Friday, May 16, 2008

ICE Nabs Icers

Breaking News: Senate to Consider Partial Amnesty for Agricultural Workers

Back Door Efforts to Increase Immigration

Congress adopted a major increase in legal immigration in 1990 to cut down on backlogged cases. Now there is an effort in Congress to adopt legislation that represents a ‘stealth’ approach to further increasing employment sponsored immigration. This strategy is unfolding in the House Immigration and Claims Subcommittee where California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, an immigration lawyer, is the chair. Among the bills Lofgren is pushing are the following:

1. remove fashion models from the H-1B (professional worker) visa category – this would make more visas available to high-tech workers;
2. exempt any foreign graduate of a U.S. university in science, math and technology from green card limits;
3. remove per-country limits that have resulted in a backlog of Indians and Chinese ‘green card’ applicants;
4. ‘recover’ immigrant visas that were not used in the previous years.

An article on this ‘stealth’ effort in Computerworld notes that “…it remains to be seen whether she can jump over the legislative stalemate created by [Hispanic Caucus] lawmakers who want comprehensive immigration reform or nothing at all.”

Local Police Join the Bandwagon of Immigration Enforcement

After a very slow startup in taking advantage of the program for training of state and local law enforcement personnel in immigration law and deputizing them, i.e., 287(g) programs, the concept has caught on. Enacted in immigration reform legislation in 1996, the training program has never been advertised or promoted by the Administration. After a few states initially signed up, the program languished. A turning point seemed to come with the new awareness of our vulnerability that resulted from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The surge in state and local jurisdictions applying for the program has recently grown so fast that the trainers have not been able to keep up and a long waiting list has developed. As a result, according to Stateline News, “…ICE is trying to tamp down demand for 287(g) by promoting other options for local law enforcement, such as gaining access to federal databases to help police fight document fraud and gang activity.”

Immigrant Assimilation — Good News or Bad News?

Today’s Washington Post reports “Study Says Foreigners In U.S. Adapt Quickly.” The lead-in sentence is, “Immigrants of the past quarter-century have been assimilating in the United States at a notably faster rate than did previous generations, according to a study released today [by the Manhattan Inst.].” If you read far enough down in the article to find out that this report raises red flags. “Vigdor [a Duke University professor and author of the study] also said his findings included cause for concern: most notably, the fact that the 2006 assimilation index of 28 is less than the previous low point of 42 in 1920. The difference indicates the substantial change in the composition of today's immigrants compared with earlier immigration waves.”

[FAIR Comment: The dichotomy between this headline good news and the red flags sounds like the fact that any group that starts at a very low number does not have to move very far up the scale to be double or triple the starting point, i.e. you only have to add one to one to increase by 100 percent. And it sounds as if the assimilation scale created by the author starts most of today’s immigrants much lower on the scale than earlier immigrants.]

Sen. Obama Courts Latinos with Driver’s Licenses

According to the head of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), "Clinton and (Sen. John) Edwards have said no driver's licenses for unauthorized immigrants. Sen. Obama has said you get a driver's license if you know how to drive. And that message I think will resonate in the Latino community as we get closer to California." According to Federico Pena, former Denver mayor and Clinton cabinet member, "Barack Obama has not backed down [on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants]. I think when the Latino community hears Barack's position on such an important and controversial issue, they'll understand that his heart and his intellect is [sic] with Latino community." This position of Sen. Obama contrasts with Sen. Clinton’s position. After she sided with New York governor Spitzer in his decision to allow driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, she reversed course and opposed that policy after Spitzer announced that he had backed off that decision.

Immigration Standoff in Congress

The Arizona Republic analyzes the continuing standoff in Congress over immigrationenforcement legislation. The article cites liberal California Democrat Howard Berman saying that the enforcement-first SAVE Act would probably pass if it came to a vote because there would be enough Republicans joined by Democrats worried about their reelection if they were to vote against the legislation. But it notes the hard-line opposition to the bill by the Democratic Party leadership. One of the efforts to discredit the SAVE Act has been to attempt to discredit the E-Verify employment document verification system currently in operation as costly and error-prone. An article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel provides an interesting testimonial to the value of that verification system by the Cargill meat-packing company. “’It's been a good tool to screen out people whose documents aren't matching up,’ said Mark Klein, a spokesman for the company, which has been using E-Verify since the pilot program began in 1996.”

Temporary Workers Denied Transportation IDs

"A German graduate student in oceanography at M.I.T. applied to the Transportation Security Administration for a new ID card allowing him to work around ships and docks. What the student, Wilken-Jon von Appen, received in return was a letter that not only turned him down but added an ominous warning from John M. Busch, a security administration official: “I have determined that you pose a security threat.” Similar letters have gone to 5,000 applicants across the country who have at least initially been turned down for a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, an ID card meant to guard against acts of terrorism, agency officials said Monday," the New York Times reports. "Ms. Howe and Maurine Fanguy, who oversees the new ID card program, said that most foreign students did not qualify for the identity cards, but that the letters were not intended to label the recipients as potential terrorists. (Some applicants are also turned down because of criminal records.)"