Bush "Amnesty" Plans Tied to Overhaul of Dysfunctional USCIS
By Cheryl W. Thompson
The Washington Post
Two key House Republicans announced yesterday they will not support changes in immigration laws unless steps are first taken to overhaul the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and George W. Gekas (R-Pa.) said any proposal by the Bush administration for legalization or amnesty of illegal immigrants would be "seriously flawed, if not dead on arrival" without a restructuring of the BCIS.
"We have found the USCIS to be the most dysfunctional federal agency around," they said in a written statement.
Sensenbrenner, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he receives six times more complaints about the USCIS than about the Internal Revenue Service. He represents a district near Milwaukee, "not exactly a border region heavy with new immigrants," he noted.
"We're sure our colleagues representing Tucson, San Ysidro, El Paso and other border areas can point to similar frustrations with the performance of BCIS," said Sensenbrenner and Gekas, who is chairman of the subcommittee on immigration and claims. Both would have a major say over the fate of the administration's proposal.
The nature of that proposal is still unclear. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell are scheduled to meet Thursday with Mexico's foreign and interior ministers, Jorge Castaneda and Santiago Creel, to discuss possible reforms.
The administration's plan may include a temporary-worker program that would allow some illegal workers to gain permanent residency. President Bush also has said he might expand the plan to include immigrants from countries other than Mexico. The proposal is expected to be announced next month during Mexican President Vicente Fox's first state visit to Washington.
A State Department spokesman said yesterday the administration was "focusing on safe, orderly, legal migration." He added that the department had been consulting with other agencies and Congress.
"They're looking at a number of different approaches, such as a temporary worker program," he said. "Clearly there will be implications for the status of Mexicans in the U.S. already, but we're not talking about a blanket amnesty."
Sensenbrenner and Gekas said the president's priority should be cleaning up an USCIS "bureaucratic structure that has failed in the past." The agency, beset by backlogs in processing applications, announced this week that it is raising application fees by 17 percent to cover inflation and technological investments.
USCIS has 34,000 employees and a $4.8 billion budget. Bush has proposed an increase to $5.5 billion -- a 10 percent rise -- and adding 1,364 positions, agency spokesman Greg Gagne said.
USCIS Penalty System Falls Down on Job
By Jonathan Peterson
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- Employer sanctions, touted 15 years ago as the nation's key tool for stemming illegal immigration, failed in practice, offering a cautionary tale as the nation once more focuses on the issue of undocumented workers.
Without fanfare, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has slashed its work site enforcement efforts in recent years, resulting in a dramatic drop--as much as 97% over two years--in arrests of workers and fines and warnings issued to employers, government records show.
Remarkably, as the White House and Congress begin a sweeping debate on immigration policy, the sanctions--which were designed to penalize employers for hiring undocumented immigrants--are an afterthought. "They have not worked," conceded Doris Meissner, who served as USCIS commissioner for seven years until last November. "There really is not any reliable way
for employers to comply with the law," which she described as "very, very weak."
Employer sanctions were undermined by a booming market in phony documents, the needs of employers to fill their job openings, widespread resistance to the creation of a national identification card--and by politics.
U.S. and Mexican officials are scheduled to meet this week in Cabinet-level negotiations on new approaches to immigration, including an expanded guest worker program that would enable many illegal workers to remain in the country, perhaps leading to permanent status for some. Just last week, Democratic leaders urged an even broader approach that would allow undocumented workers of all nationalities to remain in the United States.
Whatever emerges from the process, some experts maintain that it can succeed only with effective implementation at the workplace.
Yet, "neither Republicans or Democrats or a broad range of interest groups is prepared to support an employer sanctions program that actually would work," Meissner said. As a result, she added, enforcement of immigration laws in the workplace "will have to be addressed from some other angle."
As crackdowns in the workplace sparked political backlashes in the 1990s, Congress declined to build on the approach, and in 1999 the USCIS shifted its enforcement focus away from sanctions.
"Nobody wanted to make employers cops. Nobody wanted to make employers forensic document experts," said Joseph R. Greene, assistant USCIS commissioner for investigations. "That was in some ways the breakdown of the system."
Popular '80s Approach Proves Ineffective
Today's system was born in the emotional immigration debate of the mid-1980s, when sanctions became a politically popular counterweight to a broad amnesty for immigrants who had entered the country unlawfully.
While the USCIS had long patrolled the U.S. border, in the 1980s it faced growing pressure to assert effective control over the U.S. workplace, the obvious lure for millions of illegal immigrants.
The sanctions, passed by Congress in 1986, were a series of civil and criminal penalties--including fines and even imprisonment--faced by employers who failed to comply with the law. Employers were required to document the legal status of their workers and were subject to checks of the paperwork--as well as unannounced site visits by USCIS agents.
Yet the intensified workplace focus was controversial from the start, sparking Hollywood images of grim USCIS agents raiding factories filled with desperately poor, unskilled workers.
The immigration agency took on its new mission energetically, bearing down on a water bed factory near San Diego in an early show of force.
"The first day of the trial I walked in--the government had 15 prosecutors and there was me," recalled Peter N. Larrabee, who was the attorney for Mester Manufacturing of El Cajon in the groundbreaking 1987 case. Ultimately, Mester was fined $3,000 for six counts of hiring illegal workers, in a decision that was hailed by advocates of employer sanctions.
Yet as the USCIS escalated enforcement, illegal immigrants kept making their way into the American workplace.
When sanctions were first approved, illegal immigrants often were blamed for taking jobs from American citizens who needed them. But as the 1990s progressed and the U.S. unemployment rate fell to depths not seen in 30 years, that theory came under attack. An array of industries, from agriculture to meatpacking to hotels, restaurants and construction, were increasingly reliant on immigrant labor to fill job openings that no one else was applying for.
Employer sanctions "were going against the labor market," explained Dmitri Papademetriou, head of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. "People needed the employees, and employees needed the jobs."
Moreover, the USCIS was never given the resources to carry out the difficult mission. Today's number of agents charged with monitoring all U.S. workplaces--1,899 as of June--has been declining in recent years.
To comply with the sanctions law, employers had to determine that a worker's identification appeared "reasonably genuine," a relatively easy test that could be fulfilled with various sorts of documents. But rising concerns that foreign-born job applicants were facing discrimination led Congress in 1990 to ban employers from demanding them to produce USCIS documents.
While employers risked USCIS sanctions if they hired illegal immigrants, they risked fines from the Justice Department's Office of Special Counsel if they violated the legal rights of their employees.
Against this confusing backdrop, a black market in identification papers flourished and, increasingly, companies located outside such immigrant strongholds as California, New York and Texas--found themselves with large cadres of illegal employees.
Michael Satran, owner of Interstate Roofing in Portland, Ore., remembers with some pain the day in November 1999 when USCIS officials examined the paperwork he had collected for his predominantly Latino work force. Soon after, officials ordered him to fire 76 of his 128 employees, including his foremen and some workers with 10 years' seniority at his company.
"Everything was done right," Satran said of his record-keeping. "We didn't make any mistakes." Of those workers let go, he said, 56 had managed to get valid Oregon driver's licenses, according to his own exit interviews with the workers.
Satran was not fined. Rather, he suffered the loss of more than half his work force to nearby competitors. "Every one of [the fired workers] except one went to another roofing company in the Portland area. The other one went to a landscaping company."
Critics of the sanctions say such stories illustrate the untenable position of employers--squeezed between one part of the law that requires them to hire only legal workers and another part of the law that forbids them from discriminating against the foreign-born.
Just last week, Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City, N.J., agreed to pay $75,000 in civil penalties for its illegal demands that noncitizen employees provide their official immigration papers.
"Employers are required to walk a very, very thin line," said Russell L. Lichtenstein, the attorney for Tropicana. The resort was "caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place," he said.
USCIS Eases Off Enforcing Sanctions
Such complaints have met an increasingly sympathetic reception from politicians. After USCIS agents swarmed into the onion fields of Vidalia, Ga., in 1998, arresting 20 illegal workers and sending more scurrying for cover, several members of Congress complained to U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, as well as the U.S. secretaries of Agriculture and Labor. Efforts in 1999 to target illegal workers in Nebraska's meatpacking industry, known as Operation Vanguard, prompted a similar backlash.
The same realities now challenge U.S. and Mexican officials as they try to bring order to a system that was overwhelmed by economic forces. "If you're the BCIS, the moral of the story is Congress is telling them not to enforce the law," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies. He would like to see an effective program of employer sanctions.
By 1999, the USCIS was ready to formalize a new set of enforcement priorities, de-emphasizing employer sanctions while making violent immigrants, the smuggling of humans and document fraud top concerns inside the United States.
Since the new policy has taken effect, USCIS statistics show a striking drop-off in the enforcement of workplace sanctions affecting employers and employees. In 1998, the number of employer fines was 7,115; by last year that figure had fallen to 178. In 1998, the number of workers arrested due to workplace enforcement actions was 13,875. By last year, the figure had
dropped to 953.
"You look at the numbers--what you see is the result of that policy," said the BCIS' Greene. But he maintained that if the economy weakened to the point where illegal immigration was harming domestic workers, "resources would be shifted accordingly."
By last year, even the AFL-CIO--traditionally worried about the effect of cheap labor on its union members--abandoned its support of employer sanctions and came out for an amnesty program. Labor leaders had concluded that sanctions were not deterring illegal immigrants from seeking U.S. jobs. At the same time, the union argued that some employers were exploiting their most vulnerable employees, threatening to report them to BCIS.
"These employer sanctions worked not to penalize employers, but to penalize workers," said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union in Los Angeles.
National Identity Cards Unpopular Alternative
Despite widespread displeasure with sanctions, there was never much support for another measure that might have led to greater immigration control: a national identification card. Technology has made the possibility of a counterfeit-resistant card increasingly plausible. But such a document, which could be issued only to citizens or permanent residents, raises deep
fears of the government invading individuals' privacy.
Meissner said the opposition to such a card is at the heart of the matter: "From a civil liberties standpoint, we're not comfortable with a single national identification system. That is the core rub."
Still, observers on various sides of the debate question whether the issue of illegal immigration can be effectively addressed without employer sanctions or some way to ensure that American jobs are filled with authorized workers.
While the goal of a big, new guest worker program would be to bring many undocumented workers into a legal system of employment, the concern is that--without sanctions or some other lever over employers--companies could still face temptation to hire illegal immigrants.
B. Lindsay Lowell, a scholar at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration, worries that an expanded guest worker approach might make those illegal immigrants who do not qualify more vulnerable to exploitation than ever before.
"A large-scale guest worker program without meaningful employer sanctions would be very problematic," he said.
Greene said that new technologies for identification, if applied to a new guest worker card, might ease some of the headaches caused by false documents in the workplace.
"You can certainly make it harder for the bad guys," he said, promising that "we'll be looking at that problem in a very different way in 2001 and 2002 than we did in 1986."
Reshaping Immigration a Popular Stance, for Now
By Michelle Mittelstadt
The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON -- A rare consensus appears to be forming in the nation's capital, cutting across traditional partisan and business-labor fault lines, to fashion an immigration policy that confers legal status on some of the millions of undocumented immigrants already living here.
Negotiations by the U.S. and Mexican governments to bring order to the unregulated flow of workers streaming into the United States in search of better-paying jobs are being generally well-received inside and outside Congress - where any immigration policy changes would have to be approved.
"Everyone is trying to see who can be the better friend of immigration and immigrants right now, and I don't remember that ever being the case," said Theresa Brown, manager of labor and immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which favors legalization and expanded employment visa programs.
Political players and observers alike acknowledge, however, that the dynamic of the debate could shift abruptly if the U.S. economy sours further and if unemployment rates continue to inch up.
"Support for really open and liberal policies on immigration sways with the economy," said B. Lindsay Lowell, director of research at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration. "And even though we are not in the doldrums at the moment, the economy is flagging, and I think it makes it much harder to sell these kinds of things."
The nation's unemployment rate, which dipped to a 3.9 percent low last October, has risen to 4.5 percent and is expected to climb past 5 percent. And recent financial forecasts have been glum, with the economy enduring its weakest growth rate in eight years in the just-ended quarter.
"The economy is puttering along. It is not nearly as strong as it should be," President Bush said recently.
While many analysts believe that the threat of a recession is receding, news of major job cutbacks has been front and center of late as companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Lucent and Dell have announced they are paring workers. The manufacturing sector alone has shed 785,000 jobs in the last year.
Earlier this year, the administrations of Mr. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox launched unprecedented bilateral talks on how to deal with migration flows. Before Mr. Fox's visit to Washington next month, senior U.S. officials working on immigration issues have recommended a new guest-worker program and policy proposals that could result in legal status for some of the 3 million Mexicans living here illegally.
Amid calls from immigrant advocates, congressional Democrats and others that any legalization program be broadened beyond Mexico, Mr. Bush last week indicated his willingness to consider extending the same benefit to immigrants of other nationalities. While the U.S. government estimates the undocumented population at 6 million, others suggest it could top 9 million.
Public perception of the U.S. economy will factor into the immigration debate, many agree.
"Economic considerations are a major factor. Amnesty and guest-worker programs lose their luster when one considers the economic impact and the unintended consequences they create," said Rep. Lamar Smith, a San Antonio Republican who opposes legalization for undocumented immigrants. "These programs depress the wages of those who can least afford it, low-skilled workers - native and legal immigrant alike - who are at the bottom end of the economic ladder."
At the other end of the spectrum on the immigration debate, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Silvestre Reyes also agrees that the economy may well play a role. "But the fact is that we have millions of undocumented immigrants living in this country and contributing to society," said Yvette Pena Lopes, a spokeswoman for the Democratic congressman from El Paso.
"They are not just going to go away, and so we must address the issue. And the best way to do so is through some sort of legalization plan."
Economic weakness "would certainly diminish the resolve of those who would want to broaden our immigration policy," said Rep. Ralph Hall, a Rockwall Democrat who favors limited pilot guest-worker and legalization programs.
While motivated by the possibility that the economy could shift, proponents of a liberalized immigration policy cite other reasons in wanting Congress to move swiftly. Among them are shifting political tides in a Congress where neither political party holds a sizable majority.
"The politics in Congress are such there is an opening here. How long will that window last? I don't know," said Ms. Brown of the Chamber of Commerce. "There is always a sense of urgency with this stuff."
Yet she and others note a remarkable shift from just a few years ago, when lawmakers were far less immigrant-friendly, passing immigration and welfare law changes in 1996 that stripped legal immigrants of benefits and imposed tough sanctions on those found to have entered the country illegally.
"The tone is absolutely different," Ms. Brown said.
Credit for that goes in part to the recognition of the growing clout of the Hispanic vote; the fact that a Republican in the White House has put such a premium on immigration and closer ties with Mexico; and the reform wave sweeping over Mexico with the election of Mr. Fox, who broke 71 years of one-party rule.
"We have momentum with the administration and the Congress," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza. "It's a huge priority for the labor movement and a huge priority for a huge sector of the business community. And that is a very different calculus."While Ms. Muñoz predicts action this year, the executive director of the Center for
Immigration Studies, which favors reduced immigration rates, suggests next year is likelier. And with congressional mid-term elections next year, the debate could become more complicated, said Mark Krikorian.
"I think there's a real problem for those that want to push this, that it's going to become politically increasingly difficult," he said. "That creates an opportunity for the opponents, which is they don't so much have to kill it, they just have to slow it down."
Companies Exploit J-1 Visa Trainees' at Low Wages
By Walter F. Roche, Jr.
The Baltimore Sun
When Georgi Stankov complained that he was installing cable at a construction site instead of learning computer skills, as he says he was promised, he was told, "Your mouth is too big and if you keep it up, you'll be sent back home to Bulgaria."
Stankov is one of nearly 700 electricians from Eastern Europe and Latin America brought to the United States under a 40-year-old federal program by a Greenbelt company, USA-IT, run on a day-to-day basis by a man convicted of bank fraud.
The purpose of the J-1 Exchange Visa Program is supposed to be cultural exchange and training, typically under the auspices of nonprofit organizations such as the YMCA. "Ordinary employment or work is strictly prohibited," according to the regulations governing J-1.
But a Sun investigation shows that USA-IT rented out Stankov and other electricians at a profit to construction companies around the country for up to 18 months. Besides doing electrical work, they often performed menial labor, sometimes digging ditches.
The arrangement was lucrative for USA-IT and the contractors.
The contractors got qualified workers at a bargain, paying USA-IT $15 an hour, half the prevailing union rate in the Baltimore-Washington area. The savings were formidable - instead of paying a typical worker $240 for an eight-hour day, the contractors paid $120.
From the $15 per hour USA-IT collected, it deducted a $5 administrative fee and further cut the workers' paychecks by charging them for insurance, tools, transportation and household supplies.
As for the electricians - many of whom have college degrees in electrical engineering - they got shortchanged on both training and income, pocketing little more than minimum wage. "They lied to me," said Stankov, 26, who shares a Northern Virginia apartment with four other electricians enrolled in the program.
State Department memos show that USA-IT has been raking in as much as $140,000 a week by assigning the visa holders to contractors.
One contractor that obtained workers through USA-IT - Integrated Electrical Services based in Houston - bragged in an internal newsletter this spring that the company's savings from the program could amount to $5 million a year.
The nonprofit corporations that officially sponsored the trainees also benefitted. A subcontractor of the YMCA of Greater New York got $440,000 from USA-IT, according to a federal source, for supplying the visas that enabled 240 electricians to enter the country and go to work for USA-IT clients.
Convicted of fraud
The president of USA-IT is Diego Asencio, a former high-ranking State Department official, but many of its day-to-day operations are handled by Dennis A. Laskin, a Bethesda man who pleaded guilty in 1993 to bank fraud and three years later was sentenced to an 18-month federal prison term and fined $500,000. He had been charged with defrauding a Maryland bank and the Resolution Trust Corp. of millions of dollars in 1991 and 1992.
Laskin declined to discuss USA-IT's activities, but Asencio, in an interview, repeatedly insisted that it is a training program, not a work program, even though the company's brochure tells employers that USA-IT specializes in "finding qualified electricians from overseas for every facet of the electrical industry."
Asked to describe the training, he acknowledged it was primarily "on-the-job."
"It is worrying that the program really appears to be nothing other than a way to import skilled or semi-skilled labor into the U.S.," according to a State Department memorandum obtained by The Sun. "It also appears that there is little real training going on."
Within the past month, the State Department and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service have jointly launched an investigation of USA-IT to determine "whether or not these people are in a bona fide training program," as required by law.
Stanley Colvin, head of the U.S. State Department unit that oversees the exchange program, said new regulations to specifically bar practices like USA-IT's are being drafted.
Union organizing
Asencio blamed his company's problems on the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which he said had singled out USA-IT as part of an effort to unionize nonunion electrical contractors. "We're being targeted for extraneous reasons that have nothing to do with the program. Our intention was to do good. Our intention was not to draw the fire of the unions," Asencio said.
But Colvin said that based on his conversations with trainees, "They feel they are not getting the training they were promised."
On a hot, steamy Saturday morning late last month, about 35 USA-IT recruits from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia trooped into an IBEW hall in Washington's northeast corner. The meeting was one of several being conducted by the IBEW for the USA-IT trainees.
"You've all been mistreated," Colvin told them. "What happened to you is unconscionable. USA-IT does not own you. They do not have the right to throw you out of the country."
Earlier in the day, Ronald G. Burke, director of IBEW's construction organizing department, told the group, Stankov among the workers, that the struggle they were waging was the same that led to the creation of the union.
"They were people who said enough is enough. The laws in this country will support you. To be indentured servants is not freedom. It is atrocious what is happening to you," Burke said.
Burke then asked those at the meeting to sign authorization cards, which could force a union election for all USA-IT recruits. He also told them to write letters to USA-IT to officially inform the company that it could not make any unauthorized deductions from their paychecks.
One worker stood to say that the schedule he had been given for his assignment contained no mention of any training programs.
"It's up to us to act or to be a slave for 18 months," another worker said.
Too much vacation
Among those on hand for the Saturday morning session was Florin Ion, who came to the United States in October and was first assigned to a Maryland telecommunications company and then to an electrical contracting company, Encompass Services.
He said his problems began when he tried to take a vacation to visit his family. He said he found the cheapest fare possible on the Internet, but it required a three-week stay. USA-IT said he could have only two weeks off, and when he returned he was fired.
"I asked them to understand my situation. They said, 'If you don't like it, go home.'"
He said the fees being deducted from his paycheck before his dismissal included rent and $225.71 for auto insurance. He showed a check stub in which the gross pay of $822.50 for a two-week period was reduced to $527.62, not including federal taxes that he will have to pay later.
"It was very expensive. A very bad deal," he said, adding that he and fellow workers spent hours a day just sitting in traffic trying to get to their job assignments.
Asencio and Catherine Reynolds, USA-IT's general counsel, said all the trainees were told in advance on two occasions about the fees that would be deducted. They said USA-IT absorbs two-thirds of the costs it incurs for each trainee. They said, for example, that they absorb a $50 monthly cost for health insurance, but records show USA-IT regularly bills employers for
the coverage.
After being fired, Ion said he found work outside the program but without legal authorization.
"I was forced to go underground," he said.
Earlier this month, Ion became legal again when he was one of about 20 workers transferred to a newly created training program with another contractor.
Jake Davis, regional president for Encompass Services, said his division of the company recently severed ties with USA-IT, in part because of a downturn in business.
But he also said, "We just weren't happy with the program," declining to elaborate.
USA-IT management
Though Asencio said he was the president of USA-IT and Laskin was a "senior consultant," internal company records show that Laskin is involved in directing the day-to-day operations.
For instance, when a company executive returned from a recent vacation, Laskin sent her an e-mail with a detailed list of assignments. And when another staffer reported to his colleagues that he was taking time off to attend to a sick child, he noted that he had "informed Dennis."
USA-IT is not Laskin's and Asencio's first venture in the immigration business. Even as the bank-fraud case against Laskin was being developed by prosecutors, he and Asencio formed a company called American Immigration Services, or AIS.
It was created to market a new program authorized under a 1990 immigration law that allowed foreigners to get permanent U.S. residency by investing at least $500,000 in an American business. AIS signed up hundreds of visa applicants who put up only $125,000 in cash but signed promissory notes for the balance of the $500,000.
Although the USCIS initially went along with the AIS proposal, it has since issued a series of rulings setting stricter standards. As a result, the AIS investors, along with hundreds who joined similar plans, are facing deportation.
A Sun investigation showed that only a small fraction of the promised investment money ever made it to the businesses targeted for aid. AIS investors are challenging the USCIS actions in a court suit pending in California.
New direction
The pair then turned to the J-1 program. Under its rules, the State Department first must approve the sponsoring organization, which then issues the visa application forms and remains responsible for ensuring that the foreign visitor is taken care of and is provided the promised training.
One of the largest and oldest participants is the YMCA of Greater New York, which has used the exchange program to bring thousands of camp counselors to the United States.
The YMCA, a spokeswoman said, has for decades used the services of another nonprofit organization - British Universities North American Club based in Connecticut, or BUNAC - to handle the applications for its J-1 visas.
BUNAC was approached by USA-IT to launch its J-1 program. According to a federal source familiar with the transaction, USA-IT paid BUNAC about $440,000 to supply 240 J-1 visa forms.
YMCA spokeswoman Lenore Neier says her agency counted on BUNAC to ensure that the visas were being used properly and never looked at the documents. She said the YMCA would not have approved bringing in electricians.
"We had a 30-year relationship with BUNAC," she said. "We assumed, without looking at each application, that proper procedures were being followed. There were 240 that slipped through. It was an oversight. Absolutely it was an oversight on our part."
James Buck, executive director of BUNAC, said his organization no longer deals with USA-IT.
"We haven't worked with them since November. We worked with them recruiting people. We agreed to work with them. And then decided not to. End of sentence."
Asked why BUNAC chose to end the relationship, Buck said: "We made it very clear that it wasn't something we wanted to be involved in. It was stretching the envelope too far."
'Blind sided'
"This blind sided both of us," Buck said of his organization and the YMCA. "We were, to put it mildly, stunned" to learn how the visa holders were being used.
Both BUNAC and the YMCA say that after discovering the problems, they have been working to provide promised training to the USA-IT recruits.
"We didn't feel the [previous] training was adequate," said Neier, adding that the Y was working with the companies where the recruits are stationed to establish and implement proper training. Asencio said it was "absolute nonsense" to think his company had "blind sided" anyone: "What they are really saying is that they didn't expect trouble. Now they are running for cover."
Even before ending its relationship with BUNAC and the YMCA, USA-IT began working with other approved sponsoring organizations, such as the Cultural Exchange Network in Missouri and the Association for International Practical Training in Columbia, Md., an organization that states its purpose is to promote international understanding.
Jorge Restrepo, a spokesman for AIPT, said 329 visa application forms were issued by his organization to USA-IT during a four-month period ending in March.
"After we became aware of the complaints, we took steps to make sure there were true training opportunities," he said.
He said his organization's concern deepened when he learned that USA-IT was not a nonprofit organization.
Maryland corporate records show USA-IT was originally incorporated as a for-profit corporation. A year later an amendment was filed to convert the corporation to nonprofit status.
Late last year, yet another amendment disclosed that the conversion to nonprofit status had never taken place and USA-IT would continue indefinitely as a for-profit entity. However, it recently set up a nonprofit affiliate to seek State Department approval to process J-1 visas.
Program called 'superb'
Officials with the Cultural Exchange Network in Missouri say they have encountered no problems with USA-IT.
"The program is superb," said Vice President Margaret Popham. "Participants are getting classes in management and American business practices. They are also doing hands-on training to learn American methods. We're very, very pleased."
She declined to say how many USA-IT recruits have been brought in under the program. She did say that the pay was more than adequate and "comparable to a salary an American would make in a training program" and that she had received no complaints about excessive deductions from the paychecks of recruits.
"I have not heard a squeak," Popham said. "It may easily be that they see these things exist. If I had information, I would follow up immediately."
Like other such organizations, CENET charges a fee - $800 - for the USCIS visa forms.
"Everyone does. That's how we make money," Popham said. To recruit some of the electricians, USA-IT officials said, they contracted with a Romanian company called Procer at a cost of $1,000 per worker. USA-IT paid $500 and billed the balance to each worker, said Reynolds, the USA-IT attorney.
Procer officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Electricians, cheap
USA-IT then aggressively marketed its program, targeting primarily nonunion electrical contracting companies.
The pitch was simple: USA-IT could provide a crew of competent electricians at a fraction of the usual cost.
"Dear Contractor," one marketing letter began. "USA-IT is an exchange company that provides qualified overseas electricians to US companies.
"Because of the type of the visa that is granted and because they are not familiar with U.S. customs, we call the electricians trainees," the letter continues.
In that letter, USA-IT boasted that it brought more than 400 electricians to the United States in 2000. "The USA-IT program is an excellent way to overcome current shortages with extremely capable, reliable and cost efficient electricians," the letter states.
"It was a mistake," said Asencio. "It was a stupid mistake. The letter is damnable."
Asencio at first said the letter was written by a recently dismissed employee, Christopher Booth, whose signature was on the letter. Booth said it was written by Laskin, as were all USA-IT marketing materials.
A former intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, Booth said he quit his job because he did not agree with the way the company was run. Informed of Booth's statement, Bill Livingstone, a spokesman for USA-IT, acknowledged that Booth was not the author of the letter and said he had resigned his job and was not fired.
Among the first and biggest companies to sign up with USA-IT was Integrated Electrical Services, which owns small to large electrical contracting companies across the country, including Primo Electrical with offices in Maryland.
Lisa Marshall, a spokeswoman for Integrated Electrical, said in an e-mail response to questions that there are 340 USA-IT assigned personnel at various locations, which she declined to identify. She also declined to disclose the fees IES pays to USA-IT.
"For competitive reasons, we keep that information confidential," she said.
No complaints
Marshall also said she was not aware of any complaints from the USA-IT recruits. "They are participating in an approved training program that includes classroom or formal training as well as on-the-job training," she wrote.
In its internal newsletter, Keeping Current, the company boasted early this year about the benefits of the USA-IT program, especially its effect on the company's bottom line: "Our estimates indicate that in 2001 alone we will save up to $5 million in labor costs by utilizing this program."
Stankov, who said he has been assigned to work at a Virginia company called Communication Engineering Inc., says he misses his family, including his 4-year-old son, whom he hasn't seen in months. He said he and other USA-IT trainees were told that under American law their families could not visit them in the United States.
Federal officials say there is no such restriction.
"I don't want to live like this," said Stankov.
Bush Panel Backs Legalizing Status of Some Migrants
By Eric Schmitt
The New York Times
WASHINGTON -- A cabinet-level panel has recommended that President Bush endorse a limited plan allowing some of the estimated three million Mexicans living in the United States illegally to apply for permanent legal status, a White House spokesman said today.
Some administration officials and outside experts said that perhaps one million to two million of the illegal Mexican immigrants might ultimately meet eligibility requirements, based on their job history and how long they have been here. The exact terms have not been determined, administration officials said.
Even so, such a program, if adopted by Congress, would be one of the largest attempts to legalize the status of illegal residents in American history. A 1986 law granted legal status to about three million illegal immigrants from several countries.
In a confidential one-page memorandum sent to the White House late on Friday, a working group headed by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft addressed, at least for now, only unlawful Mexicans, who make up the bulk of the estimated seven million to eight million illegal immigrants in the United States.
Democrats and immigrant groups have urged the administration to expand any legalization plan to include illegal immigrants from other countries. A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said no decisions had been made on that issue or on many other details of the proposal.
The stakes are high for Mr. Bush. He is trying to remake relations with Mexico and at the same time court Latino voters who would be crucial to any re-election bid in 2004.
The legalization plan is the most sensitive result of broader discussions on border and migration issues that Mr. Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico began in February. Secretary Powell and Mr. Ashcroft, and their Mexican counterparts, were delegated to develop recommendations before the two presidents meet in Washington in early September.
Allowing illegal immigrants to change their status would be a central component of a new, ambitious temporary-worker program that American and Mexican officials are discussing. It would let some unlawful Mexicans living in the United States legalize their status and also permit future migrants to earn legal residency.
"The panel recommends consideration of a new temporary-worker program that would allow for some of the workers to achieve permanent residency status over a period of time," Mr. McClellan said.
Congress is already considering legislation to expand and streamline a temporary farm-worker program that would let undocumented laborers of any nationality earn permanent residency under certain conditions. It is estimated that 50 percent to 80 percent of the 1.6 million farm workers in the United States are illegal immigrants, most from Mexico.
Building on that effort, Secretary Powell and Mr. Ashcroft recommended that the White House, for now, consider legalizing the status of illegal Mexican workers in sectors other than agriculture. They include a diverse array of workers, from health-care aides to meat packers, and together could be three to four times the number of farm workers.
The White House would work closely with Congress on pending legislation for a new agriculture guest-worker program, Mr. McClellan said. That program, administration officials said, might serve as a model for a larger temporary-worker initiative.
Indeed, two leaders of a bipartisan guest-worker program, Senators Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon, and Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, met with Elaine L. Chao, the secretary of labor, on Thursday to discuss their ideas.
In the week since the first outline of a legalization plan for Mexicans emerged, more details of the internal deliberations of the administration's working group have become known, like the range of how many Mexicans may qualify.
"The president is pleased with the progress we are making through the high-level working groups," Mr. McClellan said. "We're working toward a shared goal of a more orderly, safe and humane border."
Proponents said that such a guest- worker program, with labor and wage protections built in, would allow Mexicans to travel back and forth across the border without fear of arrest. It would also acknowledge the growing interdependence of the Mexican and American economies.
Mr. Bush's initiative caught Democrats off guard. Championing immigrants' rights has long been one of their most potent issues, especially with Latino voters, and Democratic leaders, while commending the White House's efforts, have sought to up the ante.
"We believe it's time to pass a broad legalization program for undocumented, longtime workers - not just Mexican workers, as some in the administration have suggested," Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority leader, said last week.
Other immigrant groups have demanded inclusion, but they also acknowledge Mexico's special border status with the United States.
"We would wish the administration would legalize everyone, but we're mindful that Mexicans are the largest immigrant group in the U.S.," said Oscar Chacón, president of the Salvadoran-American National Network, an advocacy group, who estimated that about 400,000 of the 1.5 million Salvadorans here are undocumented.
Mr. Bush faces a challenge from Republicans who oppose any legalization plan and support new limits on legal immigration. But the pro- immigrant bloc within his party is applauding a temporary-worker plan that includes legalization.
"The president's goal is to eliminate to a great extent the black market in labor that now exists," said Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican. "That can save lives and improve the marketplace by providing legal and orderly mechanisms for U.S. employers to hire available workers."
Some Republicans, like Senator John Ensign of Nevada, said that Mr. Bush had to publicly support the legalization plan.
"Nobody has the bully pulpit that the president has," said Mr. Ensign, whose aides are scheduled to go to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the proposal. Nevada's Latino population jumped to 349,000 in 2000 from 121,300 in 1990, according to the latest census figures.
Senior Bush administration officials have been reluctant to comment publicly on any plan which still has so many loose ends.
But on Friday, Secretary Powell, while ruling out any blanket amnesty, seemed to embrace a temporary- worker program that would allow for legalization.
"We're proud of the fact that we offer opportunities for people to come to this country and to make a living, some to go back, some to ultimately become American citizens," he said. And then Secretary Powell added, "We want to regularize this. We want to make it less dangerous, less threatening to become a citizen, if that is where your destiny takes you."
Bush Choice Pledges Kinder, Gentler I.N.S.
By Eric Schmitt
The New York Times
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's choice to be the nation's top immigration official distanced himself today from a 1996 Republican- sponsored law that required foreigners entering the United States without proper documents to be detained, often alongside criminals in local jails.
James W. Ziglar, the nominee to be commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said he was especially concerned about the welfare of the 4,600 unaccompanied immigrant children the agency held in custody each year.
"I'm not one who likes the idea of people being detained unless they're convicted of a crime or a danger to society," Mr. Ziglar told the Senate Judiciary Committee in his confirmation hearing.
Instead, Mr. Ziglar said, he favored developing alternatives to allow asylum seekers and other foreigners lacking proper papers to live in the community pending their immigration proceedings. Most of the 20,000 immigrants the agency detains each year are held in shelters or jails.
It was a telling example of the kinder, gentler and more efficient I.N.S. that Mr. Ziglar told senators he would establish if he was confirmed, which Democrats and Republicans said today was a certainty. Mr. Ziglar's words echoed the pro-immigrant sentiments that Mr. Bush has sounded.
In his prepared testimony, Mr. Ziglar said his chief goal would be to ensure that every person who came into contact with the I.N.S. would "be treated with respect and dignity and without any hint of bias or discrimination."
That is a lofty ambition for an agency that has been accused of shoddy and sullen service and of abusing immigrants' rights. "You inherit an agency that's a mess," Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, said.
In a folksy but firm voice, Mr. Ziglar said he understood the challenges facing the agency, and outlined a battle plan to revamp the fast-growing agency that was charged with the often conflicting goals of enforcing the nation's borders and offering benefits and services to its newest residents.
Mr. Ziglar, the sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, urged senators to let him try to fulfill Mr. Bush's goal of restructuring the dual missions of the agency without the complication of unneeded legislation. "An awful lot of reform can be done administratively without going to Congress," he said. Mr. Ziglar, a 55-year-old son of a Mississippi shipyard worker, said another priority would be to improve the sagging morale of the agency's 33,000 employees, and assert his control over the agency's 33 district directors.
Immigrant advocates like Wendy Young of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children gave Mr. Ziglar's comments cautious praise. But, Ms. Young said, "The devil is in the details."
Mr. Ziglar is a former assistant secretary of the interior in the Reagan administration and, most important to his new job, enjoys broad bipartisan respect on Capitol Hill.
In an extraordinary demonstration of that support, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority leader, and Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican leader and Mr. Ziglar's boyhood pal, showed up to vouch for the nominee. "All that's left to be said is, `Amen, let's vote,' " Mr. Daschle said.
Ziglar Backed for USCIS Commissioner
By Suzanne Gamboa
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON –––– Key lawmakers on Wednesday backed James Ziglar, President Bush's pick to head the Immigration and Naturalization Service, despite Ziglar's lack of immigration experience.
"I know he'll do a great job. I know he'll undertake the assignment with great vigor," said Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, who was Ziglar's childhood friend in Pascagoula, Miss.
"All that is left to be said is 'Amen. Let's vote,' " Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., added at the Senate judiciary committee hearing.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., noted the rare consensus of the usual rivals and joked, "Who is this nominee?"
A vote on Ziglar's nomination by Bush will come later. But Ziglar is certain to be confirmed to take over the beleaguered agency that Congress is intent on reforming.
Ziglar has served for the past three years as the Senate sergeant-at-arms and has spent several years in government. He's the former management director for Paine Webber Inc. and Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc.
Lawmakers pointed to his 35 years of management experience as a key asset that will be critical should Congress decide to split the agency's service and enforcement responsibilities.
The bipartisan support Ziglar enjoys in Congress will prove important as Ziglar takes on some challenging immigration issues and helps the administration develop its immigration policy.
The Bush administration is weighing whether to allow some three million Mexican immigrants in the country illegally to become legal residents. The administration also is negotiating a guest worker program with Mexico.
Asked by Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., whether he supports legalizing Mexican immigrants in the country, Ziglar said he had not studied the issue sufficiently.
"I am not anti-immigrant," Ziglar said. Also this year, the Office of Inspector General found that the agency continues to have backlogs in processing naturalization and other immigration applications, although some have improved. Another audit found the agency was deporting criminals without proper escorts.
But Ziglar and his supporters said he is up to the challenge.
"I not only want to work with the Congress, I insist on working with the Congress, because that's the only way we can accomplish any of this," Ziglar said.
Among the issues Senators urged Ziglar to focus on are the detention of immigrant children and humane treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.
Immigration advocacy groups have been concerned about Ziglar's lack of immigration experience, but have not been overtly critical of Bush's choice.
Bush May Legalize Millions
By Deborah McGregor
The Financial Times (U.K.)
WASHINGTON -- It did not take long for influential conservatives in President George W. Bush's Republican party to react negatively to the news that Mr Bush was weighing a plan to grant legal status to several million Mexicans living illegally in the US.
Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who is normally one of the White House's staunchest defenders, called the idea a "very bad policy", saying it "rewards lawlessness".
Mr Gramm's remarks underscored the political gamble Mr Bush is taking as he considers what could represent the most significant change in federal immigration policy in a decade.
Even if the president stops short of an all-out amnesty - as his aides hastily assured the party faithful he would - Mr Bush has marched into a political thicket that will have implications for next year's congressional elections as well as the 2004 presidential election.
Politically sensitive immigration policies emerged last year as a significant source of friction between Democrats and Republicans, as the parties jockeyed for an election-year advantage with various ethnic groups, including Hispanic voters.
Despite his success in attracting Hispanic voters when he was governor of Texas, Mr Bush was unable to duplicate that record as a presidential contender. In last year's elections, Hispanic voters favored Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, by 65 per cent to Mr Bush's 35 per cent.
Republican strategists believe a move to grant more Mexicans legal status would be a powerfully positive signal to Hispanic voters - the fastest growing electoral group in the country.
They are also intent on changing the party's anti-immigrant image. Republicans' standing with Hispanic voters suffered when Pete Wilson, the former Republican governor of California, successfully campaigned in the mid-1990s on a pledge to cut some state benefits to illegal immigrants.
For Mr Bush, a Mexican-friendly immigration move would clearly further his goal of boosting good relations with Vicente Fox, the Mexican president. But it also risks a backlash from those who feel Mexicans are being favored over other Spanish-speaking nationals.
Some Latino groups questioned why 3m Mexicans might be singled out for favorable treatment, when there are an estimated 8.5m undocumented immigrants living in the US.
Tom Daschle, the Democratic Senate leader, said he favored extending legalization to Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and other Hispanics. "I am troubled by this distinction drawn between Mexicans and everybody else."
In the end, however, it will be the reception Mr Bush's initiative receives from his own party that will be most revealing. Mr Gramm said the proposal would be a bad example for 7m Mexican immigrants who have legally applied to enter the US and are waiting to be approved.
He and other conservatives are generally opposed to anything beyond allowing Mexicans to stay as temporary laborers.
Some analysts question whether the political risks outweigh the potential rewards for Mr Bush. Among big states, the Hispanic vote is largest in Texas and California. Yet neither is likely to change - Texas is already Bush country and California is staunchly Democratic.
The more competitive ground can be found in states such as New Mexico, where the growing Hispanic vote turned the state - with only five electoral votes - into a presidential battleground. Mr Gore won it by the narrowest of margins - something that would not have been possible without a strong Latino vote in his favor.
USCIS Automatically Extends the Validity Period of EAD
For Current Honduran and Nicaraguan TPS Class Members
AILA InfoNet, Doc. No. 01070331
WASHINGTON –– In an effort to provide ample time for eligible Hondurans and Nicaraguans to re-register for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and to prevent potential gaps in employment authorization while such individuals wait for their applications to be processed, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (BCIS) today announced an automatic extension of the expiration date of the Employment Authorization Document (EAD) from July 5, 2001 to December 5, 2001, for certain individuals.
Given Service processing capabilities and the number of re-registration applications that the Service anticipates it will receive, it is likely that many re-registrants will receive their new EAD only after the expiration date of their current EAD. This blanket automatic extension is designed to prevent current TPS class members from experiencing a gap in employment authorization.
Beneficiaries need not apply for this extension. However, qualified individuals are encouraged to retain a copy of this News Release for purposes of the employment verification process. Qualified individuals and employers of Honduran or Nicaraguan TPS class members should also consult the Notice of the automatic extension of EADs that is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on July 3, 2001.
For those eligible, it is important to note that this is only a temporary extension that expires on December 5, 2001. After this date, beneficiaries will be required to possess a valid EAD card for purposes of employment verification. Accordingly, Honduran and Nicaraguan TPS class members should re-register for TPS as soon as possible, which includes applying for an EAD extension if they wish to be employment authorized beyond December 5, 2001. The re-registration period ends on August 6, 2001.
The automatic extension applies only to EADs that:
Are issued to Honduran and Nicaraguan nationals (or aliens having no nationality who last habitually resided in Honduras or Nicaragua) who are currently registered under the TPS designations for Honduras or Nicaragua; Bear a July 5, 2001 expiration date; and
Contain either:
- The notation "A-12" or "C-19" on the face of the card under "Category", if the EAD was issued on a Form I-766; or
- The notation "274A.12(A)(12)" or "274A.12(C)(19)" on the face of the card under "Provision of Law," if it was issued on Form I-688B.
All other TPS requirements are accurate and remain in effect.
Additional information concerning the automatic extension will be available on the USCIS website at: www.ins.gov