Quickie Drivers License Can Be Ticket to Jail
By Joey Ledford
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you get a lot of spam, or junk e-mail --- and who doesn't these days?--- you've probably gotten scores of solicitations for quick and easy driver's licenses.
"Drive in 48 hours," proclaims one. "Find out how we can legally have you driving, with insurance and many more unbelievable advantages. No driving test, no Social Security number requested."
"Too many points or other trouble?" asks another. "Want a license that can never be suspended or revoked? Want ID for nightclubs or hotel check-in? . . . Protect your privacy, and hide your identity."
A lot of desperate people, especially illegal immigrants and those with bad driving records or suspended licenses, see it as a way to legally hit the road. They end up spending a lot of money to get a dubious, even illegal product.
"They are all printing a little card that says international driver's license," said Ronnie Johnson, chief driver's license examiner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety.
There is a tiny streak of legitimacy here, and that's what the scamsters are counting on to make you bite. In 1949, said Johnson, there was a Geneva Convention on road traffic in which many nations, including the United States, agreed to set standards for citizens driving in other countries.
The participants at that conference agreed to allow reciprocal travel, and to make that travel easier, they called for the issuance of an international driver's permit. "It's a multilingual translation of your existing driver's license," Johnson said. "It doesn't allow you to drive in another country, and merely facilitates your travel."
Legally licensed Americans can get an international driver's permit for use overseas for $10 from the AAA Auto Club, the only domestic organization legally authorized to issue it, said Ted Allred of AAA Auto Club South.
But it's not enough if you get pulled over --- here or overseas. You still must produce your domestic license, Johnson said.
In Georgia, you must have a Georgia driver's license to legally drive here. If you are a nonresident, you have to have a valid license from your home state or country. The international driver's license won't cut it.
"I think you'd probably land yourself in jail pretty quick the first time you showed it, if the officer was on his toes," Johnson said.
An Internet search shows that scores of businesses, both foreign and domestic, sell international licenses and many are badly misleading prospective customers by claiming the documents grant motorists the legal right to drive virtually anywhere.
Costs range from $54 to $375, and Johnson said he's been told prices can run as high as $1,000. Some Internet sites even hawk foreign licenses sold in conjunction with the international permits, offering motorists a foreign address to create an illusion of legitimacy.
Bill Cloud of the Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs said that state agency, which fights consumer fraud, has received some reports of citizens being scammed, but would like more.
"This is an area we are very interested in," he said. "These people are being misled, they are being taken advantage of, and then they are uncomfortable complaining about it."
Maritza Soto Keen, executive director of the Latin American Association, said her organization is working to educate the Latino community, a frequent target of such scams. "We get a tremendous amount of phone calls about these fraudulent (activities)," she said. "We tell them we don't think it's something they should be doing. They are, in essence, wasting their money."
Johnson said there's not much the Department of Public Safety can do to combat such interstate and even international schemes other than to cite and jail motorists who present such licenses. He said the FBI and the U.S. State Department investigate such license mills from time to time.
"A lot of people have been victimized by this," Johnson said. "They are led to believe they can drive, but they get stopped and they go to jail."
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Privacy Act of 1974; Computer matching Program
[Federal Register: February 12, 2001 (Volume 66, Number 29)]
[Notices]
[Page 9825-9826]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr12fe01-27]
AGENCY: Department of Education.
ACTION: Notice--Computer Matching between the U.S. Department of Education and the Social Security Administration.
SUMMARY: Pursuant to the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988, Pub. L. 100-503, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Guidelines on the Conduct of Matching Programs, a notice is hereby given of a computer matching program between the U.S. Department of Education (ED) (the recipient agency), and the Social Security Administration (SSA) (the source agency). This computer matching program between SSA and ED will become effective as explained below. In accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a), as amended by the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (Pub. L. 100-503), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Final Guidelines on the Conduct of Matching Programs (see 54 FR 25818, June 19, 1989), and OMB Circular A-130, we provide the following
information:
1. Names of Participating Agencies
The U.S. Department of Education and the Social Security Administration.
2. Purpose of the Match
The purpose of this matching program between ED and SSA is to assist the Secretary of Education in his obligation to ``verify immigration status and social security numbers [SSN] provided by a student to an eligible institution'' under 20 U.S.C. 1091(g) and (p). The SSA will verify the issuance of an SSN to, and the citizenship status of, those students and parents who provide their SSN's in the course of applying for aid under a student financial assistance program authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA). Verification of this information by SSA will help ED to satisfy its obligation to ensure that the individual applying for financial assistance meets eligibility requirements imposed by the HEA. Verification by this computer matching program effectuates the purpose of the statute, because it provides an efficient and comprehensive method of verifying the accuracy of each individual's SSN and claim to a citizenship status that permits that individual to qualify for Title IV, HEA assistance.
3. Legal Authority for Conducting the Matching Program
ED is authorized to participate in the matching program under sections 484(p)(20 U.S.C. 1091(p)); 484(g)(20 U.S.C.1091(g)); 483(a)(7)(20 U.S.C. 1090(a)(7)) and 428B(f)(2)(20 U.S.C. 1078-2(f)(2)) of the HEA. The SSA is authorized to participate in the matching program under section 1106(a) of the Social Security Act, (42 U.S.C. 1306(a)), and the regulations promulgated pursuant to that section (20 CFR part 401).
4. Categories of Records and Individuals Covered by the Match
The Federal Student Aid Application File (18-11-01) (which contains the applicant information on authority from ED) and the ED PIN Registration System of Records (18-11-12) (which contains the applicant's information to receive an ED PIN), will be matched against SSA's Master Files of Social Security Numbers Holders and SSN Applications System, SSA/OSR, 60-0058 which maintains records about each individual who has applied for and obtained an SSN.
5. Effective Dates of the Matching Program.
This matching program will become effective after the Data Integrity Board of each agency approves the agreement and either 40 days after the approved agreement is sent to Congress and OMB (or later if OMB objects to some or all of the agreement), or 30 days after publication of this notice in the Federal Register, whichever date is later. The matching program will continue for 18 months after the effective date and may be extended for an additional 12 months thereafter, if the conditions specified in 5 U.S.C. 552a(o)(2)(D) have been met.
6. Address for Receipt of Public Comments or Inquires
Individuals wishing to comment on this matching program, or obtain additional information about the program, including a copy of the computer matching agreement between ED and SSA, should contact Ms. Edith Bell, Management and Program Analyst, U.S. Department of Education, Room 4021, ROB-3 400 Maryland Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20202-5400. Telephone: (202) 708-5591. If you use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD), you may call the Federal Information Relay Service (FIRS) at 1-800-877-8339. Individuals with disabilities may obtain this document in an alternative format (e.g., Braille, large print, audiotape or computer diskette) on request to the contact person listed in the preceding paragraph.
Electronic Access to the Document
You may view this document, as well as all other Department of Education documents published in the Federal Register, in text or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) on the Internet at the following sites:
http://ocfo.ed.gov/fedreg.htm
http://www.ed.gov/news.html
http://ifap.ed.gov
To use PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free at the first of the previous sites. If you have questions about using PDF, call the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), toll free, at 1-888-293-6498, or in the Washington, DC, area at (202) 512-1530.
Note: The official version of this document is the document published in the Federal Register.
Free Internet access to the official edition of the Federal Register and Code [[Page 9826]] of Federal Regulations is available on GPO access at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/index.html
Dated: February 6, 2001.
Greg Woods,
Chief Operating Officer, Office of Student Financial Assistance.
[FR Doc. 01-3422 Filed 2-9-01; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-U
Tech Slowdown Reduces Visa Demand
The San Francisco Chronicle
WASHINGTON -- Last year, high-tech companies were urgently pressing Congress to raise the limit on the immigration of foreign skilled workers, warning that without the boost, they would suffer dangerous workforce short ages.
Now with projected earnings plummeting, the same firms that scrambled for workers from overseas are curbing their hiring, announcing massive layoffs and failing to take advantage of the new cap.
Companies are nowhere near reaching even last year's quota of 115,000 for specialty occupation worker visas, which Congress raised to 195,000 in October,
Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman Eyleen Schmidt said Friday.
With dot-coms collapsing, software developers issuing dire profit warnings and computer manufacturers slashing their workforces, the bottom has dropped out of the market for foreign skilled workers.
The plight of the industry can be seen in what has happened to the following firms that have been leading employers of workers with so-called H- 1B, or high-tech, visas:
-- Cisco Systems Inc., which produces much of the hardware that is the foundation of the Internet, hired about 400 H-1B workers between October 1999 and February 2000, according to the BCIS. Recently it announced a hiring freeze in the wake of falling sales.
-- Computer chipmaker Intel Corp., which secured H-1B visas for at least 367 employees during that five-month period, has also stopped hiring.
-- Telecommunications equipment provider Nortel Networks Inc., which brought in 234 foreign skilled workers during that time, announced last month it would cut 10,000 jobs.
-- Motorola Inc., the telecommunications and electronics giant, hired 618 such workers in that period. But since last December, the company, which has about 140,000 employees, has cut more than 9,000 positions.
Thom Stohler, director of workforce policy for the American Electronics Association, said administrative employees and contractors are among the first to go when companies slash their staffs. Skilled workers who entered the country under the H-1B visa program aren't likely to be among early layoffs, he added.
"The companies aren't laying off the folks they're hiring with H-1B visas unless they're shutting their doors," said Stohler, whose association represents 3,500 firms.
But Paul Kostek, former president of the U.S. division of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a 330,000-strong lobbying group, noted that even the few high-tech companies that are still actively hiring don't have to look overseas. They can shop around and find people among laid-off computer programmers and engineers.
USCIS Ignores Ruling, Will Deport DWI Violators
By Edward Hegstrom
The Houston Chronicle
The Immigration and Naturalization Service will continue deporting foreigners convicted of repeatedly driving drunk, despite a recent court ruling that seemed to prohibit such action.
After a conference-call meeting Wednesday, USCIS legal officials also decided they will likely appeal any court ruling that restricts their ability to deport legal immigrants with multiple convictions of driving while intoxicated.
"I don't think this is over yet," said Tomas Zuniga, an USCIS spokesman based in Dallas.
Immigration attorneys expressed surprise at the USCIS policy decision.
"It strikes me as short-sighted and wasteful of resources" to continue deporting immigrant drunken drivers after the court ruling, said Brian Bates, a Houston attorney.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled last week that felony DWI cannot be classified as a crime of violence, reversing an earlier ruling. The USCIS had previously justified the deportation of foreigners convicted of felony DWI by arguing that it was a violent act.
The 5th Circuit ruling governs the actions of Board of Immigration Appeals judges, who adjudicate deportation cases. But the USCIS said that instead of changing its policy based on the 5th Circuit ruling, the agency will wait until the issue works its way down to immigration judges. Even then, the USCIS will likely appeal any ruling not in its favor.
"We take our guidance from the Board of Immigration Appeals," said Zuniga. "Any decision made that is inconsistent with (the policy of deporting drunken drivers) will be appealed by the BCIS," he said.
But he would not say if the USCIS will ask for a ruling by the full court of the 5th Circuit. Last week's decision was made by a three-judge panel of the court.
Zuniga said drunken drivers now in USCIS detention will continue to be deported. He noted, however, that they have the right to appeal their removal order.
But Bates said it is now exceedingly difficult for immigrants to appeal their deportation. A law passed by Congress in 1996 requires legal immigrants to be jailed while their appeal is processed.
As a result, immigrants convicted of felony DWI must now serve out their state sentences and then be transferred to an USCIS detention facility while their deportation order is appealed.
Faced with spending a year or two in an USCIS prison during their appeal, most immigrants give up and go ahead with deportation, Bates said.
"They get impatient," he said. "They can't support their family while they're locked up, and they can't afford an attorney."
Several previous DWI-deportation cases appealed by immigration attorneys were dropped after the immigrant withdrew the appeal, Bates said. He noted that the five cases considered jointly by the 5th Circuit last week involved individuals who were deported for DWI, came back into the country illegally, and then were caught for unlawful re-entry.
Zuniga said the USCIS no longer keeps statistics on the number of foreigners deported after being convicted of felony DWI. But he estimated that "about 400 or 500" immigrants were deported from the central region office of the USCIS every year after being convicted three times for drunken driving.
In one week in the fall of 1998, the USCIS deported 34 immigrants just out of the Houston region alone, Zuniga said. The deportations came as the result of an aggressive USCIS sting operation over Labor Day known as "Operation Last Call."
Law Might Help Those Seeking a Green Card
By Bill Douthat
The Palm Beach Post
A new immigration law is giving hope to thousands of undocumented immigrants seeking a green card, including a 44-year-old woman who attended a seminar Saturday to see if the golden gates would open for her.
"I don't want to be living like this anymore," said the woman, who came from the Bahamas on a tourist visa 10 years ago and never left. She wants to buy a house, but is fearful that the mortgage application would expose her illegal status.
The Lake Worth woman heard that the new law may help her. Or maybe not.
"Many people believe the law is an amnesty and it's not," said immigrant attorney Roland Anthony Ulloa, who held the free seminar at a cultural center in suburban Lake Worth. "Many people don't qualify."
The same scene plays out at the Guatemalan Mayan Center, where director Lucio Perez-Reynozo takes dozens of calls about the "amnesty law."
He blames unscrupulous notarios, notary publics who double as immigration advisers, for spreading false hope to collect money for filling out paperwork that has no prayer of approval.
The new law, called the LIFE Act, could help up to 500,000 immigrants who entered the country illegally or overstayed visas but have sons or daughters or spouses who are legal residents. Palm Beach County's illegal immigrants tend to be single or not been here long enough to have their U.S.-born kids sponsor them for green cards.
"There are all sorts of innuendo and rumor that this is a utopia for anyone in the country illegally," said West Palm Beach immigration attorney Al Zucaro. "In fact, it has a very limited application for a limited number of people."
While not amnesty, the LIFE act opens doors to illegal immigrants by allowing them to stay in the country if they qualify for either a family or job-related visa. Since 1998, those immigrants had to leave and apply in their native countries, a tripwire since immigrants who come in without visas can be barred from returning to the U.S. from three to 10 years.
The Bahamian woman at Saturday's seminar believes she might qualify as a sponsored worker but doesn't know if she can finish the paperwork in time.
The LIFE doors remain open until April 30, the deadline for applying for a visa petition based on family or work connections.
"Unfortunately, they didn't give us much time," said Shane O'Meara, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society's Immigration Advocacy Project. He said his West Palm Beach office is filing about five a week.
Applicants must also be able to prove they were in the United States on Dec. 21, the day the bill was signed into law by former President Clinton.
The law gives preference to U.S. citizens whose relatives need green cards. Citizens can sponsor married children or brothers and sisters. Legal residents without citizenship can sponsor only unmarried children and no brothers or sisters. Either group can petition for a spouse.
The best bet for undocumented immigrants without eligible family ties may be an employer sponsoring them for a green card, said Lantana immigration attorney Wayne Levine. Immigrants can qualify for job-related green cards if an employer proves no Americans are available to fill the jobs. "People have the misconception that they would have to be Albert Einstein with a Ph.D. to qualify, but that's not the case," Levine said. "We've done labor certifications for welders, auto mechanics, diesel mechanics and cooks in ethnic restaurants."
Those getting family sponsors may have a long wait at the golden gates.
Guatemalans and Hondurans who filed a visa petition in 1996 are just now permitted to file for a green card. The backlog for Mexicans goes back to1994 before a visa number is assigned allowing them to seek residency. For Chinese and and Indians it's even longer.
"Sometimes, there is a four- or five-year wait for available visas," said Eyleen Schmidt, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Visa numbers will jump months forward, or move a day and sometimes they will go backwards."
The law allows for temporary papers for those who filed a visa petition more than three years ago and are still waiting for a visa number. They will get a "V" visa protecting against deportation and allowing them to work while they wait.
For the others, besides the wait, the process is costly. The visa petition, to be filed by April 30, costs $110. When a visa number is available, the immigrant pays $1,000 as a fine for being in the county illegally.
Demand for Foreign Skilled Workers Drops
The Minneapolis Star Tribune
Last year, high-tech companies urgently pressed Congress to raise the limit on the immigration of foreign skilled workers, warning that without the boost, they would suffer dangerous workforce shortages.
Now with projected earnings plummeting, the same firms that scrambled for workers from overseas are curbing their hiring, announcing massive layoffs and failing to take advantage of the new cap.
Companies are "nowhere near" reaching even last year's quota of 115,000 for specialty-occupation worker visas, which Congress raised to 195,000 in October, said Immigration and Naturalization Service (BCIS) spokeswoman Eyleen Schmidt recently.
With dot-coms collapsing, software developers issuing dire profit warnings and computer manufacturers slashing their workforces, the bottom has dropped out of the market for foreign skilled workers.
The industry's plight can be seen in what has happened to firms that have been leading employers of workers with so-called H-1B, or high-tech, visas: Cisco Systems Inc., which produces much of the hardware that is the foundation of the Internet, hired about 400 H-1B workers between October 1999 and February 2000, according to the BCIS. Recently it announced a hiring freeze in the wake of falling sales.
Computer-chip maker Intel Corp., which secured H-1B visas for at least 367 employees during that five-month period, also has stopped hiring.
Telecommunications equipment provider Nortel Networks Inc., which brought in 234 foreign skilled workers during that time, said last month it would cut 10,000 jobs.
And Motorola Inc., the telecommunications and electronics giant, hired 618 such workers during that period. But since last December, the company, which has about 140,000 employees, has cut more than 9,000 jobs.
Thom Stohler, director of workforce policy for the American Electronics Association, said administrative employees and contractors are among the first to go when companies cut their staffs. Skilled workers that entered the country under the H-1B visa program aren't likely to be among early layoffs, he said.
"The companies aren't laying off the folks they're hiring with H-1B visas -- unless they're shutting their doors," said Stohler, whose association represents 3,500 firms.
But Paul Kostek, former president of the U.S. division of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a 330,000-strong lobbying group, said that even the few high-tech companies that still are actively hiring don't have to look overseas. They "can shop around and find people" among laid-off computer programmers and engineers, said Kostek.
"Folks who were just queuing up (to hire) H-1Bs ... are saying, 'I was going to bring someone over, but the company down the street just imploded and there are 150 engineers looking for jobs. Let's go hire some of them.'"
Other industry experts say it's too early to blame a drop in demand for foreign skilled workers on the high-tech sector's financial woes.
Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, which led the push last year for the quota hike, said employers aren't racing to submit H-1B visa applications to the USCIS this year because they aren't worried the cap will quickly be reached.
Last year, companies flooded the USCIS with applications, exhausting the year's supply by late March.
Miller, whose group represents 26,000 members, explained that "the companies knew the existing cap was not going to be enough to last the entire year, so the process was extremely front-loaded. Now that people know there are 195,000 [visas available], they're back to a more reasonable filing schedule, based on the actual demand." But he insisted that boosting the limit was necessary, even if the quota isn't reached this year.
"Having a high cap doesn't hurt anybody," he said. "If the companies decide not to use the program fully, that's fine. It doesn't mean the economy is not going to come back -- that we won't have a disproportionate demand for people with information-technology skills."
CIA Estimates 2 Million Smuggled for Sex
Newsday
How big a problem is sex trafficking? In a nation that obsessively charts crime figures, reliable estimates are almost non-existent. The situation is even worse outside the United States.
An analysis done for the CIA in 1999 estimated that 700,000 to 2 million women and children are trafficked worldwide each year-moved across borders or within nations by those who want to exploit their labor in fields, sweatshops or brothels.
As many as 50,000 of those migrants are smuggled into the United States, according to the report, "International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime." Some portion of them are put to work in the sex industry, while others do different kinds of work.
Though large, that number is dwarfed by legal immigration: More than 650,000 immigrants legally become permanent U.S. residents each year; of those, more than 350,000 are new arrivals in this country and the rest are converting from some other immigration status.
"Since trafficking is an underground criminal enterprise, there are no precise statistics on the extent of the problem and estimates are unreliable," according to an analysis last year by the Congressional Research Service. "But even using conservative estimates, the scope of the problem is enormous." There are also signs that it is increasing.
The Clinton administration estimated that the business of trafficking in migrants-for all purposes, not just sex work-had revenues of $7 billion last year, up from $5 billion in 1993. And the number of people caught while being smuggled into the United States jumped 80 percent-from 138,000 to 247,000-from 1997 to 1999, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said.
That group would have included trafficked women.
Similarly, a number of Eastern and Central European nations reported substantial increases from 1995 through 1997 in the number of deported "irregular migrants," a group that includes trafficked women.