Hispanic Voter Drive Takes to Web - Goal: Mobilize 7 Million Voters For 2000 Election
By Tom Curry
MSNBC
At a Washington press conference, Fernando Espuelas, chief executive of StarMedia Network, an Internet firm that targets Spanish-speaking markets, said "as Hispanics are projected to become the largest minority group in the United States by 2005, it's critically important that we empower
this group with the necessary information to make an educated voting decision."The Web site, www.latinvote.org , bills itself as "the essential online source of information for Hispanics seeking to register to vote and to learn more about the electoral process."The site offers presidential candidate profiles and links to Web sites with voter registration information, forms and deadlines.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/344258.asp?cp1=1
USCIS Raids Follow Union Organizing
By Nurith C. Aizenman
The Washington Post
For months the chambermaids at the Holiday Inn Express in downtown Minneapolis had been pressing for a half-hour lunch break on their seven-hour shift and a raise in wages. Norma Lerma del Toro, a single mother from one of Mexico's poorest provinces, hoped to use the extra cashto buy more clothes for her three children.Finally, in August, Lerma and the other workers voted to join Local 17 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. But last month, three weeks before the union was scheduled to begin contract negotiations, the manager enacted what to workers seemed like
carefully plotted revenge: He called the Immigration and Naturalization Service to check on the immigration status of some of his employees. USCIS agents arrested half of the 16 workers at the hotel--including Lerma, who now faces deportation."We just wanted better treatment," she says. "None of us ever imagined this would happen.
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/06/051l-120699-idx.html
Proposal For More Work Visas Gaining Ground With USCIS Critics
By Dave Harmon
American-Statesman (Austin, Texas)
While the Border Patrol continues its unprecedented growth, politicians and immigration experts across the country keep searching for a better way to control illegal immigration.Some want to send in the U.S. military. Others suggest a smaller version of the amnesty that legalized 3 million illegal immigrants and farmworkers in 1986. There is talk of sealing the border with a massive wall or issuing national identification cards to make spotting illegal immigrants
easier.But the only idea that seems to be gaining momentum is an expanded guest worker program, which would let employers hire foreign workers through a temporary visa."There's a lot of talk about that, and I think we need to look at something like that very seriously," said U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio. "I think we've got to figure out a way to deal with that demand for labor."Arizona Gov. Jane Hull, whose state is now the top corridor for illegal immigrants, is lobbying to expand and simplify the guest worker program and has asked other border governors to join her. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican front-runner for president, has signed a letter supporting the idea, said a Bush spokesman.
http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/sunday/news_5.html
Jail Uprising Highlights Legal Limbo
By Alan Clendenning
ST. MARTINVILLE, La. (AP) -- The standoff by Cuban inmates holding a warden and two guards hostage has put a spotlight on the confusing legal status of hundreds of Cubans locked up in U.S. prisons. The standoff dragged into its fourth day today, with officials saying the Cubans seemed to have control over 80 other inmates. On Wednesday, 39 inmates who apparently wanted nothing to do with rebellion were bused out; in all, 90 have been removed. The Cubans are holding the hostages at knifepoint. There have been no known injuries. The five leaders of the uprising - who officials say may have been joined by as many as four other inmates - have said they want to be released and would be willing to be deported anywhere. "Every time there's a riot the issue comes up," said Gary Leshaw, an Atlanta lawyer who acts as an advocate for Cuban detainees. The U.S. government will not release them because it considers them subject to deportation. And there is no agreement between the United States and Cuba to have them sent back. "For legal purposes, they are not here," Leshaw said Wednesday. "So they are not entitled to due process. They can be held indefinitely." One of the Cubans told a TV station that he has been held for 13 years. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has not confirmed that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991216/aponline060229_000.htm
Cuban Special Immigration Status a Cold War Holdover
Pauline Jelinek
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six-year-old Elian Gonzalez became eligible to live in the United States the minute he landed on America's shore -- a unique privilege granted only to Cubans. The privilege is guaranteed under a decades-old, though now slightly contorted law aimed at undermining communist Cuba and its President Fidel Castro. ``It's a Cold War holdover,'' said James M. Lindsay, immigration specialist at the Brookings Institution. ``We didn't throw people back over the Berlin Wall during the Cold War,''agreed Jose Cardenas, Washington director for the anti-Castro group Cuban American National Foundation. ``And we shouldn't send Cubans back today.'' The Cubans-only fast track for moving from illegal alien to permanent resident comes from the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 that says, essentially, that anyone who fled Cuba and got into the United States would be allowed to pursue residency a year later.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/1999/12/15/national0207EST0463.DTL
Cuban Detainees Take Jail Hostages
By Natalie Gott
ST. MARTINVILLE, La. (AP) -- Negotiators worked today to persuade five armed Cubans frustrated with their incarceration to release two deputies and a warden from the St. Martin Parish jail. The hostages were taken in an "uprising" that began shortly after 4 p.m. Monday as the detainees left an exercise area, Sheriff Charles Fuselier said. No injuries were reported.
A fourth hostage, a deputy sheriff, was released after six hours of negotiations. Some of the 160 prisoners were herded into buses and driven away while others were moved to more secure locations. "We want to be released and sent back to our country or any other country. We don't care," said Jonne Ponce, one of the Cubans who telephoned television station KLFY in nearby Lafayette.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991214/aponline081411_000.htm
Residency for Nicaraguans
By Justino Aguila
San Francisco Examiner
Ambassador touts U.S. plan in S.F. Like a salesman, Nicaraguan Ambassador Francisco X. Aguiree Sacasa hopes to sway those from his homeland not to miss an opportunity of a lifetime. With phrases like "time is running out," and "take advantage of," the well-dressed man captivates his audiences passionately -- often plugging a toll-free number: (877) 478-8472. But he's not trying to make a buck here in San Francisco this week -- he is preaching to natives from his country about the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. Under NACARA, Nicaraguan nationals are able to apply for permanent residency as long as they can provide proof that they've lived in the United States since prior to December 1995, and have not committed felonies. "We are running out of time," Sacasa told his audience of more than 50 Nicaraguans on Sunday at the Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Theater in San Francisco. "We need to make this happen."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/hotnews/stories/13/ ambassador.dtl
Visa Shortage Boots Business Overseas
By Rob Kaiser
The Bergen Record (N.J.)
The battle last year was about visas to bring more foreign technical specialists into the United States. Next year, the fight may well be about companies shifting those jobs overseas. Technology executives continue to pressure Congress again to raise the cap on visas for foreign technical workers, but they are also increasingly using another method to tap foreign brainpower. More U.S. companies, from Internet start-ups to multinational conglomerates, are shifting part of their information technology work overseas, intrigued by the prospect of cheaper labor and frustrated by their prospects of getting more foreign workers into the United States. "If you can't bring the people here, bring the work to the people," said Nate Weersing, president of Westbound Consulting, a Chicago-based firm with six employees in the United States and 25, including 20 programmers, in India. The movement is a boon for countries with educated, English-speaking populations, but some Americans decry it as a wrong-headed solution that will ultimately harm the U.S. economy.
http://www.bergen.com/biz/overseas199912135.htm
Report Probes Jailed Foreigners
DALLAS (AP) -- The Immigration and Naturalization Service has jailed nearly 300 foreigners for more than three years, including some people never convicted of a crime in the United States, The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday.
Some have been jailed for arriving with inadequate travel documents. And some of those who have been convicted of crimes in this country - the USCIS says the majority have serious criminal histories - are being held despite having completed their prison sentences, the newspaper said. Until 1996, foreigners ordered deported generally could be held for a maximum of six months. But the law now requires the USCIS to indefinitely detain foreigners who pose a flight risk or a public-safety threat until they can be removed from the United States. A panel of five federal judges recently ruled that the agency violates foreigners' fundamental right to due process by holding people indefinitely.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991212/aponline170801_000.htm
Border Patrol Wears Out Welcome
By Ben Fox
TIERRA DEL SOL, Calif. (AP) -- Border Patrol agents sped down dirt roads at night with searchlights blazing. They trampled over fences to capture illegal immigrants hiding in the brush. Lifelong residents were stopped daily at checkpoints on outgoing roads, questioned about where they were going and why. "It was night and day," said Dotson, 25. "There were so many Border Patrol agents and sheriff's deputies and illegals. It was like a totally different world." The agents were requested by residents to stem the tide of illegal immigrants crossing their property. They've since become the enemy, resulting in lawsuits, criminal charges and letter after letter to newspapers and politicians. "They're a bunch of unsupervised people running wild," said Robert Harris,80. He claims agents once ordered him out of his pickup and frisked him as he was driving along a dirt road near the ranch where he's lived his entire life. Dotson's mother, Donna Tisdale, said border agents were needed after the federal immigration crackdown Operation Gatekeeper began in 1994 at the San Diego-Tijuana border, pushing migration into the eastern mountains and desert. Now that the border is under control, Ms. Tisdale said, young agents, eager to prove themselves are harassing many of the 6,500 residents living in this unincorporated region known as the Mountain Empire.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991203/aponline015454_000.htm
Congress Did Little on Immigration
By Michelle Mittelstadt
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The notion that the Immigration and Naturalization Service is in need of a major overhaul is widely accepted, even by the agency's managers. So it seemed inevitable, when Congress convened in January, that policy-makers would agree to sweeping changes. Eleven months later, with politicians gone for the remainder of the year, USCIS restructuring did not figure among lawmakers' accomplishments. Lawmakers also failed to act on virtually every other major immigration issue before Congress this year, chief among them: providing more visas for high-tech workers; restoring welfare benefits to legal immigrants; and granting amnesty to Central Americans who fled strife in their homelands and are living illegally in the United States.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991202/aponline022125_000.htm
Court Agrees on Alabama Driving Tests
By Phillip Rawls
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- A federal appeals court is forcing Alabama to stay in step with the rest of the nation by giving driver's license exams in foreign languages to accommodate immigrants. On Tuesday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld a ruling that required Alabama to abandon its policy of giving the written exam only in English. U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent ruled in June 1998 that the English-only policy discriminated against the state's estimated 13,000 non-English-speaking residents.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991201/aponline063621_000.htm
Illegal Immigration Not Slowing Despite Agency's Record Growth
By Dave Harmon
Austin American-Statesman
Five years and billions of dollars after launching the most ambitious attack on illegal immigration in the nation's history, the U.S. Border Patrol cannot show any sign that the flow across the U.S.-Mexico border has slowed. In fact, it appears to have increased despite the agency's aggressive new strategy. The Border Patrol has doubled in size since 1994 and completely changed tactics: By concentrating agents and high-tech equipment to blockade major border cities, the Border Patrol hoped to deter many would-be crossers and force the rest into rural areas, where they could not blend into city crowds to avoid capture. The agency insists the strategy works, pointing to dramatic results at major crossing points as proof: Apprehensions of illegal immigrants have hit a 24-year low near San Diego, Calif., and have dropped by half in El Paso since 1993. Many immigrants say crossing the border is now more
difficult and more expensive.
http://www.austin360.com/news/features/local/28border_theline.html
Hiring Woes at Border Patrol
By Joe Cantlupe, Copley News Service
The San Diego Union-Tribune
WASHINGTON -- The Border Patrol is failing to meet its ambitious hiring goals to have more agents monitor the nation's borders, congressional investigators say. Authorities vowed in 1997 to hire at least 1,000 agents annually through the year 2001, but an unsuccessful effort to recruit agents has resulted in a shortfall of nearly 600 agents, according to a recent report of the General Accounting Office. The understaffed Border Patrol has been under the spotlight following the
recent arrests along the United States-Canadian border of people linked to possible terrorist
groups. While thousands of agents patrol the 2,000-mile Mexican border, only a few hundred Border Patrol officials are assigned routinely to cover the 3,986-mile, unfenced northern border.
Although it is not uncommon for law-enforcement agencies to have difficulty hiring applicants, the Border Patrol's problems have been exacerbated by a strong economy, inconsistent hiring policies, and a high drop-out rate among applicants. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, which runs the Border patrol, has hired only 2 percent of its applicants this year, compared to 4 and 5 percent the previous years. About 75 percent of the applicants failed to even show up for
written exams, and 30 percent of those who passed exams did not return for their interviews.
http://www.uniontribune.com/news/uniontrib/mon/index.html
EDITOR'S NOTE: The GAO report is on line at:http://www.gao.gov/new.items/gg00039.pdf
Court Rules on Immigrant Deportation
By Bob Egelko
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Legal immigrants can go to court to challenge the government's attempt to deport them for past crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. A recent federal law reduced, but did not eliminate, judicial review of deportation, said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court also held out hope to immigrants who pleaded guilty in the past to certain crimes, such as drug crimes, that became grounds for mandatory deportation under a 1996 federal law.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991227/aponline220857_000.htm
McCain Backs Program For Temporary Foreign Workers In US
PHOENIX (AP) -- U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain is supporting a plan that would allow more foreigners to work legally in the U.S. During a campaign stop in his home state of Arizona on Wednesday, McCain told Hispanic business leaders that he favors creation of a temporary workers program that would allow people from other countries to fill U.S. jobs.
"There are jobs that Americans will not do," McCain told about 30 people attending the Hispanic Business Leaders' Roundtable. A temporary worker program could help U.S. businesses fill those jobs and discourage illegal immigration, McCain said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991230/aponline025157_000.htm
Saying Adios To Spanish?
By Stephen Lynch
The Orange County Register
Here, on Fourth Street, a block from the county government offices, it seems like the writing is literally on the wall. In restaurants, shops, parking garages and banks, the signs say, "Hablamos Espanol." What some cheer and others fear appears inevitable: a bilingual society. It is a mirage. The surge in immigration and births that will make Hispanics the largest single ethnic group in Orange County by 2016 will not strengthen the use of their native language here, researchers and linguists say. Spanish, as astounding as it sounds, is slowly dying in the United States.
http://www.ocregister.com/living/spanish019cci.shtml
Visas Not Free Ticket For Cubans
By Elaine De Valle
Miami Herald
Like many in South Florida, Jose Cohen Valdes watches the daily news accounts of Elian Gonzalez, the rafter boy rescued Thanksgiving Day who is now at the center of an international custody fight between his father in Cuba and relatives in Miami. But Cohen probably watches a little more closely than most. And each time Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a photo of Elian on the lapel of his olive green uniform, cites parental rights and demands the boy be returned to his father, Cohen winces. ``What about my paternal rights? I'm a father, too,'' Cohen said. Cohen, who came to the United States from Cuba during the 1994 rafter exodus, was able to get his wife and three children visas to enter the United States in 1996. The Cuban government won't let Lazara Brito and her kids -- Yanelis, 16, Yamila, 13, and Isaac, 8 -- leave. ``They are hostages,'' Cohen said. ``I knew I would have to pay a price for leaving but I never imagined it would be this extreme -- so many years separated from my children.'' Brito has written to many Cuban officials, including Castro. His response: Not my problem. In a telephone interview Saturday, Brito read the answer to her letter to Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly:
``This office is not equipped to intervene in that issue.''
http://www.herald.com/content/today/news/dade/digdocs/049827.htm
Advocates Say Rehearing Gives Hope To Thousands Of Immigrants
By Bob Egelko
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Immigrants' rights advocates said Monday a rehearing by a federal appeals court gives new hope to thousands of illegal immigrants who claim they were wrongly prevented from seeking legal status 13 years ago. The Immigration and Naturalization Service insisted, however, that it has already agreed to reconsider all claims that were improperly turned away. The number of immigrants affected nationwide was estimated at 45,000 by a court panel this summer, and at 200,000 or more by the immigrants' lawyers. The case involves a 1986 law that made illegal immigrants eligible for amnesty, and legal residency, if they had lived in the United States since the start of 1981 without committing a serious crime. They were requiredto apply by May 1988.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/calreport/calrep_story.cgi?N226.HTML
Charges By Three Illegal Immigrants Gives EEOC Test Case
CHICAGO (AP) -- Three illegal immigrants have filed discrimination charges against a supervisor at a plastics plant, giving the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a test case for its new policy toward undocumented workers. Until recently, the EEOC would not defend undocumented workers. But in October, EEOC Chairwoman Ida Castro amended a long-standing policy and said the federal agency would come to the aid of illegal workers if they were discriminated against on the job. On Monday, three women who worked at Algroup Wheaton Inc. in suburban Des Plaines alleged in a complaint filed with the EEOC that they were fired after accusing their supervisor of misconduct. The woman claimed the supervisor commented on their appearance and groped two of the women. Two of the women said they reported the alleged misconduct to another supervisor. All three women were fired. The company said the women never complained and were fired because they were in this country illegally.
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