Landlords Get Few Answers; Lawmakers Get Earful
December 15, 2007
By Richard Mize
The Oklahoman
Landlords looking for tips on how to enforce the state's new anti-illegal immigration law — and personally enforcing the law is exactly what the law requires them to do — left this week's meeting of the Oklahoma City Real Estate Investors Association empty handed after giving two lawmakers an earful.
Neither state Rep. Randy McDaniel, R-Oklahoma City, who voted for House Bill 1804, nor state Rep. Al Lindley, D-Oklahoma City, who voted against it, had any definite answers.
The law, among other things, makes it illegal to harbor, shelter or transport illegal residents. "Harbor” and "shelter” are what have landlords' attention.
Lindley, who is Hispanic, said a lawyer told him the worst thing a landlord could do is ask a renter a bunch of questions about his legal status and citizenship.
Lindley said the lawyer told him: If a renter says his name is "Jose Rodriguez,” he pays with a check that says his name is "Jose Rodriguez” and his mailbox says his name is "Jose Rodriguez,” then "how can you be sheltering or hiding them?”
Do "shelter” and "harbor” mean "hide from the authorities”? What about "conceal”?
If I am in my own house, and you are outside, I am sheltered and concealed. I'm not sure I'm harbored, which can connote good or bad: To harbor refugees is good; to harbor fugitives is bad.
Here's what Section 3.B of the law says:
"It shall be unlawful for any person to conceal, harbor, or shelter from detection any alien in any place, including any building or means of transportation, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the alien has come to, entered, or remained in the United States in violation of law.”
As one angry man in the audience pointed out, lawyers will sort it out — out of court, suing landlords saddled with enforcing a state law while simultaneously obeying federal fair housing laws. It is an untenable situation fraught with opportunity for wild racism, as well as wild abuse of the system.
"I'm ashamed. You don't do your research. You're destroying business,” he said to McDaniel, blaming the Republican leadership even though, to be fair, the law passed overwhelmingly with a majority of both parties in favor, and with Democratic Gov. Brad Henry signing it.
Judges tossed out a couple of premature challenges to the law. Once some effects are clear, someone will challenge it — on a basic equal-protection-under-the-law claim, if nothing else, since some authorities have said they will not emphasize it, and some have said they don't have the resources to enforce it.
Asked about the likelihood of such a challenge, McDaniel said, "We may need to work on the law, but the premise is right.” In the meantime, he said, having landlords check and confirm documentation of renters is a reasonable expectation.
Different communities' different conception of the illegal immigrant problem is part of the problem, he said — and one of the reasons lawmakers acted: They feared a patchwork approach, with cities and towns passing their own different ordinances.
"That's what makes this such a complex issue. ... We need to let this thing go through awhile, and we need to evaluate it,” McDaniel said.
Lawmakers had to do something, he said, because the majority of the electorate was calling for something.
What about "son of House Bill 1804”? That's the legislation that H.B. 1804 author Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, has promised to introduce next session to give authorities the power to size property from those who harbor, conceal or shelter illegal residents, among other things.
One thing that everyone in the meeting room of Crowne Plaza Hotel Thursday night seemed to agree on: Whoa.
Members of the Oklahoma City Real Estate Investors Association — www.okcreia.com — either own rental property or they want to own rental property.
They surely have varying views on the merits of the state taking steps that most of them seem to consider the responsibility of the federal government. But rest assured, they all want their property rights protected.
McDaniel owns rental property.
"I'm concerned about that as a landlord and as a person who wants to see the economy thrive,” McDaniel said. "If you've never been involved with politics, this may be your chance. That's what we call America, when we say, ‘Stand up and let your voice be heard.' ”
Don't know whether Lindley owns rental property, but he's against the existing law and the "son of H.B. 1804” — which he called "S.O.B. of 1804” — because, he said, it's mean-spirited, inhumane and the federal government's responsibility, not the state's.
"The House of Representatives of the state of Oklahoma has no business doing this. We have no authority to do it,” he said. "The Oklahoma House of Representatives is jerking on your chain. We're going to take away your property if you're not a good immigration agent. "Beware: "S.O.B of 1804,” Lindley said, "is coming to get us. It's coming to get people.”
Judge Dismisses Immigration Law Challenge
by Marie Price
The Journal Record December 14, 2007
OKLAHOMA CITY – A Tulsa federal judge has dismissed the latest challenge to Oklahoma’s tough new immigration law.
U.S. District Judge James Payne threw out the lawsuit for similar reasons a previous legal challenge was dismissed: failure of the some plaintiffs to outline the injuries they allege are caused by the law, most of which took effect Nov. 1. Other sections become effective in July.
In the October dismissal, the court said the plaintiffs were unable to prove they had standing to challenge the law.
Payne also said the illegal alien plaintiffs complained of grievances that could best be remedied “by simple compliance with federal law.”
“Both categories of plaintiffs must be dismissed for lack of standing, either on constitutional or prudential grounds,” Payne said in his opinion.
Both lawsuits were filed by the National Coalition of Latino Clergy Inc., several churches, a construction company, a restaurant and several John and Jane Does who are illegal immigrants.
An attempt to block the law from taking effect on Nov. 1 while the legal case continued ultimately failed.
“Plaintiffs’ complaint is breathtakingly broad,” Payne said of the new legal challenge. “By the court’s count, the seventy-six page complaint attempts to challenge sixteen separate statutes, under twenty-one different state and federal constitutional provisions and statutes, and on behalf of eighteen different plaintiffs.”
Payne said the lead plaintiff failed to identify an individual member that had standing to sue, leading to the group’s dismissal from the suit for lack of standing. He also found that, because the two churches cannot be prosecuted under the law, they also lack standing. One church’s challenge to language applying to employers was turned down because that language is not yet in effect.
Payne said the construction company and the restaurant also lack standing to challenge provisions not yet effective.
Of the individual plaintiffs, the judge said they complain of injuries speculative in nature. He said they ask the court to presume that they will engage in criminal activity, be arrested, prosecuted and denied bail by a judge.
“The court cannot engage in such presumptions,” Payne said.
He found that some individual plaintiffs have standing under the constitutional case-or-controversy requirement to challenge certain provisions, but fail under “prudential standing” analysis, which involves judicially self-imposed limits on the exercise of federal jurisdiction.
“This court is convinced that the proper remedy for the injuries alleged by the remaining plaintiffs – all of whom are in willing violation of federal immigration law – is not judicial intervention, rather, it is simple compliance with federal immigration law,” Payne said. “Therefore, the court must prudentially decline to recognize standing on the part of these plaintiffs.”
Payne noted, however, that the court might reach a different conclusion if the case involved child plaintiffs whose unlawful presence in the U.S. is involuntary.
State Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, chief architect of the immigration statute, said Payne’s decision to dismiss the case vindicates Terrill’s view that the law would withstand any legal challenge.
“The opponents of House Bill 1804 tried to accomplish through the legal process what they could not accomplish through the legislative process,” Terrill said.
FAIR Named as Hate Group
December 11, 2007
SPLC Report
The Southern Poverty Law Center announced its designation of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) as a hate group operating in the U.S. according to a report released Dec.11, 2007. (View report : http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=846 )
UCLA Researchers Find Latinos in the U.S. Illegally are 50% Less Likely to Visit Emergency Rooms
Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2007
Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries are 50% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms in California, according to a study published Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
The cost of providing healthcare and other government services to illegal immigrants looms large in the national debate over immigration.
In Los Angeles County, much of the focus of that debate has been on hospital emergency rooms. Ten have closed in the last five years, citing losses from treating the uninsured, and those that remain open are notorious for backlogs.
By federal law, hospitals must treat every emergency, regardless of a person's insurance -- or immigration -- status. Illegal immigrants, who often work at jobs that don't offer health insurance, are commonly seen as driving both the closures and the crowding.
But the study found that while illegal immigrants are indeed less likely to be insured, they are also less likely to visit a doctor, clinic or emergency room.
'The current policy discourse that undocumented immigrants are a burden on the public because they overuse public resources is not borne out with data, for either primary care or emergency department care,' said Alexander N. Ortega, an associate professor at UCLA's School of Public Health and the study's lead author. 'In fact, they seem to be underutilizing the system, given their health needs.'
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that lobbies for tougher immigration controls, said that usage rates are just one measure of illegal immigrants' effect on healthcare. The other factor, he said, is the cost to taxpayers, which Ortega's study did not examine.
Cost estimates vary widely. A Rand Corp. study published last year in the journal Health Affairs put the cost of healthcare for illegal immigrants nationwide at $1.1 billion a year, excluding care for those younger than 18 and older than 64.
FAIR called the Rand number a 'low-ball' estimate. Its own study of healthcare costs of illegal immigrants and their dependents, including U.S.-born children, estimated California's portion alone to be about $1.5 billion a year.
Mehlman said $1.5 billion 'is still a significant amount of money, unless you're Bill Gates.'
Ortega's study is not the first to find that illegal immigrants use fewer healthcare services than people born in the U.S. But his study used the largest sample, analyzing data from 42,044 participants of the 2003 California Health Interview Survey, a randomized telephone survey conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Department of Public Health.
And while other studies have attributed lower usage to immigrants simply being younger and healthier than the overall population, the study published Monday took into account age, health status, insurance status and poverty level. All such factors being equal, it found, immigrants still made fewer visits to physicians and were 30% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to have a regular source of healthcare.
Dr. Felix Nuñez, a Los Angeles-based family physician and former medical director of the South Central Family Health Center, said the findings confirm what he sees in clinics.
Illegal immigrants are infrequent patients for primary care visits, he said, because being asked for ID cards, Social Security numbers and employment histories makes them nervous. They fear being reported to authorities, even though the information is used only to determine Medi-Cal eligibility or to set a sliding-scale fee.
What did surprise Nuñez was the relatively low use of emergency rooms by illegal immigrants.
'My gut would have told me that they'd be higher users of emergency services because they're not coming in for routine, preventive care,' he said. 'This kind of study is really important because it forces you to look at the data and rethink your assumptions.'
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Archives of Internal Medicine report is available (for purchase) online at: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/167/21/2354
Police Join Feds to Tackle Immigration
By Daniel C. Vock
The Stateline News, November 27, 2007
When Alabama state trooper Darryl Zuchelli stopped a van going 18 mph over the speed limit on a routine patrol two months ago, he quickly became part of the federal government’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.
Two of the five people in the van were from India and had overstayed their allotted time in the United States. The trooper worked with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Birmingham, Ala., more than 700 miles from the nearest international border, to start deportation proceedings against the two that night.
Zuchelli is one of 56 Alabama troopers to receive special training and high-tech tools from the U.S. government to determine whether criminal suspects are in the country legally. Alabama was only the second state to partner with ICE when it signed up in 2003, following Florida.
Now the partnership known as the 287 (g) program is skyrocketing in popularity – 34 state and local law enforcement agencies in 15 states are on board and another 77 have applied. The program offers one of the few ways states and localities can help crack down on illegal immigration, a federal duty.
But deputizing local officers to help enforce federal immigration laws draws critics who question whether it could hamper police officers’ ability to do their core duties, because it could scare off immigrants from reporting crime and could lead to racial profiling. Those concerns are a big reason the program has been a politically loaded issue in some areas.
In Alabama, the specially trained officers work both on the road and in driver’s license facilities. Combating license fraud was one of the main reasons Alabama authorities were interested in the program, said Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Martha Earnhardt.
The licensing division runs a criminal background check on every applicant, and the ICE training helps the office screen for even more offenders, she said. The agency arrests 4,000 people a year who apply for licenses, for offenses ranging from fraud to child abuse to murder.
Zuchelli, a 32-year-old who led Alabama state troopers with the most drunken driving arrests last year (129), said the immigration training makes him a better police officer with the added incentive that “I may be able to take out a terrorist before he does something else to us.”
But activists for immigrants are wary.
“I don’t see how states and localities can enforce immigration law without engaging in racial profiling. The people they ask to prove their immigration status or citizenship are the people who look or sound foreign,” said Joan Friedland, immigration policy director for the National Immigration Law Center, a group that supports immigrant rights.
Alabama state police say they’ve worked with immigrant communities and civil rights groups to try to allay fears about the program, particularly about racial profiling.
Still, after meeting with the state police, representatives from the Alabama chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union had just as many concerns as they did before the meeting, said Sam Brooke, a law fellow with the group.
Kevin Butler, a lawyer who represents poor defendants against the federal government, alleged in court papers that one state trooper was targeting out-of-state Hispanic drivers for traffic stops and searches and asked state police for detailed information on the stops made by him. Butler’s preliminary review concluded that 58 percent of the vehicle searches the officer conducted were of Hispanic motorists, even though Hispanics make up 2 percent of Alabama’s population.
A judge ordered the state police to turn over the information, but the case settled before they complied.
Other activists worry that the 287 (g) program will discourage immigrants from talking to all police officers, even though in Alabama, for example, the state police are the only ones that, in effect, can work as immigration authorities.
“I’m not sure there’s a real clear understanding about the difference between the uniform of the state trooper, the sheriff’s deputy and the local beat cop,” said Isabel Rubio, executive director of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama in Birmingham.
Some law enforcement groups echo that concern.
“Immigration enforcement by local police would likely negatively effect and undermine the level of trust and cooperation between local police and immigrant communities,” concluded the Major Cities Chiefs, a group of more than 50 big city police chiefs, in a report issued last year.
But ICE spokesman Mike Gilhoody said the program is specifically designed to decrease crime – not scare immigrants. Local police don’t participate in workplace raids, and they don’t pursue immigration questions unless they have evidence a crime has been committed.
“The goal is criminal activity. The goal has never been and never will be (apprehending) victims,” he said.
Across the country, more than 30,000 people have been charged with immigration-related offenses by local and state authorities over the last three years. Nearly 600 officers are now trained to handle immigration cases.
Officers undergo a five-week training course that includes instruction on civil rights and immigration laws, federal prohibitions on racial profiling, cross-cultural issues and treaty obligations that require officers to notify foreign consulates about certain arrests.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the Massachusetts Department of Corrections are using their immigration authority to screen inmates, while four police departments in northwest Arkansas have set up an illegal immigration task force that’s nabbed 79 suspected immigration offenders in its first month.
But the program can be a dicey political issue, as it has been in Virginia.
There, Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, has rebuffed a proposal by Attorney General Bob McDonnell, a Republican, to let the state police, corrections officers and drivers’ facility staff participate in the program.
“It’s not the state’s position to step in when the federal government abdicates its responsibility,” because state workers should focus on their own jobs, Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey said.
After a Peruvian immigrant was arrested in connection with the shooting of three college students in Newark, N.J., Attorney General Anne Milgram stepped up pressure on criminals in the country illegally by establishing uniform rules on when police should call immigration authorities. But Milgram stopped short of enrolling local officers in the 287(g) program.
Also responding to the Newark slayings, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt (R) directed state law enforcement agencies to prepare to join the program and encouraged local departments to do the same.
Shortly before his unsuccessful November re-election bid, Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) said the state prison system would ask to join the 287(g) program. Lawmakers in Oklahoma also gave its state police the green light to participate in the program this spring.
Okla. Immigration Bill Hitting Business
By Tim Talley
The Associated Press, November 26, 2007
Oklahoma City (AP) -- Maxine Grider knows all too well how much her grocery store in south Oklahoma City relies on the area's Latino community to stay in the black.
Since a state law that targets illegal immigrants went into effect almost one month ago, business at Grider's Discount Foods has been off between $50,000 and $75,000 a week.
'It's hit us pretty bad,' said Grider, who has operated her grocery store at the same location for 45 years. 'I'm sure not satisfied with sales.'
If the trend continues, the store will start losing money and its very survival could be threatened.
'It affects your bottom line tremendously,' Grider said.
Retailers and employers whose success depends on Latino business and workers have felt the pinch since Oklahoma's anti-illegal immigrant law went into effect on Nov. 1. Some undocumented immigrants have left the state and others are reluctant to venture outside of their homes.
'There is a definite shortage of workers,' said Mike Seney, senior vice president of operations for The State Chamber, a business and industry group that represents 1,500 employers statewide.
With Oklahoma's unemployment rate at just 4.2 percent of the labor force _ lower than the national rate of 4.7 percent _ contractors and businesses need workers to fill their labor pools, Seney said.
'They're having trouble finding crews. Some families are just saying, 'I'm out of here,'' Seney said. 'I think we're going to have some problems.'
Reliable estimates on the number of illegal immigrants that have moved to other states or back to their own country are not available. But Oklahoma homebuilders lost an estimated 10 percent of their work force after the law went into effect, said Mike Means, executive vice president of the Oklahoma State Home Builders Association.
'Some people it seems to have hit pretty hard. In other instances the effect has been negligible,' Means said.
Home builders expect home prices to go up due to higher labor costs and delays in getting jobs done, Means said.
'When your labor pool tightens up, you may have to wait two weeks to get a roof, or maybe three weeks,' he said.
Changes are needed in the law to counteract its negative economic consequences, said Jim Hopper, president and CEO of the Oklahoma Hotel & Lodging Association. Hopper said many of his organization's 250 members have been scrambling to find workers since the law went into effect.
'We're going to be working on the legislation in February to amend it and make it a little bit more palatable for the work force in Oklahoma _ and for the employers,' Hopper said.
'We'd like to see the law set aside and maybe reworked,' Means said. 'All we're doing is running them out of Oklahoma and passing them on to somebody else.'
'Word is out that this law is too extreme,' said businessman Chip Oppenheim, who owns Oklahoma City's Economy Square shopping center where Grider's Discount Foods is located.
'These people buy cars, they buy gas, they buy bread, they buy homes. And you're telling them to leave?' Oppenheim said. 'A lot of people didn't know what they were passing when they voted yes on this.'
Seney and others said they believe immigration policy is the responsibility of the federal government and that state regulations are pre-empted by federal law. He said The State Chamber is working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on a possible lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of Oklahoma's immigration law.
'You can't handle this thing at the state level. It's physically impossible to do so,' he said.
The immigration statute was adopted by the Legislature last spring and signed into law by Gov. Brad Henry. It received bipartisan support from state lawmakers who expressed frustration with Congress' inability to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
Among other things, it bars illegal immigrants from receiving taxpayer-supported services and imposes requirements on employers to verify the immigration status and employment eligibility of their workers. Employers who willfully hire illegal aliens would be penalized under the statute.
The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Religious Leaders and others have challenged the law in U.S. District Court in Tulsa. The coalition alleges the law targets illegal immigrants and has harmed several people. A federal judge has not handed down a ruling.
Immigration Authorities Swamped in Bureaucratic Backlogs
New York Times
By Julia Preston
November 23, 2007
Immigration authorities are swamped in new bureaucratic backlogs resulting from an unanticipated flood last summer of applications for citizenship and for residence visas, officials said.
In July and August alone, the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency received 2.5 million applications, including petitions for naturalization as well as for the entire range of immigrant visas. That was more than double the total applications it received in the same two months in 2006, said a spokesman, Bill Wright.
In the 2007 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the agency received 1.4 million petitions from legal immigrants to become United States citizens, about double the number of naturalization petitions in the 2006 fiscal year, Mr. Wright said.
The surge began after Jan. 31 when the immigration agency announced fee increases averaging 66 percent for most applications, official figures show. The increases went into effect July 30. The contentious tenor of the immigration debate also prompted legal immigrants to apply for citizenship. “We did our absolute best to foresee the surge we would have,” Mr. Wright said. “We certainly were surprised by such an immediate increase with such a volume.”
The deluge has been so great that the agency is struggling to send out notices acknowledging it has received the applications. According to a special Web page the agency set up for applicants, as of Nov. 16 the agency’s processing center in Texas is sending out receipts for naturalization petitions that arrived by July 26. The processing center in Vermont is just now acknowledging naturalization petitions that came in by July 30.
Also contributing to the surge are about 300,000 applications in July and August for legal permanent resident visas, commonly known as green cards, from highly skilled immigrants. The jump in applications for the employment-based green cards resulted from the resolution of a mix-up in June between Immigration and Citizenship Services and the State Department, which is responsible for making visas available. The agencies had first invited the applications, then said they would not be accepted. They then reversed course, agreeing to accept them.
Immigration officials said it could take more than a year to decide many of the recent applications.
The processing backlogs are different from the visa backlogs that have burdened the United States immigration system for years. Because of annual limits on all green cards, immigrants from some countries like Mexico and the Philippines often have to wait decades for visas to become available. Now the agency has fallen behind on the bureaucratic work of logging in applications and deciding whether to grant visas or allow immigrants to become United States citizens.
In addition to the fee increase, the rush of naturalization requests was also prompted by anti-immigrant language in the debate over immigration policy this year, lawyers and advocates for immigrants said. Also, the immigration authorities had announced they were preparing a new, more difficult test for aspiring citizens, which they unveiled in September.
“People are scared,” said Ignacio Donoso, an immigration lawyer at the Monty Partners firm in Houston. “And they want to avoid the fees, and they do not want to face a more demanding test. So you are going to have people running like mad to apply, yet the government doesn’t hire any more staff to handle it.”
Citizenship and Immigration Services is required by Congress to draw most of its operating budget from fees. When the agency head, Emilio T. Gonzalez, announced the fee increases in January, he pledged that the agency would become more efficient and reduce wait times for deciding applications. Fees for naturalization, for example, increased 66 percent, to $675 from $405.
The agency plans to use the higher revenues to hire 1,500 employees, an increase of about 10 percent over its current staff of 15,000, Mr. Wright said. For the time being, agency employees have volunteered to work overtime to help clear the backlog.
Much of the rush for naturalization came from legal Latino immigrants. Hispanic organizations, including the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, and Univision, the Spanish-language television network, led a nationwide naturalization campaign this year in which hundreds of thousands of longtime legal immigrants signed up to become citizens.
Immigration officials said they would work to complete naturalization petitions in time for new citizens to vote in the elections next November. They strongly denied that the delays had any partisan political motivation.
“We know what this issue is,” Mr. Wright said, but he cautioned there were limits to how much the agency could expedite its procedures.
“We are not going to sacrifice quality or security to speed up just to get the numbers,” he said.
Critical Response to Study Downplaying Farm Labor Shortage
Nationally renowned agricultural economist Dr. James S. Holt has issued an analysis entitled "The Case for Agricultural Immigration Reform" which is highly critical of the "superficial and complacent conclusions" reached by Dr. Phillip Martin in a recent study on farm labor. Dr. Martin's study, "Immigration Reform and Farm Labor Shortages", concludes that farm labor shortages are not a reality and has been touted by restrictionists groups as an excuse for continued Congressional inaction on immigration reform.
However, Dr. Holt contends that the analysis is extremely superficial, and the conclusions are inconsistent with the data. Most importantly, the study ignores the most relevant data -- data that clearly point to a severe shortage of legal U.S. agricultural workers and raise troubling public policy questions. Dr. Holt concludes by stating that:
"Unless Congress acts to address the crisis in a timely manner, America faces a steady loss of control of our food supply as imports increase and American market share declines. U.S. producers must struggle to use a limited and unresponsive temporary worker program known as H-2A, or risking devastating consequences if targeted for raids."
Border Patrol Gets Tough in Laredo
Some worry crackdown on illegal immigrants will overwhelm courts
By David McLemore
The Dallas Morning News, November 1, 2007
Laredo -- The operation began quietly Tuesday in Laredo as the Border Patrol apprehended 31 illegal immigrants from Mexico in the urban area.
Until this week, most of the 31 arrested would have been eligible for 'voluntary departure' – put on a bus once they passed a criminal background check and returned to Mexico without charges.
But from now on, under Operation Streamline, all illegal immigrants caught in Laredo will be sent to federal court for misdemeanor charges of entry without inspection, a trial and deportation. If they return, they face felony charges and jail time.
The Border Patrol cites the success of Operation Streamline in Del Rio and Yuma, Ariz., where apprehensions dropped 60 to 70 percent. And the agency says the tactic will make for a 'safer community by reducing illegal border crossings and the crimes associated with illegal immigration and smuggling' on the border. Congress' failure earlier this year to produce a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration laws has fueled tensions across the country as cities and states have tried to come up with their own solutions.
Court officials and public defenders in Laredo fear the Border Patrol's new tactic will produce an overwhelming increase in a federal court docket already jammed with drug and felony human smuggling cases.
The problem is a matter of scale. Last fiscal year, the Border Patrol apprehended 54,911 illegal immigrants in the Del Rio Sector. In Laredo, it caught more than 90,000 illegal immigrants – 74,840 from Mexico alone.
'We're pretty much in a wait-and-see mode. If we see an increase in 70,000 misdemeanor cases, I can't imagine any part of the courts system will have the resources to deal with it,' said Marjorie Meyers, director of the Federal Public Defenders office for the U.S. Southern District of Texas.
Border Patrol officials cite the successes Operation Streamline brought upriver in Del Rio. Since it was launched in Del Rio in December 2005, apprehensions of Mexican citizens dropped 66.5 percent.
In addition, drug seizures increased by 66 percent in the Del Rio sector as Border Patrol agents were able to shift more resources to drug interdiction, Border Patrol officials said. The U.S. Attorney's office said that from December 2005, when Streamline was activated, to February 2006, 1,600 illegal entrants were prosecuted in Del Rio.
In Yuma, another high-traffic smuggling area, apprehensions declined by more than 70 percent after the initiative began in January. Immigration prosecutions doubled with more than 2,800 cases. Of those, about 300 were felony cases.
'I am confident that Streamline-Laredo will contribute to a safer community by reducing illegal border crossings and the crimes associated with illegal immigration and smuggling on our border,' said Carlos X. Carrillo, chief of the Laredo Border Patrol sector.
The reduction in illegal traffic, he said, would allow agents to focus on more serious threats, 'such as terrorism, border violence, and narcotics smuggling.'
Initially, Operation Streamline in Laredo will cover only the city area. Eventually it will extend to the entire sector, a region that covers 171 miles of riverfront and parts of 116 counties.
'Zero-tolerance zones'
Under Streamline, voluntary departure is a thing of the past in the so-called zero-tolerance zones. Anyone caught entering illegally where Streamline is in place will be prosecuted in federal court and charged with a misdemeanor for the first offense. Any subsequent illegal entry may be prosecuted as a felony.
The maximum penalty is six months in jail and removal from the U.S.
Those convicted are then barred from legal reentry for five years; 20 years for a second removal. Conviction of an aggravated felony would result in a permanent bar to reentry.
Senior Agent Ricardo Benavides of the Laredo sector believes the history of Streamline in Del Rio and Yuma will repeat itself in his busy area.
'We see this as a proactive approach to securing the border,' Agent Benavides said. 'There will be an early spike in the case load, but we're sure it will go down as it did in Del Rio once word gets around to the smugglers that everyone we apprehend is going to court.'
During a drive around Laredo, he pointed out how geography conspires to make the city a major smuggling crossing point.
'The river curves around the city. Almost anywhere you are, Mexico is just a short distance away,' he said. 'That makes the entire city a crossing point.
'Streamline doesn't change the Border Patrol's mission,' he said. 'Our job is to protect the border, initiative or no initiative. But Streamline gives us a way to get a hold on the problem.'
Statistics from Del Rio show that just about half of one percent of those caught up in Streamline's net have been apprehended trying to reenter illegally within the Del Rio sector, Agent Benavides said.
'Deaths of those crossing illegally are down 50 percent,' he said. 'If we can see that result alone, Streamline will be a success.'
A hint of the future came Wednesday morning, when 27 people were brought before U.S. Magistrate Adriana Arce-Flores to enter a plea for misdemeanor illegal entry.
A federal public defender visited briefly with each one as they lined up three deep, listening to a Spanish translation of the judge's reading of their cases.
When Judge Arce-Flores asked if they wanted to enter a plea, they replied in unison: 'Culpable,' or 'Guilty.' The judge then sentenced 22 to three years of probation, while the remainder received sentences of 30 to 60 days because of too many prior deportations.
'You have to understand, this is a normal day. The Streamline cases haven't been processed yet,' said Laredo lawyer Julio Garcia, who represents numerous immigration clients. 'We're going to see dramatic increases in people before this court. Everyone is preparing for it, but they're going to need another district judge and a magistrate to handle the increase.'
Criminal histories
For the most part, Mr. Garcia said, the misdemeanor immigration cases involve people who come to the U.S. to find work and to take care of their families.
'These are predominantly not violent criminals,' he said. 'But now, the government is developing a criminal history for them,'
'Not only will they have a misdemeanor conviction, but if they get probation and get caught again, not only will they be charged with a felony, but they'll be in violation of probation,' he said.
Lisa Graybill, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, agreed.
'What this initiative does is criminalize a civil offense that will just make more felons,' she said. 'We're always concerned with the legitimate needs of government to police the border when it infringes on an individual's right to due process.'
What isn't clear is whether the court system can handle the shock of the increased caseload.
A study by Thomas J. Bak of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, showed that prior to Streamline, immigration filings in the U.S. Southern District of Texas had jumped dramatically, going to 4,600 in 2005 from 1,700 in 2000. Immigration cases along the entire Southwestern border jumped to 13,000 in 2005 from 7,800 in 2001.
'Even though apprehensions may plunge due to the deterrent effect (thus easing the burden on the Border Patrol), the necessity of continually prosecuting all illegal immigrants will insure that the judiciary, and elements associated with the judiciary, will experience workloads exceeding the pre-Operation Streamline level,' Mr. Bak wrote.
Those who work in the federal judicial system, like Ms. Meyers of the Federal Public Defenders office, realize Streamline is a reality.
'We'll just have to see what happens,' she said. 'But our priority is to ensure that everyone charged with a crime receives effective counsel. If we represent someone, we'll determine the legal issues and fight to defend them. And if the caseload gets too big to do that, we'll tell the judges we can't take anymore cases.'
Latino Head of RNC Resigns
By Peter Wallsten
Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2007
Washington, DC -- The Republican Party's highest-ranking Latino official abruptly resigned Friday, marking the latest casualty in the GOP's bitter internal fight over immigration and dealing another setback to President Bush's years-long effort to court Latino voters.
The announcement by Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida that he was quitting as general chairman of the Republican National Committee came after he had expressed frustration over the tenor of the immigration debate within his party. Martinez will remain in his Senate post.
'Mel Martinez was a symbol of the party's outreach to Latinos, and that seems to be disappearing,' said Lionel Sosa, a longtime Republican strategist and advisor to GOP presidents since Ronald Reagan. 'It is not a good day for Latino Republicans, that's for sure.'
The White House had engineered the ascent of the Cuban-born Martinez over the objections of many conservatives as part of an effort to repair the GOP's image among Latinos. That image suffered when Republican congressional leaders and conservative activists stymied administration-backed measures that would have created a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
Some GOP strategists say the party's poor performance among Latino voters in 2006 helped ensure Democratic victories across the country. Now, some worry that Martinez's early exit from the RNC foreshadows more trouble in 2008.
Robert de Posada, president of the Republican-leaning Latino Coalition, said Martinez's departure is especially disheartening because it follows the resignation of another high-profile Latino in the GOP: former U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.
'The message that it sends is Latinos are not welcome,' De Posada said. 'The radical conservative base has a temporary victory right now.'
The RNC will be run by Mike Duncan, who shared the title of chairman and was responsible for the party's day-to-day operations.
A statement by Martinez released by the RNC did not mention the immigration issue or the courtship of Latino voters, topics that dominated Martinez's inauguration as chairman in January. Instead, the senator lauded himself for his efforts to 'articulate the party's core values on vital national issues ranging from funding our troops to winning the war on terror to the promotion of fiscally conservative policies.'
Bush issued a brief statement saying that Martinez 'represented the best of the Republican Party and its core values.'
But Martinez's frustration was well known. He had warned that a continuation of the GOP's 2006 tactics -- airing anti-illegal immigration television ads that many believed used ethnic stereotypes -- could doom the party's hope of competing for the country's fastest-growing voter bloc.
Those tactics, strategists said, erased many of the gains achieved by Bush and his chief political advisor, Karl Rove, who had been assiduously courting Latinos since Bush's first run for Texas governor in 1994.
In 2004, after an intense bilingual campaign, Bush won an estimated 40% of the Latino vote, helping ensure his reelection. Republicans won just 30% of the Latino vote in 2006. Next year's election could be decided by Latino-rich states such as Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.
'I believe that not to play this card right would be the destruction of our party,' Martinez said in a spring interview with the Los Angeles Times. 'Hispanics make up about 13% of our country, and by 2020 will be closer to 20%. It is a demographic trend that one cannot overlook.'
The debate over courting Latino voters has split the GOP, with each side charging that the other would destroy the party's hopes of regaining a majority.
Critics of the GOP's Latino outreach have accused Bush, Rove and Martinez of compromising core conservative principles in their support for creating a path to amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
Opinion leaders such as talk show host Rush Limbaugh have charged that loosening immigration laws would only hurt Republicans, because new immigrants tend to register as Democrats.
The party base appears to be winning the fight.
The top Republican candidates for president, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, are promising to be tougher on illegal immigration.
Of the higher-profile GOP candidates, only Sen. John McCain of Arizona has accepted an invitation to participate in a debate sponsored by the Spanish-language television network Univision.
New US Visas Offered to Crime Victims
By Roxana Hegeman
The Associated Press, October 19, 2007
Wichita, KN (AP) -- Illegal immigrants who are victims of violent crimes in the U.S. can now apply for special visas, seven years after Congress offered protection against deportation to those who cooperate with law enforcement agencies.
The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services is finally starting to process the visas this week, agency spokeswoman Marilu Cabrera said.
The long delay occurred largely because the agency drafted rules for issuing the so-called 'U' visas before it became a division of the then-new Department of Homeland Security, she said. Consequently, the rules had to be reviewed again. Then the Department of Justice had concerns, she said.
'It is legally very complex, and so it went back and forth for a while,' Cabrera said.
The 2000 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act established the visa to encourage illegal immigrants to report crimes against them in return for the right to remain in the United States and eventually apply for permanent residency.
'This is an extremely important visa for individuals who have been victims of a crime,' Cabrera said. 'It is helpful for the government that we get information and cooperation so we can solve these crimes and prevent future crimes. For the person, it gives them peace of mind and an opportunity for a new life.'
The law authorized up to 10,000 'U' visas every year. The visas are good for up to four years, and visa holders who are in the U.S. continuously for three years can apply for permanent residency.
Critics are concerned about that provision.
'I would much prefer that we used it as a temporary visa, not an immigrant visa — something that allowed a person to testify but didn't give them the jackpot of a green card,' said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors limits on immigration.
Ed Hayes, the Kansas director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, is more vigorous in his opposition to the program. He argues that there are many more American victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants than illegal immigrants who are crime victims.
'If they are here illegally, they broke the law,' Hayes said. 'If they become a victim, I am sorry for them. They should testify and then go home.'
Since the law was passed, 8,301 petitioners and their families have been granted interim relief from deportation while awaiting publication of the 'U' visa rules. They now have 180 days to apply for the special visas.
Among those who qualified for deferred action was Eleuterio Rodriguez Ruiz, who said he hopes to get a visa that will allow him to travel to Mexico to see his parents.
'More than anything I came to this country to find a better standard of living, maybe even buy a house,' he said in Spanish in a phone interview from Sacramento, Calif., where he works as a field hand harvesting fruit.
The 30-year-old Mexican citizen was one of seven people held at gunpoint at an Arizona rest stop by an Army reservist as they were crossing illegally into the United States.
Rodriguez Ruiz said he cooperated with authorities, who subsequently filed aggravated assault charges against Sgt. Patrick Haab. The county attorney later dropped the charges, citing a state law that allows citizens to make an arrest when a felony has been committed.
The delay in the 'U' visa program led a coalition of civil rights groups to file a class-action lawsuit in 2005 against Citizen and Immigration Services and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
'We intend to continue the fight for immigrant crime victims. ... Because it was a largely poor, vulnerable population with no political clout, it took seven years,' said Peter A. Schey, lead counsel in the lawsuit.
Schey wants Citizen and Immigration Services to allow more than 10,000 annual 'U' visas to compensate for the delay.
He also opposes restrictions giving victims only six months to apply for the visa and the requirement that petitioners be certified as crime victims by a law enforcement agency or prosecutor.
'Hundreds of thousands of law enforcement agencies will not see fit to certify them. They don't know about it, don't want to get involved or don't care,' Schey said.
Angela Ferguson, an immigration attorney in Kansas City, Mo., who has handled about 50 deferred action cases for 'U' visas, doubts the program will change immigrants' attitudes toward police.
'I don't think it is going to help them trust law enforcement more,' she said. 'The fear is being stirred up everywhere — the fear of racial profiling, the rumors, the raids. I have people for the first time coming into my office and saying they are giving up and leaving.'
Judge Blocks Bush Measure on Illegal Workers
By Julia Preston
New York Times
October 11, 2007
A federal judge in San Francisco today ordered an indefinite delay on a central measure of the Bush administration’s new strategy to curb illegal immigration.
The judge, Charles R. Breyer of federal court for the Northern District of California, said the government had failed to follow proper procedures for issuing a new rule aimed at getting employers to fire illegal employees whose Social Security numbers can not be immediately verified.
He chastised the Department of Homeland Security for making a policy change with “massive ramifications” for employers, without giving any legal explanation or conducting a required survey of the costs and impact for small business.
Under the rule issued by the Bush administration, which had been scheduled to take effect on Sept. 14, employers would be forced to fire workers within 90 days after receiving a notice from the Social Security Administration that an employee’s identity information did not match the agency’s records.
The rule, announced with fanfare in August by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, was the linchpin of the administration’s effort to crack down on illegal immigration by denying jobs to the immigrants, part of a campaign of stepped-up enforcement since broader immigration legislation favored by President Bush was rejected by Congress in June.
If allowed to take effect, the judge found, the rule could lead to the firing of many thousands of legally authorized workers, resulting in “irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers.”
The decision brought a sense of relief to the unusual coalition behind the lawsuit, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the United States Chamber of Commerce, normally adversaries.
They had feared the measure would bring mass layoffs in low-wage industries, sweeping up both illegal and legal workers and disrupting the labor force. It was an awkward disappointment for Mr. Chertoff, a former federal judge, who was relying on the rule as an enforcement tool since Congress left him with few other options.
“We will continue to aggressively enforce our immigration laws while reviewing all legal options available to us in response to this ruling,” Mr. Chertoff said in a statement today.
Mr. Chertoff said the Bush administration was doing “as much administratively as we can, within the boundaries of existing law” to crack down on illegal immigration, but he called on Congress to revisit legislation to give legal status to illegal immigrants and impose even tougher enforcement measures.
Some conservative lawmakers, who argue for vigorous enforcement of the immigration laws should as a priority, said they were outraged.
“What part of ‘illegal’ does Judge Breyer not understand?” said Representative Brian Bilbray, a California Republican who is chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. “Using a Social Security number that does not belong to you is a felony. Judge Breyer is compromising the rule of law principles that he took an oath to uphold.”
The rule establishes steps an employer must follow after receiving a notice from the Social Security Administration, known as a no-match letter, reporting that an employee’s identity information does not match the agency’s records.
If the employee could not clarify the mismatch by providing valid information within 90 days, employers would be required to fire the worker or risk prosecution for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. Immigrants often provide false Social Security numbers when applying for jobs.
Before it took effect, the rule was held up temporarily on Aug. 31 by another judge in the San Francisco court, Maxine M. Chesney, to give time for Judge Breyer to consider it.
Today, Judge Breyer ordered a halt to the rule until the court can reach a final decision in the case, which could take many months. The judge made it clear he is skeptical of many of the government’s arguments.
The decision also bars the Social Security Administration from sending out about 141,000 no-match letters, covering more than eight million employees, which include notices from Homeland Security explaining the new rule. Other groups bringing the lawsuit include the American Civil Liberties Union, the San Francisco Labor Council, and several national and local small business associations.
Judge Breyer found that the Social Security database that the rule would draw upon was laden with errors not related to a worker’s immigration status, which could result in no-match letters being sent to legally authorized workers. “There is a strong likelihood that employers may simply fire employees who are unable to resolve the discrepancy within 90 days,” even if they are legal, the judge wrote.
Lucas Guttentag, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the government had demonstrated “a callous disregard for legal workers and citizens by adopting a rule that punished innocent workers and employers under the guise of immigration enforcement.” A.F.L.-C.I.O officials had estimated that some 600,000 of their members who were legal workers could receive the letters and be vulnerable to dismissal.
In a December 2006 report cited in the court documents, the inspector general of the Social Security Administration estimated that 17.8 million of the agency’s 435 million individual records include discrepancies that could result in a no-match letter being sent to a legally authorized worker. Of those records with errors, 12.7 million belonged to native-born American citizens, the report found.
In a letter on Sept. 18 to Mr. Chertoff, the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration supported a claim in the suit that federal officials had failed to carry out a required analysis of the impact on small businesses before announcing the new rule. The office is independent from the Small Business Administration, which supported the rule.
Judge Charles Breyer is the brother of a Supreme Court justice, Stephen G. Breyer, and was nominated by President Clinton in 1997.
State Dept. Announces DV Applications via Internet
The State Department announced it is accepting applications for the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program via the Internet until Dec. 2.
Those who meet all the legal requirements and are lucky enough to be selected at random will be among the 50,000 people who will benefit by the permanent-residency lottery offered every year by Washington to citizens of countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.
''The lottery will be totally free of charge and we shall accept only electronic forms. This means that handwritten or printed applications sent by mail will be discarded,'' said Steve Royster, a State Department spokesman.
''Another important point is that there is no other website authorized to receive the electronic forms. If another portal appears, it is fraudulent,'' he added.
The program uses a computerized shuffle to select applicants from six geographic regions: Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, North America and the zone that includes Central America, the Caribbean and South America.
To make the lottery more equitable and to give a chance for all to qualify, the State Department gives priority only to citizens of countries that in the previous five years have received fewer than 50,000 immigrant visas from the United States.
For that reason, ''some countries cannot participate in this edition, such as Ecuador and Guatemala,'' Royster said.
Among the requirements to participate: The applicant must have graduated from high school or have two years of work experience in the previous five years in a profession that requires a minimum of 24 months of training.
Every application -- which includes the spouse and minor children -- must be accompanied by a digital photograph in JPG format, in color or monochrome. The photograph must be taken head-on.
A person from a country not allowed to participate in the lottery can still apply on the basis of the nationality of his or her spouse or parents, as long as the spouse or parents are natives of a country allowed to participate.
The applicants' forms and photographs must be delivered electronically to http://dvlottery.state.gov, the only site authorized by the State Department to receive applications during the two-month window of opportunity.
Returning Foreign Employee Exemption Expires
By Dena Bunis
The Orange County Register (Santa Ana), October 2, 2007
Washington -- Businesses that complain they cannot fill their needs for workers came up against another obstacle this week when a little-known provision of immigration law expired, making it more difficult for seasonal workers to return to the United States.
Until Monday, the H-2B visa, which is used by companies to bring in non-skilled seasonal employers, had a loophole in it that allowed people who had been coming back to the United States to work year after year to return and not be counted against the annual cap of 66,000 H-2B visas. That exemption expired and congressional lawmakers who support the provision have so far been unable to get it reinstated.
“I will do everything I can to make sure small businesses do not suffer without this exemption,’’ Sen. Barbara Mikulski said in a statement she made last week before the visa cap exemption lapsed. A spokeswoman for Mikulski said the Maryland Democrat is still negotiating with her colleagues to figure out a way to reinstate the exemption.
Opponents of expanding H-2B visas, such as Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., say they take jobs away from U. S. workers.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who chairs the House immigration subcommittee, said Tuesday that she may favor changes that go beyond just reinstating the returning worker exemption.
“I think we have to make clearer that people in this temporary category have the full protection of the law while they’re here,’’ said Lofgren, D-San Jose. “And we need to make sure that the hiring of people in this visa category does not put American workers at a disadvantage.’’
H-2B visas are used mainly in the hospitality industry as well as in some seasonal businesses like seafood and canneries.
“Once these companies with seasonal needs identify a good worker, for the ski season or the holiday season, they want to use these same workers year in and year out,’’ explained Irvine immigration lawyer Mitchell Wexler. Without the exemption, he said, “that’s not going to be possible.’’
Immigration officials said this week that the cap for seasonal workers for the first half of next year has already been reached. So it’s too late for businesses to apply for an H-2B visa for any workers for next year’s ski season, for example.
As with many immigration visa categories, businesses have to jump through many bureaucratic hoops in order to get the workers they need, he said. An employer must first advertise for the U.S. worker to do the job. They must pay the foreign worker the same wage they would pay a local employee.
Wexler said there are agencies worldwide that specialize in identifying H-2B workers. When they can find a “returning” worker, he said, “that’s the prize” because until the exemption expired, a company could bring that worker into the United States without worrying whether there was a visa available for them.
Mikulski had hoped to get the exemption for the returning workers into the comprehensive immigration bill that failed in the Senate earlier this year. She is still hoping to add the measure into another Senate bill.
USCIS Reaches H-2B Cap for First Half of FY2008
October 1, 2007
WASHINGTON— U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it
has received a sufficient number of petitions to reach the congressionally mandated H-2B cap for the first half of Fiscal Year 2008 (FY2008). USCIS is hereby notifying the public that September 27, 2007 is the “final receipt date” for new H-2B worker petitions requesting employment start dates prior to April 1, 2008. The “final receipt date” is the date on which USCIS determines that it has received enough cap-subject petitions to reach the limit of 33,000 H-2B workers for the first six months of FY2008.
Under current law, a “returning worker” who was counted toward the H-2B numerical limit
during FY2004, FY2005 or FY2006, was exempt from being counted against the FY2007 H-2B
cap. As of today, Congress has not reauthorized or extended the “returning worker” provisions
for FY2008. Absent such reauthorization or extension, USCIS must count all petitions requesting H-2B workers for new employment with an employment start date of October 1, 2007 or later toward the FY2008 H-2B cap.
USCIS will apply a computer-generated random selection process to all petitions which are
subject to the cap and were received on September 27, 2007. USCIS will use this process to
select the number of petitions needed to meet the cap. USCIS will reject, and return the fee, for all cap-subject petitions not randomly selected. USCIS will also reject petitions for new H-2B workers seeking employment start dates prior to April 1, 2008 that are received after September 27, 2007.
Petitions for workers who are currently in H-2B status do not count towards the congressionally mandated bi-annual H-2B cap. USCIS will continue to process petitions filed to:
•Extend the stay of a current H-2B worker in the United States;
•Change the terms of employment for current H-2B workers and extend their stay; or
•Allow current H-2B workers to change or add employers and extend their stay.
More information about the H-2B work program is available at www.uscis.gov or by calling the National Customer Service Center at 1-800-375-5283.
– USCIS –
New tool verifies workers
By Eunice Moscoso
The Cox News Service, September 26, 2007
Washington -- Businesses, facing a government crackdown on hiring illegal immigrants, now have one more tool to help them verify a worker's status.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services unveiled a system Tuesday that matches photographs from green cards and other immigrant work permits against a database of more than 14 million pictures.
If the photos match, the employer will know that the person is using his or her own card, not a stolen or doctored identification, federal officials said.
''We are very, very committed to the idea of workplace enforcement,'' said Emilio Gonzalez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. ``If we have workplace enforcement, we can reduce pressure on our border. That allows the assets that we have on our border. . . to catch bad people.''
The photo system is part of a volunteer employment verification system known as E-Verify that compares employee information against millions of government records.
About 23,000 businesses across the country participate in the program and about 2,000 are signing up every month, Gonzalez said.
In addition, the Department of Homeland Security is working on regulations that would require all new federal contractors to use the E-Verify system. A draft of the rules will likely be released early next year, said Gerri Ratliff, deputy associate director of the National Security and Records Verification Directorate at USCIS.
Ratliff, who demonstrated the photo match system for reporters, said it showed strong success in a pilot program where 93 percent of all new hires were instantly verified as ``work authorized.''
If an employee's photo doesn't match, the company has eight days to report the discrepancy to the Department of Homeland Security, which investigates within two days, she said.
The employee is given a letter, available in English and Spanish, that explains that the photo didn't match and details a process to contest the discrepancy.
In the pilot program, most of the mismatches resulted from problems with information from the Social Security Administration, such as a person not updating a change of name through marriage or a change of legal status, USCIS officials said.
Only about 5 percent of the inquiries resulted in people being rejected or never contesting the mismatch.
Ratliff said that USCIS is hoping to expand E-verify in the future to include access to photographs from drivers' licenses in the 50 states, but that it would likely take federal legislation to accomplish that goal.
Businesses and civil rights groups have argued that the quality of government databases poses a problem for such programs.
A Department of Homeland Security effort to crack down on companies that ignore warning letters about employees with potentially fake Social Security numbers was put on hold earlier this year by a federal judge in part because of a lawsuit that raised such concerns.
The lawsuit, by the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, says the rule ``would threaten jobs of U.S. citizens and other legally authorized workers simply because of errors in the government's inaccurate Social Security earnings databases.''
ICE: Tab to remove illegal residents would approach $100 billion
By Mike M. Ahlers
The CNN News, September 12, 2007
Washington -- It would cost at least $94 billion to find, detain and remove all 12 million people believed to be staying illegally in the United States, the federal government estimated Wednesday.
Day laborers, who identified themselves as illegal immigrants, talk to a potential employer in Dallas, Texas.
Julie Myers, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, gave the figure during a hearing before a Senate committee Wednesday.
She acknowledged it was based on 'very rough calculations.'
An ICE spokesman later said the $94 billion did not include the cost of finding illegal immigrants, nor court costs -- dollar amounts that are largely unknowable.
He said the amount was calculated by multiplying the estimated 12 million people by the average cost of detaining people for a day: $97. That was multiplied by the average length of detention: 32 days.
ICE officials also considered transportation costs, which average $1,000 per person.
But that amount can vary widely, the spokesman said. Some deportees are simply driven by bus across the border, while others must take charter planes to distant countries, he said.
Finally, the department looked at personnel costs, bringing the total to roughly $94 billion.
The statistic is likely to become one more piece of fodder in the heated debate between the Bush administration -- which has fought for a 'path to citizenship' for people who have lived peaceably in the United States -- and those who want to see more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws, up to, and including, the deportation of all illegal immigrants.
EDITOR'S NOTE: More information on the Senate committee hearing is available on line at
http://hsgac.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=480
Isn't Lady Justice Still Blind?
Monday, September 10, 2007
WASHINGTON, DC - The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) calls on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to assure access to counsel and information about individuals' legal rights and options in the context of any enforcement action. America is a nation of laws and is founded on guarantees of due process embedded in our Constitution. These principles are the hallmark of a democracy based on the rule of law that has served the United States admirably for more than 225 years.
Immigrant communities across the United States are under fierce scrutiny as immigration raids and enforcement actions increase by the day. In order to assist immigrants in understanding and protecting the rights guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution, non-profit pro bono organizations, lawyers and community groups have been stepping up their efforts to provide accurate and timely information to individuals and communities deeply affected by these enforcement actions. Unfortunately, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency charged with upholding the law, seems to be applying a one-sided standard and has been reported to have condemned legitimate educational efforts.
Last week, in an article published in the Boston Globe, an ICE spokesperson was quoted as saying, "We would encourage organizations that are engaging in that kind of information distribution [information about legal rights] to stop." If this quote is accurate, AILA strongly disagrees.
Part of the strength of our democracy is the notion that "justice is blind," meaning that every individual has the right to legal counsel and a day in court without regard to their status, race, background, or any other attribute. Recently, the Pennsylvania U.S. district court's decision in Lozano v. Hazleton reminded us that Lady Justice is still blind as to the application of the U.S. Constitution in the context of local ordinances focused on immigration status issues. The court stated the following: "The genius of our Constitution is that it provides rights even to those who evoke the least sympathy from the general public. In that way, all in this nation can be confident of equal justice under its laws."
It is also well settled case law that ICE cannot enter a home or business without a warrant. Providing information on what U.S. law requires of enforcement authorities in conducting an arrest or providing information on U.S. immigration laws is not the same as advising someone to violate the law. It is troubling to see a call by ICE, the agency charged with enforcing U.S. immigration law, to limit access to legal counsel. Citizens would certainly question the IRS, if it called for tax lawyers and advisors to stop providing legal counsel. Unfortunately, we have learned time and again that ICE is far from perfect in its execution of our immigration laws. Some of the people arrested by ICE have turned out to be U.S. citizens. Without access to legal counsel and our judicial system, even more U.S. citizens would be at risk of being mistakenly deported.
"I strongly support the actions and initiatives of those individuals educating immigrants on their legal rights in our unique and honored system of justice," said Kathleen Campbell Walker, President of AILA. "Attempts to provide pro bono legal assistance in this country to the poor and the undocumented should not be seen as threatening to law enforcement officials. In the current backlash after the defeat of comprehensive immigration reform, let us not also lose the principles of justice for which we are admired and respected as a nation. Legal knowledge and access to legal rights enhances our system of justice and makes sure that everyone, including the government, plays by the rules crafted by Congress and embodied in our Constitution."