Chinese Families Pay Big Money for U.S. Student Visas
By Michael Dorgan
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
BEIJING -- Yang Zhen, one of tens of thousands of Chinese who are hoping to win admission to a U.S. university this spring, insists that he'll return home after he graduates. "I am the only child in my family," said the earnest 25-year-old, who hopes to study business administration or international relations.
If Yang does return to China, he'll be one of a tiny minority. China sends more students to the United States than any other country _ more than 50,000 last year. And although all of them assure State Department visa officers here that they'll go home after they finish school, as many as 99 percent look for jobs in America instead.
Some qualify for special visas for high-tech fields. Some marry Americans. Some simplydisappear. "Once they're in the U.S., they're pretty much free to do what they want to do," concedes Charles Bennett, the chief of visa services at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
The impact of China's massive and unofficial immigration on the United States depends on one's point of view. For high-tech companies, it's a boon. For colleges and universities, it's a source of world-class scholars. For other applicants, particularly to top graduate science programs, it means tougher competition.
For China, the defection of top scholars to U.S. schools and employers is a worrisome brain drain. "It's well-known in the society that the first-class students go abroad," said a professor at the International and Comparative Education Institute of Beijing Normal University, speaking on the condition that he not be identified. "The second-class students go to joint ventures (in China, with foreign companies), and the worst students go to the state-owned enterprises," he said. "It's a big loss to the country."
Luring the brainpower home won't be easy. Enhanced personal freedom aside, the economic argument for staying in the United States is compelling. Top pay for a senior engineer at China's largest software company is 80,000 yuan a year, or about $9,780. The same engineer can make 10 times that in California's Silicon Valley.
While it is possible to live more cheaply in Beijing, China's cost of living approaches California's when the comparison entails a Western-style basket of goods and services, according to figures provided by HR International, a human resources consulting firm based in Waltham, Mass.
Bottom line: The return rate for Chinese students in the United States is so low it that could be used as an argument for reducing the number of visas granted, said a former U.S. visa official here, who asked not to be identified.
She noted that the nearly 50-year-old law guiding U.S. visa policy says non-immigration visas should not be granted if the interviewing officer suspects that the applicant does not intend to return to his or her home country.
"An honest evaluation would virtually end visa issuance (to Chinese applicants)," she said. Indeed, the very "eagerness and desperation" that many applicants show would be evidence against granting them visas.
Foreign-educated Chinese who do return, including many high-tech entrepreneurs, are westernizing China at its highest levels.
More than half the presidents and vice presidents of the 44 colleges under China's Ministry of Education have studied overseas. A recent survey of the country's top five universities found that 70 percent of their students planned to study abroad, most of them in America.
So keen are Chinese students to get into U.S. schools _ or at least into the United States _ that a cottage industry has sprung up to help them.
Special schools prepare students to meet the English language requirements. Consultants help fill out applications to universities and prep candidates for their interviews with U.S. Embassy visa officers.
"We can provide service to all types of people, from (prep school students) to graduate students, who want to study in America," said Lucy Liu of the Weilian International Co. in Beijing. "There are lots of U.S. schools that have relations with our company. The charge ... will range from 10,000 yuan to 70,000 ($1,200 to $8,500), depending on the type of service you need."
For fees of up to $10,000, some consultants will create phony letters of recommendation and false evidence of economic support. Some even provide professional actors or actresses to stand in for applicants in their brief but crucial interviews with visa officers, said William Lesh, the anti-fraud officer at the U.S. Embassy here.
Once in the United States, some Chinese visitors may be undertaking another kind of fraud. U.S. counterintelligence officials say some Chinese students, especially in physics, computer science and other high-tech disciplines, are actually Chinese spies, and that some real students are ordered to report what they learn about U.S. high-tech research to the Chinese government.
A commission on Chinese espionage chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., reached a similar conclusion last May. A headline in the third unclassified chapter of the commission's 872-page report noted that "(Chinese) Students Have U.S. Citizen-Like Access to High Performance Computers at the National Weapons Laboratories."
Without more specifics, the report said "threats to national security can come from (Chinese) scientists, students, business people or bureaucrats" in addition to professional spies.
Despite these suspected side effects and strained U.S.-Chinese relations, the flow of Chinese students to the United States _ many of them related to senior government and party officials _ appears to be growing.
During the past academic year, 51,001 Chinese nationals studied in the United States, according to the Institute of International Education, a New York nonprofit. That was nearly 5,000 more students than second-place Japan, until recently the largest source of foreign students in the United States. Chinese represented about 10 percent of the total U.S. foreign student population of 490,933.
Ohio State University, with 637 Chinese students among its total enrollment of 55,000, had the most Chinese students in the 1998-99 academic year, according to a partial list of Institute for International Education figures made available to Knight Ridder. In all, 128 American universities and colleges had at least 100 Chinese students. Among states, New York led with 4,287 Chinese students, followed by California, with 3,515; Texas, with 3,060; Ohio, with 2,640; and Illinois, with 2,373. Three-quarters were graduate students; 12 percent undergraduates. The rest are non-degree students or students of English.
A U.S. immigration official here, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, said experience shows that more than 99 percent of Chinese students remain in the United States after graduating.
Even Yang Zhen wouldn't return immediately. "I don't pretend I don't have plans to work awhile in the U.S.," he said over a cup of coffee at a downtown Starbucks. Yang's first challenge is to get into a school that provides him financial aid. That matters both because he needs money and because visas go only to students who provide convincing assurances that they won't need a job.
Yang, a top student in the 1997 class of the respected Beijing Foreign Studies University, is optimistic as he awaits the outcome of admission and aid negotiations with, among others, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and the University of Miami. He picked them from friends' recommendations and the annual rankings by the magazine U.S. News & World Report.
"We know that the United States has lots of famous schools and that we can get a world-class education, especially at the graduate level," Yang said in impeccable English, his undergraduate major. Yang's parents are reluctant to part with their only child. But as they sipped tea one recent evening in a modest south Beijing apartment tinted blue by the exercise program playing on the television, both endorsed their son's decision.
"I think an MBA (a master's degree in business administration) would probably be best," said his mother, Pan Lili, whose own education was cut short by the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution, when China's universities were closed. "It's fashionable in China, and very useful."
So prized are U.S. student visas that the deceptions used to acquire them can be elaborate. When a group of 16 "students" showed up at the U.S. Embassy here last summer seeking visas to attend an academic program at Brigham Young University's Hawaii campus, all of their papers, including a letter of invitation, seemed to be in order. It was their accents that betrayed them. The visa officer interviewing them suspected that they came from Fujian Province on China's southeast coast, though their passports indicated they were from elsewhere. An investigation revealed that the passports were fake, as were their transcripts from Xi'an Bodi Academy. The Brigham Young program they were to attend didn't exist.
"I was shocked to receive the correspondence purported to come from BYU-Hawaii with my signature fraudulently written," associate dean Theresa K. Bigbie wrote in response to an inquiry from the Embassy. "Though it looks like our letterhead and BYUH's logo, it is not my signature nor a schedule created by our university."
In the '90s, the State Department investigated about 300 cases of visa and passport fraud worldwide, Inspector General Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers told the House Committee on Government Reform last July. About 10 percent, she said, involved allegations that U.S. diplomats had granted visas improperly.
The drama of the student visa quest is played out each working day at the U.S. Embassy by a cast of hundreds. The stage is the Spartan room where supplicants, dozens at a time, line up for two-to-three-minute individual interviews that will set the course of their lives.
Outside, a dozen or so travel agents wait with offers of cheap airplane tickets for anyone who emerges with a smile. Most visa-seekers, however, emerge crushed. Because visa officers conduct as many as 200 interviews per day, they've no time to verify documents or confirm stories. Likeliest to get the nod, according to one former visa officer, are top scholars from well-known Chinese universities who've been accepted, with financial aid, by well-known U.S. schools.
"We skim the cream," she said. "It's a wrenching, emotionally racking experience for both sides," she continued. "The visa officers must steel themselves to try to follow the law, and the applicants sometimes end up screaming that they've ruined their lives. "One man fainted on me," she recalled. "I thought he was dead, that I had killed him. I rushed to his side, shouting, 'Are you all right? Are you all right?' "He opened his eyes and said, 'Yes. Now can I have my visa?' "
Ohio Judge Rules on Profiling Issue
Troopers May Not Ask about Immigration Status in Routine Stops
by John Seewer, Associated Press
Akron Beacon Journal
TOLEDO (AP) -- Asking drivers about their immigration status during routine traffic stops is illegal, a federal judge has ruled. State troopers who pose such questions are violating equal protection guarantees in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. District Judge James Carr said Thursday.
Carr said it was likely that "racial stereotyping influences the kinds of questions an officer chooses to ask during a traffic stop.'' It's the latest decision in a debate over racial profiling, a practice by which police stop people and question them on the basis of their race. The U.S. Justice Department is studying the issue. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 200 police departments are tracking racial and ethnic information to help determine whether officers stop minority drivers unfairly.
Nine Hispanic motorists and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, a union representing migrant laborers, sued the State Highway Patrol four years ago. They said troopers routinely stopped Hispanics without justification, asked about immigration status and in some cases confiscated green cards.
They claimed to have been detained on the basis of race and alleged that their rights were violated when they were stopped, searched and held. "It's pretty clear that race is what's triggering this,'' said Mark Finnegan, a lawyer with the Equal Justice Foundation, which represented the farm labor union.
"The big question that remains is why is the highway patrol investigating immigration laws,'' Finnegan said.
Lt. John Born, a spokesman for the patrol, said yesterday he could not comment because he had not seen the ruling. He did say it was the patrol's policy to turn over questions about a person's residency status to federal immigration officials.
The court still must decide whether the patrol routinely stops Hispanics without justification. A trial on that issue is scheduled to begin May 16. Carr's ruling expands upon a decision he issued in September that said troopers can ask motorists about their immigration status and seize green cards if there is reason to believe the papers are counterfeit.
In the September decision, Carr said there was no evidence that troopers were unreasonably detaining the Hispanic motorists who sued. That ruling, however, did not address the equal protection guarantees.
Carr's latest ruling said that lawyers for the farm labor union had introduced direct evidence that "Hispanic motorists are treated differently than white motorists.''
Plan to Track Foreign Students Criticized
By Katherine Hutt Scott
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - Immigration officials are readying a $43 million computerized system to track all 500,000 foreign students in the United States under a program inspired by the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center. ''It's really easy to get a student visa from any country,'' said Efren Hernandez III, an immigration official. ''And once you're here, we don't know where you are. You could drop out of school and be on the streets, or you could stay in school and study something technical that you could use against us.''
Some colleges see benefits in the new system, which under a 1996 law must be operational by 2003. It essentially will computerize information that colleges already collect and submit on paper to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. A pilot program at 20 colleges showed that an electronic version streamlines the reporting process and speeds up USCIS handling of student requests.
But many people don't like the plan. Experts question whether the tracking system will help prevent future terrorist attacks. Some schools and students don't like the idea of government watching over their shoulders, and many oppose a requirement that colleges collect a fee from foreign students to pay for the tracking system. ''It's troubling for us,'' said Terry Hartle, senior vice president for government relations for the American Council on Education, which represents 1,800 colleges and universities. ''We think the intellectual mission of the university is to not get caught up in international politics. But the sad reality of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that colleges and universities are not islands.''
The World Trade Center bombing proved that. A Jordanian man convicted in the deadly attack, Eyad Ismoil, had entered the United States to attend Wichita State University in Kansas. After three semesters, he dropped out and joined a group of Islamic terrorists.
The 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building also helped the drive for a computerized tracking system. Investigators initially suspected foreign terrorists and asked the government for names of nearby foreign students. But that information wasn't readily available because USCIS records sat in paper files, not computer files.
''It would be foolish to assume that countries that sponsor terrorism would not use students to some terrorist advantage,'' said Allen Kay, spokesman for Rep. Lamar S. Smith, R-Texas, who sponsored a provision in a 1996 immigration law that requires the tracking system. ''Tracking foreign students is one of many prudent steps we can take to help prevent terrorist acts.''
Between 1991 and 1996, the United States issued 9,767 visas to students from five Middle Eastern countries on the U.S. State Department's list of seven countries whose governments sponsor terrorists, according to a 1997 report published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A high number of those students studied subjects that could help their countries develop weapons, the report said.One terrorism expert said a tracking system wouldn't help prevent future attacks unless the USCIS improves its coordination with law enforcement authorities, which is unlikely. But it could help bring a perpetrator to justice after an attack and help the U.S. government monitor what foreign students are learning.
''I sincerely doubt that that (tracking system) would be able to stop somebody from planning an event such as the World Trade Center bombing,'' said Stephanie Lanz, a specialist in terrorism and information warfare at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Under the new system, schools would use the Internet to send the USCIS information about each foreign student, such as name, address, visa expiration date and field of study. The schools would notify USCIS if the student transferred to another school, dropped below a full course load or dropped out of school entirely. But USCIS couldn't do much if a foreign student dropped off its radar screen, acknowledged Hernandez, acting chief of the USCIS division that handles foreign students. If the USCIS could find a student suspected of violating his visa status, it could deport him. But if the student disappeared, the USCIS has limited resources for tracking him down, he said. Even an ineffective Big Brother is unappealing to colleges and foreign students.
''I do suspect that they will have a strong emphasis on tracking people from the Third World countries like India and China who have traditionally been viewed with suspicion by the BCIS,'' said Balaji Krishnapuram, a 22-year-old from India earning a engineering doctorate at Duke University in Durham, N.C. India and China are among the top 15 countries whose students attend U.S. colleges. None of those 15 is on the list of terrorism sponsors.
''Congress has singled out foreign students for special tracking and scrutiny,'' said Norman Peterson, director of international programs at Montana State University in Bozeman. ''They aren't doing this for foreign businessmen, they aren't doing this for foreign tourists or other classes of individuals, and I think that's bad policy.''
Another controversy over fees to pay for the tracking system may delay the project. The USCIS has proposed charging foreign students - including some exchange students and visiting scholars - $95 each time they enroll in a degree-granting program in a U.S. college, university, vocational school or language school. The proposed regulations generated about 4,800 protest letters. Only a 1986 law that granted amnesty to illegal immigrants has generated more, said USCIS spokeswoman Eyleen M. Schmidt.
The schools say it's inappropriate for them to serve as collection agents for the government because schools are hosts and advisers for foreign students, according to a Gannett News Service review of letters at USCIS headquarters. Colleges say collecting the fee would increase their operating costs, forcing them to raise tuition or cut funding for academic programs. Schmidt said the BCIS, in response, will propose to Congress that it, rather than the schools, collect the fee.
Despite the complaints, the new tracking system has some admirers among the 20 Southeastern colleges and universities in the pilot program for the past two school years. It is easier for schools to fill out electronic questionnaires on the foreign students than to mail in paper ones, said Catheryn Cotten, in charge of student visas at the medical facilities of Duke University. And
the USCIS answered student requests for permission to work within a month, compared to the typical four to six months.
''If the students get benefits and the schools get benefits, I think (the tracking system) is worth a reasonable fee,'' Cotten said.
House Judiciary Committee Oks Visa Waiver Plan
By Jim Abrams, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A House panel voted Tuesday to make permanent a pilot program that waives visa requirements for travel between the United States and 29 other countries. The legislation [H.R. 3767] passed the House Judiciary Committee by voice after Democrats on the panel inserted language to ensure that racial and ethnic profiling are not used to exclude nations from the program. The measure would make permanent a visa-free program that was inaugurated in 1986 and now is used annually by 17 million people, more than half those visiting the United States every year for business and travel. To qualify for the program, a country must extend reciprocal visa-free entry privileges to American citizens, have a nonimmigrant visa refusal rate of less than 3 percent and commit to fully develop a machine-readable passport by 2006.
Senate Panel Hears Sex Slaves Tales
By Paul Shepard, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- First, the story was told in Russian by two women who were tricked into lives of forced sexual slavery. Then, a Mexican woman described how her search for a better life unwittingly lead her into a life in a brothel. In two languages, a Senate panel crafting legislation to curb the growing problem of sexual slavery heard from victims, through interpreters, stories of rape, drug addictions, forced abortions, and beatings. "I was given tight clothes to wear and told what to do," said "Maria" a former sex slaves who wore a disguise before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Near Eastern and Southern Asian affairs subcommittee Tuesday. "There would be armed men selling tickets to customers in the trailer.
Tickets were condoms," Maria said. "Each ticket would be sold for $22 to $25 each." Like Maria, "Olga," a native of Siberia, said she was told she could make a lot of money if she left home to work in another country as a maid. Olga was led to Israel, where she was told she had been sold to a man for $10,000 and had to "work off the debt." Olga said she resisted at first, only to be beaten in her kidney area to create maximum pain but minimum abuse to her appearance. "I saw 15 to 20 customers a day and the brothel owners gave me drugs so that I would work," Olga said. "I felt as though I was losing my mind, so they gave me drugs they said were for headaches." Olga said she later discovered the drug was Ecstasy, "a drug that makes
you relax and more willing to be intimate," she said. "After three weeks, I was dependent on the pills and asked for it everyday." Though figures are sketchy, it is believed that between 50,000 and 100,000 women and children are trafficked into the U.S., said William Yeomans of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. Meanwhile, the House Judiciary committee approved by a voice vote a bill [H.R. 3244], sponsored by Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., that would
create a new class of visas for victims of sex trafficking or slave labor. Visas would be extended to those victims and their families who cooperate with law enforcement and who would face persecution or extreme hardship if repatriated. Those admitted under the program, which would be capped at 5,000 a year, would be able to apply for permanent residence after three years.
Bush Courts Calif. Hispanics, Gays
By Scott Lindlaw
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- George W. Bush is distancing himself from former Gov. Pete Wilson, who is among California's best-known Republicans but who remains a symbol of polarizing ethnic politics to Hispanics. The de facto GOP presidential nominee is aggressively courting Hispanic votes, and used his latest pitch to repudiate Wilson's immigration policies. The message drew a sharp response from a Wilson spokesman, who said it resembled Democratic attempts to "demonize" the two-term California governor. Whereas Wilson warned darkly in a TV ad that illegal immigrants "keep coming," Bush said he could relate to Mexicans who cross the border in search of a better life. "If you're a mother or dad, and you're worried about feeding your children, and you can't find work close to home, and you hear of opportunities somewhere else, and you're worth your salt, you're coming."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000408/aponline022134_000.htm
New High-Tech Visa Bill Introduced
By Michelle Mittelstadt
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chairman of the House immigration subcommittee on Tuesday introduced legislation that would allow an unlimited number of visas over the next three years for foreigners with prized high-tech skills. The measure offered by Rep. Lamar Smith is far broader than a version he offered just weeks ago that would have provided a one-time increase of
45,000 visas in the program. The Texas Republican said his plan would address the booming high-tech industry's plaint of persistent labor shortages. At a news conference, Smith said he expanded his bill after learning that this year's demand for visas outpaced last year's request by 50,000. Industry officials, who support other House and Senate proposals that would raise the H-1B visa program beyond its current 115,000 annual limit, said Smith's bill is laced with anti-business provisions - and they questioned whether, if implemented, it would result in any increases.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000411/aponline190041_000.htm
EDITOR'S NOTE: For more information on Rep. Smith's proposal visit:
http://www.house.gov/lamarsmith/H1B/home.htm
Court Nixes Hispanic Border Stops
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Border Patrol agents may not consider a driver's Hispanic appearance when deciding whether to stop someone for suspected smuggling or illegal entry, a federal appeals court has ruled. Because Hispanics make up a large and growing part of the population, ethnicity is irrelevant in deciding whether there is reasonable suspicion to stop them, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in issuing its 7-4 ruling Tuesday. "Stops based on race or ethnic appearance send the underlying message to all our citizens that those who are not white are judged by the color of their skin alone ... that they are in effect assumed to be potential criminals first and individuals second," Judge Stephen Reinhardt said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000412/aponline070702_000.htm
EDITOR'S NOTE: The ruling is on line at:
http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/opinions
Anti-immigrant Group Criticized
Ex-senator quits, cites treatment of Abraham
LANSING (AP) -- Former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson resigned last week from the board of an anti-immigration group because of ads the group has been running in Michigan against U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham. The Federation for American Immigration Reform issued a statement Thursday about the resignation of Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming. "Senator Simpson's concern was that we did not treat Senator Abraham with proper respect in our advertisements in Michigan," FAIR wrote in the statement. Simpson served in the Senate with Abraham when their terms overlapped in 1995-96.
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/nsimp14_20000414.htm
Hot Job Market in Mexico Eases Pressure to Emigrate
By Joel Millman
The Wall Street Journal
ZAPLOTANEJO, Mexico -- The flow of labor from Mexico to the U.S., one of the greatest modern migrations and long a source of tension between the two countries, may be peaking. Demographers say more sustained job creation in Mexico plus lower birth rates mean that fewer people will head north in search of employment in coming years. The signs, literally, are everywhere in this rural area of eastern Jalisco state, usually hand-painted and crammed into the corners of dusty windowpanes. They say "se solicitan operadores" or "buscamos persona." Translation: help wanted. Similar signs are going up across Mexico's rural areas, evidence that the country is starting to see something unthinkable in the past -- a labor shortage."For 15 years, the number of working-age Mexicans entering the labor force has stayed the same, and we needed emigration to help our people find work," says demographer Augustin Escobar. "But now that we see growth of that working-age cohort is slowing, we can also see that the future is going to be quite different from what we saw in the 1980s and the 1990s." The future he sees is one where the supply of new jobs in Mexico matches, or even exceeds, the number of annual entrants into the labor force. When that happens, he figures, Mexicans won't be as inclined to emigrate. Mr. Escobar, who works at Guadalajara's CIESAS think tank, calculates that day may come as soon as the year 2006. "My most pessimistic scenario," he says, "is the year 2010."
Others, citing the same trends, are more cautious. They argue that emigration will continue at a rate of about 300,000 Mexicans a year, as it has since the mid-1980s, but agree that the 50-year relationship between Mexico and U.S. employers is going to change. "Poverty will be less important than [employer] demand as a factor in migration," says Jose Pescador Osuna, deputy secretary for population and migration services at Mexico's Foreign Ministry. "In the next 15 years, people aren't going to go across the border just to get a job, but to get a better job, or tocompete for a higher salary."
Implications for U.S. Employers
Both predictions -- that immigration will soon wane, and that the reasons for migrating will change -- have big implications for U.S. employers. Those already operating in Mexico will face pressure to raise wages to hold on to workers in a tighter labor market. Employers in the U.S., particularly those in the agricultural sector, are likely to step up demands for new "guest worker" legislation, similar to the Bracero program that brought thousands of Mexican farm workers legally to the U.S. during another great economic boom, from World War II to 1965. Here in Mexico, demand for labor is already changing the face of the work force. Researchers have noted a rising number of women in Mexico's rural labor force, as well as an increasing number of children. They say farm-labor recruiters are traveling deeper into the remote southern states of Guerrero and Oaxaca to find workers. Employers say the same thing. "I need 3,000 workers for four weeks every spring," says Carlos Kennedy, who grows grapes and other fruit outside the northern city of Hermosillo. "Each year, they get harder and harder to find."
At the root of these changes are two phenomena: declining fertility and a more stable economy. Birth rates in Mexico dropped from more than six births per mother in 1994 to fewer than three by 1996. The rate, already lower in the cities, is starting to fall in the countryside as well. At the same time, jobs are being created in Mexico at a more sustained pace, a product of both greater macroeconomic stability and big investment inflows triggered by the six-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement. For the past three years, Mexico has added jobs at a rate of about one million per year. In the early 1990s, the rate was about half that.
The ebbing of migration reflects other factors as well. In "sender" towns like Zaplotanejo, the steady outflow of workers resulted in the virtual disappearance of males from the local labor force. Until recently, women lived mainly off remittance payments their husbands, sons and fathers wired home. Last year, those payments totaled about $7 billion countrywide and were Mexico's fourth largest source of foreign exchange after manufacturing, petroleum and tourism. Since the mid-1990s, though, the women themselves have begun to enter the work force. Instead of having more sons to send north, as their mothers and grandmothers did, they have sought jobs in the assembly plants springing up around them. Plenty are springing up, too, even in these remote areas. As labor conditions have tightened in the big assembly centers close to the U.S. border, companies have had to look farther afield for workers. Over the last few years, several have set up shop in Jalisco, traditionally the state that dispatches the most immigrants to the U.S., sending an estimated five million of its sons and daughters to California alone since the end of World War II.
'Waiting for Their Husbands'
You can see the impact here in Zaplotanejo, a town of 70,000. In the late 1980s, returning migrants began putting their savings into small businesses. Many were encouraged by the passage of Nafta, which allowed them to import some U.S. machinery and equipment duty-free. In Zaplotanejo, much of the capital invested went toward imported sewing machines, and now
the little market town has been transformed into one of western Mexico's largest garment-assembly centers. Today, with about 2,000 family-owned shops in town, Zaplotanejo has become a major employer of women from the surrounding countryside. Those women, many earning almost as much as their brothers and husbands make working illegally in the U.S., embody the
demographic change evolving across Mexico.
"In my mother's time, women stayed home, waiting for their husbands to come back from El Norte," says 28-year-old Sandra de Alba, taking a break from her sewing machine at one of Zaplotanejo's biggest clothing factories, Industrias Espuelas de Oro SA. Ms. De Alba, who comes from a family of 10 children -- four of her brothers work in the U.S. -- says she is unmarried and childless.
Hector Alvarez, Ms. de Alba's employer, says he has all but given up on finding more workers in town and is turning to outlying hamlets for workers as his business expands. Besides his 40 machines in Zaplotanejo, another 60 are divided between the tiny villages of Los Platos and Tecomatlan. Another 40 families do piecework out of their homes, sewing buttons and trimming cuffs. He says 80% of his work force is female. "You see 10 factories in town, four of them have help-wanted signs," says Javier Flores, president of the local council of garment makers. "You have to go out to the ranchos now to find workers."
The penetration of industry to even these remote places means fertility will continue to decline, demographers say. And if Mexico's economy continues to grow at 3% to 4% a year, the declining birth rate will mean fewer idle workers in the countryside. That, eventually, will limit the number of people heading north. "Mass migration always goes up and down, particularly over a five- to six-decade period," says Lindsay Lowell, a demographer with Georgetown University in Washington. "In Europe, we saw immigration tail off with the declining peasant class. To some extent, that is happening now in Mexico as well."
Court Gives Noncitizens Time to Change Criminal Plea
By Lesley Clark
Miami Herald
TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday that non-U.S. citizens who plead guilty or no contest to criminal charges, and are not told they could be deported as a result, will have two years to withdraw their pleas and seek a new trial. Immigration attorneys said the ruling could give relief to hundreds of people facing deportation throughout the state. The 4-3 decision by the high court reverses several rulings by trial courts and the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami-Dade, which held that in order to reconsider a plea, the defendants would have to show that they would have been found not guilty had they gone to trial. The high court instead ruled that non-U.S. citizens -- ranging from illegal immigrants to people who have resided in the country legally for years -- need only to show that a trial judge failed to tell them the consequences of pleading guilty or no contest to criminal charges. The ruling was welcome to immigration attorneys, who said it clears up confusion over a 1988 state Supreme Court rule that requires judges in Florida to ``personally'' warn every defendant that if he or she is not a U.S. citizen, a guilty or no-contest plea could trigger deportation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
`SIGNIFICANT'
"It's a significant decision in the sense that it provides some hope to people who are facing deportation for a criminal conviction," said Miami immigration lawyer Neil D. Kolner. ``In many ways it's a favorable ruling for these people and the system. The court is saying there is a rule and the reason for the rule is to make sure that when someone takes a plea they're doing it knowingingly and voluntarily.'' The high court implemented the 1988 rule, finding that ``deportation from the U.S. often is just as harsh as other consequences, if not more so.'' But Kolner said judges have been inconsistent in telling defendants about the consequences of pleading guilty or no contest. The stakes were raised in 1996, when a federal law, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, broadened the definition of crimes triggering deportation and allowed USCIS to target noncitizens for past crimes. ``This now will allow someone who pled without realizing the consequences, a second chance,'' Kolner said. The trial court's failure to tell the defendants that they might be deported made their pleas ``involuntary,'' Justice Harry Lee Anstead said. ``Such consequences, given their significance, would appear to constitute the requisite showing of prejudice,'' wrote Anstead, who included a footnote from a court filing that found that someone who has lived for years in the U.S. could consider deportation ``a far more Draconian punishment than a brief period of incarceration.''
DISSENT
In dissent, justice Charles Wells said he believes that an appeal should be triggered by an actual deportation, and that the defendant must prove he would not have been deported because he would have been found not guilty. ``The issue can only logically be whether the person's conviction would result in the person's deportation,'' Wells wrote. But Anstead said that waiting for deportation would ``be too late'' or would require defendants to file their appeals ``from the countries to which they are deported.'' In the cases the court heard the defendants were from Grenada, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. ``Surely that cannot possibly be a proper result in light of the initial failure to inform these particular defendants of the important consequences of a guilty plea as mandated by our rules of criminal procedure,'' Anstead wrote. The Miami appeals court had said that defendants who were not warned of the deportation consequences should have two years after sentencing to ask for a new trial -- not two years after they find out they can be deported.
FRESH EVIDENCE
A two-year limit would allow evidence to remain fresh and allow the court to ``reliably determine whether defendant most likely would have prevailed at trial,'' the appeals court said. But the Supreme Court's ruling provides that the two-year clock began ticking Thursday for defendants who now know they may be deported -- and that the clock will begin to run for future cases when the defendant ``has or should have'' knowledge of the threat of deportation. The high court's ruling Thursday also drops the requirement that a defendant show that, had they gone to trial, they would likely have been acquitted. The ruling means that a non-U.S. citizen who pleaded guilty or no contest to certain felonies, including rape, aggravated assault or drug
trafficking as early as 1989 -- the year the ruling went into effect -- and is facing deportation, now will have two years to withdraw that plea.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Florida Supreme Court's ruling in the case of RoanPeart v. State of Florida, SC92629, is on line at:
http://www.flcourts.org/sct/sctdocs/ops/sc92629.pdf
Court Bars Border Stops Based on Ethnicity- Racial Profiling
By Henry Weinstein
Los Angeles Times
Border Patrol agents may not consider an individual's "Hispanic appearance" as a factor in deciding whether to stop motorists for questioning near the U.S.-Mexico border, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday. "Stops based on race or ethnic appearance send the underlying message to all our citizens that those who are not white are judged by the color of their skin alone," the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 7-4 ruling. "Such stops also send a clear message that those who are not white enjoy a lesser degree of constitutional protection--that they are in effect assumed to be potential criminals first and and individuals second." The decision by the San Francisco-based court is likely to add fuel to the growing debate over racial profiling by law enforcement agencies. Last year, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said the U.S. Justice Department was conducting several investigations and a study of the issue, in response to complaints that police agencies across the nation engage in such conduct. The American Civil Liberties Union said 200 police departments are tracking racial and ethnic information to help assess the validity of complaints about race-based traffic stops and similar practices. "It is significant any time a court stands up and says that taking note of ethnicity as a mark of criminal activity is wrong," said David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Toledo College of Law who is considered one of the nation's leading scholars on racial profiling.
Despite the court majority's conclusion that two Border Patrol agents improperly considered racial appearance in deciding to stop German Espinoza Montero Camargo and Lorenzo Sanchez Guillen, the court unanimously ruled that the agents still had valid reason to stop the two men because the two were driving suspiciously. Among the reasons cited by the seven-judge majority were that the two men were "driving in tandem," made a sudden U-turn when they approached a recently reopened checkpoint north of the California-Mexico border in El Centro, and then stopped in an obscure spot "historically used for illegal activities."
Federal officials said they were satisfied with the ruling because it is already the Border Patrol's policy not to make stops solely based on race. "We think it's a good decision and it's consistent with how we conduct our operations," said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Laguna Niguel. Robert Gilbert, the Border Patrol's deputy assistant director for the western region, said that "race, on its own, is not a reason to stop anyone." Gilbert said that agents are trained to consider a wide variety of factors before deciding to make a stop. The Border Patrol agents in El Centro had said they stopped the two cars after another motorist tipped them that two cars with Mexican license plates had turned around about a mile from the checkpoint. The agents found two large bags of marijuana in one of the cars and a loaded .32-caliber pistol and an ammunition clip in the other.
A federal trial judge rejected the defendants' claim that the searches were illegal. Subsequently, Montero entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to possess and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, but reserved the right to appeal. Sanchez went to trial and was convicted of those crimes as well as of being an illegal alien in possession of ammunition. A passenger in Sanchez's car also pleaded guilty to the weapons charge. Last May, a divided three-judge panel of 9th Circuit judges upheld the convictions and said that it was allowable for the officers to consider Latino appearance, among other factors, in deciding to stop the two vehicles. The 2-1 majority also said that the cars' traveling together, the agents' prior experiences and the past use of the area as a drug drop-off spot were other valid rationales. That opinion was formally withdrawn when a majority of the 9th Circuit's 21 judges decided that a larger panel of judges should rehear the case. Although Tuesday's ruling, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles, upheld the ultimate validity of the traffic stop, the court's comments on race may have broad ramifications, law professor Harris said.
"What is significant is that seven members of this court are standing up and saying you can't look to the ethnic group of these people as a possible indicator of suspicion," Harris said. "For too long, judges, not just police, have either implicitly or explicitly used race or ethnicity as a proxy for greater propensity to be a criminal." Federal public defender Stephen Hubachek, who represented Sanchez, also lauded the judges for taking "ethnicity and race out of the reasonable suspicion calculus so that factor won't be and shouldn't be relied on in executing vehicle stops. That should go a long way toward eliminating the 'driving while Hispanic' and 'driving while black' complaints people have legitimately raised." Nonetheless, Hubachek and Harold Murray, who represented the other defendant, said they were disappointed that the jurists upheld the search, contending that their clients' conduct was not so suspicious as to warrant being stopped.
Substantial Latino Population Noted
Reinhardt's majority opinion emphasized that California has a substantial Latino population and that the population of Imperial County, where El Centro is located, is 73% Latino. "Accordingly, Hispanic appearance is of little or no use in determining which particular individuals among the vast Hispanic populace should be stopped by law enforcement officials on the lookout for illegal aliens," Reinhardt wrote.
"Reasonable suspicion [for an officer to stop and question an individual] requires particularized suspicion, and in area in which a large number of people share a specific characteristic, that characteristic casts too wide a net to play any part in a particularized reasonable suspicion determination," Reinhardt stated. To buttress his argument, Reinhardt said that in recent years, federal courts have significantly restricted the use of race as a criterion in government decision-making. He quoted decisions by conservative Supreme Court justices striking down affirmative action programs as illustrations, including a 1989 decision which said that "classifications based on race carry a danger of stigmatic harm." Reinhardt added that the danger of such harm "is far more pronounced in the context of police stops in which race or ethnic appearance is a factor."
Although they agreed on the outcome of this case, four 9th Circuit judges, led by Alex Kozinski of Pasadena, accused the majority of engaging in "verbal Macarena." In a tart opinion, Kozinski contended that the two drivers were engaging in such patently suspicious behavior trying to evade law enforcement that there was no need to consider any other issue. "Turning in one's tracks just before reaching a law enforcement checkpoint is precisely the kind of behavior that properly gives rise to reasonable suspicion," he wrote. Kozinski said that the 9th Circuit ought to overturn a 1975 decision, U.S. vs. Ogilvie, in which it came to the opposite conclusion.
Kozinski accused the majority in Tuesday's ruling (U.S. vs. German Espinoza Montero Camargo, No. 97-50643 and U.S. vs. Lorenzo Sanchez Guillen, No. 97-50645) of writing a contorted decision, attempting to distinguish this case from the Ogilvie ruling in attempt to keep the older ruling intact. The judges divided almost entirely on ideological lines. All seven judges who voted in the majority were appointed by Democratic presidents; all but one of the judges in the minority were appointed by Republicans.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The ruling is on line at:
http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/opinions
House OKs Visa Waiver Program
By Jim Abrams
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tourists and business people from 29 foreign countries that allow Americans visa-free entry will not need visitors' visas in the United States under legislation (H.R. 3767) passed Tuesday by the House. The bill, passed by voice vote, made permanent a pilot program under way since 1986 among the United States and the other countries, mostly European. The Immigration and Naturalization Service says 17 million travelers used the program in 1998, and the travel and tourism industry has actively sought to make the program permanent. Participating countries must extend visa-free entry privileges to American citizens, have a nonimmigrant visa refusal rate of less than 3 percent and commit to fully developing a machine-readable passport by 2006. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the Judiciary immigration subcommittee, also would tighten controls over visitors by requiring the USCIS to develop a fully automated system for tracking the entry and departure of visa waiver travelers entering by air or sea. Unlike most industrialized nations, the United States does not keep extensive records of departures, which makes more difficult identification of foreign travelers who overstay their visits. The Clinton administration has said it supports a permanent visa waiver program but has cautioned that the time frame for automating databases might be overly ambitious. The Senate still must act on the bill before it goes to President Clinton for signature. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee endorsed the bill after winning acceptance of an amendment clarifying that race, sex, sexual orientation or disability cannot be used in calculating a participating nation's visa refusal rate. They expressed unease that race might have caused the failure of any African or Caribbean nation to qualify for the visa-waiver program. Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., demanded assurances that the bill doesn't permanently "sanction biases which are in that whole denial and approval process."
U.S. Proposes to Offer 500,000 Legal Residency
By Esther Schrader
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration, in a sudden turnaround on immigration policy, is proposing to offer legal residency to more than 500,000 illegal immigrants who were left out of the sweeping federal amnesty program of 1986. The proposal, if approved by Congress, would affect about 8% of the estimated 6 million illegal immigrants in the United States, administration officials said. More than a third of them are believed to live in Southern California. The proposed legislation [H.R. 4172], would alter an obscure provision of immigration law that offers legal residency to all immigrants who have lived continuously in the United States since 1972 and who are deemed to be of good moral character. The measure would change the date of eligibility to 1986.
"It's a mini-amnesty; it's a stepping stone," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based immigrant advocacy group. "It's widely known in the Latino immigrant community. People are excited about the prospect of people who have been here a long time who work hard being rewarded for their efforts." The administration proposal was unveiled by Vice President Al Gore on March 30 in an announcement that was covered extensively by Spanish-language media but received little attention elsewhere. Chances for rapid passage by Congress appear slim, but administration officials said they will seek to attach the measure as an amendment to a bill that would increase the number of skilled worker visas. That legislation is expected to win congressional approval.
The proposal may reflect an effort by the administration to curry political favor at a time when the number of Latino and Asian American voters--and campaign contributions--are growing fast. The fate of the millions of illegal immigrants in this country resonates with immigrants who have obtained citizenship and can vote. With the U.S. economy still expanding and unemployment lower than it has been in three decades, anti-immigrant sentiment appears to be on the wane. The AFL-CIO, for example, recently proposed a new amnesty program for millions of undocumented workers and repeal of the 1986 law that made hiring them a crime.
"It's an election year, and people are paying some attention to Hispanics," said an administration official who requested anonymity. "It doesn't hurt to have Hispanics know that Gore is proposing this solution." The proposal is an attempt by the administration to resolve class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of an estimated 350,000 immigrants who claim that they were wrongly discouraged from applying for the 1986 amnesty program because of short-term absences from the United States. It also would apply to an estimated 150,000 immigrants who are not plaintiffs in the suits. Government lawyers have fought the lawsuits for more than a decade. Until last month, Clinton administration officials insisted publicly that the claims should be settled in the courts.
"I believe that revising the registry date from 1972 to 1986 would not only provide humanitarian relief to many long-term immigrants but also reduce or eliminate the need to continue litigating some of the large class-actions still lingering from the 1986 legalization program," Gore said in announcing the administration's about-face. While the proposal is generating considerable excitement in Latino communities, lawyers representing the immigrants involved in the lawsuits said that it is not enough. The registry date change would allow the litigants to apply for legal residency, they noted, but it does not guarantee that immigration authorities will grant it in each case.
"Our class members do not want a new amnesty program which will involve a long wait to be legalized, completely new applications, probably fights over new regulations over how the new law is interpreted," said Peter Schey, a Los Angeles immigration attorney who represents all but 10,000 of the plaintiffs. Schey said that his clients want the amnesty they say they were eligible to receive years ago, and they may also seek millions of dollars in monetary damages from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The legal battle has its roots in the way the USCIS handled the 1986 program, which granted amnesty to any immigrant who had lived in the country continuously since 1982. Under the legislation, amnesty seekers were required to prove continuous residence, but brief trips abroad were not supposed to affect eligibility.
The class-action suits were filed on behalf of immigrants who contend they were improperly discouraged from applying for amnesty by USCIS officials because they had taken such trips. By the time they learned that the USCIS gave them bad advice, the deadline for applications had passed. Many tried anyway and became known as "late-amnesty" applicants.
Federal authorities have said that the number of people discouraged from applying for amnesty is far smaller than the lawsuits contend. The plaintiffs, meanwhile, have been living in legal limbo. Most were granted temporary work permits while the cases were fought in the courts. But the work permits leave them ineligible for welfare and education programs and make it difficult for them to buy homes, obtain college scholarships or travel abroad. Now many of the work permits are expiring, putting the immigrants at risk of deportation.
Adriana Fernandez was 11 when she entered the United States illegally from Uruguay with her parents and settled in Houston. She attended school and became fluent in English. Because she and her family visited their homeland for several weeks in 1984, however, she was denied residency under the amnesty program. Fernandez, now 31, managed to obtain enough money for two years of business college in the 1980s. But the money ran out, and her work permit made her ineligible for scholarships. She has held a series of low-paying clerical jobs since. A few months ago, her grandmother in Uruguay died, but Fernandez was unable to go to the funeral. Her work permit does not allow foreign travel. "It's crushing psychologically," Fernandez said. "We've been pending for so many years, and our lives have been put on hold forever." Frida Dominguez,
42, is a single mother in Los Angeles, who entered the United States legally from her homeland of Peru in 1981 but overstayed her visa. When she heard about the amnesty offer a year after it became law, she went to an USCIS office and applied. But immigration officials discovered in her passport a stamp indicating that she had made a 25-day visit to Peru two years earlier. Her father had been sick. They told her the trip made her ineligible for amnesty. She left the office in tears.
Ever since, Dominguez said, "it's been a nightmare, a complete nightmare." As a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits, Dominguez has been able to get and keep a temporary work permit enabling her to hold a clerical job at a swimming pool supply company. But her children are considered illegal immigrants. Her 21-year-old daughter cannot get a driver's license and is ineligible for college financial aid. "There are so many limitations for us, especially for my daughter," Dominguez said.
Administration officials hope to be able to forge something of a compromise by resolving the lawsuits filed on behalf of people like Fernandez and Dominguez without directly admitting guilt. "A change in registry date provides a clean fix to this unfairness without having to backtrack on prior statements in litigation," said White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste. "There is definitely a more receptive public awareness to these issues of fairness for immigrants than there was even, say, a year ago. And so we try to take advantage of that and see what can be done."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The vice president's statement is on line at:
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/4/3/6.text.1
French Hairstylists and Fake Visas
NEW YORK (APBnews.com) -- A chain of French salons that wanted to grow itsbusiness in this country has been convicted of obtaining phony immigration visas in order to send more than 30 French hair stylists and colorists into the country, prosecutors said today. Jacques Dessange Inc., the American subsidiary of France-based Franklin Holding, and Howard Deutsch, a New York immigration attorney, were convicted of 31 counts of immigration fraud after a three-week trial thatended Thursday in a federal court in Manhattan. Prosecutors said the scheme arose after Franklin Holding decided in January 1994 to expand the Jacques Dessange chain in the United States by licensing franchises in cities such as Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Nashville, Tenn. To "maintain a quality image for the Jacques Dessange brand," the company believed the new salons should be staffed with French rather than American help, U.S. attorneys said. Intended for senior executives Jacques Dessange Inc.'s Executive Vice President Yvez Anthonioz expressed these goals to Deutsch, who prosecutors said began bringing French staffers to this country using visas intended for senior executives transferred by multinational firms. U.S. officials said the visas were fraudulently obtained because the colorists and stylists did not qualify as senior executives, and in many instances the "senior executive" positions they were hired for in the United States did not exist. Deutsch's law partner, Libby Salberg, pleaded guilty to the charges in January and testified on behalf of the government. Anthonioz received
immunity in exchange for his testimony during the trial. Lawyer destroyed documents. The jury also found Deutsch guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice and of obstructing the investigation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (BCIS), after prosecutors provided evidence during the trial that he destroyed documents and created false ones upon learning of the USCIS probe. Deutsch's office said he had no comment. Sentencing is scheduled for July 14. Deutsch faces up to five years in prison for conspiracy to commit immigration fraud, five years for conspiracy to obstruct justice, five years for obstructing an USCIS investigation and 10 years for obstructing justice. He also faces fines for each count. The Jacques Dessange company faces a fine of up to $16 million.
Anxious Pursuit of More H-1B Visas
3 Fixes Proposed in Congress Address Education, Training
By Jim Puzzanghera
San Jose Mercury News
WASHINGTON -- It's becoming an annual rite to rival the blooming of the cherry trees here: Immigration officials run out of special visas for skilled foreign workers, Silicon Valley companies panic and come running to Congress to solve the problem. This year, the annual allotment of 115,000 H-1B visas actually disappeared before the first blossoms arrived, a startling development given that Congress nearly doubled the number two years ago. The Immigration and Naturalization Service just cut off new applications -- six months before the end of the federal fiscal year. Last year, the plug was pulled on new applications June 15. The faster pace at which the visas were doled out again this year has led to proposals to provide a long-term fix -- from more money for education and retraining to scrapping the visa program altogether and allowing skilled foreigners to come here permanently. But the high-tech industry is also looking for another short-term fix for one simple reason: There will be even fewer visas available next year.
http://www.sjmercury.com/premium/front/docs/visas26.htm
Senators Ask Clinton to Delay Deportations of Haitians, Central Americans
By Jody A. Benjamin
Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.)
A bipartisan group of senators asked President Clinton on Tuesday to protect thousands of Haitian and Central American refugees from deportation while Congress weighs whether to extend the deadline of legalization programs for those groups. Deadlines to apply the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act and the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act are Friday. Observers say thousands of eligible people have yet to apply and are unlikely to make the deadline for the programs established by Congress. Florida Sen. Bob Graham wrote the letter that was signed by senators as diverse as Florida Republican Connie Mack, Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Jesse Helms, R-N.C. The senators asked Clinton to be prepared to act in case Congress is unable to vote on the issue before the deadline. "These individuals came to the United States to escape chaos in their war-torn home countries," Graham wrote. "A protective order . would ease their fear of deportation."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,30000000000106255,00.html
Congressman Champions Hmong
The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON -- They risked their lives to help the United States in the Vietnam War, but when they came here, they were welcomed with poverty and challenges. Now, a Minnesota congressman is trying to help the country's Hmong community, which numbers between 45,000 and 75,000 in Minnesota alone, in its struggle to be accepted. Many Hmong served with U.S. forces in the war in Laos and came to the United States as refugees when the war ended. Rep. Bruce Vento, D-Minn., has introduced legislation that would free members of the Hmong community from having to pass tests in the English language and American civics when they apply for U.S. citizenship.
http://www.sltrib.com/03312000/nation_w/37454.htm
$2,500 Buys Fake Canadian Passport in Bangkok
Stewart Bell
National Post
EDITOR'S Note: The following is an article in a series on human smuggling.
Follow the link below for other stories in the series.
Many desperate people want to migrate to Canada, and plenty of crooks are ready to help them. In a week-long series, the National Post goes inside the people-smuggling business, exposes Canada's lack of controls, and reveals the audacity of those who exploit misery. BANGKOK - The short Thai man standing between the used-book table and the T-shirt stand at the Khao San Road market spoke little English, but he knew the words most important to his trade. "Passport! Any country," he said. "You want photo-substitute?" You only have to be in Bangkok a few hours to find a scout willing to lead the way to one of the city's notorious passport forgers. The forger would offer to sell a Canadian passport and replace the photo with another. A Canadian citizenship card was also included in the package. The cost of fraudulent Canadian citizenship: $2,500 (US). Khao San Road, listed in travel guides under the heading "places to avoid," is the centre of a flourishing trade in forged documents in a city known as the forgery capital of the world. A large proportion of the fake passports used to smuggle illegal migrants around the globe are produced here. Forgers do a booming business on this narrow street in the old section of Bangkok, where foreign backpackers hang out in cheap hotels and open-air beer parlors between treks to Laos, Cambodia and the southern beaches.
http://www.nationalpost.com/home.asp?f=000325/242780.html
Government's 'H-1B' Program Caps Put Squeeze on University Research
By Esther Schrader
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- When officials at the college of veterinary medicine at Cornell University set out last year to explore new frontiers in horse reproduction, they knew there was just one man for the job. Equine sex experts, after all, are not a dime a dozen. Trouble was, the man they were convinced would make the research program a success, a specialist in animal embryo transfers, is from South Africa. And getting him a visa to work in the United States so far has proved impossible.
After six months of trying, the researcher is still in Pretoria, minus the house he sold and the prestigious position he resigned in response to Cornell's promise of a job. And the Ivy League school's ambitious plans to conduct cutting-edge research is on the rocks. It wasn't supposed to be this way. For years, major research universities across the country have imported experts in everything from Middle Eastern anthropology to advanced plant breeding using a visa program that allows U.S. employers to hire highly specialized foreign workers for as much as six years at a time.
But the number of "H-1B" visas that the government grants for such professionals is limited. And with high-tech companies increasingly competing for the same visas for their own foreign job candidates, academia is feeling the squeeze. Requests for H-1B visas are coming in at such a pace that the Immigration and Naturalization Service announced last month that it would accept no more applications this year. That leaves academic institutions, with their slower, more bureaucratic hiring processes, in the lurch. They will not be able to hire new workers until new visas become available Oct. 1. And unless the law is changed, they will face an even greater squeeze under next year's smaller visa cap.
"It is just incalculable, the loss for our school, for our field, every time this happens," said Dr. Rob Gilbert, associate dean of the Cornell veterinary college. "This is frustrating, particularly at a university like this, where our mission is to be the best in the world and to find the best candidates from around the world," he said.
With the tightest labor market in 30 years severely limiting the number of home-grown candidates for jobs requiring highly trained workers, pressure is growing on Congress to raise the cap on H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers. Companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are lobbying hard for the increase, saying that they need overseas talent to grow.
Lost amid the clamor from the high-tech sector is the plight of universities from Harvard to UCLA, which count on bringing in more than 10,000 such foreign professionals each year. Although data are scarce on just how many academics are denied the visas because of the crunch, the College and University Personnel Assn., which lobbies on the issue, estimates that as many as 60% were turned down last year.
Some scholars eventually received visas, but only after long delays. In many cases, they are former graduate students who entered the United States on student visas and now are stranded in America while their H-1B visa requests are being processed, unable to work or leave the country.
"The most horrendous situations are the conditions of our researchers, typically post-doctoral researchers," said Ted Goode, director of services for international students and scholars at UC Berkeley. "We have four or five people every year for whom we have no avenue available but for them to stop their employment, stop their research activities and either leave the U.S. and wait or stay here because they are unable to go home," he said. Goode said that many are unable to support themselves and must draw down their savings. "We have struggled each year," he said. "We have told people to apply early but the cap is coming earlier and earlier each year and the numbers that industry uses are going up astronomically." The number of H-1B visas requested by colleges, universities and other research institutions pales in comparison to requests from the high-tech industry, which has relied heavily on skilled foreign workers to fuel its boom.
Since 1990, when the H-1B visa category was first established, high-tech companies have hired hundreds of thousands of workers from overseas, most of them computer engineers, computer support specialists, system analysts and database administrators essential in the new information economy. The Computing Technology Industry Assn., a trade group, says that nearly 269,000 high-tech jobs are going unfilled already, costing U.S. businesses $4.5 billion in lost productivity this year. According to USCIS records, more than 30,000 applications for H-1B visas in the pipeline will not even be processed this year.
But universities and major research institutions like the Mayo Clinic also rely on the H-1B program to ensure that top scientists and experts in a range of academic fields can come to the U.S. to work.
Under U.S. immigration law, workers with H-1B visas can stay in the U.S. for up to six years. After that, they can apply for permanent resident status but cannot remain in the H-1B program unless they leave the United States for at least a year. The law provides that the foreign workers are to be paid salaries comparable to those of American workers in the same jobs. Last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would boost to 195,000 the number of H-1B visas available this year and for the following two years. The current limit is 115,000, and is set to fall to 107,500 on Oct. 1, and to 65,000 a year later.
The Senate legislation would solve academia's quandary by exempting university professors and researchers from the cap altogether. While eager to please the increasingly influential high-tech industry, lawmakers fear a backlash from workers concerned about competition from low-wage foreigners. As the use of the H-1B program spreads to other industries across the country, so do reports of abuse. In some instances, H-1B workers have received only a fraction of the salaries they were promised or have been tied to jobs they would rather leave.
Critics of the program oppose raising the caps on H-1B visas, which they say displace U.S. workers. They say that companies should retrain older U.S. workers and work with schools to produce better students, rather than hire from abroad.
The Clinton administration has said that it supports a "reasonable increase" in the number of visas issued to skilled foreign workers. But administration officials say that the increase must be accompanied by more money to fight fraud in the visa program. None of the abuses cited by critics include the professionals hired by academic institutions. For such institutions, the H-1B program is a way to recruit the best talent in the world.
"Certainly I understand the concern about foreign scientists taking positions that Americans deserve, but that's not the case for us," said Deborah Spector, professor of biology at UC San Diego. "We do extensive searches to find just the right people and often the ones we need justaren't from the U.S." With no more visas available this year, Spector is trying desperately to
figure out a way to keep Chinese biologist Ming Ye in the lab. Ming, a post-doctoral fellow who received a student visa extension while he completed his graduate studies at the University of Iowa, needs an H-1B visa to stay in the country beyond August. Ming, an expert on the herpes virus that is the major cause of viral birth defects in children, is trying to develop a vaccine that works against it. "There is quite a lot at stake here," Spector said. "His knowledge, particularly of a certain glycoprotein, is a very essential component in the development of this vaccine. And to interrupt the research at this point, well, it really requires a total retooling. You're effectively losing a year of research. You cannot just pick up where you left off."