbers are higher; more than 90 percent of Fairfax households with children have home computers, according to a recent survey by the school system.

But even in Fairfax, the digital divide lives on in the study carrels of the Woodrow Wilson public library in the Falls Church area. Most afternoons, it is crowded with students from low-income or immigrant families using the computers. Although they live in one of the richest counties in the United States, these students recount skipping lunch to work at school labs or making long journeys to the public library after school.

Such effort is necessary because students are doing much of their work online: reading textbooks, watching podcasts, using discussion boards and creating PowerPoint presentations. The most frequently searched-for Internet term in the Washington area this year is 'fcps blackboard,' according to Google. That's the Fairfax County system on which teachers post homework assignments and study guides, children ask questions or participate in discussion groups, and parents monitor class work.

Henry Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California, describes today's digital divide as the 'participation gap' -- the chasm between students who have ready access to the Internet at home vs. those struggling to work in public spaces. Those with home access have a big advantage because they'll have ample time to develop social networking, research and other skills necessary to succeed later on, Jenkins said.
'Barrier to the world'

Without a computer, 'there's a kind of a wall, a barrier to the world,' said Ying Wu, 18, a senior at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church.

She earned a 4.2 GPA in the school's International Baccalaureate program despite the fact that she did not have a computer at home until recently. She says she earned high marks for coping skills, such as writing her papers in longhand and then typing them 'so fast' at school. She filched her sister's library card to extend her online time at the library. It's another complicated calculus; cardholders are allowed only two 30-minute increments if others are waiting.

She remembers admiring a classmate's elaborate PowerPoint project on eco-friendly medical technology, trimmed with pictures of doctors and solar panels, that she would never have had time to do. She worked at a bookstore this summer so she could buy herself a computer.

'This is the most expensive thing I have,' Wu said, touching the $700 laptop. 'It's the whole point of my world.'

School administrators said they try to accommodate students by opening libraries and computer labs before and after school and at lunch. The district has 103,000 computers, about 90 percent of them available for student use.

But the effort is complicated because many lower-income students take the bus home right after school to care for younger siblings or work jobs to support their families.

'We are limited, unfortunately, because of the situation of many of our students,' said Pamela Jones, the principal at J.E.B. Stuart, where 40 percent of students come from other countries and more than half are eligible for free and reduced-cost lunches. 'It's hard for them.'

This year, the school instituted a 40-minute study period called 'Raider Time,' built into the school day and aimed at those who can't stay late.

Students without computers said their instructors showed varying degrees of understanding.

'They don't want to hear excuses,' said Daritza Perla, 16, a junior at Edison High School in the Alexandria section of Fairfax. She was cited for being tardy earlier this year after an assignment-related delay at the school library.

Her mother, Maria, 49, said that she and her husband, an auto mechanic, would love to buy Daritza a computer but can't afford it. She worries that Daritza misses important news from school by not having e-mail and wishes her daughter was home more instead of constantly at the library.
Complications

Librarians at Woodrow Wilson provided an excuse note for 15-year-old Juan Henriquez after he lost an eight-page paper on the Bill of Rights because his computer session timed out before he'd saved his work.

'I felt mad,' Juan said. 'I didn't know what I was going to do.'

Juan, the son of Salvadoran immigrants, said he prefers working at the library because if he stays after class to work in the school lab he gets too hungry. He usually takes the bus home and eats a quick dinner before heading out to study.

He lives in an apartment complex in the Culmore neighborhood off Route 7 in Fairfax. From there, it's a short walk to Best Buy, where he often goes to look at the laptops.

When a reporter whipped out a BlackBerry, Juan's eyes widened.

'Do you have WiFi on that?' he asked.

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18.
African immigrant seeks alliance with Chicago's Mexicans
Immigration issues bond two cultures
By Oscar Avila
The Chicago Tribune, December 6, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-africa-activist_aviladec06,0,2887331.story

A few months after arriving from Sierra Leone, Alie Kabba learned the dynamics of Chicago immigrant life when he found a pickup soccer game near his Rogers Park apartment. All of the players were Mexicans.

'I didn't have enough for my own team,' he recalled. 'They had the numbers.'

Now head of the United African Organization, Kabba is pursuing an intriguing and complicated experiment: to see whether Africans can forge a political alliance with the Mexicans, who make up the largest share of immigrants in Chicago.

Last month, Kabba's group organized a first large-scale meeting with Mexican leaders, in which the sounds of Liberian drummers meshed with casual conversations in Spanish.

Both sides say broadening their base is crucial because lawmakers in Washington are set to debate a plan to legalize illegal immigrants and bring in foreign 'guest workers,' an idea unpopular with many Americans.

Kabba, 47, has been stirring the pot since he was a university student leader in the western African nation of Sierra Leone. A 'liberal, almost radical leader,' as he now describes himself when younger, Kabba spent regular stints in jail after challenging a longtime dictatorship.

In the early 1990s, while Kabba was attending the University of Illinois at Chicago on a student visa, a full-fledged civil war broke out in Sierra Leone. Fearing for his life if he returned, Kabba was granted political asylum. He is now a U.S. citizen.

Almost immediately, he revived his activism in Chicago as a man who could blend scholarly explanations about global economics with a warm smile that pops up even when discussing his own political persecution.

A natural storyteller, Kabba recounted how he was hunting for plantains one day in Rogers Park and finally found them -- in a Latin American grocery store. As a Puerto Rican merengue tune thumped in the store, Kabba realized that the rhythms came from Africa.

Those touchy-feely anecdotes have a broader purpose, in Kabba's view. As he told those at last week's meeting, 'We realize that the right thing is to build a common front and find our common humanity.'

In 2006, Kabba opted to establish the United African Organization's office in the black cultural hotbed of Bronzeville instead of the usual African immigrant enclaves of Uptown, Edgewater and Rogers Park.

The message: We are African-Americans, too.

Kabba, who said he has attended meetings at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition since arriving in Chicago, noted black colleagues' resentment that illegal immigrants have flooded the job market and contributed to the depression of wages.

Kabba says the answer is granting legal status so employers can no longer exploit them.

'Those [critics] are capturing a sentiment in the community. Their voices shouldn't be ignored,' he said. 'Unfortunately, both sides are operating from a paradigm where they're fighting for the same crumbs.'

The outreach to Mexicans has been even trickier.

Erku Yimer, who has led the Ethiopian Community Association since the 1970s, said some African leaders worry that Kabba's bridge-building might hamper attempts to organize African immigrants who themselves are divided by language or religion.

Claudia Lucero said her countrymen need allies from other countries because opponents often cast illegal Immigration as a Mexican invasion, even though about 40 percent of illegal immigrants are not from Mexico.

'There are undocumented Irish, there are undocumented Polish, there are undocumented Africans. It's a global issue,' said Lucero, regional coordinator for the Chicago-based National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities.

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19.
Local nonprofit BCFS gets $21.5 million federal grant
The San Antonio Business Journal, December 7, 2009
http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2009/12/07/daily1.html

Baptist Child and Family Services (BCFS) has been awarded a $21.5 million contract through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, located within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to expand its International Children’s Services program in San Antonio and into northern California.

The program provides shelter and care to unaccompanied children from foreign countries while the federal government determines the appropriate next steps toward reconnecting youth with their families.

Thousands of children migrate to the United States each year, many fleeing war, violence, abuse or natural disaster, while others come to reunite with family members already here or to seek better lives for themselves.

Nearly 35 percent of children are returned home to their native countries, while a small percentage of others are found to have escaped from dangerous environments and are therefore granted sponsorship to stay with family members who legally live in the United States.

'These children have had desperate trails of hardships which led them to the U.S., some of which may have been smuggled across international borders and suffered deplorable conditions and treatment to make their dreams of living in America come true,' says Asennet Segura, BCFS executive director of residential programs.

For the next 5 years, under the $21.5 million federal contract, BCFS will provide shelter, counseling and intense case management and educational support to children placed in the residential facilities in San Antonio and northern California. The exact location in California is not being disclosed out of concerns for the safety of children who have been victims of human smuggling. The facilities house only boys, most of whom are from Central and South American countries. These boys will be involved with legal counsel to expedite their immigration status that will eventually allow them to reach a more permanent and long-term placement.

BCFS has existing International Children’s Services shelters in San Antonio and Harlingen, that, in addition to providing shelter, offer English and other basic education courses, as well as vocational training in areas such as photography, mechanics and upholstery, to help children learn a trade so they may earn a living if returned to their native country.

BCFS is a San Antonio-based nonprofit health and human services organization with locations and programs in the United States as well as Eastern Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa. It was founded in 1944 by the Baptist General Convention of Texas as an orphanage for Mexican-American children.

Its range of services have grown over the years to include emergency shelters for abused or neglected children, assisted living services and vocational training for special-needs adults, mental health services for children and families, foster care and adoption services, pre-natal and post-partum health services, and international humanitarian aid for children living in impoverished conditions in developing countries.

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20.
Rigo Padilla: Support grows to fight UIC student's deportation
Immigration and Customs Enforcement says plans unchanged for deportation because 21-year-old received due process
By Antonio Olivo
The Chicago Tribune, December 6, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-deportation-student_olivodec06,0,6449452.story

What began earlier this year as one young man's quest to stay in the U.S. has grown into a movement, with nearly 200 demonstrators rallying on behalf of Rigo Padilla in Chicago last week and faxes and text messages being sent to Washington with pleas to spare him from being sent back to Mexico.

Padilla, 21, hasn't seen the country of his birth since he was 6 -- making him one of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who arrived to the U.S. illegally as tag-alongs to their parents.

His fight against an order to leave the country by Dec. 16 has made him a symbol to Immigration activists yearning for passage of the DREAM Act, proposed legislation that would grant conditional legal status to undocumented students who arrived to the U.S. as children.

At the same time, the fact that Padilla's illegal status was discovered when he was arrested in March for drinking and driving has energized groups opposed to legalization of the undocumented. Some conservative bloggers have characterized Padilla as a criminal who deserves to be booted out of the country. An initial felony charge later was reduced to a misdemeanor DUI, to which Padilla pleaded guilty.

With supporters chanting his name Friday inside the First Methodist Church, Padilla appeared choked up by the attention, clearing his throat several times before he could say 'Thank you.'

He recounted a life in Chicago that began in 1994, when he arrived with his family from the Mexican state of Jalisco and was placed in a bilingual education class.

Four years later, he said, he'd finally learned enough English to enroll in a regular fifth-grade class.

'At the time, it was the biggest moment in my life,' he said. 'I remember wanting more. I remember working extra hard and being told that, if I worked hard enough, I could accomplish anything.'

Referring to his DUI arrest, he added, 'Unfortunately, I did make one mistake that I am very sorry for.'

Padilla is enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a major in Latin American and Latino studies with a minor in sociology. He has been an active student leader there, attending classes while wearing the ankle monitor he was issued by federal Immigration authorities in lieu of being detained.

'He's one of the top students of my class,' said Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, a UIC sociology professor who has helped coordinate an online petition drive of university faculty that has spread to other parts of the country. 'It would be our loss if Rigo is deported, as we would lose one of our finest.'

Padilla's story inspired the Chicago City Council last month to pass a resolution on his behalf calling for his deportation to be stayed.

Since then, several more legislators and religious leaders have joined the campaign to 'Stop The Deportation of Rigo Padilla' a movement driven by students and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

On Friday, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., announced that she has introduced legislation that would specifically benefit Padilla and seeks to grant him legal permanent residency.

Though the bill doesn't guarantee relief for Padilla, it could delay the process, Schakowsky said, calling on Congress to speed efforts to again consider Immigration reforms that could resolve cases like Padilla's.

Officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the process for Padilla will continue according to schedule.

'Rigoberto Padilla is in the United States in violation of federal Immigration laws and has been duly afforded due process through Immigration courts,' Gail Montenegro, the Chicago spokeswoman for ICE, said in an e-mailed statement.

With his deadline looming, Padilla sought to keep a cool attitude, smiling at supporters and politely answering reporters' questions, sometimes in rusty Spanish.

'All my family is here; I don't know anyone in Mexico,' he said. 'I'm trying to balance my time and have enough energy to go to school. That's why I'm here; that's why I came to this country.'

Meanwhile, the campaign on his behalf flickered with intensity.

'You don't deport our best resources when we're trying to fix the Immigration system,' the Rev. Michael Shanahan, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, said at the rally. 'If nothing happens to stop the deportation of Rigo Padilla ... we will be back and we are ready to be arrested, including myself.'

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21.
A melting pot simmers
In Hyde Park, effort to bridge cultural divide and build neighborhood unity meets apathy
By Meghan E. Irons
The Boston Globe, December 7, 2009
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/07/a_melting_pot_simmers/

Bob Vance knew he had a problem when festivities for Taste the World of Hyde Park fizzled before they even started last year.

The dining fest was meant to offer samplings of such things as stewed yams, dumplings, and empanadas - foods that highlight the neighborhood’s booming ethnic population. But after Vance and others spent weeks urging foreign-born restaurant owners in Hyde Park to participate, only one signed up.

'I was really disappointed about that,’’ said Vance, whose community group, 02136 All Things Hyde Park, eventually canceled the celebration. 'Maybe we were a little ambitious.’’

Once an all-white working-class community, Hyde Park has undergone a dramatic ethnic shift in recent decades. Nearly 60 percent of its residents are members of a minority group, with nearly one-third born outside the United States. Hyde Park joins Dorchester, Roslindale, East Boston, and Allston/Brighton as the city’s five neighborhoods that have seen the sharpest increase in foreign-born population.

But as much as the faces of Hyde Park have changed, the neighborhood is still divided street to street as immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa buy homes and settle in enclaves there. The Caribbean community tends to live closer to the Mattapan border, whites closer to the Dedham and Milton lines, and Latinos and Africans in between.

'Economically, all of Hyde Park is the same,’’ said Christopher Johnson, a manager at The Hyde restaurant and a lifelong neighborhood resident. 'We’re pretty much a blue-collar community. Culturally, I wouldn’t call it segregated, but there are definitely cliques. There are definitely places where whites go, where blacks go, and where the Haitians go.’’

The goal of breaking down cultural walls street to street has sparked debate from Hyde Park to East Boston, as local leaders have begun driving home a theme of inclusion.

The issue came up during a Boston Civic Summit last year as community leaders wrestled with how to get more ethnic minorities to join local planning boards, neighborhood committees, and business groups. More recently, advocates have been pressing a one-neighborhood theme.

It has not been easy.

Only an African restaurant participated in a trolley food tour earlier this year in Hyde Park. No Haitians attended a jazz fest featuring musicians from their native country. And at a business breakfast meeting in October, only three foreign-born store owners attended.

White community leaders have had difficulty spreading the word about their groups’ services and offerings, because of language barriers and sometimes because of their inability to identify and communicate with various ethnic groups.

For instance, Vance, who is white, refers to most islanders as Haitians, even though many Hyde Park residents hail from different Caribbean countries.

And, immigrants who work multiple jobs or take classes at night say they do not have time to make the meetings.

'People are busy,’’ said John Emokpae, a Nigerian immigrant from Mattapan. 'But that does not mean we don’t care about the neighborhood.’’

Robert Consalvo, the city councilor who represents Hyde Park, said he meets regularly with Haitian, African, and Latino residents who express concern about improving their neighborhood. As proof of their civic engagement, he cited Hyde Park’s high voter turnout - among the top five in the city - during the recent mayoral election that returned neighborhood resident Thomas M. Menino to office.

'It shows they are engaged,’’ Consalvo said. 'It shows that whether you are Spanish, Italian, African, or Haitian, you turned out to vote and have your voice heard.’’

But he concedes that many of those same people might not volunteer with their neighborhood groups.

Patrice Gattozzi, who heads Hyde Park Main Streets, a nonprofit that promotes neighborhood businesses, said her group is beginning to identify and work with emerging leaders in the ethnic communities.

'We are trying to get business owners across the board,’’ she said. 'As business owners change, we want them to be part of the neighborhood. Sometimes, someone from another country may not realize that they should be involved.’’

Javier Diaz, a native of the Dominican Republic who owns Rincon Caribeño, is an emerging leader among immigrants in Hyde Park. But even Diaz is finding it difficult to rouse his countrymen to the meetings.

'My only guess is that there are poor, hard-working people here and they don’t have the time,’’ Diaz said. 'When you are struggling, there is not much else you can do.’’

In Hyde Park, white residents who have long been active in the community have rolled out a welcome mat to newcomers - even to those who can’t attend their meetings.

'I work seven days a week,’’ said Mir Enayet-Karim, a member of a small Bangladeshi group in Hyde Park. 'If my neighbor goes to the meetings, then I benefit.’’

Carline Desire, executive director of the Association of Haitian Women in Boston, said Haitians, too, are seizing educational and job opportunities that were not available to them in Haiti. Today, she said, Haitian involvement in the neighborhoods is improving as more immigrants seek political office.

Her group is stepping up efforts to keep up the momentum, particularly on census and immigration issues.

'I want people to know that we count as contributors in this society,’’ Desire said.

Vance and other leaders have seen other signs of change.

A recent community arts event drew more than 100 people, many of them immigrants. At a neighborhood business breakfast, half of the 30 who attended were foreign-born. And Vance’s group now has two volunteers who speak Haitian Creole and three new board members who are Hispanic and African.

There are small, hopeful steps, he said.

'We don’t want to do these once-in-a-while type of things,’’ he said. 'We want this to be a united Hyde Park.’’

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22.
Royals working on logistics in deal with Cuban pitcher
By Bob Dutton
The Kansas City Star (MO), December 6, 2009

Indianapolis -- The early buzz at baseball’s winter meetings, which open officially today, centers on the Royals and what appears to be an imminent deal with Cuban left-hander Noel Arguelles, a 20-year-old who defected more than a year ago in Canada.

Only it isn’t yet official.

'I know what’s out there,' general manager Dayton Moore said. 'I know what the speculation is. I know what the truth of the matter is. There is nothing that I can say about it because of formalities that need to be completed.'

What’s out there — and what club officials aren’t denying — is the Royals have an agreement in place with Arguelles for a five-year deal whose value could exceed $7 million.

The agreement is a Major League contract that, when completed, would place Arguelles immediately on the 40-man roster.

Moore’s hesitancy to confirm the contract appears rooted in the logistics of securing Arguelles’ entry into the United States — initially on a tourist visa to permit a physical examination and subsequently on a P1 entertainment visa for work purposes.

The P1 visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows foreign nationals who are athletes into the United States for specific competition.

Privately, club officials say they expect no problems in maneuvering Arguelles past those barriers but anticipate doing so could take a few weeks.

All indications suggest Arguelles is worth the effort. ESPN.com analyst Keith Law ranked him as the No. 10 free agent available in the offseason market and a likely top-five pick if available in next year’s draft.

'Arguelles earns raves for his athletic body and wide receiver-like build,' Law wrote, 'and his change-up projects as a plus pitch with his curveball further behind it.

'Arguelles’ command and control are still well below average, and he has limited professional pitching experience, so I wouldn’t expect him to reach the majors for three or four years.'

Tentative plans call for Arguelles to start next season at Class A Wilmington.

Arguelles was a member of the Cuban Junior National team in July 2008 when he and shortstop José Iglesias defected at a tournament in Edmonton. The Royals also pursued Iglesias before he signed an $8.2 million deal last summer with Boston.

The Royals were one of several clubs that scouted Arguelles in recent weeks in the Dominican Republic.
. . .
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/story/1614639.html

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23.
Helping people understand immigration process
By James Rufus Koren
The Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA), December 5, 2009
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_13935734

How many times can you fail the immigration civics test? What do you do if you feel an immigration officer isn't treating you fairly? Can you still become a citizen if you've been arrested?

Immigration officers from the San Bernardino office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were on hand Saturday morning in Apple Valley to answer those and dozens of other questions posed by about 50 local residents interested in becoming U.S. citizens or helping others through the naturalization process.

The Saturday program, held at the Apple Valley Church of the Nazarene, was the second presentation in a new pilot program that aims to spread information about citizenship and paint federal immigration officials in a better light.

'We want to make people more comfortable with the immigration process,' said Noe Lopez, an officer with the citizenship and immigration office in San Bernardino. 'A lot of people, they think, `Immigration office? I'm not going there. They'll arrest me.' But that's not us. We just provide services.'

Marisa Rodriguez, a Church of the Nazarene member who came to help with Saturday's event, said there's clearly demand for immigration information.

'A lot of people have a lot of questions and doubts,' she said.

Lopez's office held its first immigration information session in September in San Bernardino. It plans to do similar events around the Inland Empire once every three months, Lopez said, adding that future sessions might be geared to subjects other than the naturalization process.

'There are a lot of questions,' he said. 'And not just about naturalization, but also adjustments of status and green card applications.'

Saturday's attendees had questions about nearly every requirement of the citizenship allication, from their abililty to travel out of the country to the degree to which they must be able to speak and write in English.

Genaro Martinez, 27, has lived in U.S. for 11 years - 10 in the high desert and one in Temecula. He said he isn't sure if he is eligible to become a citizen but came to Saturday's information session learn more about the process.

'I'm trying to hear all the options,' he said. 'If I don't have any chance now, maybe I can in the future.'

Along with nearly two hours of answering questions, immigration officers explained immigration requirements and performed a mock immigration interview session, showing attendees what they can expect if they apply for citizenship.

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24.
Santa Muerte in L.A.: A gentler vision of 'Holy Death'
The sect is linked to narcotics trafficking in Mexico. As it moves north, it takes on the benign glow of virtue.
By Jill Leovy
The Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-muerte7-2009dec07,0,4919726.story

The prayer in Spanish sounded like one from an ordinary Catholic Mass. But the man who led it wore a coyote-skin headdress and called himself the last of 13 generations of brujosbrujos -- witch doctors -- in his family.

The name the worshipers invoked was not that of the Virgin Mary but of Santa Muerte, or 'Holy Death,' a Mexican folk saint linked to narcotics trafficking, a kind of female grim reaper with a skull for a face.

About two dozen devotees recited a rosary and stood and sat on cue to offer praise to this unconventional icon one Sunday at a storefront shrine near MacArthur Park.

'Angel created by faith,' they chanted, 'allow the power in me to be released.'

Santa Muerte is not a Catholic saint, and in recent decades her popularity in Mexico, especially among the poor and criminal classes, has led to clashes with church officials and government authorities. Her first adherents included Mexican prisoners, drug dealers and prostitutes, and those in legitimate but dangerous nighttime work, such as security guards and taxi drivers.

'It's sort of like the Virgin for people on the edge,' said Patrick A. Polk, a folklorist and curator at UCLA's Fowler Museum.

But in and around Los Angeles, where Santa Muerte services are held in at least three storefront shrines, a dash of pop theology and Southern California sunshine seems to have given the movement a mild New Age flavor.

Followers, many of whom call themselves Catholics, talk less about death than about cleansing the spirit and developing inner strength.

'Everything depends on oneself,' said Miguel Velasco, a former administrator and a 'spiritual guide' at the 3-year-old Sanctuario Universal de la Santa Muerte on Alvarado Street. 'You can believe in God, or a saint, or even a tree. But what really matters is the faith you have. Faith can move mountains.'

Leaders here characterize the practice as benign, and devotees appear to draw from a broad cross section of people in immigrant neighborhoods -- manual laborers, public employees, couples with children, laid-off factory workers.

Despite the startling imagery, these worshipers say, their cult is centered on love and virtue and is becoming accepted.

'Years ago, they used this for witchcraft, to get certain things: money, revenge,' said Santiago Guadalupe, who dons piles of wooden beads in addition to the headdress to give the weekly sermon at Sanctuario Universal. 'Now it is more religion. It is about health, prayer.'

Guadalupe wears a ponytail and possesses classic Aztec features: beaked nose, prominent brow, a wisp of a beard. He is from Catemaco, a town in Veracruz state where a Mexican subculture of alternative religion thrives. He said he began his training in the shamanistic arts as a child.

He helps run the sect from a pink office in the back of a tiny botanica up the street from the shrine. The walls are decorated with a sentimental painting of an Indian shaman in wolf skin, a sunset calendar and shelves containing incense and a bottle of Tapatio hot sauce.

From here, Guadalupe, who cited spiritual reasons in declining to give his age, works three phones at once, taking calls from clients all over the region seeking blessings or help with love affairs -- part of the all-inclusive spectrum of Santa Muerte devotion. There are also those requesting the more basic Shamanistic services: healing herbs, potions and readings of tarot cards and foreheads.

One recent afternoon, Guadalupe barked into one phone while reading the screen on a second, periodically cupping his hand over the mouthpiece to call out to customers in the botanica.

The customers wanted their fortunes told, and Guadalupe asked them to wait as he turned back to his phones, impatiently tapping a pen on the desk.

A large stack of tarot cards sat on the desk near him. Behind him, a large, glossy statue of the Virgin Mary caught the glare from the single lightbulb.

'People come for their jobs, for good luck at the casinos or for problems with a husband or wife,' Guadalupe said.

'In Mexico, more came because they were having problems in their family. Here, they come because they feel alone.'

Santa Muerte 'accepts them no matter their age, creed or color. She is accepting of all religions,' he said.

At the weekly Santa Muerte Mass, Guadalupe takes turns with several other spiritual guides to lead a long and somber service that resembles traditional Catholic Masses in Mexico and includes the recitation of a special rosary that incorporates the traditional Lord's Prayer and appeals to Santa Muerte in place of Mary.

Sneakers and cowboy boots thump on the laminate floor as the crowd stands for long stretches, then kneels for blessings. They inhale incense smoke, and raise their arms to the figure of Santa Muerte wearing a security guard's badge. Paper notes are safety-pinned to the skirt of her white satin gown -- petitions from devotees seeking favors.

Offerings are piled at her feet: orange carnations, white chrysanthemums, pink roses, a goblet of Snickers bars and peanut butter cups, beer, tequila and baskets of bananas, grapes and loaves of bread. Signs in felt pen urge visitors to be quiet.

Guadalupe offers prayer for those in jail or in trouble with the law -- a nod to Santa Muerte's origins among the marginal. But mainstream preoccupations rule. His sermon stresses the importance of family, the evils of envy and gossip.

'People miss their families and traditions,' Velasco explained. 'In the U.S., they face a lot of changes. The youth seem very lost. This society is very advanced with technology and security, but in human principles it remains low.'

Asimilar scene plays out three times a week at the Templo Santa Muerte on Melrose Avenue, where about 20 people gather for services. 'Blessed and glorious mother, Angel of Death,' they pray. 'We ask you to protect us.'

The services are run by a Mexican wrestler turned missionary who calls himself Sisyphus, who set up the shrine three years ago. Their tone is more improvised and folksy than at the shrine on Alvarado Street, and there are personal testaments and singing.

'We search for spiritual evolution,' Sisyphus said. He said he sees himself more as a counselor than a priest.

At both locations, devotees talk of Santa Muerte's power to perform miracles. They share stories of unexpected blessings -- an airline ticket procured, a baby's lung infection cleared. Santa Muerte is said to have particular powers over love.

But guides don't make guarantees. Their mission is to help people only with their faith, Guadalupe said, adding: 'I don't like problems.'

Marta Mendes, a Salvadoran grandmother who calls herself a devout Catholic, said she has attended the Melrose Masses for more than a year. She credits Santa Muerte with helping her vision, which had begun to fail because of diabetes.

'I am always a Catholic,' Mendes said. 'But my faith is here.'

Catholic church officials in Los Angeles have made no official statements on the sect, said an archdiocese spokeswoman.

Local devotees say they feel more accepted than they used to.

'At first, people would attack us. They saw this,' Velasco said, fingering a Santa Muerte pendant he wears around his neck, 'and they would start yelling. But now, there is more tolerance.'

Still, among enthusiasts, there is a sense that acceptance of Santa Muerte remains fragile.

They are quick to dissociate themselves from rumors of black magic and Satanism that circulate south of the border, and they dispute connections to drug traffickers. Allegations of such a connection have fueled bitter debate in violence-torn Mexico, where earlier this year a military campaign against narcotics culture was reportedly behind the destruction of several Santa Muerte shrines.

The sect's emergence here may not be especially surprising.

Los Angeles has been an incubator for all manner of fringe religions since the 19th century, a tradition fanned equally by rich Hollywood seekers and storefront-church disciples.

Mexico, too, has an enthusiastic tradition of tarot card reading and other forms of divination and also of healing herbs and potions.

Rick Nahmais, a photographer who has documented immigrants' Santa Muerte worship, said the practice fills serious needs among the marginalized, citing a group of transgender prostitutes he photographed in San Francisco. They sought Santa Muerte's protection from AIDS and even conducted marriages in her name, he said.

Southern California's version of the practice may contain 'a little shtick,' as is typical of L.A.'s New Age dabblings, he said. But the creed's striking imagery sets it apart. Nahmais called it genuine spiritual questing by people trapped in highly dangerous lives whose poverty, need or underworld occupations leave them feeling exiled from conventional faith.

'What I love about Santa Muerte worship is that it deals with the shadow very openly -- the Jungian shadow, the archetype of darkness in all of us,' he said. 'It embraces that.'

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25.
Philly school's racial tensions lead to fights
By Kathy Matheson
The Associated Press, December 4, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120403530.html?hpid=sec-education

Philadelphia (AP) -- Tensions between black and Asian students at a public high school erupted in a series of assaults over two days, leading to 10 suspensions and several students seeking medical treatment.

Asian students at South Philadelphia High School say two off-campus fights and a lunchroom attack left them feeling unsafe and helpless, in part because they say school security guards often turn a blind eye.

More than a dozen teens skipped school Friday to share their concerns at a news conference with adult advocates.

'We are outraged,' said Xu Lin of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp., who works with immigrant students. 'The parents are very, very concerned.'

School officials say this week's clashes were an aberration that belie strenuous efforts to improve race relations and cultural awareness.

'What gets lost in all of this is the fact that the school, the community and the students have worked hard over the past two years to foster that kind of positive learning environment,' said James Golden, the school district's chief safety executive. 'Despite what happened this week, that positive learning environment prevails.'

Lin said his efforts to facilitate community meetings and cultural training at the school have been largely ignored.

The school, with some 1,200 students, is 70 percent black and 18 percent Asian. It serves mostly low-income neighborhoods south of downtown and has been labeled 'persistently dangerous' by the state, based on the number of safety incidents reported.

Wei Chen, president of the school's Chinese-American Student Association, said the attacks stem from bullying over cultural differences and Asian students' poor English.

Accounts of the incidents differ.

Golden said a fight broke out Wednesday after school 'involving a small group of students' about a block off-campus. He said a black teenager suffered minor injuries. Asian students say a Vietnamese teen was attacked by more than a dozen teens.

Golden said a minor incident occurred Thursday in school, with no injuries or arrests. But Asian students described a lunchroom brawl in which some of them were punched and kicked.

After school Thursday, a large fight broke out about two blocks off-campus, according to students and officials. Several Asian students sought treatment at a hospital. Ten students - all black or Asian - were given 10-day suspensions after that attack and may be permanently expelled, district spokesman Vincent Thompson said.

Using Lin as a translator, ninth-grader Chaofei Zheng said Friday that he wants to get an education, make friends and improve his English. He said there are nice students at the school and that he doesn't understand the reason for the attacks.

'We are very afraid and feel helpless,' said Zheng, who sported a bruise on his eye from the lunchroom brawl. 'We don't know what to do.'

Golden said authorities were investigating. About a half-dozen police cruisers and twice as many officers on bicycles were posted outside the school Friday afternoon.

Amina Velazquez, a 17-year-old senior who is black and Puerto Rican, said the school is being tarnished by a few.

She also said Asian students tend to stay within their own groups, making it hard to get to know them.

'We just need to get them out of their shells more often,' she said.

Velazquez, a member of the school's student government, suggested that if Asian students participated in more activities, they would be further integrated into the school community. She noted that for some, language barriers make interaction difficult.

Regional superintendent Michael Silverman noted officials have met with school security guards to discuss the need for consistent discipline.

The racial tension 'started in the community and came into the school,' Silverman said. 'I don't know how you separate the school from the community.'

On Friday evening, Silverman and other district officials and police met with members of the Asian community for two hours in what Silverman called 'a very emotional meeting' about the week's events.

'We never want this to happen again,' Silverman said.

Thompson said the number of violent incidents at the school is down 50 percent from this time last year. According to state reports, South Philadelphia reported 371 violent incidents last school year, down from 480 in the 2007-08 school year. But the school population also declined by about 300 students in that period.

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26.
Mixtco-speaking immigrants struggle to make a life near Othello
By Melissa Sanchez
The Yakima Herald-Republic (WA), December 4, 2009
http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2009/12/04/mixtco-speaking-immigrants-struggle-to-make-a-life-near-othello

Othello, WA -- In a bleak housing project west of this small rural town, the Mexican farm workers living here murmur to each other in a dialect many of them don't want their children to learn.

It's called Mixteco, one of the dozens of dialects spoken by Latin America's indigenous people.

For these immigrants, Spanish is a second language. Many don't speak it.

'I want my children to learn Spanish,' said Isabel Reyes, a 31-year-old who speaks to them in broken Spanish. 'And English. I want them to go to school and get good jobs so they don't have to work in the fields like we do.'

Indigenous people like her are the Native Americans of Mexico and Central America.

They have been coming to the United States for as long as Mexicans have been immigrating here -- although in dramatically higher numbers over the past three decades.

Nationwide, the federal government estimates that 17 percent of farm workers are indigenous.

They first arrived in California -- at least 500,000 indigenous Mexicans still live there -- and slowly migrated north into Oregon and Washington, following other Mexican immigrants to jobs in agriculture and restaurants.

Now, their migration has brought them over the Cascades and into Eastern Washington, mostly to Othello, Quincy and Mattawa.

Only a few dozen Mixteco-speaking immigrants live in the Yakima Valley.

Othello, with a population of about 5,800, is home to the state's highest concentration of Mixtecos.

As many as 800 people from the highlands of southern Mexico live here -- often in cold, cramped duplexes and mobile homes outside of the city's quiet downtown.

They are neighbors who are related to each other by blood or marriage, having grown up in the same village or worked in farm jobs together in the United States or Mexico.

How so many got here is a story that mirrors that of countless immigrant communities transplanted into rural Americana.

Ramiro Silva, who arrived more than a decade ago, believes one of Othello's pioneer Mixtecos was a man from a Guerrero mountain village who found work picking apples in the late 1980s alongside other Mexican immigrants.

The man sent back money to relatives in Mexico, married Ramiro's cousin and told relatives about this place where jobs were plentiful and life was good.

Back home, where the land was too degraded to grow, villagers already had a history of doing seasonal labor in other parts of Mexico.

As in many stories of migration, word about Othello swept through the villages and hundreds more indigenous Mixtecos -- including Silva and his son -- would eventually follow.

'Only the grandparents and the small children are left,' said Silva, 50, a butcher at a Mexican meat market who last year became a homeowner with his son and family. 'I haven't been back in a very long time.'

In an ironic twist to the immigrant narrative, it is in the United States that many indigenous Mixtecos become more Mexican. Not only do they speak Spanish to their children -- who learn English in public schools -- but they also watch Mexican soap operas they can't always follow on satellite television and learn to make tamales to sell to other immigrants in the fields.

Doing so helps them blend into the greater farm worker community. According to the U.S. Census, more than 60 percent of Othello residents are Hispanic.

It's an attempt to avoid the discrimination that's followed indigenous people for centuries, said James Loucky, an anthropology professor at Western Washington University.

History in Latin America -- as in the United States -- has not been kind to indigenous communities, which have been enslaved, forced off of productive lands and are still marginalized because of their language, copper-colored skin and small stature.

Even in recent decades, the Guatemalan military massacred indigenous Mayans during a brutal civil war while, in Mexico, the government has used military force to quell indigenous uprisings in demand of autonomy.

Salvador Lopez, a 39-year-old migrant farm worker from Guerrero, said the discrimination followed him to Othello.

Other Mexicans 'will take our money, yell at us on the job or threaten us with immigration,' he said. 'It's usually the white people who can't even tell us apart who treat us better.'

Loucky, who studies indigenous communities in southern Mexico and Central America, called Mixtecos an extremely vulnerable group within an already marginalized immigrant community.

'Sometimes I think the person that's already being exploited or is in a hard place, then takes it out on somebody who is in a lesser position,' he said.

Sarah Leyrer, a lawyer with Columbia Legal Services, an organization that advocates for legal and human rights for the poor, said that many Mixtecos she works with carry that history like a heavy burden.

'We've found that the Mixtecos face a lot of discrimination in Mexico because they're Indian, and they take that here with them -- that feeling that they'll be discriminated against here, too,' she said. 'They often don't speak up when they don't understand Spanish. They're a more isolated population, less trusting of outsiders.'

Over the years, social agencies and immigrant rights groups in Othello have found hope in second-generation Mixtecos, such as Carmela Porfirio and her sister, who have become interpreters.

It's a job the 24-year-old enjoys and lets her embrace her parents' tradition.

'I want to help my people,' Porfirio said one evening after interpreting for a Mixtec couple at a Columbia Basin Health Association clinic, which has made significant inroads at building trust among Othello's indigenous immigrants. 'What makes you unique if you don't have your own language anymore?'

Mixteco is not a written language, which makes it challenging for parents to teach their children if they don't have much time to spend around them.

'Sure it'd be nice for them to learn all the dialects, but we don't have time to teach them,' said Lopez, who learned a little Spanish during grammar school in Mexico. 'So we teach them Spanish. It's more useful.'

One street away from the Lopez home, another immigrant said teaching her children her native tongue has been a struggle.

'They understand what I say,' said Josefina Pineda, a 25-year-old who shares a two-bedroom duplex with her husband, three children and seven other relatives. 'But they don't speak my dialect. They say they don't want to, that they just can't.

'I don't know why.'

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27.
Postville immigrants face likely deportation
By Grant Schulte
The Des Moines Register, December 6, 2009
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20091206/NEWS/912060343/-1/COMM07/Postville-immigrants-inching-toward-closure

Postville, IA -- Forty-year-old Juventino Lopez Pichia wants to bring his wife and children to Iowa.

But he knows that likely will never happen.

Instead Pichia and about 29 other immigrants arrested in the massive 2008 raid of Agriprocessors Inc. face deportation, probably sometime before the end of the year. The 30 or so immigrants were given temporary work visas so they could remain in Iowa and be available to testify in Sholom Rubashkin's second federal trial.

However, those charges were dropped against the former Agriprocessors vice president.

'If I could bring my wife and children here, I would,' said Pichia, who cut chicken breasts at the plant for $7.25 an hour. 'This is a country of opportunities. But since that can't happen, I'm going to work hard here until I go back.'

Pichia shares a home in Decorah with six other men involved with the raid and commutes with them to their jobs in Postville. All are originally from Guatemala. In their free time, they alternate chores cooking and cleaning the home, rented from a local family.

Javier Lopez Sache, 19, said he had hoped to help support his five brothers and five sisters back at home. Sache said he worked in a refrigerated area of the plant, in a cold comparable to the outdoor temperature in the teens.

Work at the plant remains hectic, 'but the pace is better now,' Sache said. 'Before, all the supervisors were very demanding.'

Many of the men attend services at local churches. Pichia, who said he doesn't drink or smoke because of his Christian faith, said he now calls his family once a day.

Advocates for the immigrants who were supposed to testify against Rubashkin say they are outraged that a federal jury will never hear about past abuses at the plant.

'What is their future?' asked the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk, retired pastor of St. Bridget's Catholic Church in Postville. 'What will the government do with them? Will any recognition be made that they sacrificed two years of their lives?'

Some immigrants suffered so greatly from their post-raid experiences that the Catholic Archdiocese of Dubuque, which encompasses Postville, hired bilingual psychiatric counselors to help them with depression and other mental illnesses, Ouderkirk said.

'The raid isn't over,' he said. 'There's no closure, no matter how hard the people want there to be.'

Agriprocessors was the site of a May 2008 federal raid that caught 389 illegal-immigrant workers. About 300 were charged with aggravated identity theft or possession of false documents and sent to prison for five months.

Among them was Victor Hugo Sis Tepaz, 44, a Guatemalan who worked a 4 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. shift at the plant before the raid. Tepaz was arrested, pleaded guilty to an identity theft charge for using an Ohio Social Security number, and served a five-month prison sentence in Florida and Oklahoma.

Federal agents returned Tepaz and other former workers to Postville in November 2008 so they could testify against Rubashkin in his 72-count Immigration trial.

But those charges were dropped in November, after a South Dakota jury convicted Rubashkin of 86 counts of financial fraud. The decision hinged, in part, on the likely cost and inconvenience to witnesses. Prosecutors also argued that jurors had effectively declared Rubashkin's guilt on some Immigration charges when they found him guilty of lying to the plant's lender about the work force. Defense lawyers dispute the assertion.

When the Immigration charges were dropped, prosecutors no longer needed the immigrant witnesses, who now face deportation.

The immigrants were given temporary work visas while they waited to testify in the trial, and eventually returned to Agriprocessors.

Rubashkin, along with his father and several former human resource employees, still faces thousands of child labor charges levied by the Iowa attorney general's office. All have pleaded not guilty, and a trial is slated to begin at a not-yet-set date next year.

Tepaz said conditions at the kosher meat plant have improved. The supervisors before 'were very strict' and always pushed employees to work faster, he said through a Spanish translator. 'Now, they're friendly,' he said.

He said he now makes $9.25 per hour, up from the $7.50 hourly wage he collected when he first started. He works 50 to 60 hours per week.

Workers have alleged that they were illegally underpaid, overworked and threatened with job termination if they complained. One girl, who was 15 when she was hired, told state investigators of repeated sexual harassment from some low-level supervisors.

A sense of caution still hovers in Postville about Agri Star, the plant's new name under new ownership. Hershey Friedman, a Canadian businessman, bought the plant out of bankruptcy and reopened it with promises to restart the now-dormant beef kill line.

Becky Monroe, a stylist at the Headquarters hair salon in Postville, said she has noticed smaller crowds outside the Postville church pantry, which used to attract lines that stretched well down Greene Street.

'It's going to take a long time to recover,' she said. ' ... I think that the community's perspective on Agri Star is going to be: Sit back and wait with caution.'

Other business owners said an Oct. 17 fire at a downtown bakery, a popular local business, had overshadowed immediate concerns about the raid.

The fire destroyed the 126-year-old building and displaced more than 10 people who lived in the apartments upstairs. The blaze also damaged the Wishing Well, a gift and flower shop and one of the few remaining retail businesses in town.

Some residents express hope that, as the raid's aftermath nears an end, their northeast Iowa town might start to recover.

'Everyone predicted this town would dry up and blow away,' said Gary DeVilbiss, who runs an insurance firm downtown. 'But we knew we were going to survive.'

DeVilbiss said the Rubashkin verdict inched the town toward a sense of closure. 'You could feel the weight come off the town's shoulders,' he said. 'It wasn't that he got convicted. It was just the sense that it was over.'

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28.
Cartels' youth recruitment worries authorities
By Lynn Brezosky
The San Antonio Express News (TX), December 7, 2009
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/state/78659102.html

Brownsville, TX -- When Laredo police investigator Joe Baeza meets with the juvenile enforcement team, he hears of a disturbing trend.

'The adult prison gangs are basically recruiting wide-eyed children, literally, to do their criminal activities, only because the system doesn't treat them the same way,' he said.

The Texas Department of Public Safety last month warned parents of Mexican gang recruitment and the Border Patrol is continuing a 'scare and awe' campaign highlighting the risks, including torture and death, of cartel employment that seems to promise street status and easy money.

But on the border, it seems, youths are being schooled to be brazen.

'These kids aren't thinking like the 15- and 16-year-olds we were,' Baeza said. 'They're reciting search and seizure laws back to the officers on the street because they've been taught by somebody else that this is what you can get away with.'

Laredo police have caught youths as young as 13 in cars full of marijuana still wet from the riverbank, he said, and the geography of the city is obvious enough to know where marijuana in that amount is coming from.

The cartels control the routes leading north to the Rio Grande, and those who study the problem have for years suspected they have formed alliances with street gangs on the U.S. side to help distribute the product.

Customs and Border Protection officers in El Paso last March stopped eight juvenile drug smugglers, five of them U.S. citizens, with a total of 388 pounds of marijuana and 4.8 pounds of cocaine, prompting a news release warning that 'traffickers will employ any and all types of people in their drug smuggling attempts.'

Mexican cartels have been exploiting the border's overtaxed justice system in this way for years, Hidalgo County District Attorney René Guerra said.

Since there's no youth offender program in the federal courts, a 16-year-old caught trying to bring 200 pounds of marijuana over an international bridge will likely wind up in the state's juvenile system, among thousands of cases heard each year by his county's state district judges. Most records will be sealed.

Border Patrol agents at inland highway checkpoints routinely catch drug loads worth $1 million or more. Perpetrators with smaller loads — Guerra couldn't remember the 'threshold' — may end up farmed out to courts in rural counties.

'To me it's a question of court time,' he said. 'That's why I don't do federal crime. We can't afford it.'

That's not to say youth aren't being prosecuted. What happens in a given case will vary based on the individual and the circumstances.

Experts on gangs, including at least one former gang member, say the focus needs to be on preventing youths from joining them in the first place.

'It's more about ... being part of this family; you want to be part of this family, you gotta be down. It's nothing to do with ‘Oh, you won't get caught, they won't keep you because you're 12,'' said Ossco Bolton, 37, who was involved in a Bloods vs. Crips war in Kansas City, Mo. 'You're doing it because you want to show your big brothers or your crew or your set that you're down.'

Bolton now travels across the country and Canada to promote P.O.S.S.E (Peers Organized to Support Student Excellence). 'We started out as a rap group,' he remembered of gang life. 'Eventually we decided we're going to just defend ourselves, we're going to get our own guns. . ... We didn't know we were going to wind up killing each other and going to prison. How could you know at 16?'

The DPS warning Nov. 17 about Mexican cartel recruitment beyond the border took some by surprise.

DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange did not have any recent evidence of cartel recruitment in the state's interior. Several school districts contacted said they had seen the alert and had taken notice, but none knew of any such cases in their districts.

'Although we've not seen this behavior spread to cities that are not along the border it could start happening some time soon and we wanted to make sure parents were aware of that,' Mange said. Susan Ritter, a border crime expert at the University of Texas-Brownsville, said the biggest problem may be cartels making connections with existing gangs.

The Tri-City Bombers, named for the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo area, started as a break-dancing group that graduated to petty crime and eventually made ties with prison gangs. It is now said to be competing with the Texas Chicano Brotherhood, Texas Syndicate and the Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos to be the Texas border arm of the Gulf Cartel.

A grenade thrown through a bar window in Pharr in January was traced to explosives believed to be used by the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel's enforcers, in attacks against a television station and the U.S. consulate in Monterrey, Mexico.

'They don't know how the Tri-City bombers got their hands on that,' Ritter said.

Of the DPS notice she said, 'That's nothing new. It never hurts, though, to send reminders out to parents.'

Awareness is the intent of 'Operation Detour,' the Border Patrol program that's so far been presented to more than 53,000 people, including more than 47,000 students, in the Rio Grande Valley.

'We try to give them the information that of course the cartels or the recruiters don't tell them,' agency spokesman Jose Trevino said.

Beyond attorney's fees, having a transport vehicle impounded, and potentially losing financial aid for college, being deported, or being shut out of a long list of careers, Trevino said, is the violence of the drug world.

'OK, you've dealt with the legal system, but what about the dope? You just lost the dope, and these cartels, they hold everybody accountable. They expect something, their narcotics back or money. Somehow they'll get it, whether it's retribution towards them or even family members.'

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29.
2 charged with smuggling Nigerian, Brazilians
The Associated Press, December 7, 2009

Lake Worth, FL (AP) -- Two men who allegedly tried to bring immigrants from as far as Nigeria to Florida are facing federal smuggling charges.
. . .
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/1366125.html

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30.
Brother of Dallas bomb suspect deported to Jordan
The Associated Press, December 7, 2009

Amman, Jordan (AP) -- The father of a man accused of trying to blow up a Dallas skyscraper welcomed home his other son who was deported from the United States.
. . .
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6757350.html

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Overseas News

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

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

[For CISNEWS subscribers --

1. Mexico: Declining remittances may drive currency devaluation
2. Mexico: Detainees granted access to new library
3. E.U.: Council on Refugees displeased with Maltese appointment
4. U.K.: Visa system allows flood of bogus foreign students (story, link)
5. U.K.: AG never considered resignation over housekeeper (story, link)
6. U.K.: IT sector protests influx of Indian employees
7. U.K.: Anti-Islam rally descends into violence (link)
8. U.K.: Couple forced to reside in Chile under new law (link)
9. France: Issue at heart of national identity debate
10. Germany: Deportee an exile in native but unfamiliar Turkey
11. Switzerland: Gov't to halve non-E.U. work permits
12. Italy: Soccer fans heap abuse on young immigrant star
13. South Africa: Int'l. NGO critical of health care access
14. Japan: Chinese woman deceived biometric controls
15. Australia: Figures show China leading source of immigration
16. Australia: Audits close more questionable colleges
17. Australia: Catholic Church says immigration keeping church 'vibrant'
18. Australia: Canadian facing deportation begins hunger strike (link)

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

-- Mark Krikorian]


1.
Falling remittances one factor in possible peso devaluation
By Steve Clark
The Brownsville Herald (TX), December 6, 2009
http://www.themonitor.com/articles/peso-33232-brownsville-possible.html

Brownsville, TX -- Less money being sent to Mexico could mean a cheaper peso, economic experts said.

Mexican migrants sent home 36 percent less money in October than a year earlier, marking the largest drop since records began being kept in 1996, the Associated Press reported last week.

The volume of foreign currency entering Mexico is one of several factors that affects its exchange rate, Rafael Otero, interim dean of the school of business and associate professor of economics and international business at the University of Texas at Brownsville/South Texas College, said.

'The more money that flows into Mexico, the more the peso strengthens,' he said. 'If it’s going down that would be one pressure toward devaluation.'

This does not mean peso devaluation is imminent, since a variety of factors are involved. In fact, it is unlikely in the short term, Otero said, noting that the Central Bank of Mexico is selling off $50 million a day to try and maintain the current exchange rate.

Devaluation of the peso hurts both sides of the border. Brownsville’s economy suffered as a result of peso devaluations in the 1980s and 1990s, which stemmed the flow of Mexican nationals spending money north of the border.

'It had a huge impact on the border economy,' Otero said. 'Fortunately for Mexico, the Central Bank has about $75 billion to $80 billion ready to sell to counter pressures to devaluation.'

If current conditions persist long enough, however, it could hurt that country’s economy. Mexico’s main three sources of foreign money are oil exports, remittances and tourism, in that order, and all three are in decline. Migrant workers in the U.S. are having such a hard time finding work that relatives in Mexico are having to send money north.

And then there’s oil.

'Oil prices are not what they were two years ago,' Otero said. 'Oil production is going down. Since the government has been taking most of the money from Pemex, the company hasn’t had much money to invest in looking for new sources of oil.'

As a result, Mexico, stuck drilling old fields that are running out of oil, is the world’s only major exporter with falling reserves. Every other exporter is increasing reserves, he says.

'The medium-term, long-term outlook is not very good for the Mexican economy,' Otero says.

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2.
Mexico Opens Library for Detained Aliens
The Associated Press, December 4, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/04/world/AP-LT-Mexico-Detainee-Library.html

Mexico (AP) -- Foreign migrants caught while in Mexico illegally can now at least fight boredom while mourning their bad fortune.

Mexico's National Immigration Institute says it has installed a library with 1,000 pieces of reading material at its holding station in eastern Mexico City. It's named ''Looking South,'' even if many of the migrants caught were looking north, hoping to cross Mexico to reach the United States.

The agency says the project is meant to give the detained migrants what it calls ''elements of distraction and cultural enrichment during their stay.''

Spain's international development agency is helping finance the project that opened Friday.

The involuntary visitors can also watch DVDs or television and use a computer at the facility.

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3.
Malta ‘is not the right country’ to host EU asylum agency
The Malta Independent, December 6, 2009
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=98365

Last week, the European Union announced that Malta is to host the EU’s Asylum Support Office, a new European agency whose remit is to help member states deal with irregular migrants.

The agency, Malta’s first since it joined the EU, was awarded last Tuesday with the backing of 22 out of 27 member states.

Cyprus and Bulgaria were also in the running to host the agency, which will have an annual e50 million budget and a staff of 100.

It would appear that the way was opened for Malta to acquire the agency when Bulgaria withdrew its application.

The office, due to open some time next year, is intended to deliver help both with countries’ day-to-day operational requirements dealing with refugees and with so-called emergency situations where a mass influx of asylum seekers lands on their doorstep.

But not all are happy with this decision.

According to EUObserver, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles noted that the member state chosen to host the new agency has a history of anti-immigrant politics, with 'illegal' immigration in recent years becoming one of the country’s top priorities both nationally and at EU level.

'Malta ... does not have today the best record in welcoming refugees,' said Kris Pollet, a senior policy officer with ECRE.

ECRE went on to say that in many instances policies have given rise to violations of fundamental rights of migrants, particularly arbitrary detention and forcible return.

On the other hand, French interior minister Eric Besson told journalists ahead of the announcement: 'France clearly supports Malta to get the seat.'

'We have to end this asylum ‘supermarket’,' he added.

Asylum policies vary widely across the EU. In 2008, for example, virtually no Iraqis were recognised as refugees in Greece, while 91 per cent of the Iraqi asylum seekers who ended up in Germany were given international protection

France, on its part, resettled 92 refugees from Malta last year and in 2010 will take in 'around 80' other asylum seekers.

Human rights organisations and refugee advocates back the principle of a more harmonised European asylum system but issued a note of concern at the announcement.

Advocacy groups worry the focus is on preventing irregular immigration rather than on protection of the vulnerable.

'The creation of a European Asylum Support Office has the potential to minimize this asylum lottery. However, at the negotiation table member states are opposing new rules which aim to achieve a more harmonised European asylum system based in higher standards of protection for refugees,' Mr Pollet told EUobserver.

ECRE also worried that a European asylum system will lack oversight from the European Parliament and input from independent experts, such as academics and NGOs.

Amnesty International also welcomed the 'creation of a common area of protection' as 'a step in the right direction' but worries that the EU actions proposed on migration 'are all directed towards achieving an effective and sustainable return policy' and 'not on a rights-based approach.'

'Policies in this field, including in co-operation with third countries, must be guided by the principle of safeguarding the human dignity and human rights of migrants,' the group said in a statement ahead of the announcement.

'In practices seen in member states this has often proven not to be the case.'

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4.
Immigration rules result in flood of bogus students
Serious flaws in immigration controls have been uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph only days after a chief government adviser called for a review of Britain's student visa system.
By David Barrett
The Telegraph (U.K.), December 6, 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/6736498/Immigration-rules-result-in-flood-of-bogus-students.html

Serious flaws in immigration controls have been uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph only days after a chief government adviser called for a review of Britain's student visa system.

New Home Office rules, which ministers promised would reduce the number of new arrivals, have actually led to a surge in applications

Our undercover reporters have exposed a host of scams offered to foreign nationals desperate to come to Britain as bogus students.

New Home Office immigration rules, which ministers promised would reduce the number of new arrivals, have actually led to a surge in applications and prompted immigration officials to voice their concerns.

Thousands of bogus students are being handed British visas after the Government's much-heralded reform of the immigration system created a major loophole, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

Whistleblowers within the immigration service have revealed for the first time that rising numbers of student visa applications have created a big global backlog because new Home Office rules left officials powerless to refuse fraudulent applicants.

Undercover reporters in three foreign countries have also exposed a host of fraudulent methods used in attempts to exploit weaknesses in the Home Office's new 'points-based' immigration system.

These include:

* Fake 'relatives' in Britain offered at $1,000 (£610) each, to make visa applications look more impressive.

* Under-the-counter loans organised for foreigners to 'prove' they can pay course fees and support themselves, although the money is handed back to the lender once it has appeared on bank statements.

* Immigrants being advised to apply to a legitimate university and then switch to a bogus college once on British soil.

Last week, Professor David Metcalf, the chairman of the Home Office's Migration Advisory Committee, said he was 'stunned' by the number of colleges allowed to bring students into the country on degree courses despite them being 'not proper universities', and called for the scope of student visa sponsorship to be reviewed. A separate review is already under way after Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, last month called for a rethink of the student visa system.

The situation has worsened to such an extent, and created such a rush of applications, that one foreign government has already raised 'concerns' about the points-based system with Home Office ministers, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Government officials in the Philippines alerted British consular staff to the large number of poorly-educated citizens who were heading for Britain on study visas.

Theresa Dizon-de Vega, Consul-General at the Philippine Embassy in London, said: 'The Ambassador had a very productive discussion recently with minister Phil Woolas and officials of the UK Home Office.

'The Philippine Embassy and the UK Home Office agreed to co-ordinate closely and exchange information and views on various immigration-related concerns including the implementation of the new points-based system of migration.'

It is a major blow for the points-based system (PBS) which was meant to 'raise the bar' and reduce the number of immigrants coming to Britain from outside Europe.

Devised by Liam Byrne, the former immigration minister who has since promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the PBS came into force for overseas students in March.

It requires students to have 40 points to come to Britain. Applicants receive 30 points for holding a course offer from a college or university, and 10 points for proving they can pay the fees and support themselves while in the country.

Sources within the UK Border Agency claim the PBS removed the discretion of entry clearance officers in British embassies around the world, who are now forced to approve applications if candidates demonstrate they have 40 points, even if they suspect the applicant is a fraud.

An investigation by this newspaper has exposed widespread abuse by visa agencies in India, China and the Philippines which are advising customers on how to get around the British Government's requirements, with some admitting that most 'students' were simply coming here to work.

One agency in Fazilka, in Punjab, India, made an extraordinary pledge, telling our reporter: 'We guarantee an applicant a student visa within a month.'

At another agency based in a cramped, stinking building in Fazilka, close to the Pakistan border, an adviser told our reporter that students in Britain always find a way to work more than the permitted 20 hours a week.

In the Philippines, one agency offered to bolster a visa application by arranging for Filipinos already living in Britain to pose as members of the applicant's family for $1,000 and also promised that course records could 'be arranged' for a fee, even if the student had failed their exams.

The applicant would then be able to secure a place in a British college – winning 30 points required under the PBS – on the basis of fraudulent paperwork.

Agencies in China advised applicants to register with a bona fide language school or university, and then switch to a bogus college once on Britain soil, to make it easier to extend their visa.

Li Wiuling, an agent in Beijing, said: 'You can change after you arrive, because the formal ones are expensive.'

She offered a 'guaranteed' visa for 40,000 yuan (£3,500) and promised that anyone who failed to attend their classes in Britain faced little prospect of being discovered.

'There are so many people doing the same thing, they are all fine. There won't be one risk out of 100,' she said.

Sources in the immigration service estimate that there are 5,000 immigrants in the London area alone who arrived here as bogus students and are working in the black economy, possibly with little intention of ever returning home.

Awareness of the Home Office's new rules in countries such as China, Pakistan and India has led to student visa applications quadrupling in some areas, generating a global backlog running into tens of thousands, The Sunday Telegraph discloses today. Applications in Sri Lanka and Nepal are also believed to be increasing.

As consular staff struggle to process the mountain of paperwork, the backlog has reached 10,000 applications in Beijing and 6,000 in Bombay, sources told this newspaper.

The Home Office had already acknowledged a backlog of 14,000 applications from Pakistan which Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, officially blamed on computer problems earlier this year.

One source said: 'Before the points-based system, Bombay was getting 150 applications a day in the peak application season but now it is getting 600 a day, which is why the backlog has gone up and up.

'At the moment there is massive abuse. The points-based system is utter nonsense and an utter farce.

'Without a shadow of a doubt you are talking about thousands of visas being issued to people who are not legitimate students and simply want to come to Britain and work.'

Insiders estimate that the visa section at the British Consulate in India has received 15,000 to 20,000 extra applications this year while in China there have been an extra 10,000.

Both the Indian and Chinese missions introduced a moratorium on new student applications eight weeks ago which remains in force in both countries. In an indication of the scale of the problem there are no plans to lift either embargo, sources said.

Last month it emerged that the number of student visas issued at Mumbai and New Delhi in India, and Dhaka in Bangladesh, was 6,771 between June and August last year, but this year the figure was 19,950.

Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, said: 'Ministers should be very worried if the new system is easier to exploit than the old one. They must act to reassure the public, and genuine colleges, that this is not another immigration disaster in the making.

'The borders agency needs to call in all applications that have come through these routes as a matter of urgency.'

A source said: 'Under the old system under the Immigration Act, immigration officers could reject an application they believed was not legitimate. They don't have that ability any more.

'As long as an applicant gets the points there is no flexibility for the entry clearance officer to reject the visa. It's a terrible loophole.

'The government's spin was that the PBS would make it much quicker and easier to spot false applications, but it has actually made things much worse.'

A Home Office spokesman denied there was a moratorium on applications and insisted that the rise in student visa numbers was down to the global recession and not the PBS.

Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, said: 'The points-based system ensures that colleges and schools must be licensed to bring in foreign students, inspected by accreditation bodies and the UK Border Agency to ensure they are genuine, and take responsibility for their students.

'Before we tightened controls around 4,000 UK institutions were bringing in international students, this has been reduced to around 2,000.

'We continuously monitor our systems and where improvements can be made we will make them.'

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Britain 'losing out on tens of thousands of overseas students', says report
Points based immigration system aimed at rooting out terrorists blamed for delaying visas for genuine students
By Jessica Shepherd
The Guardian (U.K.), December 6, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/06/immigration-students-blocked

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5.
Baroness Scotland 'never considered resigning over illegally employed housekeeper'
Baroness Scotland never considered resigning as Attorney General amid the row over her illegally employed Tongan housekeeper, she disclosed during an appearance on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
The Telegraph (U.K.), December 6, 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/6744162/Baroness-Scotland-never-considered-resigning-over-illegally-employed-housekeeper.html

Lady Scotland was fined £5,000 for failing to keep photocopies of documents she claims she was shown by Loloahi Tapui, who was charged with fraud and immigration offences.

In her first major broadcast interview since the affair came to light, Lady Scotland told interviewer Kirsty Young she was 'very, very sorry' for the distress she caused to her family and accepted she had breached the rules.

But asked if she ever thought about 'jacking it in' as political opponents called for her resignation, she responded simply: 'No.'

Lady Scotland said: 'It was a very difficult time and I clearly accepted that I should have taken a photocopy of the passport. I didn't.

'That was wrong. I was fined. I accepted it. The thing I was really worried about was the impact it had on my family.

'My family have been amazing and I am very grateful to them and I am very, very sorry that an oversight on my part, a genuine mistake, has caused them a great deal of distress.

'The law was targeted at employers and I have paid the penalty for that. If anything, it demonstrated that nobody at all is above the law.'

Asked what lessons she had drawn from the events, she replied: 'I learnt that I need to be an awful lot better at managing my administration.'

In a wide-ranging interview, Lady Scotland recalled her childhood on the Caribbean island of Dominica and her experiences of racist bullying after her policeman father moved the family to the east London suburb of Walthamstow in the late 1950s.

She revealed that, before entering the law, she considered alternative careers as either a ballet dancer or a nun.

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Baroness Scotland's former housekeeper in court over immigration
The former housekeeper of Attorney General Baroness Scotland appeared in court today charged with immigration offences.
The Telegraph (U.K.), December 7, 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6752368/Baroness-Scotlands-former-housekeeper-in-court-over-immigration.html

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6.
UK call for action on Indian IT workers
By James Boxell
The Financial Times (London), December 6, 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bc68649c-e29e-11de-b028-00144feab49a.html

Indian technology companies have been accused of bringing overseas staff to the UK on an 'industrial scale' after Home Office figures showed the biggest users of temporary IT work visas were almost all from the subcontinent.

The details were disclosed after a Freedom of Information request revealed that seven of the top 10 companies importing non-EU IT workers were Indian.

Tata Consulting Services was the biggest user of 'intra-company transfers' in the sector, with 4,465 of its staff coming to the UK last year. It was followed by Infosys and Wipro, with 3,030 and 2,350 respectively.

The Association of Professional Staffing Companies, which represents IT recruiters and which submitted the FoI request, said the figures showed it was too easy for foreign companies to bypass the domestic labour market and raised the question of UK wages being undercut.

Unions and recruiters have lobbied the government and the immigration watchdog, the Migration Advisory Committee, to introduce a tougher regime for the transfer of overseas staff, arguing that companies were sidestepping visa regulations while resident workers and graduates were desperate for employment.

More than 60 per cent of the non-EU workers who arrived in the UK last year came via intra-company transfers, the large majority working in the IT sector.

Ann Swain, chief executive of Apsco, said: 'There is no requirement for companies to tap the UK labour market before transferring workers from overseas.

'This is a major loophole that the government has failed to close.'

IT companies insist overseas staff are essential to plug gaps in local expertise – because of the shortage of British engineering, science and maths graduates – and that their use encourages inward investment.

Keith Sharp, UK and Europe marketing director for Tata Consulting, denied that transferring temporary workers from India was 'a cheap option' and said Tata was fully compliant with regulations, paying housing allowances, wages and taxes.

'I have heard about abuses of the system,' he said. 'But if it is being abused then people should report it to the border agency.'

Tata understood that the issue of transfers was 'clearly sensitive', Mr Sharp said, but workers were brought in on specific projects at the request of large corporate clients such as British Airways.

He added that they ­usually returned home to work on the same project after a period in the country. The Migration Advisory Committee estimates the average stay is about 18 months.

Tata also said it was committed to employing permanent staff in the UK.

The Home Office is about to tighten the transfer route, meaning temporary workers will not subsequently be allowed to settle. Overseas employees will also need to have worked for a year for a company before they can move to the UK, up from six months.

Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, said: 'Intra-company transfers are an important part of making the UK an attractive place in which to do business, and therefore keep industry and the economy moving.'

He also said anyone coming to the country must be paid a UK equivalent salary and that the border agency would take action against any employer shown to be 'undercutting' local wages.

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7.
11 arrests at anti-Islam protest in England
Agence France Presse, December 5, 2009

London (AFP) -- Eleven men were arrested and a policewoman was taken to hospital Saturday after violence broke out at a far-right group's demonstration against Islamic extremism in central England, police said.
. . .
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jcuzzL8GAnyYdhGzZ7zvY4J_lzpA

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8.
Teenage couple who are 'too young' lose court battle to live in UK
A British teenager has been forced to move to Chile to live with her new husband due to a law designed to prevent forced marriages, despite the couple being described in court as a 'love match'.
By Caroline Gammell
The Telegraph (U.K.), December 7, 2009

Amber Aguilar, 18, is British while her 19-year-old husband Diego Andres Aguilar Quila was born in Chile.

Mrs Aguilar, from Friern Barnet, north London, was given the choice of living in the UK alone or moving back to South America because her husband was not allowed to stay.

They married in November 2008 and his visa expired in August this year, forcing them to relocate to Chile in July.
. . .
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/6752956/Teenage-couple-who-are-too-young-lose-court-battle-to-live-in-UK.html

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9.
French immigration fears cloud identity debate
By Carole Landry
Agence France Presse, December 6, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iZAt5FvV38ibn7jABZpK7TZasQ8g

Paris (AFP) -- President Nicolas Sarkozy insists it is a noble exercise in soul-searching about what defines Frenchness, but the national identity debate gripping France has quickly exposed fears about immigration.

Sarkozy's right-wing government launched the debate last month, inviting ordinary citizens to explain what it means to be French on an Internet forum and at town hall meetings organised across the country.

On Tuesday, the debate goes to the National Assembly where deputies will provide their input before the introspection draws to a close on February 4 with a national conference allowing the government to take stock.

The initiative ignited controversy from the outset, with the left accusing Sarkozy of trying to woo far-right voters ahead of March regional elections by appealing to French pride and patriotism.

Struggling with low approval ratings, Sarkozy has defended the discussion about national identity, saying 'this is a noble debate' and that those who opposed it are simply afraid of tackling complex issues.

A member of Sarkozy's party showed no fear when he told a local gathering last week that France had too many immigrants and that this problem had been swept under the carpet for too long.

'It's time we reacted because we are going to be eaten alive,' said Andre Valentin, mayor of a small village in northern France. 'There are already 10 million of them, 10 million who are getting paid to do nothing.'

Immigration Minister Eric Besson, who is also the minister for national identity, stepped in and declared such remarks 'unacceptable' within the government-sponsored debate.

He also announced that his ministry would from now on carefully monitor the posted comments on its identity debate website to remove contributions deemed racist or xenophobic.

These include such comments as 'being France means being white. That's all' and 'being French means learning to park your car in a garage to avoid having it torched' -- a reference to car burnings in the high-immigration suburbs.

France is home to Europe's largest Muslim minority and Islam now ranks as the nation's second religion, so opinion was rattled by the Swiss referendum vote to ban minaret construction.

Despite several local campaigns by the French far right, dozens of mosques are slated for construction in France, including a Grand Mosque in Marseille that will have a 25-metre (82-foot) minaret.

Next month, a parliamentary inquiry will produce a much-awaited report on whether to ban the full Islamic veil, and the 'burqa debate' is providing yet another test of how far France is willing to go to accommodate Islam.

'This debate is being organised in a very unhealthy context,' said Eugene-Henri More, the deputy mayor of the ethnically-mixed Paris suburb of La Courneuve.

'The idea is to come up with a model for being French, but who will define this model?' he asked. 'It really seems to me that it's being organised to appease fears about immigration.'

Among the questions raised by the debate's organisers are: Should France have 'integration contracts' for immigrants imposing rules such as French language skills, and should students be required to sing the national anthem 'La Marseillaise' at least once a year?

Booing 'La Marseillaise' at soccer matches has become the signature form of protest by French immigrant youths.

The opposition Socialist Party is boycotting the debate, with leader Martine Aubry accusing Sarkozy of whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment and allowing the debate to become a platform for xenophobia.

As of last week, more than 40,000 comments had been posted on the debate website.

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10.
Victim of Immigration Policy
The German Forced to Become a Turk
By Jochen-Martin Gutsch
Der Spiegel (Germany), December 4, 2009
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,665060,00.html

Mohammad Eke was born and grew up in the German city of Essen. Until authorities found out that his parents had entered the country illegally, Germany was his home. Then Eke was deported to Turkey, even though he'd never visited the country and didn't speak the language. It's just another run-of-the-mill case of German immigration policy in action.

The young man sits with his bag in Istanbul's airport, as he often does when he doesn't know what to do with himself or his time.

The bag holds two towels, two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts, a pair of shoes, a jacket and his toiletries. It also contains an English dictionary, a folder containing documents from a German Office of Alien Affairs and a bottle of antidepressant pills, which he needs to fall asleep. The bag is the size of a carry-on bag, and he could easily be mistaken for a tourist visiting Istanbul for a couple of days. Such tourists are eager to see the sights and do the things tourists do here: see the Bosporus, Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque or a game of Fenerbahçe, the city's famed football team -- and then return home.

In fact, there is probably nothing Mohammad Eke would like more than to go home -- to board an airplane, take off and arrive at his destination. But, for him, that would be difficult and perhaps even impossible. Going home would mean returning to Germany, where officials have spent a lot of time and effort over the last few years trying to get rid of him and send him to Istanbul.

When they finally succeeded, it was Aug. 6, a hot summer day. Sometime between two and three in the morning, Eke walked out of his cell at a deportation center in Büren, a town in northwestern Germany. He hadn't slept. During the nine months he spent in custody pending deportation, he had dreaded this moment -- while at the same time longing for it.

Then, he was handcuffed and driven a short distance to Düsseldorf's airport, where he was searched -- his clothing, his bag, his body. Then he was driven out to an aircraft so that he could board it before the other passengers. He sat down in the window seat in row 29. He was joined in his row by two federal German police officers who were accompanying him during his deportation. And just in case there were any problems during the flight -- such as a suicide attempt, perhaps -- there was a doctor sitting in the seat in front of him.

At approximately 8 a.m., Turkish Airlines flight TK 1530 took off for Istanbul on a normally scheduled flight. Eke watched Germany's industrial Ruhr region slip away beneath him, and he thought back to the only time he had traveled abroad, for a weekend in The Hague with his football team. He was a child then, but now he was 21 and sitting in an airplane for the first time.

The only reason he was taking the first real journey of his life was because he was being deported to Turkey. He had never set foot in Turkey. He didn't speak any Turkish.

Eke remained quiet throughout the flight, looking every bit the tourist among tourists.

A Turkish police officer was waiting at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport. The escorts from Germany disappeared, and then Eke spent a number of hours in two police stations. Eventually, he was handed a document that he couldn't read, though it seemed important.

Then he was free to go.

By the time Eke left the police station, it was already dark. The only things he had on him were his travel bag and the €50 ($75) he had been given as a deportee.

For the first few weeks, he spent nights in a mosque on the airport grounds. He hid in a corner and slept on a carpet that smelled musty from the feet of the people who prayed there. During the day, he walked over to the departure hall and watched the travelers pulling their trolley cases past the glass booths of the Turkish border officials. He went to a mobile phone shop that offered free Internet use to keep up with German football scores and write e-mails to his girlfriend back home in Essen. Otherwise, he simply waited -- either for a surprise turn of events or for someone to come along to tell him that it had all been a mistake.

What else could it be, he thought. He wasn't a criminal. He was born in Germany, and he had spent his entire life there. Germany was his home, and German was his native language -- German with an accent from the Ruhr region. How on Earth could they deport someone as German as he was?

That question still haunts him, and all the time. But what Eke lacks is a good answer, something that will make his story make sense. But perhaps there is no explanation, at least not one that makes sense. And if there is, it's typically German -- complicated.

A Story That Never Should Have Happened

The immigration office in Essen is housed in a new, cube-shaped building. Jörg Stratenwerth, its director, sits in an office on the fifth floor. He is an amiable, heavyset, 38-year-old man who has spent his entire career working for this agency. He was promoted to head the office a few months ago, and there is now a file sitting on his desk that he will use to help explain the case of Mohammad Eke. Two clerks are also sitting in on the meeting, as is Detlef Feige, the spokesman of the city of Essen. Four men for one story, and a story that is neither particularly significant nor particularly confusing. In fact, by the end of the meeting, you might have been left wondering why this story ever happened.

Stratenwerth opens the file. It all began 21 years ago, on May 30, 1988, when Mohammad Eke was born. He had a different name then: Mohammad Ahmed. During his childhood, he was always told that his parents came to Germany from Lebanon before he was born, after fleeing the civil war there. Since they had no passports, they were all classified as refugees with 'unresolved status.' Mohammad Ahmed went to kindergarten and then school. He played in the local football club, and he was an FC Bayern fan. He was a Lebanese from Essen whose German was better than his Arabic.

In 2001, Mohammad's parents received a letter from the immigration office. The letter stated that officials had discovered evidence that they had provided false information about their origins when they immigrated to Germany.

Stratenwerth pulls a piece of paper out of the file. He speaks quickly, and his sentences are filled with the flotsam of data and legalese. But when all the important details are filtered out, Eke's story boils down to this: In 2001, immigration offices across the country launched investigations, and special police commissions had been formed to find so-called 'fake' Lebanese. The authorities suspected that a few thousand Turks had come to Germany in the 1980s as part of a large wave of refugees claiming to be victims of the civil war ravaging Lebanon. In the first few years of the new millennium, the immigration offices conducted DNA tests to ascertain degrees of kinship and searched for evidence in Turkish birth registries. In the case of Mohammad Eke, the officials found what they were looking for: his parents were part of the group they had uncovered.

DNA tests were done, and the results showed that they were not Lebanese. Instead, the test indicated that they were from the remote Mardin Province in southeastern Turkey, where Arabic is spoken. 'The parents presented Lebanese papers,' Stratenwerth says, 'but they were amateurish forgeries.'

Grasping for an Identity

Sitting in a café, Eke calls this all 'the lie.' He spits out the words like poison. The lie divided his life into two identities. Suddenly he was a Turk. Mohammad Ahmed became Mohammad Eke. He was ashamed of his parents and ashamed to face his friends. How could he explain to them that he had lived with a fake background, in a Lebanese fairytale? The lie began to pervade his life. And it quickly and inexorably set in motion the series of events that would end with his being stranded here in Istanbul.

Eke speaks in a quiet voice. He is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and his face is the face of a boy. 'I'm confused,' he says. 'I don't know what or who I am. I don't know whether I'm a Sunni or a Shiite. I have no history -- or at least not one I'm aware of.' His father, he says, never told him where the family came from, not even after the lie had been exposed. He remained clueless about his family's past. Instead, Eke withdrew into the only thing that seemed indisputable to him. 'In my heart, I am German,' he says. But that has caused problems for him, too. He has no former life. But he doesn't have a new life yet, either.

For example, Eke has been in Istanbul for more than three months, but he has yet to explore much of the city. He rarely goes into downtown Istanbul because, as he says, it's too dangerous there -- too many thieves and swindlers. He's noticed that the kebabs are drier than they are in Germany and that they have 'less meat and less lettuce.' Likewise, Eke finds it hard to deal with the Turkish mentality. The Turks are stingy and unfriendly, he says -- though he'll admit that this impression might have something to do with the fact that he doesn't speak Turkish. At any rate, he says, the best place in Istanbul is the airport. 'There's Internet here, so I can distract myself,' Eke says. 'And everything is monitored.'

From Would-be Deportee to Refugee

In October 2002, German officials refused to extend Eke's residence permit, which meant that he was now legally required to leave the country, as were his parents and siblings. The first attempt to deport the family came in April 2005. It failed, because the parents weren't home that day; instead, they were at a family gathering in Bremen. After that, the father disappeared for several months. The mother was overwhelmed, and the immigration office obtained a court order to appoint a guardian for her six underage children. The authorities were closing in.

On Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005, police surrounded the house again. This time, though, everything went according to plan. The parents and the younger siblings were taken into custody and deported to Turkey. By chance, however, Mohammad had spent the night at the house of his older brother. The next morning, he came home to an empty house. His family was gone.

Frightened and confused, Eke thought about his options. The good news was that he was still in Germany. The bad news was that he was 17-years-old and, as of a few hours, parentless. He decided to go to the immigration office, where he expected them to be waiting for him. And perhaps, he reasoned, they would give him a chance because he had missed his family's deportation and somehow stayed behind, because he was born in Essen, after all, and really just a German boy. At least that's the way he saw it.

At the immigration agency, Eke and his court-appointed guardian were sitting in the office of a clerk when they were told that he could not be deported -- at least not right away -- because he was a minor and his parents' exact whereabouts were unknown. Instead, he would be placed in Essen's Hermann Friebe House, a home for refugees. Now he would be Mohammad Eke, institutionalized child.

'Integration Achievement'

At that point, says Stratenwerth, the head of Essen's immigration agency, nothing had been decided. Nothing at all. Under certain conditions, though, Eke could have stayed in Germany. But that's not how Eke sees it. 'Of course,' he says, 'he was more or less required to leave the country. That much is completely clear.'

But, after spending his entire life in Germany, wasn't Eke really a German, a de facto native, so to speak? Were 17 years not enough?

Stratenwerth shakes his head. It's claiming a false identity, he says. And under German law, Stratenwerth explains, Eke can be held responsible for his parents' lie.

This is the point at which Eke's story becomes a legal matter -- and even a matter of government policy. The life of Mohammad Eke is now measured against the 'public interest to regulate the immigration of foreigners,' to quote a later court decision on the Eke case.

Stratenwerth flips through the file. He has never met Eke but in the end, he says, his is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill case. There are about 1,800 similar cases in Essen alone, he adds, of Turkish parents falsely claiming that they were Lebanese when they first entered the country -- and of children who grew up in Germany and spent their first 10, 15, 20 years in the country. Each of these cases ends with the question: Can they be allowed to stay, or do they have to go?

Stratenwerth says that everything depends on what he calls 'integration achievement,' which he sees as the intent behind Germany's Residence Act. 'The more someone is integrated,' he says, 'the greater his or her changes are.' In cases where individuals are well-integrated, deportation can be classified as legally unacceptable. It is a discretionary decision, though, and one with which immigration authorities have a certain degree of latitude.

In the end, this meant that Eke had to take an examination of sorts -- an integration test, so to speak. But it was a test he wouldn't be able to pass.

Granted, Eke has a few legal blemishes on his file. He had driven without a license; he had illegally altered a moped; and he had been convicted for theft and embezzlement after selling a borrowed Playstation for €70 ($104). But none of these were all that shocking or more than your average youthful indiscretions. And as Stratenwerth says: 'None of this stood in the way.' Instead, Eke was told to abide by his guardian's instructions. He was instructed to live at the refugee facility and go to school. By doing so, the authorities reasoned, he would be demonstrating his 'integration achievement.'

The Final Hurrah

After a few days, officials at the Hermann Friebe House reported that Eke was missing. As he puts it, he didn't want to be an institutionalized child. After that, he did what he was told and participated in a program called 'Training and Employment for Adolescent Asylum Seekers.' But he stopped attending after six months, and he also broke off contact with his guardian. On June 9, 2006, a few days after his 18th birthday, the immigration office noted that his whereabouts were now unknown and issued a warrant for his arrest. He was now a legal adult, but one that was illegal and eligible for deportation.

In retrospect, Eke admits, it might've been a mistake. But, at the time, it seemed like his only option. He didn't trust the immigration authorities, the same authorities who had deported his parents and siblings. And he didn't trust his guardian, either.

For the next two years, Eke stayed off the radar. He lived with friends in Essen and then moved in with his sister in Bremen, who has a German passport. He played football in various clubs and earned a little money by giving lessons to children. He likes to tell the story of how he played professionally with Rot-Weiss Essen, a local football club, with Mesut Özil -- a fellow Turk and a member of the German national team today.

In the late afternoon of Nov. 7, 2008, Eke gave up. The police had surrounded his brother's auto repair shop in Essen. Eke ran to the emergency exit hoping it would be his last chance to get away. But when he opened the door, there were two police officers waiting outside with weapons drawn.

'I was almost glad when they caught me,' Eke says. 'I thought: Now everything will be straightened out. I really thought they would say: 'It was our mistake' and 'Of course you'll get another chance.''

What Exactly Constitutes Integration?

In fact, Eke still seems surprised. He opens his bag and pulls out a few documents: references from the German football clubs he had played with, a letter from the petitions committee of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, a certificate showing that he had attended an industrial placement program at BMW facilities in Essen, and the boarding pass from his August deportation flight. The documents are now little more than yellowing pieces of paper, testaments to his unsteady German life.

Eke left secondary school after ninth grade. His parents hardly speak any German, and they paid little attention to the education of their 11 children. When Eke is asked what his parents did for a living, how they made money, he says, 'with nothing.' It was a large family that survived on welfare. Under these conditions, how could Eke be expected to score well on any 'integration achievement' test?

When asked whether he believes that he's integrated, he says that he doesn't exactly know what the term means. Still, the fact is that, in Germany, no one really knows what it means. Can integration really be measured? Eke speaks German like a German. He isn't a criminal, and he isn't a bad guy. That, so to speak, is his integration achievement. Is it necessary to ask more of him? Or is there also such a thing as a German integration achievement? Is there a level of responsibility that someone must achieve after having lived in Germany for 21 years?

On Nov. 8, 2008, Eke was taken to the deportation center in Büren. He spent the first few weeks in a six-man cell with three bunk beds. After two months, he was permitted to work as a cleaner in the detention facility. He was having trouble sleeping, so the in-house doctor wrote him a prescription for antidepressants. When his hair occasionally fell out in dark clumps, both the doctor and Eke attributed it to stress.

Arguing His Case in Court

Twice during his nine-month incarceration, Eke was taken to the Turkish Consulate. But, on both occasions, he refused to apply for a Turkish passport, arguing that he was 'born in Germany and am therefore a German citizen.' His sister in Bremen hired attorneys, who filed a lawsuit against the government's deportation efforts. At this point, he was hoping that the German courts would come to his rescue.

But that wasn't in his cards. In a tersely worded ruling dated Jan. 14, 2009, an administrative court in Gelsenkirchen, near Essen, wrote: 'The claimant's consciously illegal stay in Germany after his disappearance already suggests a lack of integration because it shows that the claimant intends to make his integration into the German legal order dependent on his interests.' The judge also ruled 'that it is in keeping with the need to fairly balance the public interest in regulating the immigration of foreigners against the claimant's private interest in remaining in Germany that the claimant return to Turkey.'

Subsequently, Eke's lawyers filed an appeal with the administrative appeals court of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. On June 5, the appeal was denied. The judges argued that there was no evidence of Eke's being rooted in 'German society' to a degree that would 'make deportation to Turkey seem unacceptable.' Besides, the judges wrote in their decision, 'through his illegal presence in Germany since June 2006, the claimant has demonstrated his ability to cope with difficult living situations.'

Eke had run up against a wall. He filed an appeal with a commission responsible for adjudicating hardship cases, but it also was denied. On July 9, the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany's supreme legal body, decided not to hear Eke's constitutional complaint. Now 21, Eke had exhausted his legal options in Germany. The only people left who could have prevented his deportation were Jörg Stratenwerth and the immigration officials in Essen. But they didn't.

Stretching the Boundaries of Reasonable

Stratenwerth closes the Eke file. He has been working for the immigration authority for almost 15 years, and he has witnessed all of the German debates on integration, abuse of asylum privileges, Turkey's accession to the European Union, double citizenship, a German green card and mainstream culture. These days, Germany defines itself as a country of immigration. This perception might reflect reality -- and it might just be little more than wishful thinking. Stratenwerth isn't sure. He doesn't make the laws, he says, he just enforces them. He did his job correctly, he adds, as he looks out the window at the fall foliage.

'The chance was there,' says Stratenwerth. 'His mistake was to drop out of the training program and disappear. Now he has to deal with the consequences.'

If you follow the logic, it would seem that Eke failed to live up to an expectation that he grow up more quickly than normal -- something which a German youngster from a similar background would never have been expected to do. Moreover, that German youngster would certainly not have suffered the same consequences as Eke for failing to pass the test.

Stratenwerth is open to discussing most issues, including the question of who is responsible for Mohammad Eke. Is it Germany, the country where he was born, or Turkey, a country he had never even visited beforehand? 'Legally speaking, Turkey is responsible for him,' says Stratenwerth, who holds a legal degree. 'From an emotional standpoint,' he adds, 'perhaps he belongs in Germany. But under international law, he's Turkish.'

Perhaps Eke could get a job, Stratenwerth suggests, in an attempt to look on the bright side of things, as if that would make everything better. 'With his language qualifications, his German and Arabic,' Stratenwerth says, 'he has excellent job prospects in Turkey.' A return to Germany, on the other hand, could be difficult. He could marry a German woman or someone with the right legal status. 'But before returning to Germany,' Stratenwerth adds, 'he would have to pay back the costs incurred by his deportation.' In Eke's case, these costs could be quite steep. There's the nine months he was in detention. And then there was the airfare for himself, the two police officers and the doctor. And then, of course, the costs of the medical reports. 'It'll certainly come to about €20,000 ($30,000),' Stratenwerth figures.

Foreign at Home

Mehtap Sabah, Eke's 23-year-old girlfriend, says she would be willing to marry him. She is a petite girl with a German high-school diploma, Turkish parents and a German passport. '€20,000?' she asks. 'How are we supposed to come up with that kind of money?' Sabah is in her second year of an apprenticeship to become a tax accountant's assistant. In August, shortly after Eke was deported, she went to see him in Istanbul. It was a strange visit. As they walked through the streets, she served as his interpreter. She also talked about the beauty of the city, the sea, the warm climate -- and soon she felt like his Turkish tour guide, as well. But all Eke could say was: 'I feel lost here.'

Eke is her first love. She could join him in Turkey, but she doesn't want to live there. Germany is her home, she says. Sometimes, when she compares his life with hers, she sees no difference between the two. Both of them were born and raised in Essen. But she received a German passport at some point, while Eke was deported.

At moments like this, despite the fact that it is her home, Germany must seem like a mysterious, inscrutable country to someone like Sabah.

Lost

Back at Istanbul's airport, Eke is thinking about where he'll sleep tonight. He has spent the last few weeks in Esenyurt, a neighborhood in Istanbul where he had been working at a small bakery during the day, dusting off the flour from pita bread. He lived in the apartment of Shekmus, a baker who spoke a little Arabic. It was musty and dark in the apartment, and they slept on dirty mattresses. But it wasn't bad, Eke says. At least he had a place to stay. But then he was told that the bakery was going to close soon because sales were poor. Perhaps it was true. Or perhaps they just didn't need an employee from Germany to dust off the flour from their pita bread, particularly one who didn't even speak Turkish.

Eke hasn't spoken with his parents since they were deported in September 2005. He can't forgive them for lying. For practical reasons, he now has a Turkish ID card. But he doesn't have a Turkish passport. As he sees it, doing so would mean taking another step into a Turkish life, a life he has still successfully managed to keep his distance from.

If marriage is his only option for returning to Germany, Eke says he'll do it. Marriage, at 21-years-old, just to return to the place where you've always lived.

He gets up. It is almost midnight, and he is thinking about spending the night at the baker's apartment. 'It takes about two or three weeks to get to know Turkey, to see all the sights,' says Eke. He sounds like a tourist.

He walks through the arrivals hall at the airport, not quite sure where he's going. He's a young man with a bag in his hand.

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11.
Switzerland halves non-EU work permits
Agence France Presse, December 5, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gmcbYARMlOr09XxSZoCIIOMb_NbA

Geneva (AFP) -- Switzerland announced Friday it would halve from next year its quotas of permits for workers from outside Europe, with unemployment and immigration at high levels.

The Swiss government also announced a drop in immigration from EU countries and so held back on invoking a clause that would allow it to temporarily bar European workers to protect its job market.

For workers outside of Europe, 'A maximum of 2,000 residency permits and 3,500 short-term residency permits can be issued next year, half for the year underway,' it said in a statement.

These quotas could be revised in June, it said.

The government also said it would decide next year whether to activate a safeguard clause that allows Bern to impose temporary restrictions on Europeans working in Switzerland in specific circumstances.

The clause was built into a deal with the European Union that allows European workers to take up jobs in Switzerland without being subject to the work permit quota system.

Unemployment in Switzerland hit a four-year-high in October, reaching 4.0 percent, while inward migration is expected to reach 70,000 for 2009.

Last year it registered its biggest rise in permanent resident population in 40 years amid record immigration.

Swiss Economy Minister Doris Leuthard said in media reports last month that the government made a mistake by deciding in May not to invoke the safeguard clause which 'could have kept thousands of people away from the Swiss job market.'

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12.
Racist abuse against Balotelli feared at Inter-Juve tie
By Mark Duff
The BBC News (U.K.), December 5, 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8396769.stm

One of the highlights of the Italian football season is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over racist abuse against one of Italy's young stars.

The clash in Turin between Juventus and league leaders Inter Milan should be a match to relish.

But much of the attention will be on how the home fans greet one man, the young Inter player Mario Balotelli.

The black striker, who is an Italian citizen, has become a target of racist abuse wherever he plays.

Balotelli has become a hate figure for a hard core of Juventus fans, not just because he poses a threat to their club's stuttering hopes of winning the Italian championship, but because he is black.

Balotelli was born in Sicily to Ghanaian immigrant parents, but they gave him up for adoption to an Italian family when he was three.

He is an Italian citizen, has already represented Italy at Under-21 level, and is being tipped for a place soon in the senior national squad.

But none of this carries any weight with his tormentors.

'There's no such thing as an Italian negro' - they chanted at one match recently - 'you'll always be an African'.

Balotelli's club captain says he will ask the referee to abandon Saturday evening's match if there is any repeat of the abuse.

What is certain is that Mario Balotelli has touched a raw nerve.

He symbolises a vision of a new, multicultural and diverse Italy.

The incessant abuse shows just how far the country still is from reaching that point.

As one leading commentator put it, the racists represent Italy's past and Balotelli its future.

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13.
Immigrants in S. Africa 'blocked from health care'
Agence France Press, December 7, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gohdyu_L-WJWpMFHf386bOPZxWQQ

Johannesburg (AFP) -- South Africa's large immigrant population is routinely and illegally denied health care by clinics and hospitals, leaving them at mortal risk, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

'Migrants to South Africa are abused in transit, attacked upon arrival, and then denied care when they are injured or ill,' said Rebecca Shaeffer, a health campaigner for the group.

'The South African government should be ensuring that these people get the care they need, and are entitled to, under the country?s constitution,' she said in a statement.

A new report by Human Rights Watch detailed how harassment, lack of documentation and fear of deportation prevent many migrants from seeking medical treatment -- even though South Africa legally guarantees a right to health care for everyone physically in the country.

Millions of people from trouble spots such as Somalia, Zimbabwe and Sudan have fled to South Africa over the last decade to search for a better life.

But many are not aware of their legal rights and fear they will be deported to authorities if they turn to the public health system. Health care workers also routinely deny care to migrants, the report said.

'Discrimination against foreigners is institutionalized in South Africa?s health care system,' Schaeffer said. 'People seeking care should not be subjected to abuse.'

Last year, more than 60 people were killed and tens of thousands fled their homes when anti-immigrant violence erupted across South Africa, mainly in poor neighbourhoods where foreigners were accused of stealing scarce jobs and committing crimes.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The report is available at: http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/12/02/no-healing-here-0

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14.
'Fake fingerprint' Chinese woman fools Japan controls
The BBC News (U.K.), December 7, 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8400222.stm

A Chinese woman managed to enter Japan illegally by having plastic surgery to alter her fingerprints, thus fooling immigration controls, police claim.

Lin Rong, 27, had previously been deported from Japan for overstaying her visa. She was only discovered when she was arrested on separate charges.

Tokyo police said she had paid $15,000 (£9,000) to have the surgery in China.

It is Japan's first case of alleged biometric fraud, but police believe the practice may be widespread.

Japanese police suspect Chinese brokers of taking huge sums to modify fingerprints surgically.

Local media reports said Ms Lin had undergone surgery to swap the fingerprints from her right and left hands.

Skin patches on her thumbs and index fingers were removed and then re-grafted on to the matching digits of the opposite hand.

Japanese newspapers said police had noticed that Ms Lin's fingers had unnatural scars when she was arrested last month for allegedly faking a marriage to a Japanese man.

The apparent ability of illegal migration networks to break through hi-tech controls suggests that other countries who fingerprint visitors could be equally vulnerable - not least the United States, according to BBC Asia analyst Andre Vornic.

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15.
China top source of immigration
By Peter Martin
The Age (Melbourne), December 8, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/china-top-source-of-immigration-20091207-kfcp.html

China has become Australia's biggest source of migrants, for the first time eclipsing New Zealand and Britain.

The latest migration figures show a record 6350 new settlers arrived from mainland China in the four months to October, compared with the 5800 from Britain and the 4740 from New Zealand.

The Chinese ascendancy owes more to a collapse in migration from the traditional sources than it does to the 15 per cent annual growth in migration from China. The number of migrants from the UK is down 28 per cent over the year and the number from New Zealand down 47 per cent.

Adelaide University demographer Graeme Hugo said the global financial crisis had hit migration from our traditional sources in ways that hadn't much affected China.

In March the Government cut 18,500 places from the skilled migration program for 2009-10, hitting the UK, for whom skilled migrants account for eight out of 10 flights booked. Chinese migration, dominated by family reunions, suffered less.

Professor Hugo said New Zealand migration collapsed as our neighbours across the Tasman decided to hang on to their jobs.

''Just as someone from Adelaide is likely to try to hang on to their job in the global financial crisis rather than move to Sydney or Melbourne to take their chance at a time of tightening employment, I think that would be the case in Auckland as well.

''It's an immediate response. New Zealanders don't need to apply to immigrate, there's no pipeline - that's why the response is so big.''

Short-term arrivals figures also released yesterday show a change in where visitors are choosing to stay. NSW, traditionally the most popular state, has received 6 per cent fewer visitors over the past year. Victoria and Western Australia have received 9 and 15 per cent more.

At the same time, the high dollar and the continuing impact of bonus payments sent a record 570,200 Australians overseas on holiday in October, meaning that for at least some of the month one in 40 of us was out of the country.

Departures climbed 20 per cent in October, compared with a 7 per cent recovery in arrivals.

New Zealand remained our most popular destination. Trips to Indonesia and the United States were up 51 and 47 per cent on the previous year. Travel to Malaysia jumped 50 per cent, Philippine trips 40 per cent and travel to Fiji 24 per cent.

Tourism and Transport Forum executive director Brett Gale said the boom came at a cost to the local tourist industry.

'Over the past year departures have outnumbered arrivals by almost 600,000. On the one hand, it's hurting domestic tourism but, more optimistically, there's an opportunity because it has made so many new airline seats available to bring overseas visitors into Australia.''

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Australian immigration figures are available online at: http://www.abs.gov.au/

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16.
Audits close more dubious colleges
By Sushi Das
The Age (Melbourne), December 8, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/audits-close-more-dubious-colleges-20091207-kfcd.html

Two more private colleges in Melbourne have been forced to close after a regulator found they had failed to meet the most basic education standards.

The Australian Institute of Career Education and the Australian International College of Commerce were closed yesterday because they had inadequate learning materials, deficient kitchen facilities for training hospitality students, and they failed to keep proper student records.

The Age believes the Australian International College of Commerce also had inadequate staff to teach the students it had enrolled.

A total of 129 mostly Indian and Chinese international students studying commercial cookery have been left in limbo. Some were due to finish their courses in less than two weeks. Students who are displaced as a result of college closures must, by law, be found alternative colleges or have their course fees refunded.

The closures bring to 11 the number of colleges that have shut since July, either because of a failure to comply with regulations or because of financial woes. In total, more than 3000 international and domestic students have been affected.

The state education regulator, the Victorian Registration and Qualification Authority, said it ''found the colleges to be significantly non-compliant with relevant registration standards''.

The latest closures come as the Chinese Government warns students to avoid ''unstable and risky (colleges in Australia) even if they have been approved by local authorities''.

An alert issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education last month said: ''Students should be cautious and not choose education providers that mainly enrol international students under a short-term business model based on 'education as an export'.''

The strongly worded warning is a sign that the collapse of the colleges, including large, established colleges, has harmed the reputation of Australia's $16.6 billion international education industry.

The executive director of the Australian International College of Commerce, Zhi Mei Ye, and the chief executive of the Australian Institute of Career Education, Gopi Chengareddy, could not be contacted yesterday.

The State Government, which is expecting further college collapses, said the latest closures were a result of its efforts to ''tidy up the sector''.

Minister for Skills and Workforce Participation Jacinta Allan said the closures were a result of 41 rapid audits of high-risk colleges.

The audits, which were conducted jointly by Victoria's education regulator, and federal education and immigration departments, began in May and are expected to be complete by the end of the year.

Federal and state education authorities are expected to meet students on Thursday.

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17.
Catholic Church kept vital, thanks to migrants
By Barney Zwatz
The Age (Melbourne), December 7, 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/catholic-church-kept-vital-thanks-to-migrants-20091206-kcwd.html

Migrants are keeping the Catholic Church in Australia vital and energetic, and also making church a more enjoyable place for Australian Catholics, the church's chief researcher said yesterday.

''Without migrants, church attendance and levels of satisfaction would be much lower,'' Bob Dixon, pastoral projects director for the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, told the Parliament of the World's Religions.

Migrants from a non-English-speaking background were more often in church - 14 per cent of Australia's 5.1 million Catholics attended Mass each week, compared to 29.4 per cent of Catholic migrants - but in particular a much higher proportion of their young adults attended.

In a seminar on the integration of migrants and refugees, Mr Dixon said migrants from non-English-speaking countries were 1.4 times more likely to say they grew in faith due to their parish, 2.7 times more likely to say they were always inspired by celebrating Mass, and 2.8 times more likely to follow up someone who was drifting away from church.

But they also influenced Australian-born Catholics who, in parishes with more than 30 per cent migrants, were 1.3 times more likely to say they grew in faith and 1.4 times more likely to say Mass inspired them.

''Because of their presence in the parish, liturgy is more vibrant and there's a greater sense of faith and spirituality,'' Mr Dixon said.

He said Mass in Australia was celebrated in 30 languages, from Walmajarri (indigenous) to Latin, to Sudanese, Vietnamese, Croatian and Korean.

Philip Hughes, senior researcher at the Christian Research Association of Australia, said nearly half Australia's population were first or second-generation migrants. Only 51 per cent were Australians born to Australian parents.

The biggest migrant groups, in order, were British, New Zealanders, Chinese, Italians, Vietnamese and Indians, who were the fastest growing. However, many more spoke a foreign language at home - for example, there were 278,000 Chinese migrants but 500,000 Chinese speakers.

Dr Hughes said the fastest-growing church in Australia was the Oriental Orthodox, especially the Copts from Egypt, who generally came as skilled migrants and had the highest education level of any group, with more than half those over 15 holding a university degree.

He said religion remained important for helping migrant communities find their place in Australia because it reaffirmed values, language and culture.

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18.
Canadian facing deportation in Australia goes on hunger strike
The Canadian Press, December 5, 2009

A Canadian citizen who has lived in Australia for nearly a decade says he has gone on a hunger strike to protest his imminent deportation to Canada.
. . .
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canadian-facing-deportation-in-australia-goes-on-hunger-strike/article1390357/

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Center for Immigration Studies
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