Month: February 2009

According to a USCIS Press Release:  “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today it has delayed by 60 days, until April 3, 2009, the implementation of an interim final rule entitled “Documents Acceptable for Employment Eligibility Verification” published in the Federal Register on Dec. 17, 2008.  The rule streamlines the Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9) process.”

According to a USCIS Press Release:  “Federal contractors and subcontractors will be required to begin using the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ E-Verify system starting May 21, 2009, to verify their employees’ eligibility to legally work in the United States.   The Civilian Agency Acquisition Council and the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council amended the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to reflect this change.”

According to a USCIS Press Release:  “Federal agents arrested 11 individuals in 6 states Wednesday as part of an investigation into suspected visa and mail fraud. Matthew G. Whitaker, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, announced the operation, which was carried out by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in Iowa, California, Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and New Jersey.”

According to his website, “U.S. Representative Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) announced that he will spearhead a five-week national tour—visiting 14 U.S. cities—to document the harm caused to citizens across our nation in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform.

Representative Guitierrez is a tireless advocate on behalf of immigrants.  In fact, I am such a fan of his that the home page of our firm website, immigrantconnect.com, has the following quote from him:  “Mr. Speaker, our nation depends on immigrants’ labor, and I hope we can create an immigration system as dependable as they are.”

According to an article on azcentral.com:  “Four Democratic U.S. House members are calling for the new Attorney General and Homeland Security Secretary to investigate allegations of racial profiling against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.” 

This “Sheriff” has been accused of being a publicity hound and riding the anti-immigrant wave of past couple of years to fame and fortune.  Arpaio appeared on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight in November 2007 where he said “it’s an honor” to be compared to the Ku Klux Klan.  He is now host of his very own show on Fox News according to huffingtonpost.com (unless it has been cancelled, I have not seen the show). 

The Federal Investigation would be just one of Arpaio’s legal problems.  According to the Phoenix Business Journal:  “A federal court says that a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union alleging Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office unfairly targets Hispanics in crime sweeps can move forward.”

According to an article on nytimes.com:  “An immigration policy group said Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration mission has been undermined by wasteful spending along the southern border, law enforcement efforts that focused on snaring illegal workers rather than high-risk criminals, and an often hostile bureaucracy that discourages people eligible for legal entry from playing by the rules.”

The article makes some interesting points.  Immigration is an issue that certainly needs to be addressed and changes to our laws as well as government policies that have become enforcement-centric will be necessary. 

I believe that this administration will address immigration in a big way, but timing is everything.  If a CIR package similar to those previously proposed by the Senate were to come up for a vote tomorrow, it would face severe opposition in light of the state of the economy.  Behind the scenes work needs to take place to improve on the proposed bills and CIR should be introduced when the economy has rebounded somewhat. 

According to an article on hispanicbusiness.com:  “The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued a report on the work of three organizations that it labels those ‘most responsible for blocking comprehensive immigration reform in 2007.’ The center, famous for its work in civil rights litigation and anti-hate education, said that all three organizations — Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA — were founded and funded by John Tanton, whom the SPLC refers to as ‘the ‘puppeteer’ of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist roots.”

Add to these the “reputable” cable news organizations with certain anchors who choose to selectively report on the issue of immigration and who routinely quote representatives of these anti-immigration (both legal and illegal) organizations as authorities on the subject, and you have the perfect storm for blocking CIR.

Average Americans will not examine the issue in great debth and may get their news on ghe subject simply from watching CNN or Fox News for an hour or two.  If the audience tunes into a particular show or anchor regularly, and has it pounded into their heads that immigration is bad for the country – they have little reason to question that premise.  Add to that a very vocal and well-organized anti-immigration movement with ideologies that only a minority of Americans agree with, and one is left with no useful progress towards improving our nation’s immigration system.  Remember, the organizations mentioned in the article oppose immigration, not only “illegal immigration”.  The undocumented are simply an easy target with which to rile up a certain segment of the population.  Illegal immigration is only the first step of these organizations’ not so subtle attempts to reduce or ideally eliminate all immigration to the United States.

The Department of State has published its Visa Bulletin for March 2009.

According to an article on chicagotribune.com:  “Flying worldwide from O’Hare and 22 other airports, the so-called ICE Air planes transported more than 367,000 illegal immigrants, including 11,500 from the Chicago area, out of the U.S. from October 2007 to October 2008—a 26 percent increase over the previous fiscal year and 77 percent more than in 2006.”

At least one aitline is flying full.  I recently saw a story on CNN about undocumented day laborers who were unable to find work in this economy and one of them who was interviewed said he wanted to return to his country but could not afford the fare. 

Rather than spend untold millions of our taxpayer dollars on raids, scare tactics and detaining the undocumented, this might be a good time for the U.S. to offer to transport, at no cost, those who want to depart the U.S. to their home countries.  ICE tried something like this last year but the agency:  (1) was not guarateeing that they would pay for the return fare, (2) was not offering the option to aliens with certain criminal records, (3) was requiring paperwork that probably amounted to an admission of some sort, and (4) there was still work available for these individuals in the U.S., which is why many of them risked their lives to come here in the first place. 

That plan failed miserably because of these details and because as they say, timing is everything.  Jobs are no longer readily available, so the incentive to be here no longer exists gor many of these workers.  Some sort of “Departure Forgiveness Program” wherein those who choose to leave would be given a one-way ticket, not be detained, and would not have a bar to legal entry in the future, would probably garner some interest.  

According to a very interesting entry posted on Jay Hancock’s blog on baltimoresun.com:  “So immigration is another way out of the deficit debacle.  The national debt just surpassed $10 trillion and will surely head higher. We need new taxpayers to help pay it off.   There are nearly 20 million vacant homes and apartments across the United States. We need new renters and owners to live in them.  There are companies that can’t find enough competent employees. We need new workers to help them grow. There are retailers going bankrupt. We need new consumers to buy their stuff.”

As hard as it will be, the new Administration and Congress need to carefully address immigration and fix our system.  The anti-immigrants are hard at work using scare tactics to decrease or eliminate certain categories of immigration altogether.  They are after both legal immigrants as well as the undocumented. 

As an amendment to the stimulus bill, the Senate has introduced an amendment that would retrict banks receiving bail-out money from hiring H-1B workers under certain conditions.  According to the Associated Press:  “The legislation by Sens. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, would require the banks to seek American workers before turning to foreign nationals when they’re hiring. It aims to prevent replacement of Americans by foreigners working under the H-1B visa program, which allows employers to bring in workers for high-skilled and advanced-degree jobs.”   

Getting more Americans employed is a noble goal.  A counter-argument to restricting H-1B hiring is that banks should hire the best and the brightest to help get them out of this mess and if these individuals happen to be foreign-nationals in H-1B status, so be it.  It seems to me that forcing the banks to start lending out a portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax-payer money they are receiving would be a much more useful component of the stimulus package.  We will see what comes out of conference in the next week or so.