G.O.P. and White House Near Accord on Immigrants
By Robert Pear
The New York Times
WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans said today that they were nearing agreement with the White House on legislation that would grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.
After resisting the idea for months, the Republicans have submitted an amnesty proposal to the White House, and they said they were inching toward an agreement that could be included in a comprehensive budget deal, clearing the way for adjournment of the 106th Congress.
The agreement falls far short of the comprehensive amnesty sought by President Clinton, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, immigration lawyers and civil rights groups. But the proposal goes further than most Republicans were willing to go before the Nov. 7 election, offering benefits to tens of thousands of additional immigrants.
Republicans said two factors contributed to their new stance. They want to be in tune with Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, their party's presidential nominee, who has tried to cultivate good relations with Hispanic Americans. And the Republicans have been deluged with pleas from employers, who say they want to hire immigrants because, with the unemployment rate at a 30-year low, they cannot find the workers they need.
In assessing the latest Republican proposals, the White House has been consulting Hispanic groups.
Cecilia Munoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group, said: "The president's proposal would have helped 800,000 people. This deal will help fewer than 400,000. That is probably better than nothing. But there's real anger in the Latino and immigrant community that it has been whittled down so far."
Representative Luis V. Gutierrez of Illinois, a Democrat who is chairman of the Hispanic Caucus's study panel on immigration, said the budget bill would include some assistance for immigrants, but not enough.
"Unfortunately," Mr. Gutierrez said in an interview, "our bargaining position is weakened. You have a recalcitrant Republican Congress that wants to provide a paltry amount of justice for immigrants. And you have a president who, I believe, does not really think immigrants are as important as Medicare, school construction and other federal programs."
The emerging deal, which builds on legislation offered by Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, includes these provisions:
The government would grant a new type of visa to the spouses and minor children of certain lawful permanent resident aliens. This would help people who have been waiting for visas for three years or more. They would be allowed to come to the United States or to remain here, with the right to work, until they became permanent residents, as most eventually would.
Immigrant spouses and minor children of permanent residents and immigrant spouses of United States citizens already living here would be allowed to apply for the new visas without returning to their homelands, as they must do under current law. The government would ignore the fact that many had illegally entered the United States or had overstayed their visas.
The government would reopen the cases of tens of thousands of immigrants seeking amnesty in several large class-action lawsuits. These immigrants have been here for more than 18 years and would have qualified for amnesty under a 1986 law but for errors by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Congress and the White House may also grant a special dispensation to certain immigrants who are subject to deportation because they committed relatively minor crimes before 1996. Under this proposal, lawful permanent residents who have lived in the United States at least seven years could go before an immigration judge to show why they should be allowed to stay here. Under a 1996 law, a large number of offenses, including misdemeanors, were retroactively defined as aggravated felonies requiring deportation.
Republicans said they had rejected Mr. Clinton's effort to grant legal status, under a separate proposal, to tens of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans and Haitians. Supporters of this proposal said it would give these immigrants the same treatment authorized in 1997 for Nicaraguans and Cubans.
But Republicans resisted the idea. Mr. Hatch said, "It would grant a blanket amnesty to undocumented aliens and pick out specific groups of immigrants - Central Americans - for special treatment."
The Republicans also refused to renew a provision of immigration law that allowed large numbers of people eligible for family and employment visas to get their green cards in this country by paying a $1,000 fee. Employers, including hotels, restaurants and other service industries, lobbied for reinstatement of this provision, section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
"If all the aliens working in these industries were forced to leave, the economy would crash," said Bonnie B. Lanza, an immigration consultant in Boston.
Already, lawyers say, some immigrants have been forced to leave their jobs and their relatives in this country while pursuing their visa applications. Elliot J. Diringer, a White House spokesman, said, "We want to make sure that individuals can remain with their families in this country while their immigration status is resolved."
Congress passed a stopgap spending bill on Monday that provides money to operate much of the government through Friday. By then, Congressional leaders said, they hope to have reached agreement with Mr. Clinton on a budget for the rest of the fiscal year, which runs through through Sept. 30, 2001.
Battered Women Proposal Broadens Asylum
By Dan Eggen
The Washington Post
Battered women from other countries could use their status as victims of domestic violence to apply for asylum in the United States, according to new rules proposed yesterday by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The decision was hailed by pro-immigrant groups and women's advocates as a long-overdue step to provide shelter for women fleeing abusive relationships in their home countries, where social norms and tepid laws offer little protection.
In addition, experts said the rules could also be used by immigrants already residing in the United States who, under current guidelines, are often deported along with a spouse convicted of a domestic crime. About 300 people are deported each year as abusers, according to USCIS statistics.
Estimates of the rule's impact vary, but all agree it would annually open the door to hundreds, if not thousands, of new asylum-seekers.
"This recognizes that domestic violence is not a private issue; it's a public issue," said USCIS spokesman Bill Strassberger. "Although domestic violence is a more personal, one-on-one type of persecution, it is still persecution."
But critics of U.S. immigration policy decried the proposal as a drastic expansion of the asylum concept, which was originally intended to offer protection to those persecuted for political or religious beliefs.
David Ray, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the rules will spur on thousands of new asylum-seekers, both real and fraudulent, and will turn an already overburdened immigration system into a sprawling divorce court.
"Before we had some very strict rules where you had to say, 'Here is a government that is persecuting me because of my beliefs,' " Ray said. "Now all you have to say is 'I'm in a bad marriage.' . . . It takes asylum away from political persecution and into the realm of personal relationships."
USCIS officials and immigrant advocates say such fears are overblown, noting that similar rule changes in recent years--such as those allowing gays to cite their homosexuality in an asylum claim--have not resulted in significant increases in asylum claims. The immigration reform federation and other critics argue that those categories are too narrow to compare with domestic violence.
But Leslye E. Orloff, an immigrant expert with the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, predicted that cultural, legal and physical barriers will keep the number of battered women seeking asylum low, despite high abuse rates among some ethnic groups. One recent study of 329 Latina immigrants in the Washington area found that nearly half had been in relationships abusive enough to qualify for a court's protective order, Orloff said.
Applicants for asylum are required to show they can't return home because they face persecution on the basis of political belief, race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social group.
The last category has evolved over the years to include a range of groups, including expansions in the mid-1990s that added homosexuality and the threat of genital mutilation. Claims by members of clans, such as those found in some African countries, were also added during that time.
Just over 1,000 of the more than 42,000 asylum claims in fiscal 1999 were filed by women saying they were members of a particular social group, which may include being victims of domestic violence. But Ray said that number could "balloon" under the new rules.
The proposed changes, which must undergo a 45-day review period before they are finalized, were spurred in part by a high-profile case last year in which a brutally abused Guatemalan woman was denied asylum by the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative body that reviews immigration cases. Rodi Alvarado told U.S. authorities that her husband beat her unconscious, raped her and kicked her so badly she hemorrhaged, and that Guatemalan authorities rebuffed her pleas for help because they viewed it as a private matter.
Alvarado's case is now under review by Attorney General Janet Reno, who has said the government needs clearer rules on gender-based asylum cases. One official said yesterday that with the new rules, Alvarado "will almost certainly end up getting her asylum."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The proposed asylum guidelines are in December 7 Federal Register, pp. 76588-76598. Go to:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fedreg/a001207c.html
and the Immigration and Naturalization Service heading is about halfway down.
USCIS Turns Its Enforcement Emphasis to Employers
By Cindy Gonzalez
The Omaha World-Herald
Criminal charges filed last week against three managers at an Omaha meatpacking plant represent a new and more aggressive approach to curbing the flow of undocumented labor into the Midlands, the head of the local Immigration and Naturalization Service office said.
From now on, Jerry Heinauer said, his agency will seek jail time against company officials who knowingly violate immigration laws.
"We're going to up the ante against the employer as opposed to the employee," Heinauer said. "To make the biggest impact, it's best to build a criminal case against the employer."
In the past, he said, employers typically faced administrative fines that were viewed by critics as little more than a slap on the wrist or the cost of doing business.
Local federal officials pursued criminal action against only one company for an immigration-related offense in the past five years, Heinauer said. That case ended in a fine, not jail.
While Latino and immigrant advocates commend the new spotlight on management, they have questioned other aspects of the Nebraska Beef raid that led to the removal from the country of about 200 men and women found to be working in the United States illegally.
Community representatives also are looking at how best to lean on politicians empowered to enact the kind of legal changes that would permit undocumented immigrants to work in the labor-starved Midlands economy.
If nothing else, the recent controversy and aggravation can raise awareness and momentum, said Milo Mumgaard, executive director of the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest.
He and others said the raid at the plant near 35th and L Streets and other recent topics that garnered national attention - such as the controversial USCIS Operation Vanguard and efforts to unionize local Hispanic meatpacking workers - have pulled together a base of support that can push for change.
"This is a moment to gear up for new actions that correct tremendously damaging immigration policies," said Lourdes Gouveia, a sociologist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "There is nothing benign about policies that treat humans as hazardous waste, dumping them on the other side of the border."
Omaha Police Sgt. Mark Martinez, head of the Latino Peace Officers Association, is among community representatives concerned about the fallout from a raid that left parts of families in Omaha while sending the worker to Mexico or elsewhere.
The USCIS action, he said, probably will set back police-community relations that the Latino officers have tried to improve.
"You work so hard to make certain you're doing the right thing, then something like this happens," he said, noting that many people don't differentiate between the USCIS and local police. "We're going to be stuck at the local level with the healing process."
From a law enforcement angle, Martinez said, the Latino officers organization understands the BCIS' duties. But he also noted the governor's 37-member task force report that recommended less disruptive ways to curb illegal immigration.
The USCIS decision to conduct the raid was contrary to the task force's recommendations, said Mumgaard, a leader of the group.
After a year of meetings, the cross section of Nebraskans objected to the use of work-site raids, saying they caused communitywide disruption. Instead, they supported the use of USCIS software to screen out undocumented workers before they're hired and also urged support for amnesty and more work visas for immigrant laborers needed in the state.
Several days after the raid, Gouveia said, the community still doesn't know: "How far up the ladder will this prosecution go?"
Heinauer has said the investigation is not complete and criminal prosecution against others besides the three managers and three company recruiters is possible.
He said he was confident, however, that the prosecution of the six, who each face 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, was enough to curtail the alleged smuggling scheme.
Similar criminal investigations are under way at other area companies, Heinauer said. He declined to provide details.
Any future work-site raids where lower-ranking employees are detained in large numbers likely will be connected to a criminal prosecution, he said.
"The message we're sending is that if you're an employer, you need to comply with the immigration laws of this country," he said.
Since the beginning of 1995, about $115,000 in civil fines was paid by 13 Nebraska and Iowa businesses that were accused of immigration-related violations. USCIS officials said the district had only one criminal fine during that same period - $50,000 paid in 1997 by a potato-processing plant that admitted hiring 41 undocumented workers.
In that case, against Frenchman Valley of Imperial, Neb., the U.S. Attorney's Office ultimately dropped charges against the company's president.
Change Planned in Asylum Rules on Domestic Abuse
By Patrick J. Mcdonnell
Los Angeles Times
The U.S. Justice Department is expected to propose groundbreaking new rules today easing the way for victims of domestic violence to gain asylum in the United States.
The move would represent a major victory for women's groups, immigrant advocates and others who have waged a national campaign to make it easier for women to win claims alleging persecution based on gender.
"It makes refugee law in the United States consistent with the international understanding that women's rights are human rights and women's rights are universal," said Deborah Anker, a Harvard Law School expert on asylum.
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britain have already moved to provide greater protection to battered women filing gender-based claims for asylum, experts say.
A critic denounced the change as the latest example of expanding the definition of asylum beyond a traditional reading based strictly on government repression. In recent years, asylum seekers have filed claims alleging persecution based on gender prejudice, sexual orientation and clan membership.
"The intent of the political asylum law was to protect people from political persecution," said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which contends that broadened definitions draw fraudulent asylum seekers. "Now it's protecting people from a whole variety of misfortunes that might befall them."
However, officials in the Immigration and Naturalization Service--the Justice Department branch that evaluates asylum cases--say the new rules are fair and will not open any floodgates. Applications from victims of domestic violence are not expected to number more than several hundred annually, according to officials and attorneys.
The new rule, in essence, allows domestic violence victims to be considered members of a "social group," an important designation in immigration law.
Under U.S. statutes, asylum applicants must show that they cannot return to their homelands because of persecution or fear of persecution arising from at least one of five categories--race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most gender claims arise under the last category.
Homosexuals and women with gender-related claims won asylum claims during the 1990s as persecuted members of specific social groups. However, federal officials stress that all applicants must still meet the high standard of proving they face persecution if sent back to their homelands.
"We have simply not seen a dramatic increase in the number of applications from persons following decisions by the Department of Justice to recognize a new particular social group," said Kelly Ryan, an USCIS attorney who helped draft the new language.
The proposed rules are scheduled to be published today in the Federal Register, the official chronicle of regulatory business. Interested parties will have 45 days to comment before a final rule is considered.
The new rules attempt to eliminate considerable confusion and clarify conflicting interpretations that have emerged in recent years as claims of gender-related persecution have become more common. The USCIS in 1995 issued guidelines to assist officers evaluating such matters.
Before that milestone move, advocates say, women fleeing persecution based on gender had little chance of success; their problems were largely viewed as personal or family matters.
The following year, a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals--an administrative body that reviews immigration court rulings--bolstered the case for gender-based claims. The board approved an asylum petition by a young woman who said she could not go home because she faced female genital mutilation, a ritual still practiced in some parts of Africa.
However, last year a sharply divided board issued a decision that many regarded as a retreat: It reversed an immigration judge's grant of asylum to a Guatemalan woman, Rodi Alvarado, who, records showed, had been brutalized for more than 10 years by her husband, a former soldier. She finally fled and now lives in San Francisco.
The board did not dispute that Alvarado had suffered terribly. But the panel rejected the judge's ruling that the persecution was based on social group membership. Alvarado is appealing in federal court.
The new Justice Department rules, once made final, experts said, would have the effect of overturning the board ruling in the case of Alvarado and easing the barrier for others alleging persecution based on domestic abuse.
Law Allows Oklahoma State U. to Hire Unlimited International Employees
By DeAnna Browne
Daily O'Collegian (Oklahoma State U.)
STILLWATER, Ok. -- Oklahoma State University could have an unlimited number of international scholars, teaching assistants and researchers on its campus starting next month under a new federal law that exempts all U.S. universities from a cap on the number of temporary international educators,
scholars and employees they can hire each year. President Bill Clinton signed the law Oct. 17, and it will take effect in December.
Regina Henry, coordinator of immigration for OSU's International Students and Scholars office, said lifting the cap off the education industry means good things for the science fields because they are popular among
international students, but not American students. Therefore, she said, the law poses no threat to American students who may be seeking research, scholar or teaching positions in the science fields.
Paul Westhouse, graduate program coordinator for the physics department, agreed.
"I wish we could hire Americans to fulfill our research needs," he said. "But if it weren't for international students, the physics department would shut down. There just aren't a lot of qualified American students out there for the science fields."
That cap -- which the government set at 115,000 this year -- is usually reached by other industries within the first six months of the year, Henry said, leaving universities unable to fill their open research and scholar
positions for the last six months.
"What (universities) needed was relief from the cap so that we wouldn't have to compete with industry for the temporary workers and scholars, and the law gives us that," she said.
Margaret Essenberg needed that relief in 1998. As a regents professor for OSU's biochemistry department, she tried to hire a research assistant to help her develop edible cottonseeds. But her research was set back a year when the associate professor she hired from China couldn't get a visa
because of the cap. She said no American students applied for the plant chemist position she advertised.
"If I had found an equally qualified American, I could have avoided the setback, but no one applied. It would have been easier to hire an American because they could have started sooner, and there wouldn't have been acculturation barriers," she said.
The chemistry of plant natural products is not popular among Americans, Essenberg said. So she and her assistant were forced to wait until November 1999 for his visa, and he didn't start research until last February.
Essenberg called the setback a "nightmare."
Henry said the law was passed to avoid problems like these. But it may mean stiffer competition between American and international students for jobs in the science fields.
"American students may have to compete with international students now to get these jobs, but they need to remember that international students are just filling the gaps in those fields that American students won't," she said.
Officials with NAFSA: Association of International Educators, agree.
"(We) got involved in (the cap issue) because universities kept telling us that even after they'd hired all the (American students) that applied, they still had open slots and needed researchers," said John Greggory, assistant director of government relations for the organization.
Greggory said many American students who have degrees in the science fields go into industry, not education, because that is where higher salaries are. Many international students, however, use academics to get their feet in the door, because they know American students don't traditionally work in
the science fields.
"It's not that there are a few (research and scholar) slots open with a lot of competition -- there are many slots and not much competition," he said. "International students are filling the gaps, not taking Americans out of the competition."
Immigration and Naturalization Service is responsible for implementing the law. John Brown, who deals with policy for the agency, said the service is still drafting the regulation, and it will be published in the Federal Register next month.
Meissner Ends Embattled Tenure as Head of USCIS
By Dan Eggen
The Washington Post
For five long months, Doris M. Meissner was engulfed by the Elian Gonzalez case.
As commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Meissner was the first to decide that the 6-year-old Cuban boy should return to his father after his mother died in an attempt to reach Florida. Meissner and her boss, Attorney General Janet Reno, were berated on talk shows, cursed by Cuban American activists and, when armed USCIS agents seized Elian, pilloried in Congress.
Most would consider this an ordeal. But to Meissner, being thrust into the middle of a political firestorm "was one of the most satisfying experiences professionally that I've had.
"It was a team effort that worked extremely well," she said last week in her office on the outskirts of downtown Washington. "I didn't come here to work against 30 years of practice when it came to Cuba and Castro. But the case was what it was, so we rolled up our sleeves and said, 'Let's do it right.' "
The Elian saga wasn't the only political gale to buffet Meissner, 59, who ended her seven-year tenure as head of the USCIS Friday. Her term was plagued by scandals and missteps as she tried to remake one of the government's most troubled agencies. At the same time, the USCIS was coping with one of the largest waves of immigration in U.S. history; 1 million or more immigrants arrived annually during most of Meissner's term.
Meissner, who also held immigration posts in the Carter and Reagan administrations, oversaw a doubling of the USCIS work force to 32,000 employees, and a tripling of the agency's budget to $ 4.3 billion. She earned praise from immigrant advocates, and even some foes, for bringing professionalism and expertise to an agency that was known for neither.
Meissner cut down on backlogs in the BCIS's troubled asylum system, implemented a crackdown along the Mexican border and worked to speed approvals for legal immigrants seeking citizenship. Just last week, the USCIS announced that the wait for naturalization had declined from more than two years to less than nine months, while the application backlog had dropped to 800,000 from a high of nearly 2 million two years ago.
"She inherited a badly structured, demoralized agency at a time when the immigration debate was getting red hot," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group. "She's performed admirably and effectively in an impossible job."
Meissner, who will return to a post at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the USCIS "is not only a significantly bigger agency, it's a significantly better agency."
But Meissner frequently ran afoul of advocates on both sides of the immigration debate and often raised the ire of critics in Congress. She fought unsuccessfully against 1996 legislation that expanded the list of crimes punishable by deportation and helped derail attempts to split the USCIS into separate enforcement and service agencies.
Last year, Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Tex.), chairman of the House immigration subcommittee, called for her resignation amid reports that as many as 1,500 nonviolent criminal immigrants were set to be released because of crowding in detention centers. The USCIS scrapped the plan and Meissner declined to step down.
A naturalization drive that mistakenly allowed hundreds of criminals to become citizens because of flawed background checks arguably caused Meissner's worst moments. Smith and other GOP leaders alleged that the Citizenship USA campaign, which processed nearly 1.3 million new citizens before the 1996 elections, also was part of an effort by the White House to pad the rolls of Democratic voters.
A Justice Department report dismissed political motives on Meissner's part, but lambasted the USCIS for a malfunctioning fingerprinting process and a computer system so antiquated that officials couldn't determine exactly how many applicants they had.
T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents most of the BCIS's 9,100 border employees, said, "We would have to give [her] a failing grade as commissioner." He said that many agents are demoralized and that Meissner should not be credited with increasing the agency's manpower and equipment.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration group, said last week that Meissner's resignation was "long overdue and welcome."
"Everywhere she closes a door," Dan Stein, the group's executive director, said of Meissner's attempt to stem illegal immigration, "she opens a window."
Meissner soldiered on through the political crises even as she weathered a personal one. In 1996, her husband, assistant commerce secretary Charles F. Meissner, died in a plane crash in Croatia that also claimed the lives of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and 31 others. Meissner has two grown children.
The daughter of German immigrants who made their way through Ellis Island, Meissner said her parents' experience helped shape her philosophy. "The fear of not measuring up is universal in the immigrant experience," she said. "I think I have understood that and tried to make it better."
Phony Visa Forms Found in N. Texas
The Houston Chronicle
An immigration scam that has popped up in North Texas has probably made its way to the Houston area, a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman said Sunday. Fraudulent travel forms bearing realistic immigration stamps are being used to obtain Social Security cards or passports. The problem has become so prevalent in the region that it has prompted USCIS officials in Dallas to issue an alert. "Logically, it would lead one to believe that if it is going on in Dallas, then it is going on in Houston," said Dallas USCIS district spokesman Lynn Ligon. He attributed that to Houston's size, although he said he hasn't heard of any specific cases of the scam appearing here. Luisa Aquino Fine, Houston USCIS spokeswoman, said Sunday she couldn't comment on whether the scam had been detected in Houston or South Texas. No one has been arrested in connection with the scam. The fake documents have a DV1 visa designation stamp. DV1 stands for diversity visa, a permanent resident immigrant visa awarded each year through a federal lottery program. "I'm sure somebody is selling them," Ligon said. "I don't know what price they are going for." Ligon said travelers who have overstayed their visas, such as tourist visas, could be among those using the phony documents. Suspicious documents include I-94 arrival/departure forms, routinely issued during international flights and inspected by the USCIS when travelers enter the United States. The travel forms sparked suspicion after copies were forwarded to the USCIS from a Social Security office in North Texas. Some contained too many numbers, others had fake USCIS stamps or misspellings. Ligon said the alerts and communication between USCIS intelligence officers in Houston and Dallas would keep the Houston USCIS district office abreast of the scam. Similar scams have been reported in Austin, Chicago, New Orleans and St. Paul, Minn., according to government sources. Ligon said getting a Social Security card is important because "so many things are keyed on the number." Four to five such cases have surfaced in recent months at the Arlington Social Security Administration Office. "The feedback we've gotten from the USCIS is that in most cases these documents are fraudulent," said Karl Barnett, district manager for the Arlington office. "The people coming in are coming for Social Security account numbers." Ligon said the scam places doubt on the thousands of lawful diversity visas distributed each year. "When you see so many fraudulent ones, it casts suspicion on all of them," he said.
Those eligible for a Social Security card can call the Social Security Administration for assistance at 800-772-1213. Applicants with legitimate documents can usually get cards within seven to 10 days, Barnett said.
Rural Jails Profiting from USCIS Detainees
The Washington Post
SALISBURY, Md. -- Warden John W. Welch says he has learned some things about foreigners. One: They're not hard to intimidate. Throw a troublemaker in a jail cell with 30 American thugs. That, Welch says, adjusts his attitude.
Two: There's money to be wrung from the plight of immigrants who run afoul of the system. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service pays $50 a day for a bed in Welch's jail, a bed that costs just $17.89 to provide. That's $32.11 clear profit. Last year, the Wicomico County Detention Center made $2.7 million, two-thirds of it gravy.
Just south of the Delaware line on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Wicomico County is cashing in on a soaring number of immigrants housed behind bars. Tough new immigration laws passed by Congress in 1996 require that foreigners facing deportation be jailed while awaiting a final decision on their fate. The imprisoned include immigrants who have criminal records or expired visas, as well as new arrivals who have requested political asylum from violence at home.
The average number of USCIS detainees has tripled to 21,000 each day, making them the fastest-growing sector of the nation's booming prison population. Desperate for jail space, the USCIS uses more than a third of its $800 million detention budget to rent cells in about 225 jails--most of them in rural counties where costs are low and there are beds to spare.
Immigrant advocates say the arrangement puts people who overstay a student visa, write a bad check or show up on these shores with a sad story of persecution in jail with local criminals accused of rape, robbery and murder.
And they contend that the remote jails are too far from the lawyers that immigrants need to navigate complicated deportation proceedings. Wicomico County, for example, is 116 miles from Washington and 110 miles from Baltimore.
But the arrangement has let jails that once consumed big chunks of local budgets become profit centers for small-town America. In Farmville, Va., the growing profits have made the Piedmont Regional Jail self-supporting. In York County, Pa., a new jail wing built exclusively for the USCIS funded a property tax cut.
In Wicomico County, warden Welch has proposed building a whole new prison for the USCIS that would generate an estimated $4 million a year at a time when county voters have rejected new taxes.
However, Welch has his critics. His facility spends less on its inmates than any other jail in Maryland. In July, more than 80 USCIS detainees signed a letter complaining that they "sleep on the floor with cockroaches," eat bologna "2 and sometimes 3 times a day," and receive a single set of clothes, forcing them "to walk naked when they [are] washed."
There are also allegations that jailers use excessive force and abusive restraining devices and provide insufficient medical care. Last month, the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department began an investigation into reports of abuse and neglect in Wicomico County.
Welch says the investigators will find nothing: No one sleeps on the floor in his jail. Food, clothing and medical care all meet guidelines set by the Maryland Commission on Correctional Standards, of which Welch is vice chairman.
"I run a constitutional jail," Welch said. USCIS officials say they have no reason to doubt Welch, nor to question his flinty style. "It's his facility," said Chris Bentley, spokesman for the BCIS's Baltimore District. "What he says goes."
Life of a Detainee
The Wicomico County Detention Center sits in a slight hollow not far from the Salisbury shopping mall. The modern, low-slung jail constantly operates at its maximum capacity of 655 inmates. On a recent day, 128 were USCIS detainees, including 97 residents facing deportation after criminal convictions and 31 people who had violated immigration laws.
Florin Cacau was among the latter group. He was a 20-year-old stowaway when U.S. border guards pulled him off a ship in the Port of Baltimore in May 1999. He told them he was afraid to go home because he was beaten in his tiny Romanian village by corrupt police who accepted bribes from a rich man who covets Cacau's land.
He wanted to go to his relatives in Detroit. Instead, he was shackled and led to a van for the drive to Wicomico County. When his sister-in-law, her husband and their daughter, Daniela, 16, arrived after a 12-hour drive from Detroit, they were informed that visits were limited to 30 minutes, twice a week, and that no one younger than 18 was admitted. Cacau had a brief, tear-stained reunion with the parents while Daniela sat in the car. Visits on consecutive days are not allowed, so the family turned around and went home.
Since then, Cacau has spoken to his relatives by telephone, but that's a problem, too. In Wicomico County, inmates must use pay phones that force them to call collect. The people they call are charged $4.94 for the first minute and 69 cents a minute thereafter. The jail profits from the arrangement that allows the phone company to bill at those rates.
This summer, after receiving a $2,000 phone bill, Cacau's family had to start refusing his calls.
"We miss him," Daniela David said from her home in Detroit. "We thought he was going to get out pretty soon, but it passed a year and a half now."
Cacau feels trapped, isolated and miserable. Detainees have no right to bond, and the USCIS refuses to release him. He also has no right to a court-appointed attorney, but a sympathetic United Nations refugee official asked the only Salisbury firm that handles immigration cases to represent Cacau for free.
To get out of jail, Cacau must convince a judge that he deserves political asylum. Or he can give up and agree to go home. After 18 months in Wicomico County, he said, impoverished Romania is starting to look like the better option.
Boyish and slight, Cacau is terrified of the much bigger American inmates, who range from killers and drug dealers to drunk drivers and thieves. Not long ago, he said, an inmate was stabbed.
"I can't keep my soul clean here with these people. They curse every single minute. And they fight for no reason," Cacau said. "If I escape here without getting cut, I'm a lucky guy."
In the broken English he has picked up in jail, Cacau said he has no trouble with the guards. But everyone has heard stories.
There's the Nigerian who says jailers put him in a cell with an American inmate, knowing the American had threatened him. The man was badly beaten, said his attorney, Penny Venetis, associate director of the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers Law School.
On another occasion, Venetis said, jailers locked the man naked in a solitary confinement cell. The man was granted asylum and released a few years ago.
In 1996, a pregnant Haitian woman who spoke little English mistakenly nodded yes when a guard asked if she was suicidal. Yvenie Emmanuel was placed in an isolation cell wearing a paper gown, said her Washington attorney, John O'Leary.
After five days, Emmanuel persuaded jailers to release her. Two weeks later, she suffered a miscarriage. Jailers kept her shackled on the way to the hospital, O'Leary said. A few months later, she was deported.
The Rev. Mark Horak, an immigration lawyer with Catholic Charities in Baltimore, said a mentally ill Jordanian man in the Wicomico jail did not see a doctor or receive medication for six months.
Wicomico County "contracted with the USCIS to make money. . . . They don't have any particular incentive to provide services that you or I would think are pretty basic," Horak said.
The Wicomico Way
Warden John Welch is a gruff and blustery former military man fast approaching retirement age. He takes great pride in his jail. It is modern. It is efficient. Its operating costs are the lowest in the state. In 1988, the jail became the first in Maryland to win an USCIS contract, and as Welch will tell you, that contract has repeatedly bailed out Wicomico County.
"Five years ago, the county needed to raise $65,000 in 30 days," Welch said, puffing on a cigarette in a jailhouse office stacked high with inmate files. "I picked up the phone and called the USCIS and said, 'Send me 70 inmates.' And it was done."
Welch's USCIS contract requires an annual inspection by the BCIS. But when advocacy groups show up at the jailhouse door, he turns them all away. Out-of-town attorneys with clients in the jail say they also have had trouble getting in. Welch, who teaches a law class at Wor-Wic Community College, is unapologetic.
"I am an expert on correctional law. Basically, I will push the legal envelope to the limit," he said. "I'm not going to let anybody be abused. But I don't want anybody looking over my shoulder, either."
Some USCIS detainees do have special needs, Welch said, but Wicomico County accommodates them all.
"If you spoke Russian, I would treat you the same way I treat an American. I'd say, 'This is your food. Set your tray down. You can eat,' " he said, speaking slowly and miming the actions with his hands.
"All our inmates, we treat as if they're innocent," Welch said. "We do use dogs. I will turn dogs loose on a pod of inmates if they're raising hell."
But dogs are ideal jailers, he said. "They have no conscience. They're colorblind. And they don't care who they bite."
The dogs--big Rottweilers--are one of the things that prompted the Justice Department investigation, sources said. There's also talk of improper use of the restraint chair, a plastic device draped with straps in which inmates are immobilized for 24 hours or more.
Welch has plenty of defenders. John O'Malley, assistant USCIS commissioner for detention and deportation, used to work in the Baltimore District office and has known Welch for years. He said Wicomico County has been cooperative in meeting USCIS needs.
"I personally was saved by those dogs once," O'Malley said, adding that the animals are "slobbery, friendly" and likely to "lick you to death more than anything else."
As for the Justice Department, "we're aware of what the allegations are," O'Malley said. "If there was a finding of abuse in a jail, we would take everybody out. No matter how much of a problem it would be for us."
New USCIS Standards
The USCIS recognizes problems in its detention program. After human rights organizations published a raft of scathing reports about the treatment of detainees, USCIS Commissioner Doris Meissner vowed to increase the use of discretionary releases for asylum seekers who pose no threat to the community, to improve access to legal representation and to set higher standards for county jails holding USCIS inmates.
"People who come to this country yearning to breathe free should not languish behind bars," Meissner told the Senate subcommittee on immigration in 1998.
Two years later, advocates say there has been little progress. An USCIS initiative to review the cases of criminal detainees held for more than six months led to 1,800 releases. But the USCIS still counts 2,700 people who have been in custody longer than six months. And that doesn't include detainees without criminal records, such as Florin Cacau.
Meanwhile, the USCIS this month released the first-ever set of standards for the care of USCIS detainees, promising ample recreation time, fewer strip-searches, cleaner sheets and more consistent separation of nonviolent USCIS inmates from violent local offenders. The standards also call for better access to the outside world, including free phone calls, law libraries and regular presentations explaining detainee rights.
No one believes that implementing the standards will be easy. And the standards do not address the biggest barrier to legal representation: jails in the middle of nowhere.
"We're at the mercy of available space," O'Malley said. "There are things we wish were different."
Jails that do upgrade their facilities are likely to demand more money. If Wicomico County has to let every inmate go outside every day, for example, Welch estimates that instead of $50 a day, the USCIS would have to pay him $80.
Next year, Welch hopes to put together some kind of advisory board to promote public support for his idea to bring more USCIS detainees to Wicomico County.
"Renting beds is a lucrative business. If I built 500 beds, I could rent them all tomorrow morning," he said.
Green Card Applicants Face Wait of 3 1/2 Years in Houston
The Houston Chronicle
The government can deliver a letter overnight, process a Social Security card in 14 days and hand over a passport in about six weeks. But when it comes to processing a green card application at the Houston office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the wait now stretches a minimum of three-and-a-half years.
A massive paperwork backlog places Houston among the very worst USCIS offices in the nation in terms of processing times for green cards, creating delays that have severely affected many of the 45,000 Houston-area immigrants awaiting the cards, which bestow permanent residency.
The bureaucratic delay has prevented teens from attending college and barred some foreigners from traveling home to visit dying parents. There are cases in which immigrants have qualified for a green card by marrying an American, only to be disqualified when the spouse died during the prolonged application process.
"I'm just sick and tired of seeing the way this affects the lives of the people I represent," said Charles Foster, a prominent local immigration lawyer. Foster said he has seen clients break down and cry when relating stories about problems the backlog has caused.
"If this were any other agency of U.S. government, this delay just simply wouldn't be tolerated," Foster added. "You would almost think there's a conspiracy to prevent legal immigration."
Not all of those affected are foreigners. Americans who marry immigrants also must endure the years of waiting, in which spouses are sometimes barred from traveling abroad.
"The USCIS has a sluggish, if not punitive, bureaucracy that's not motivated to get much done," summarized Don Ellison, a Sugar Land businessman whose wife, Susan, probably will wait a total of four years to get her green card.
Congress has taken note of the notorious USCIS delay, which is a growing problem across the nation. A bill recently approved by Congress included a provision calling on the USCIS to eliminate its processing backlog by the end of 2001.
Congress determined that it should take the USCIS no longer than six months to process green cards and other immigration forms.
As bad as the problem may be across the nation, however, observers say Houston remains the most notorious USCIS office.
"It's just become part of our lexicon" to associate Houston with delays, argued Crystal Williams, a representative of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington. "Houston is just the worst in the nation in terms of processing times."
Not quite. Though Houston has at times sat in the cellar, it has recently been replaced by Phoenix and Harlingen as the slowest offices in the nation in terms of processing green cards, according to the most recent report card produced by AILA.
Still, it takes more than twice as long to get a green card in Houston than it does in immigrant-rich cities such as Miami and New York.
Richard Cravener, USCIS district director for Houston, acknowledged the severity of the problem here.
"We have been traditionally under-resourced," Cravener said of the Houston office.
But Cravener said he already has moved to rectify the problem by hiring 20 new USCIS officers who will work specifically on eliminating the green card backlog. He acknowledged that it will be several months before they are trained, on the job and able to work at processing the stockpiled paperwork.
After so many years of chronic problems, critics remain skeptical.
"You have to say that's good news," Foster said of the new hires. "Whether and when it will have an impact, we don't know."
Houston is currently processing green card applications filed in June 1997, according to Cravener. That means there is a 40-month delay between the day an immigrant files an application and the day a bureaucrat takes that file out of storage and begins to process it.
Cravener said he has done studies showing that the few workers he has processing green cards in Houston are more productive than workers in other parts of the country. But some attorneys argued that USCIS officials in Houston seem to go out of the way to make the green card application process more difficult.
"Cravener has put a bunch of bureaucrats in who are just mean-spirited," argued Peter Williamson, one of the better known immigration lawyers in town.
Williamson told of a time he applied for an emergency waiver so that a client could travel abroad to attend a relative's funeral. The USCIS wanted proof that the relative had died and insisted on seeing the original death certificate.
The system reached a complete breakdown in 1996, when the USCIS forgot to request CIA background checks for thousands of green card applicants. The problem has been resolved, but critics say it created a months-long backlog that remains to this day.
Foster and others also said the process has become a vicious cycle. With the permanent residency application delayed for years, applicants periodically need to go to the USCIS to apply for temporary visas to tide them over. So officers spend time processing temporary visas instead of reducing the backlog of green cards.
But some of the problems related to green card delays indisputably stem from policies set in Washington. The processing of green cards has been caught up in a highly partisan debate in Washington over the creation of new voters.
There are two steps in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen. An immigrant first must obtain a green card to become a permanent resident. Then the permanent resident must be naturalized to become a citizen.
In theory, the USCIS is required to process both green cards and naturalizations. But under the Clinton administration, the USCIS has been directed to put most of its resources into processing naturalizations, while all but ignoring the green cards.
"The No. 1 priority of the Immigration and Naturalization Service - until now - has been naturalization," said Cravener. He said his superiors in Washington ordered him to set a goal of naturalizing nearly 37,000 new citizens in fiscal year 2000, compared with processing just 6,000 green cards.
Cravener said he has gone to Washington to complain about this arrangement. It doesn't make sense to focus virtually all USCIS resources on naturalizations, he said, since a green card makes so much more of a difference in the life of an immigrant.
A person who obtains a green card can work, Cravener noted. Their children can obtain the in-state residency and scholarships many need to go to school. They are free to travel.
In fact, a person with a green card has just about the same rights as a citizen.
But citizenship brings one right that is of great importance to many politicians in Washington. As Foster noted: "Citizens vote; residents don't."
The Clinton administration first began a massive naturalization program known as Citizenship USA in 1996. Republicans cried foul, noting that most immigrants vote for Democrats. The conservatives accused the White House of running an "import-a-voter program," and suggested that the naturalizations moved so fast that criminals and other unqualified immigrants were becoming citizens.
On the surface, the partisan debate in Washington was all about naturalization of citizens rather than green cards. But Foster and other observers noted that the green card process suffered anyway.
When the Democrats pushed to boost naturalizations, they virtually stopped processing green cards. And when the Republicans responded by calling for a Congressional investigation, the probe caused delays in green card applications as well as naturalizations.
But times may be changing. Cravener said that for the year 2001, Washington has given him orders to produce more balanced work. He has been asked to set a goal of producing 28,000 green cards in 2001, compared with the 6,000 in fiscal year 2000.
"It's an astronomical increase," he said.
American Muslims a New Force
The Washington Times
American Muslims began the Ramadan month of fasting last night as a remarkably well-organized religious minority. Advocacy efforts have put Muslims on the political map, secured religious liberties, discouraged media and corporate slighting of Islam, and included its religious symbols in national holidays.
As a relatively new minority, Muslims overall do well financially in the United States, especially among Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants who make up most of the estimated 6 million followers of Islam here.
"U.S. Muslims have become more visible at a variety of levels of society," said John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.
"We notice them in many professional areas, and right down to taxi drivers."
Ramadan, the month of daytime fasting, adds visibility to U.S. Muslims as they get exemptions in workplaces or schools to observe the fast. The month ends Dec. 27 with a feast day, Eid ul-Fitr.
These religious customs, including the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, have generated more favorable news stories about Islam in the United States - with the help of Muslim public relations groups.
"The fast is performed to learn discipline, self-restraint and generosity, while obeying God's commandments," says the "Ramadan 2000 Media Kit" circulated nationwide by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington.
In the nation's capital, an Islamic crescent now stands with the Christmas tree and Hanukkah candelabra on the Ellipse, and the U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp for Eid ul-Fitr next year.
"This is a giant step forward for a growing and vibrant Muslim community," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, Virginia Republican.
Muslim leaders said that 3,000 Muslim schoolchildren wrote letters promoting the stamp idea, an example of how constituents can be organized.
The American Muslim Council in Washington sponsored one of the largest U.S. protests over the recent violence in the Mideast, and Ramadan is being portrayed as an occasion for American sympathy for Islamic concerns.
"During this time of crisis in the Holy Land, the fast of Ramadan offers people of all faiths an opportunity to learn more about Islam and about the Islamic community in America," said Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR.
Muslims also have mobilized for elections.
Two weeks before Election Day, the American Muslim Political Coordination Council endorsed Texas Gov. George W. Bush and a post-election poll found 70 percent of Muslim voters took its advice.
Mr. Esposito said the political savvy Muslims are showing reflects their maturity. "They have been reasonably successful in voter registration and in identifying election issues that concern Muslims," he said.
Still, the continued claim that Muslims face "Islamophobia" and "discrimination and harassment" has prompted some critics to call it special pleading. Some critics say that American Muslims, while decrying discrimination against them in America, rarely scold Islamic governments in the Middle East for harsh discrimination against Christians and Jews.
"Muslims are flourishing and in some cases are privileged," said Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, a critic of U.S. Muslim political advocacy on Middle East issues. "My impression is that the leadership asks for these privileges, not ordinary Muslims."
Privilege, he said, is evident in the easy ability of Muslims to win legal disputes with financial penalties, payments from corporations who offend Islam, retractions from newspapers and favors from government.
"I don't see any Hindu stamps, and I don't see Hindus filing so many complaints," he said.
In a Commentary article this month, Mr. Pipes listed the successes of American Muslims, including Senate and White House resolutions against discrimination and Muslim median household incomes of $69,000.
"This is not to deny that some degree of bias against Muslims does exist," Mr. Pipes writes. "But no immigrant community or non-Protestant religious group wholly escapes such prejudice."