Chavez Is under Fire over Illegal Immigrant
By Thomas B. Edsall and Manuel Roig-Franzia
The Washington Post
Linda Chavez, who has been chosen by President-elect Bush to be secretary of labor, provided a room and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars to an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who did various "chores" around Chavez's house, a Bush spokesman said yesterday.
Chavez was not aware of the woman's illegal status in the 1992-1993 period, said Bush spokesman Tucker Eskew, and had taken the woman in as an act of charity, not as an employee or as a "nanny" for her son, who was then about 13 years old.
Chavez defended her actions in a phone interview last night: "If someone came to me needing shelter and needing a helping hand even under the same circumstances, I would try to help them."
Chavez declined to go into detail about the time Marta Mercado spent in her home, but, she said, "I would not turn away from my door a woman who had no place to live and who had been badly mistreated and needed help."
Bush, who learned about the illegal immigrant yesterday after ABC News reported it, will "absolutely" stand behind the Chavez nomination, Eskew said.
Chavez was already drawing criticism from Democrats concerned about her opposition to affirmative action and her past attacks on raising the minimum wage. The Mercado controversy gives them new ammunition.
"This is a very troubling new allegation which needs to be fully addressed at the time of the hearings," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who will chair hearings on Chavez next week, said in a statement. "It's already an extremely troubling nomination because of her long-standing hostility to the basic rights of American workers."
Senate Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that if Chavez employed an illegal immigrant, "it would present a very serious problem. This is the labor secretary. The labor secretary ought to set the example, ought to be able to enforce all of the laws."
A Senate Republican said she would withhold judgment. "There are a number of questions there. I think it would be difficult to speculate on it until we have all the facts," Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) told CNN's "Late Edition."
Three of Bush's Cabinet choices -- Chavez, Attorney General-designate John D. Ashcroft and Interior Secretary-designate Gale A. Norton -- have provoked angry responses from major liberal constituencies, including organized labor, civil right groups, women's rights proponents and environmentalists.
Eskew said Bush welcomes a fight over Chavez. Bush "believes she is an outstanding nominee, and we are all viewing this as an opportunity to cast light on her big heart," he said.
Chavez took Mercado in "at the request of a friend who knew of Ms. Chavez doing things like this before for those down on their luck or who needed shelter. [The friend] asked Ms. Chavez to take the woman in and provide shelter and she did so as an act of charity and compassion," Eskew said.
Eskew said he did not know who the friend was who asked Chavez to take in Mercado, did not know how much money Chavez gave her and could not describe the circumstances under which she left the Chavez household in Bethesda.
Asked if Chavez discussed the woman with the Bush lawyers who clear nominations, Eskew said, "The vetters ask a range of serious questions, including things about domestic employees and paying taxes. They don't, however, ask potential nominees to enumerate every act of compassion."
In an interview last night at her split-level house in Beltsville, Mercado, whose maiden name is Pineda, said that she spoke no English when she first arrived here from Guatemala using false papers. But after some English lessons, she said, she told Chavez, who did not speak Spanish, of her illegal status about three months after moving into Chavez's house in late 1991.
Mercado said Chavez had arranged for her to work for a neighbor, who paid her in cash. Chavez periodically also gave Mercado cash -- $100 or $200 every month or two -- that Mercado said she saw as Chavez's way of helping her when she had nothing.
"In reality, I was not an employee" of Chavez, Mercado said, although she said she also viewed the money as Chavez's way of showing appreciation for Mercado's helping with household chores.
Mercado said Chavez promised to help her gain legal status. But in the two years she lived at Chavez's house, she learned from other friends that it would take a long time to become documented. She said she returned to her native Guatemala in late 1993, discouraged and uncertain about her prospects in the United States.
Six months later, Mercado said, she came back to the United States on a tourist visa but not to Chavez's house. She said she stayed after the visa expired, living with friends until her marriage to a U.S. citizen in 1996, which eventually led to her legal residency. She lives with her husband, Ismel Mercado, their son, her sister and her three daughters from a previous marriage.
After reporters started asking her questions about her relationship with Chavez, Mercado went to Chavez's former home in Bethesda Saturday, according to Jesse and Nicole Goodman, who had bought the house on Hillmead Road for $575,000 in 1998 from Chavez and her husband, Christopher Gersten.
Mercado said she then phoned Chavez at her home in Purcellville and spoke with her late Saturday night. "I was very, very nervous, but I thought she was very relaxed," Mercado said of the conversation. They recounted their history, back to their first meeting, and Chavez told her to submit to an interview with the FBI. "She said more than anything, it was important that I speak with the FBI."
FBI agents interviewed her at her home today, Mercado said.
Mercado lived in Chavez's Bethesda home during the early controversies of the Clinton administration over the employment of illegal immigrants and the failure to pay Social Security taxes by two failed nominees for attorney general, Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood.
Chavez was sharply critical of Baird. On Dec. 21, 1993, she appeared on PBS's "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" and said: "I think most of the American people were upset during the Zoe Baird nomination that she had hired an illegal alien. That was what upset them more than the fact that she did notpay Social Security taxes."
Eskew said Chavez had helped people in need before and after Mercado. He said she housed two refugees from Vietnam for two weeks and that she had paid for parochial school educations for two Puerto Rican children in New York.
In the case of Mercado, Eskew said, Chavez "drove her to English classes, to job interviews and helped her learn how to use the Metro" subway. During Mercado's stay, Chavez "provided her with spending money from time to time" that was "in the hundreds, if not more. It could be thousands," he said.
Mercado "did chores on an irregular basis," including "putting the dishes away, helping out with the vacuuming" in the same way that any houseguest would do as a courtesy to their host, according to Eskew. These were voluntary chores, not a job, he said: "She did the kind of things that anyone who got food and shelter would do around a house -- chores."
Elliott C. Lichtman, a Washington immigration lawyer, said that since the 1986 passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, employers who "knowingly employ employees who are not authorized to work" within the United States are subject to fines. He said the minimum financial requirements to qualify someone as an employee are very low, and if the payments to Mercado were in the thousands of dollars, the threshold had easily been reached.
Under immigration law, it is also illegal to harbor any person who is in the country without proper documentation. Violators are subject to fine and imprisonment.
Eskew countered that Chavez should be evaluated by "a common-sense standard, government should not punish you for trying to help somebody else out in life."
The AFL-CIO, which already opposed the Chavez nomination before the Mercado disclosures, was sharply critical in its statement: "Unfortunately, her explanation sounds too much like the explanation of employers who have tried to skirt the law by saying that individuals are not their employees. As secretary of labor, Linda Chavez would have chief law enforcement responsibility for the basic and fundamental protections that workers in this country . . . are entitled to -- and she of all people should be held to the highest standard."
...
http://www.washingtonpost.com:80/wp-dyn/articles/A29890-2001Jan7.html
New Law Triggers Confusion
By Suzanne Hurt
The Modesto (Calif.) Bee
Immigrants are panicking over confusing new legislation that includes a fast-approaching sunset.
Scant information about recent, highly technical changes in immigration law is perplexing people in the Central Valley, immigrant advocates say.
"For now, it's a lot of confusion. People think there is a new amnesty," said Luis Magana, coordinator of immigrant support for the American Friends Service Committee in Stockton. "Many consultants are taking advantage of this, and people end up paying thousands of dollars to consultants."...
http://www.modbee.com/metro/story/0,1113,226263,00.html
Investor Visas Failed to Benefit Firms
Investigation Report Provides New Details on USCIS Program
By Walter F. Roche Jr.
The Baltimore Sun
An internal U.S. Justice Department report on a program that promised permanent residency to foreigners who invested a minimum of $500,000 in troubled American businesses concludes that only a tiny fraction of the money ever made it to the companies seeking assistance.
The report, written by the department's inspector general on a now-closed investigation, also includes new details on concerns raised by officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service about improper influence in the agency's administration of the investor visa program.
While 2,761 investor visa petitions were approved by USCIS between 1994 and 1998, the report said that "usually, only a few thousand dollars of the petitioner's money ever made it past the partnership to any United States companies."
Based on the 1990 law, 2,761 visas should have produced investments of more than $1.3 billion in American businesses.
The investigation focused on actions of former USCIS general counsel Paul W. Virtue in the administration of the 10-year-old investor visa program. Under the program, foreign residents can become permanent U.S. residents by investing $500,000 to $1 million in an American business.
According to the report, the probe was triggered by allegations that Virtue "improperly granted former USCIS officials preferential treatment and undue access and influence."
The Sun reported in February that a small group of firms - including American Immigration Services or AIS, a Greenbelt firm - was created specifically to take advantage of the new law. Those firms signed up a number of former USCIS officials to represent them, including Gene McNary, the former USCIS commissioner, who served as legal counsel to AIS.
Five paragraphs of a two-page summary of the investigation were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by a New York lawyer. Nearly all of the second page of the report was blackened out.
E-mails and memos
The 47 additional pages that were made public include internal memos, e-mails and the notes of some interviews, including a March 16, 1999, session with Doris Meissner, then USCIS commissioner.
The commissioner, according to the investigator's report, said she knew little about the details of the program and only learned of problems during a briefing by a departing USCIS attorney who told her there was a "sensitive issue" regarding the administration of the program.
Many of the e-mails and memos released relate to efforts by AIS to allow its investors to amend already submitted visa applications to comply with the investment requirements of the 1990 law. The effort included meetings between AIS officials and Virtue.
A two-page 1998 e-mail authored by S. Alexander Gisser, then an USCIS attorney, charges that such after-the-fact amendments are not allowed under USCIS laws or regulations.
"We never intended to allow deficient original petitions to be cured at the back end. ... This violates basic immigration law," Gisser wrote.
Citing past instances of preferential treatment in the program, Gisser wrote, "even the advocates are starting to get a little amazed at our generosity."
In another memo, detailing an interview with an unnamed USCIS official, an investigator on the case reported that when the USCIS tried to clamp down on apparent abuses in the program, it "began receiving political pressure from congressional sources unhappy with the signaled change in policy."
Lawyer seeks disclosure
The report was released to Steven Perlman, a New York City immigration lawyer. Perlman said yesterday that despite the partial release he will continue his personal effort to force disclosure of the entire report in a suit pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
In a letter to Perlman, officials of the inspector general's office said that they were withholding nearly 100 pages of additional materials relating to the investigation because their release would violate privacy and confidentiality rights of unnamed "third parties."
The Sun obtained a copy of the released materials on Wednesday.
USCIS spokesman Russell Bergeron said it would be "inappropriate" to comment on the released materials or the investigation itself. He noted that the investigation was triggered by concerns raised by the BCIS.
William Cook, a former USCIS official who is now a lawyer representing AIS, said Wednesday that the fact that the investigation was closed without any criminal action proves that the allegations of undue influence were "absolutely unsupported."
He said charges leveled against Virtue were the "creations" of USCIS officials who were philosophically opposed to the investor visa program. "I have known Paul Virtue for over 12 years and his integrity is beyond reproach," Cook added.
Bergeron, the USCIS spokesman, said that Virtue left the agency on May 6, 1999, nearly six months before the investigation was completed.
No comments
Virtue, who is now in private law practice, did not respond to a request for comment. In a previous interview he defended his actions. While declining to comment specifically on the Virtue investigation, Bergeron said, "Generally speaking, if an individual leaves an agency and a subsequent investigation shows the individual did not violate any criminal statutes, then there is nothing we can do."
Paul Martin, a spokesman for the inspector general, also declined to comment on the released materials or to elaborate on the contents or conclusions of the report.
The final sentence of a two-page synopsis of the case states, "Based on the foregoing, this investigation is closed, as no further investigative action is warranted."
Immigrants Feel Cheated by Consultants
By Edwin Garcia
The San Jose Mercury News
Juan Muñoz, a father of seven who has lived in Watsonville off and on for 21 years, faces a critical deadline Thursday. He must return to Mexico voluntarily or risk deportation, either of which includes a 10-year ban from re-entering the United States.
Muñoz has built his case largely on blaming the private immigration consultants he hired to assist in his petition for legal residency. He claims these consultants provided erroneous and unlawful advice.
Muñoz has plenty of company.
Each year hundreds, perhaps thousands, of illegal immigrants in California and elsewhere turn to consultants, who aren't required to have legal training and aren't allowed to give advice. Sometimes known in Spanish as notarios, they promise residency and work permits. Some deliver, many do not.
``They ruined my whole life, my future, and worse yet, the future of my family,'' said a dejected Muñoz, a roofing supervisor who reluctantly purchased plane tickets for himself, his wife and five of their U.S.-born children for a flight tonight to Guadalajara, to start a new life.
Facing a ``voluntary'' deportation order, Muñoz is leaning against leaving, hoping the Immigration and Naturalization Service will allow him to remain at least through completion of his testimony against the consultant. Such a voluntary order from the USCIS encourages someone to leave by a designated date. If a person stays, it initiates formal deportation hearing process.
Chances appear slim, however, that he would be allowed to stay. An USCIS official in San Francisco last week denied his request for an extension to plead his case to stay. Muñoz said that if he's not deported, he could be eligible for residency in about another 18 months -- when his wife qualifies -- but doesn't want to separate the family by going to Mexico alone.
Meanwhile, it's likely that the growing problem of unqualified consultants will soon worsen, immigration attorneys and county prosecutors warn, following the liberalization of immigration laws. Many undocumented residents erroneously believe the new laws, which went into effect Dec. 21, have created a blanket amnesty, prompting legal experts to worry that more will seek out the advice of these consultants.
``There's a huge risk of major misinformation,'' said Doris Rose Inda, one of Muñoz's attorneys at the East San Jose Community Law Center. ``People are eager to hear that one of these new laws apply to them, which is probably not the case.''
The work performed by unqualified consultants doesn't affect only immigrants from Latin America.
``Immigration consultant fraud is a huge problem in California and it's getting worse and worse,'' said Steve Baughman, a partner with the San Francisco firm Baughman and Wang, which represents many Chinese immigrants who say their applications for residency were botched by consultants.
``We have one situation where a couple paid $40,000 over the course of a year to a very corrupt immigration consultant, and they may now have to face deportation proceedings,'' Baughman said.
Enforcement efforts often fail because nearly all victims, who can quickly point fingers at bad consultants, are reluctant to file complaints. Muñoz is one of few people in Northern California to formally accuse a consultant of wrongdoing. One of his top reasons for wanting to stay, he said, is to pursue his ongoing civil case against the consultant that allegedly wronged him, Pronto Dollars of Gilroy and Salinas.
``I don't want this to happen to anyone else,'' Muñoz, 40, said.
In his lawsuit filed in Monterey County Superior Court, Muñoz and other plaintiffs in the case allege that non-attorneys at Pronto Dollars made choices clients had never requested, such as applying for political asylum without their consent.
Immigration Judge Back on Bench
By Todd Bensman
The Dallas Morning News
A federal immigration judge who removed himself from the bench after marrying an undocumented Colombian immigrant has returned to work but cannot hear any marriage or deportation cases while his wife petitions for legal residency, a review board has ruled.
The Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility and the Executive Office for Immigration Review cleared Judge Cary H. Copeland of any impropriety following a six-month ethics review. But to prevent any erosion of public confidence in the Dallas district of the federal immigration court, the panel said it added the restrictions on his caseload while his wife's case is being heard. Those who appear before Judge Copeland also will have the right to challenge his participation.
The panel, which supervises the nation's 240 appointed immigration judges, said it ordered the unprecedented stipulations to preserve public faith in the court after deciding that Judge Copeland properly disclosed the marriage and had petitioned for his wife's legal status.
"All responsible authorities have concluded that Judge Copeland's actions did not violate any law or regulation and should not have any adverse impact on his ability to continue serving as an immigration judge," wrote Chief Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy in a one-page statement. Through a spokesman, he declined to elaborate.
Self-removal
The judge, 58, removed himself in August and requested a review after disclosing his July 22 marriage to Leticia Steer, a 33-year-old Bogotáá resident who has lived in the United States without permission for five
years longer than her tourist visa allowed. Current immigration law would have required that she be deported if discovered before marrying a U.S. citizen but allows her to stay after marriage while petitioning the USCIS for legal residency.
As an immigration judge, Judge Copeland often presided over cases brought by USCIS prosecutors in which immigrants sought to legalize their status through marriage to U.S. citizens. He also presided over deportation hearings involving undocumented immigrants who overstayed their visas.
Judge Copeland, who since 1995 has served as one of four immigration judges in the northern district of Texas court, did not respond to a request for an interview. In August, shortly after removing himself from the bench, he said he was not at liberty to explain matters to friends and colleagues who might question the propriety of the relationship with his wife before the marriage and his ability to maintain impartiality on the bench.
Judge Copeland disclosed the marriage in a letter to the Executive Office for Immigration Review that said he did not meet Ms. Steer while acting in any official capacity - a situation that could have led to discipline.
Like thousands of other U.S. citizens, the judge and his wife have applied to the USCIS for legal residency, a process by which the agency will have to determine that the relationship is legitimate and not a ruse by which she might remain in the United States.
Judge Creppy's statement concluded that Judge Copeland had done nothing wrong. But in establishing stipulations, the senior judge acknowledged a concern for preserving the public's perception of the court's impartiality.
"This office also recognizes that his relationship to a person who is out of status may raise questions about the propriety of his functioning as an immigration judge while he and his wife are seeking an immigration benefit from the Immigration and Naturalization Service," he wrote.
Judge Copeland used accrued compensatory time over the six months he waited for a decision, and visiting judges were flown in from other states to handle his caseload while he was away, Justice Department officials said.
Several judicial ethicists agreed that Judge Copeland should be allowed to remain on the bench but should not issue rulings involving cases similar to his own until it is concluded. Marrying an undocumented immigrant, they emphasized, is not a crime.
Expert opinion
Stephen Gillers, professor of legal and judicial ethics at New York University's school of law, said the facts in the Dallas situation were rare but that judges routinely remove themselves from cases that involve
family members or a personal financial interest.
"You want the judges to step aside where the judge's impartiality might be questioned," Mr. Gillers said. "I think they mean it to be temporary, and I think that's right as well. You don't want him to be ruling on other
people's cases when he's got his own case alive."
Steven Lubet, a professor of law at Northwestern University who has written several books about judicial ethics, also said the decision to allow Judge Copeland's return under special stipulations was correct.
"Let's say that it is appropriately cautious," he said. "You're deciding the fate of people, and you don't want any suggestion that the case is being decided on something other than the facts. This is exactly the right
thing to do."
Legislation Opens Door For Many "Illegal" Aliens
By Michael Doyle
The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee
WASHINGTON -- Untold thousands of California's Central Valley residents can seek once more the immigration amnesty they believe was wrongly denied them, under legislation awaiting President Clinton's signature. The once-illegal immigrants who've adopted California as their new home are part of a class of about 400,000 people who potentially benefit from the legislation. Roughly half of all these eligible immigrants live in California, according to the attorney representing them.
"(This) resolves most of the ultimate issues, but the courts still have to protect class members from deportation and joblessness pending the start-up of the (late amnesty) application process," Carlos Holgein, an attorney with the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said Monday
The Los Angeles-based group has represented the immigrants through what one federal appellate judge termed "a long and unhappy history" of overlapping lawsuits. A number of these class-action plaintiffs live between Sacramento and Fresno, Holgein said.
For many, the new legislation will be good news. But the immigrant advocates and government officials who are still paging through the legislation approved with minimal debate Friday also caution that some will end up disappointed.
To use the so-called "late amnesty" provision, for instance, immigrants must still demonstrate they entered the United States prior to 1982. Almost certainly, many of the 400,000 class-action plaintiffs won't be able to. The American Immigration Lawyers Association, for one, estimates that only about 150,000 of the class-action plaintiffs might come up with the necessary proof.
"We may take a lenient attitude," Don Riding, officer in charge of the Fresno-based Immigration and Naturalization Service office, said Monday, "but we're still going to ask that they prove that they were here before1982."
Riding's office handles USCIS matters for the entire San Joaquin Valley. As of Tuesday, his and other regional USCIS offices were awaiting further guidance from an agency headquarters that's also preparing for a new president.
The late amnesty provision is one of three major immigration measures soon to gain Clinton's signature. Another provision establishes a new visa program to clear up some of the backlog of spouses and children of legal U.S. residents. A third major provision extends for four months a program enabling certain immigrants to pay a $1,000 fine instead of having to leave the country before obtaining permanent U.S. residency.
"If it makes them eligible to be a legal immigrant, it's certainly worth their while for them to pay the $1,000 fine," Riding said.
This provision, dubbed 245(i) in honor of its place in the legal code, originally ran from 1994 to 1998. It was once popular in the Valley, suggesting that it could get briefly popular again. Riding recalled the Fresno office used to average 50 applications a month for legal resident status. After the 245(i) provision took temporary effect in 1994, he said, applications reached a high of 1,200 a month in the Fresno office.
The newly approved legislation will work like this: Family members of legal permanent residents or U.S. citizens must apply by April 30. By applying, they'll be eligible to pay the $1,000 fine - and avoid a forced return to their home country - whenever their name comes up off the waiting list to obtain their own green cards.
Currently, there's about a five-year backlog for family members of legal permanent residents. An estimated 200,000 people could be eligible. Even those signing up by April 30, however, could still be vulnerable to USCIS action until they actually survive the waiting list, pay their fine and get their green card.
"They shouldn't have a false sense of security," said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
A different section of immigration law covers the late amnesty provisions affecting the roughly 400,000 class-action plaintiffs. This follows up on the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which permitted illegal immigrants who'd been in the United States continuously since at least Jan. 1, 1982, to seek amnesty.
Nearly 2.7 million immigrants obtained amnesty under provisions of the 1986 law. Many others, though, were denied amnesty, including those who'd traveled briefly outside of the United States. Some potential applicants were turned away at the USCIS front desk, without even filing an application.
"The USCIS interpreted the law excessively strictly," said Cecilia Munoz, of the National Council of La Raza. "They were telling people they were ineligible, when they weren't." Lawsuits challenged the denials. Eventually, federal courts ordered the USCIS to grant work authorizations to those who were part of the class-action suits. This permitted the immigrants to work legally while waiting for final court decisions. It also prompted an unhappy Congress in 1996 to essentially strip federal courts of their jurisdiction.
Now, having second thoughts, Congress has given members of the class-action suits another shot at their amnesty applications. By definition, these are people who've now lived in the United States at least 16 years. Not all applicants, though, will succeed.
"We suspect," Riding said, "there will be fraud in at least some of these applications."
The third immigration provision provides for so-called V-visas. An estimated 500,000 people are thought eligible for these, which will be provided to family members who've been waiting in the green-card backlog for at least three years.
Attempt to Soften Law Meets Hard Line
By Mary Jacoby
St. Petersburg Times
WASHINGTON -- A woman who immigrated from Germany as an infant was almost deported for pulling someone's hair. A grandmother who wrote $100 worth of bad checks two decades ago came close to getting the boot.
Such were the well-publicized and unintended consequences of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, a law Rep. Bill McCollum helped shepherd onto the books as a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee.
But McCollum, who in November lost a bid for the U.S. Senate, came to regret his involvement with the law. Last year, the Longwood Republican introduced a bill to repeal a retroactivity clause widely criticized as unfair. The clause has snared immigrants for a range of violations that were not deportable offenses when they were committed.
The House unanimously passed McCollum's bill on Sept. 19. But last week, it died in the Senate at the hands of Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, a Republican.
The bill "welcomed money launderers, tax evaders, perjurers, fugitives from justice, alien smugglers and an assortment of other scoundrels to live among us," according to a memo Gramm's office forwarded to the St. Petersburg Times in response to a request for comment.
It "even extended this special protection to people who coerced children into prostitution," the memo said.
McCollum did not respond to a request for comment. After his Senate defeat last month by Florida Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson, he has been shuttling between Washington and Florida looking for a job.
There has been speculation that McCollum is up for a position in the Bush administration, possibly as the "drug czar," who oversees federal efforts to stem the flow of illegal drugs, or as head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who worked with McCollum on the bill's passage, called Gramm "intellectually dishonest" in his objections.
Frank noted that the House-sponsored reform would not have changed current law, which requires the automatic deportation of resident aliens who have ever been convicted of rape or sexual abuse of a minor.
Rather, the reform aimed to inject common sense into a law that had taken away immigration judges' discretion in deciding close-call deportation cases, Frank said.
"We were talking about people who got convicted of drunk driving 11 years ago, or got in a fight in a bar or shoplifted. The categories (Gramm) is talking about are just irrelevant," Frank said.
When asked to elaborate on Gramm's objections, his spokesman, Larry Neal, forwarded information that suggested the Texan was displeased with the House attempts to eliminate the retroactivity provisions.
For money laundering, tax evasion, perjury and other crimes mentioned by Gramm, the 1996 law required non-citizens to be deported if sentenced to as little as one year in prison. The provision was also made retroactive.
What Gramm did not like, his spokesman suggested, was the House attempt to return to a five-year sentence as a standard for deporting non-citizens who were convicted before 1996.
Still, Gramm's objection to the bill was surprising, given its strong backing by some of the House's most conservative Republicans.
In addition to McCollum, Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde and Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the Judiciary immigration subcommittee, had fought for the bill. McCollum lobbied Gramm on the matter.
On the House floor in September, McCollum called the 1996 law's deportation provisions a "manifest injustice" that had been inserted by senators into the bill against his will.
McCollum's reform was set to be folded into a massive end-of-session spending bill approved by Congress last week. But Gramm blocked it by leveraging unique rules of the Senate that allow a single member to, in effect, threaten a filibuster.
The 1996 law expanded the list of offenses classified as "aggravated felonies" for immigration purposes.
In some cases, the threshold was lowered for what constitutes a deportable offense. Before 1996, for example, a federal money-laundering conviction involving more than $100,000 was a deportable offense. In 1996, the threshold was lowered to $10,000 and made retroactive.
The retroactivity provision is how a Georgia woman named Mary Anne Gehris became entangled in USCIS proceedings. She came to the U.S. as a baby from Germany and in 1988 pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for pulling someone's hair. A judge sentenced her to a one-year suspended sentence.
The USCIS was moving to deport her when New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis took up her cause. Gehris' deportation proceedings ended when she was pardoned this year by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.
The Georgia board also pardoned Mary Gibbs, a grandmother who was to be deported for writing $100 worth of bad checks in the 1970s.
McCollum's bill would have prevented such cases from automatically going to deportation proceedings.
McCollum's interest in softening the 1996 law he helped shape came after it snared the Canadian-born son of a local Republican Party official.
In late 1998, Robert Anthony Broley, son of Orange County Republican Party treasurer Robert M. Broley, was expelled from the country after spending four years in the Marion Correction Institution on charges of fraud, burglary, grant theft and forgery.
McCollum tried to bring Broley back to the United States by introducing a private relief bill. McCollum's private bill would have helped only Broley and not addressed the plight of other immigrants; he came under criticism when the Times reported his efforts on Broley's behalf in January 1999.
In July 2000, in the midst of his race against Nelson for the Senate, McCollum introduced his untitled bill to reform the process.
The bill would not have affected Broley, however. Broley had been sentenced to five- and nine-year sentences for his crimes, a length that qualified him for deportation under any version of the law.
American Muslims Gain Influence Beyond Their Numbers
By Teresa Watanabe
Los Angeles Times
Omaima Bukhari is a precocious Muslim in Maryland. She's 20, fascinated by Islam, computer science and psychology. She discusses everything with her father, Zahid, who works at Georgetown University and counts as friends imams and sheiks from Al Azhar, the prestigious seat of Islamic learning in Cairo.
Last December, she attended an engagement party for relatives in Pakistan. The bride-to-be was sobbing in the next room. So Bukhari marched before the family elders and demanded to know: Did you ask for her consent to the marriage? No? You have to! This right is from Allah, conveyed by our prophet Muhammad!
The women were silent. The men were arguing. These were men with beards down to their chests. This was a small rural village. This was a place where women have only just begun to receive educations.
But Bukhari was quoting the Koran. She was quoting a hadith (an account of the prophet's life). She was insisting that the villagers' treatment of women was based on cultural practices, not the faith of Islam. No one could argue with her sources.
Finally, the graying patriarch of the Bukhari clan delivered judgment: Omaima is right. Consent must be obtained. The fiancee eventually granted it. And, as Bukhari prepared to return to America, the old-world patriarch told his new-world descendant, "Granddaughter, you've taught me a lot."
Far from the fatwas--the religious decrees--of hierarchies abroad, American Muslims are slowly but steadily carving their mark on the Islamic world.
Their relatively small numbers, young history and still fledglingorganization would seem daunting barriers to wider influence. Of the roughly 1 billion Muslims worldwide, those in the United States are only a tiny fraction, numbering somewhere between 3 million and 10 million.
But a confluence of forces that has made those Americans among the freest, most educated, affluent and diverse Muslims in the world has given them an impact greater than their numbers. Helped by the growing use of English as a language of Islamic discourse and by the ever-spreading world of the Internet, they are self-consciously seeking to influence their religious brethren worldwide.
Moreover, the spirit of the times may be on their side. "The guy with a turban and rifle is out," says Marcia Hermansen, a theology professor at Loyola University Chicago. "The guy drinking a latte with a laptop computer reading Internet fatwas is in."
Provocative Islamic thinkers are flourishing in the climate of America's unparalleled intellectual freedom. They are tackling taboo subjects such as spousal abuse and highlighting the aspects of their nearly 1,400-year tradition that embrace women's rights, human rights and democratic practices.
The sheer diversity of the community here is prompting efforts to promote Islamic models of pluralism. U.S. Muslims include American natives, mainly of African descent, as well as immigrants from more than 50 nations.
American Muslims also are expanding their influence by bringing modern education, business practices and economic development to their homelands through a mushrooming number of nonprofit organizations. More than 300 such groups now raise about $50 million a year for such causes as education and health care, according to Aslam Abdullah, editor of the Los Angeles-based Minaret magazine and president of the American Federation of Muslims From India.
"Muslims all over the world are looking with high expectations toward the ummah [community] in the United States and Canada," says Murad Wilfried Hofmann, a retired German diplomat and Muslim jurist. "Its dynamism, fresh approach, enlightened scholarship and sheer growth is their hope for an Islamic renaissance worldwide."
Working against that hope are the community's weaknesses. American Muslims are divided and sometimes fractious. They struggle with discrimination and comparatively weak political clout at home. They are seen by Muslims elsewhere as generally lacking in the classical Islamic education that would undergird their authority.
Some leaders worry that the powerful forces of assimilation, which homogenize most immigrant groups in the U.S. by the third generation, could weaken the American Muslim identity before it fully consolidates.
Key leaders across the ideological spectrum--from Sheik Hisham Kabbani of the Islamic Supreme Council of America to Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations--voice a common view that Muslims here must get their own house in order before hoping to have a major impact abroad. But despite the problems, American Muslims present the Islamic world with a seductive new model of modernity, says Sulayman Nyang, a professor of African and Islamic studies at Howard University in Washington.
Until now, the main model in the Islamic world for modernization had been Turkey, which excised Islam from public life in the name of progress. America gives Muslims an alternative--an example of a society in which the faithful are free to be both modern and religious. Here, more women are voluntarily donning the hejab head covering as a mark of religious pride and identity--even rendering it hip with T-shirts touting it as "Good in the 'Hood."
Nyang argues that the potent combination of modernity and piety demonstrated by Muslims in the U.S. could catch on in the Islamic world, offering a compelling alternative to extremism.
The American faces of Islam belong to people like Dany Doueiri and Shamshad Hussain.
Doueiri is a co-founder of one of the world's most popular Web sites on Islam,
http://www.islam.org
Every day, the Los Angeles-based site receives 140,000 hits. More than half the visitors are from outside the United States. They are shown an expanse of Islam that bypasses the divides of cultures, religious sects and schools of Islamic law that often separate Muslims from one another.
For instance, when numerous Bosnian Muslim women were raped by Serbian soldiers during the Balkans conflict, the site was flooded with queries on the Islamic position on abortion. Doueiri says his team presented without judgment two opinions from different schools: one holding that any abortion is forbidden, the other saying that the procedure is allowed for up to 120 days into the pregnancy, after which, adherents believe, the soul enters the body.
The neutral presentation of differing views within the vast Islamic tradition, though rare, is equipping Muslims worldwide to think through their own Islamic practices rather than simply accepting the rulings of the local scholar, Doueiri says.
"This site has brought so much happiness overseas, because people say they find a much more objective point of view than they get from their own scholars," he says.
The rise of the electronic fatwa, sometimes by self-styled experts, dismays some classically trained scholars. But experts say the trend is irreversible.
The Internet, satellite TV and steady gains in literacy are prompting a quiet but dramatic shift in the source of Islamic authority throughout the Muslim world--from political and religious leaders to the common educated people, says Dale F. Eickelman, a Dartmouth College anthropology professor and co-author of the book "New Media in the Muslim World."
Led by Muslims in the West, unprecedented numbers of believers are debating the fundamentals of their faith and practice in a new Islamic reformation, he says.
"Nobody is controlling anymore," Eickelman says. "Even if you're not getting an increase in liberalism or a shift from authoritarianism, you're now getting large numbers of people who know what they're missing." One pipeline of fresh Islamic views to younger Muslims abroad is the Iqra International Educational Foundation in Chicago. Iqra--the Arabic word for "read" and God's first word to the prophet Muhammad, according to the Koran--is pioneering American-produced, English-language Islamic textbooks. In the last few years, overseas demand has skyrocketed and the foundation now exports tens of thousands of books annually to 16 countries in theMideast, Asia, the Indian subcontinent and Europe.
The books' distinction, according to managing director Hussain, is that they promote the idea of self-study of the Koran and hadith and present the tradition's essence shorn of regional and sectarian differences.
The quest to crystallize Islam's essence, free of the overlays of cultural tradition, is perhaps most advanced here because America's diversity is forcing Muslims to strive for a common understanding. Doueiri's Internet group, for instance, represents Muslims from both the majority Sunnis and minority Shiites who hail from 30 countries. Doueiri, for example, is an African-born American of Lebanese ancestry.
American Muslims are producing the first modern "hajj model of community," says Agha Saeed, who teaches ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, referring to the annual gathering of Muslims in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
American Muslims say they are striving to restore their faith to its essence of tolerance and pluralism. Two decades ago, the Islamic Center of Southern California was a pioneer in arguing for an American Muslim identity based on "finding ways in Islam to make bridges to 'the other' and live together," as center co-founder Maher Hathout puts it.
At the time, his was an odd voice among Muslim leaders who were focused inward and viewed America as dar ul-kufr, or "place of unbelievers." Today, the concept is mainstream.
In Westwood, Michael Flemming represents the small but growing number of Muslims who are marrying cross-culturally. An African American graduate student in Islamic studies at UCLA, Flemming says his in-laws from India initially resisted his request to marry their daughter. But that resistance began to melt, he says, after he made his pilgrimage to Mecca.
Still, the challenge of pluralism looms unmet for many. "Some African Americans get the feeling that even with our Muslim brothers, it's still 'us and them,' " Flemming says. "I think the youth, because they've grown up together here, will be able to overcome this."
In the academic arena, striking American voices of Islam belong to people like Khaled Abou el Fadl. The UCLA professor of Islamic law is breaking intellectual ground with bold social critiques based on a blend of classical Islamic training and Western academic grounding. He trained in Egypt and Kuwait and at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the last four years, Abou el Fadl has published searing critiques on sexual abuse, wife-beating and other problems among Muslims, analyzing how Islamic tradition sometimes promotes such behavior. Without America's academic freedom, he says, such scholarship would have been impossible.
Using case studies of mistreated Muslims, Abou el Fadl has admonished the tradition--and present-day imams--for the general silence on incest and sexual abuse. He has challenged divorce laws favoring men and concluded that expectations of blind obedience from women is immoral.
So far, he has not been able to punch a doctrinal hole in the laws of apostasy, although he would like to: He says he is morally offended by the laws, which punish those who leave Islam with penalties of death or imprisonment in many countries.
His unflinching scholarship is controversial, but it is gaining notice abroad. Abou el Fadl has been asked to lecture in the Mideast, North Africa and Europe and has received e-mail from around the world. Some peoplechastise him, but he says the vast majority back his efforts to reinterpret the Islamic legal tradition.
He has no patience for those who claim that Islam is perfect.
"Instead of being brave and gutsy in confronting the flaws and shortcomings of the tradition, they are being apologists," Abou el Fadl says. "It is our moral obligation as Muslims to speak the truth."
American Muslims have even established an organization that counts gender equality as a core value. Jamal Al-Muslimeen was established in 1977 in Minneapolis and now has chapters in Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ghana, Britain, Germany and Canada, according to Ali Siddiqui, an imam based in Chino who is a member of the group.
Siddiqui tries to walk the talk, delivering sermons at area mosques on spousal abuse as a consequence of misplaced ideas of male superiority. When he marries couples, he tells them that Allah has made women and men equal. Sometimes, he says, he is challenged--especially by elders from remote areas.
Such experiences temper his idealism about the impact American Muslims can have in changing values both here and abroad.
"We have a lot to contribute, but it's a very slow process," Siddiqui says. "Ideas take time to take hold, especially when people have been doing something for so long."
Online Service Offers Love from Russia
By Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje
The San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO -- Julia Neal opens the door with a delicate swoosh, the very picture of soft-spoken grace and deference.
She is 22 and pretty, her peroxide blond hair swept up in a ponytail, a little fur collar accenting the gray suit that hugs her svelte figure. She is tentative and shy, smiling demurely and gesturing toward the couch. She speaks only halting English, words that emerge like smooth, curved globes.
Later, Julia will jump up every time the telephone rings to answer it. Otherwise she sits quietly on the couch, hands folded in her lap, looking over adoringly at her husband, hanging on his every word. When she speaks it is soft and careful, never insistent or interrupting. Sometimes she will gently drape her hand over his.
She is the perfect mail-order wife.
Ashley Neal knew that, of course. He spotted her on his first night of filming in the Siberian disco and knew instantly she was the woman for him.
"It was like this," he said, dramatically snapping his fingers. "I was like, `Wow, she's just so beautiful,' and she was just what I was looking for in terms of personality."
Actually, the personality part was a bit tricky. Julia didn't speak a word of English back then, so Neal had to divine the contents of her character by drawing tiny scribbles on cocktail napkins and relying on the expertise of hired interpreters. Still, by 4 a.m., after hours of drinking champagne and dancing together, Neal had ascertained she was his soul mate.
Such is the nature of love at
www.ForeignSecrets.com
Neal's 3-month-old, San Antonio-based marriage service. Neal assists men on the hunt for "traditional" women -- he always calls them girls or ladies, never women -- who live in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
In his three years in the foreign matrimony industry, Neal said he has arranged 150 marriages. In the past year alone, he has single-handedly videotaped more than 1,100 women for his online warehouse. Just recently Neal created www.FacesofSiberia.com, a "sister site" to www.ForeignSecrets.com that adds yet another plank to his growing empire.
So confident is Neal of his service that he offers clients a full money-back guarantee.
"Of the guys that go over there, 90 percent get engaged," said Neal, who arranges occasional "tours" to his overseas offices, where male clients choose among females they have surveyed on line to find mates. The schedule is vigorous, Neal said: "We introduce them to up to eight ladies in one day."
Neal is as forthright and self-assured as his wife of one year is tentative. He strides out of a bedroom in his apartment on San Antonio's north side dressed in a bronze, disco-ish shirt paired with black pants and black, tasseled loafers. His hair is dyed brown. He has opaque green eyes that seem never to blink. A 36-year-old graduate of Baylor University with a degree in business and accounting, Neal has the salesman's habit of repeating the first name of the person he is talking to, a verbal tic geared to instill warmth, familiarity.
Spend any time with Neal and it becomes clear he envisions himself as a romantic figure, a humanitarian on a mission to rescue poor, bedraggled American men from the uppity ranks of career-obsessed American women.
"This all goes back to the women's liberation movement," he said, warming to a topic he's clearly pondered a lot. The mail-order bride business "is just guys' natural response to it, to feeling trapped. At some point, guys just said, `Enough.' Whatever happened to traditional values? What about the way God made man and woman?"
The result of unfettered female freedom, he continued, has been the sharp rise in divorce, a plague in broken families and general social decline.
Neal's own romantic history mirrors that of many of his male clients, he said. He married his college sweetheart. Had a kid. Got a divorce. He would not elaborate about the demise of his first marriage except to say that issues "culturally oriented to American women" played a part; his 10-year-old son now lives with his ex-wife in Bandera, Texas.
But it was what came after his divorce that set him on the road to searching for love in overseas places. He dated woman after woman, he said, none of them willing to sacrifice careers for family. He dated five women over a 12-month period, each one as hardheaded as the next.
"And one day, Melissa, I woke up and thought, `There must be a trump card left for a smart guy to play."'
Turns out, there was.
Neal had seen an episode of "60 Minutes" on a foreign mail-order bride service based out of Russia and figured, hey, if those "goofball guys" can do it, so could he.
He went to St. Petersburg, Russian, and the Ukrainian capital of Kiev with interpreters in tow and made his connections. Once back at home, he got busy designing an Internet business.
He worked with partners for about a year, all the while keeping his day job in the insurance industry. But Neal's partners didn't share his vision to create the most state-of-the-art online bride service in the world, he said. So, in 1999, he quit his job and struck out on his own.
Today, www.ForeignSecrets.com joins more than 200 foreign-bride services that each year advertise around 100,000 to 150,000 women, most of them from impoverished areas of Southeast Asia, Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
Why Russia? Neal said the "girls" there are very family-oriented.
"There hasn't been a women's liberation movement over there," he said. "When you explain it to them, they look at you and say, `Oh, you mean like Hillary Clinton."'
According to a 1998 report done for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a surge in recent years in the mail-order bride industry can be traced to Russia and the former Soviet Union, where women have flocked onto foreign dating rolls. It's not surprising: The average wage in Russia, according to government statistics, is the equivalent of $50 per month. A startling 37 percent of the population lives on $1 a day or less.
To be listed on Neal's service, females pay nothing. Male clients can choose from a selection of "packages" from $79 to $300 that grant them access to the women's profiles, phone numbers, home addresses, online videos and e-mail addresses. The women also may contact men they are interested in.
As desirable as his female clients are, so too are the men he offers as husbands, not all of whom live in America. His male clients aren't desperate "geeks" or weirdoes, Neal said. "We have doctors, lawyers, a mechanic, lots and lots of guys in the computer software industry," he said. "One is even a model."
According to the immigration service report, a survey of foreign-bride services found that men who use such services tend to be white, well-educated, politically and ideologically conservative and economically well-off. Most have been married at least once; 75 percent wished to father additional children. The average age is 37. The survey found the men tend to be 20 to 50 years older than the foreign women they ultimately marry, a fact that led one researcher to conclude such men were seeking younger mates they could "mold."
"It's apparent that power and control are critical for these men," the USCIS researcher wrote.
To the contrary, Neal said, his male clients are searching purely for love, as are his female clients. And love typically happens quickly during the tours, which cost $3,300 for airfare, transportation and room and board. Interviews are arranged at Neal's onsite offices over coffee -- with the use of interpreters since most of the women speak no English.
"I tell the guys, `Use your brain first before you fall in love.' It's important that you have something in common, because there are so many beautiful ladies over there."
How do www.ForeignSecrets.com marriages fare? Neal doesn't know, since he doesn't do follow-up interviews with clients.
Likewise, no hard data exist on the rate of domestic abuse among such marriages, but experts cited in the USCIS study believe it may be higher than in the general population. Unions based on wifely submission and other traditional ideas are ripe for battering and other forms of abuse, they say.
Neal, however, said "not a single girl has been hurt" through his service, although he acknowledged that he does not have follow-up data proving his claim.
And Neal insisted he is not selling sex.
"We're selling marriage and traditional family values," he said.
Census Finds Immigrants Blending in Faster, Easier
USA Today
They speak English sooner, get educated quicker and buy homes earlier. All this may benefit an aging USA, says Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt, peeking at the new Census in an interview with USA TODAY's editorial board. Prewitt will unveil the first bits of Census 2000 data Thursday. His comments were edited for length and clarity.
Q: What results of this latest Census may surprise Americans?
A: One thing that's really interesting is not only the magnitude of the recent immigration into this country, but also its distribution and its investment in the country. About 9.3% of the population is now foreign born. What's really surprising is how well distributed those population groups are. Historically, we see new immigrants primarily on the coast and in a few big cities. I think the data are going to show a much wider distribution of the new population groups than we've experienced historically.
Q: What else may contradict the conventional wisdom?
A: The new immigrant groups are catching up educationally much more rapidly than we thought, especially the Asian population. I think the Census will show that the Asian population will have higher levels of college graduates than the Anglo population. The Hispanic population, it's U-shaped. You have a lot of Hispanics getting advanced and intermediate education, but you also have a large number of recent immigrants who aren't.
I think the other thing that will show up is that the pace at which new population groups are learning English is accelerating. Historically, it takes a couple of generations: First generation, almost not at all; second generation, a little bit; by third generation (far more). That's accelerating. Many kids are coming with English (proficiency) from even Cambodia and Vietnam and central Asia and so forth. Which bodes well for the educational system.
Q: How do these children learn English so quickly here? TV?
A: Well, certainly. But it's also a function of whether they were watching television before they even came. In 1890, nobody sitting in a village in Italy or China was exposed to the English language. Now these kids are exposed to it even before they get here. The international distribution of English gives us a head start.
Obviously, immigrants are a self-selected population; that is, certain kinds of people are determined to make it in a new world. The fact that in many instances they come already with some English capacity is only an indication to me that they made that decision (to come) even before they started their effort to get here.
Q: In what other ways do these newer immigrants differ?
A: The other thing that may be accelerating -- this is again speculation on my part -- is home ownership among the new immigrant groups. That's another indicator of attachment to the country. Homeownership of the new immigrant groups is, I think, going to come very close to the national norm, which is about 67%.
Language proficiency, home ownership and intermarriage -- that is, a new immigrant marrying someone who's already here -- all are indicators of someone making a commitment to this country. And that's a very, very big story.
Q: What does this mean for this country?
A: Our country will be the first country in world history that is literally made up from every population stream from the rest of the world; the first country in world history that is pan-world.
What Census 2000 is going to do is paint the platform on which this is going to happen, and I think it's by far the most interesting thing that's going to happen in the country.
Q: Is today's rate of assimilation more rapid than before?
A: The immigrant groups that once came here, starting with the Puritans, never thought of going back to the old country. By the end of the 19th century, the Italian and the Irish and the Eastern Europeans and so forth, at least they could imagine making a visit back after they had some money. . . Now they're on the Internet e-mailing back and forth. So the notion of how you integrate yourself has itself changed. . . . Even though there are indicators of a deeper integration into this society, they haven't been at the expense of maintaining some sort of connection (with their countries of origin). That's another big complicated thing the 21st century society is going to have to deal with, the idea of dual citizenship.
Q: In what ways will that affect us?
A: We may be in the presence of the largest transfer of wealth from the rich countries to the poor countries in world history -- not through World Bank stuff, but through people up here sending money back home. We don't have a good measure of that, by the way, but that's a huge issue, redistribution of wealth.
Also, if you strip out the immigrant population of the United States, we've got a real age problem. We've got a lot of older people who aren't going to work and a lot of younger people needed to sustain Medicare, Social Security and so forth. The only way that pyramid can get moved a little bit is new younger people coming to the country. So the pressure's on this country to allow immigrants to come in as workers.
Immigration is more complicated than it ever has been in our history, because the people who are coming, even if they make their commitment here -- language, marriage, house owning, jobs, Social Security -- are not cutting themselves off from their country of origin.
Immigration Helped Shift 12 Seats in Congress
By Tony Pugh
The Miami Herald
WASHINGTON -- Massive immigration helped drive the U.S. population to a record 281.4 million and will contribute to the shift of 12 congressional seats affecting 18 states by 2002, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday.
The first detailed data from the 2000 Census showed that the U.S. population grew 13.2 percent to 281,421,906 in the past decade. It totaled 248,709,873 in 1990. The new figure was higher than expected, reflecting especially strong growth in the South and West.
Northeastern and Midwestern states grew more slowly, as aging baby boomers moved to warmer locales throughout the 1990s and displaced manufacturing and industrial workers sought jobs elsewhere.
Population figures and other census data determine how billions in federal money is spent. States adjust the nation's 435 congressional districts every 10 years based on the head count.
Thursday's census report offers only population by state. Future reports will fill in the national picture with data based on race, ethnicity, gender, housing, income and other characteristics.
Immigrants, mainly from Asia, the Caribbean and South America, accounted for about 40 percent of the increase in the U.S. population since 1990, said Charles Keely, professor of international migration at the school of foreign service at Georgetown University in Washington. Their surge is on the scale of the migration of Germans, Italians and Eastern Europeans at the turn of the 20th Century.
California, with 33.9 million residents, remains the most populous state. Texas, which counted 20.9 million, climbed past New York's 19 million to rank second. Wyoming, with 493,782 people, is the smallest state. Nevada's 66.3 percent jump in population to 1,998,257 was the greatest in the nation. Arizona was second, with a 40 percent increase since 1990. Its population now is 5,130,632.
The District of Columbia was the only area to experience a population decline in the '90s. About 35,000 D.C. residents -- 5.7 percent -- moved elsewhere.
Population shifts won eight states additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas each gained two. California, Colorado, Nevada and North Carolina gained one apiece.
New York and Pennsylvania each lost two seats. Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and Wisconsin each lost one seat.
When reapportionment is complete, each member of the House will represent about 647,000 people.
Adjusting congressional districts to reflect population changes often affects a state's power in Congress.
``The likelihood is greater that a senior member from a large state is going to chair a major committee,'' said Jeffrey Wice, a Washington lawyer and political consultant. ``And the more members a state has, the more members they can have on different committees to protect a state's interests.''
Reapportionment -- adjustment of the number of congressional districts for each state -- also alters Electoral College membership.
Each state gets an Electoral College vote for each senator and one for each congressional district.
Had the new Electoral College composition been in place in the November election, George W. Bush would have gained seven Electoral College votes and Vice President Al Gore would have lost seven.
Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt said the higher-than-expected count in 2000 could mean that the bureau was successful in reaching more undocumented residents. He praised the million-plus employees and volunteers who helped complete the head count on time and $300 million under the projected 10-year, $7 billion budget.
About 67 percent of the mail-in surveys were returned, reversing a three-decade decline in the response rate.
Later Thursday, President Clinton thanked the American public for its increased participation in the census effort.
``With their help the country is better equipped to meet the needs of every American and the challenges in the 21st Century,'' Clinton said in a statement. ``Since 1790, these data collected during each decennial census help to tell the ongoing story of America, its rich heritage and broad diversity.''
In Prewitt's estimation, the head count attained a ``good level of accuracy.''
The 1990 Census missed about 8.4 million people -- many of them minorities and children -- and counted another 4.4 million twice.
In the 1990 Census, American Indians were missed at 15 times the rate of whites, blacks at six to seven times the rate of whites, Asians at three times the rate of whites and children at twice the rate of adults, according to Department of Commerce Undersecretary Robert J. Shapiro.
To ensure a fairer and more accurate count, the bureau is considering issuing two sets of numbers, the regular head-counted figures and an adjusted count using scientific estimates, or ``sampling,'' to account for people who were missed.