Immigration Lawyers Begin Joint Program With U.S. Military

January 16, 2008 6:30 a.m. EST
Kris Alingod - AHN News Writer

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - A prominent group of lawyers has begun a joint program with the U.S. military to give American troops and their families with immigration problems free legal guidance.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) announced on Monday that it was working with the defense department's Legal Assistance Offices to establish the AILA Military Assistance Program. The group aims to answer the need to provide U.S.military personnel and their families with "a unified approach to assist military legal assistance attorneys." Immigration cases involving American troops or their family members are handled by immigration officials and not by the military, the group said, making most cases more difficult to resolve.

"U.S. soldiers fighting overseas should not be placed in the impossible predicament of having family members facing deportation back home due to a dysfunctional immigration system and the complexity of our immigration laws," Kathleen Campbell Walker, President of AILA, said in a statement. "Our military personnel need and deserve the peace of mind that their loved ones will be waiting for them when they return if legal remedies are available."

The AILA is a national group of over 10,000 lawyers and professors engaged in immigration law. It previously partnered with the American Bar Association to give pro bono legal assistance for those with immigration cases in San Diego, California.

Adman to Pitch Immigrants' Story

By MIRIAM JORDAN
January 16, 2008; Page B1

Las Vegas

The nation's heated debate over immigration is headed to television advertising, in the form of a business-funded campaign that will tout the benefits of legalizing illegal workers and try to counter hardening rhetoric on immigration.

The campaign is spearheaded by Lionel Sosa, a media strategist who is credited with delivering nearly half of the Hispanic vote to President Bush in the previous presidential race.

Pro- and anti-immigration demonstrators in Connecticut last June
Yesterday, Mr. Sosa gathered here representatives from the construction, lodging, agricultural and banking sectors, as well as from churches, grass-roots groups and both political parties, to review the ads and finalize their strategy.

Mr. Sosa says he has raised $25 million for the campaign from one group he didn't identify. His independent nonprofit organization -- Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, or Matt.org -- plans to match that with other contributions from business interests that benefit from immigrant labor, he says. His long-term goal is to invest $100 million in a national ad campaign, though he acknowledges that is a tall order in a presidential election year.

"The anti-immigrant groups have smashed all of us who back immigration reform. It's time to respond," Mr. Sosa said in an interview. "Americans have to see why it's in our interest to make these workers legal."

Taking the group's immigration message to the airwaves has risks, however -- particularly if it sets off a well-funded, anti-illegal-immigration TV campaign from the other side of the issue. Indeed, on hearing of Mr. Sosa's initiative, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for restricting all immigration, said that his group and its partners plan a campaign of their own. FAIR, which has 100,000 paid members, lobbied fiercely to defeat the Senate immigration bill this past spring.

"We are in the process of developing ads to try to educate Americans about the negative impacts that immigration has on wages and working conditions for certain segments of the American labor force," Mr. Stein said. He declined to disclose the timetable or funding sources for such an effort.

Anti-illegal-immigration groups argue that undocumented immigrants are a burden on U.S. social services, education and health care and contend that they undermine U.S. wages and culture.

Mr. Sosa, 68 years old, in 1980 founded the agency Sosa Bromley Aguilar, which specialized in advertising to Hispanic consumers, selling it in 1990. Matt.org -- based in Mr. Sosa's hometown of San Antonio -- employs three advertising strategists who worked with him at the agency. Among them is Cesar Martinez, who in 2002 created ad campaigns targeting Hispanics for Jeb Bush's Florida gubernatorial campaign and Rick Perry's Texas governor's race.

Mr. Sosa said he plans to launch the immigration ads on TV nationally after the presidential conventions this summer.

Among those at the Las Vegas gathering was J. Allen Carnes, president of the Texas Vegetable Association, who has testified before Congress on immigration issues. In the past two seasons, Mr. Carnes has lost more than $600,000 worth of crops, he says, because he couldn't secure enough workers. "Every year the shortage becomes worse and worse. If we continue down this path the agricultural industry in Texas as we know it will no longer exist," he said. According to the Texas Produce Association, half of the fruits and vegetables being shipped in Texas are already being grown across the border.

Until now, business interests have mainly lobbied legislators and their staffs in Washington to press for legalizing undocumented workers. But some businesses are reshaping their strategies, responding to the collapse of a Senate bill last spring, the introduction of state ordinances to punish businesses that hire undocumented workers, and emotive rhetoric on immigration during the presidential campaign.

"There's a lot of anxiety in the business community, and we have come to the point of realizing that something big has to be done," said Eddie Aldrete, a senior vice president of the International Bank of Commerce, a Laredo, Texas, bank that also operates in Oklahoma. The bank has pledged an undisclosed sum to Mr. Sosa's campaign, he added.

Craig Silvertooth, director of federal affairs at the National Roofers Contracting Association, said he would encourage his members to fund Mr. Sosa's effort. "The business community was largely missing in action when the bill went through the Senate," he says. "We were outgunned financially and at the grass-roots level by anti-immigrant groups. We will continue to lose until we get our story out there."

Potential donors for Mr. Sosa's effort include trade groups, such as Western Growers, whose 3,000 members grow, pack and ship half the nation's fresh produce. "It's important to communicate to the American public the importance of providing a legal, stable work force for agriculture," says Paul Simonds, communications manager for Western Growers. "We have a work force that is predominantly falsely documented or undocumented. Anything that would further our efforts we will definitely look into."

In the $1.2 trillion construction industry, at least one-third of the work force is undocumented, according to an estimate by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Industry experts believe the actual figure is much higher: In 2006 alone, nearly half of new construction workers were Hispanics who had arrived in the U.S. since 2000. In agriculture, about 70% of all workers are illegal immigrants, according to independent estimates, and an existing guest-worker program supplies less than 2% of the work force required each year.

Mr. Sosa's team has created a series of 30-second pilot TV spots that highlight the work of immigrants in several industries and warn of the consequences of losing that labor force. One of the spots, entitled "Drive Them Out," focuses on the New Jersey town of Riverside, which fell on hard times after it passed an anti-illegal-immigrant ordinance last year that prompted thousands of undocumented residents to leave. The spot's closing statement: "Let's be careful what we wish for."

Another ad shows "Help Wanted" signs for jobs such as orange-picking and roofing, followed by signs that read "Can't Hire Immigrants" or "Immigrants Need Not Apply." In the end, a voiceover states: "Today's immigrants do the work Americans need done. Can't we find a way to make them legal?"

The ads consciously avoid the term "illegal" because it "connotes a negative," Mr. Martinez says. "We want to concentrate on the positives."

Mr. Sosa, who has worked on several presidential campaigns, says he began thinking about a national ad campaign after the Senate defeated a bipartisan immigration bill last spring. In Mr. Sosa's view, Senate leaders were cowed by a deluge of calls, emails and faxes from a vocal minority that opposed the bill and, more broadly, promoted negative images of Hispanic immigrants. By contrast, the pro-immigrant proponents didn't communicate a clear message, Mr. Sosa says.

i9Direct.comâ„¢ Announced the Launch of an Easy to Use Online Tool to Help Small and Medium Size Employers Comply with Federal I-9 Form Regulations

i9Direct.com now provides online verification tools for businesses to comply with the US Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). This act requires all employers to confirm U.S Citizenship of potential employees to work legally in the United States. our model for growth is focused on providing our business partners with tools to hire and retain the right people. We will continue to provide innovative solutions for the ever changing requirements of our customers and stay on top of all emerging technology developments in the HR space for small businesses.

Wilmington, DE (PRWEB) January 3, 2008 -- i9Direct.com now provides online verification tools for businesses to comply with the US Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). This act requires all employers to confirm U.S Citizenship of potential employees to work legally in the United States. Utilizing the services of i9Direct.com, businesses will be able to easily verify the legal eligibility of job applicants within seconds. The verification process is streamlined and simplified through use of an innovative paperless, electronic storage and retrieval system.

i9Direct offers business partners a simple solution: electronic online forms; electronic signature, and electronic document management services. This new system will assist companies manage and resolve significant human resource issues in a seamless, and integrated fashion. According to D. Michael Brown, Vice President, "i9Direct.com was formed to deliver the Large Corporation HR automation tools and products to small and medium sized companies to ensure compliance with all federal regulations in the new hire and employee verification space."

i9Direct.com is led by a team of senior executives who possess a proven track record of success in Human Resources and business management within (Fortune 500) companies. All members of the management team bring a unique combination of professional backgrounds from leading sales and marketing firms, technology firms, financial institutions and the legal profession.

i9Direct.com's future business strategy is to continue the creation of world class business process automation solutions that drive efficiency, productivity, and compliance for small and medium sized businesses. According to Jim Sills, President, "our model for growth is focused on providing our business partners with tools to hire and retain the right people. We will continue to provide innovative solutions for the ever changing requirements of our customers and stay on top of all emerging technology developments in the HR space for small businesses."

Concocted crisis?

By Bruce Fein
January 15, 2008

Politicians and pundits have concocted an immigration crisis to find a scapegoat for various ills that beset the United States. Their demagoguery exploits the craving of ordinary citizens to seek simple answers to complex questions, even at the expense of truth.

Like the majority of life, the nation's attitudes, immigration laws and enforcement efforts represent a jumble of contradictions. On the one hand, most Americans wink at most illegal aliens because they display admirable traits while engaged in productive work: ambition, industry, risk-taking, familial devotion and honesty. Hiring illegals evokes no greater moral hesitation than did liquor consumption during Prohibition.

On the other hand, most Americans understand the need to police the nation's borders. Terrorists, criminals, and persons afflicted with contagious diseases must be excluded. Some limits must be placed on immigration to avoid an overwhelming influx that might dilute or debase the nation's democracy and political culture. And regularizing the status of existing illegals would simply fuel new illegals who would expect to benefit from a new edition of regularization.

The jumble of contradictory immigration views among the American public finds expression in congressional ceilings on legal immigration combined with relatively scarce enforcement resources for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security. The result is a muddle — not a crisis — and superior to alternative pure approaches.

The number of illegal aliens has remained constant at 12 million to 14 million for decades. There is no upward trajectory. Illegal immigrants neither create nor exacerbate the nation's economic or social ailments. They do not compound unemployment. They fill jobs that citizens will not perform at competitive wages. Entire industries would plunge into depression if illegal alien labor disappeared, which would cause countless citizens to lose jobs as well.

All citizens benefit from illegal alien workers. They buy goods or services that either would not exist or would be higher-priced without illegal alien labor.

In the civil rights era, boycotts of racist public or private enterprises were a customary method of opposing racial discrimination, for example, the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. The absence of corresponding boycotts to punish the employment of illegal aliens testifies to a public indifference or ambivalence about the matter.

Illegal aliens probably add more than they subtract from the public coffers, although numerous studies are inconclusive. They pay sales, excise, property, income and payroll taxes, including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment taxes, to federal, state and local governments. They boost business profits and activity generally, which generate additional taxes.

On the other hand, illegals make demands on public services, for example, education, health care and welfare, even though they are ineligible for food stamps, Medicaid, federal housing programs, unemployment insurance, Social Security and otherwise. Whether or not the economic impact of illegal aliens is positive or negative, it is not creating a crisis.

Illegal aliens commit crimes, but their incidence is not tracked by the FBI. Anecdotal evidence indicates that in some localities illegals contribute disproportionately to crime. But there is no crime crisis associated with illegal aliens. According to the FBI's preliminary 2007 statistics, during the first six months of the year violent crime nationally plunged 1.8 percent and property crimes fell 2.6 percent from the previous year.

Teenage pregnancy, obesity, drug abuse and declining education and moral fiber are earmarks of social or cultural decay in the United States. They are worrisome, but they are not substantially affected by illegal immigrants. They are not evidence of an immigration crisis. Deporting every illegal immigrant and constructing an impervious wall along the southwest border will not deter American youths — the country's future — from idolizing moral, philosophical or intellectual pygmies in Hollywood or elsewhere.

The immigration laws might profit by revising the preferences for legal immigration, broadening the criteria for asylum, and circumscribing the crimes that trigger automatic deportation.

But no overhaul is required. The best that can be expected from immigration laws and enforcement is an uneasy equilibrium among contradictory objectives and attitudes.

Against the trend, U.S. births way up

By MIKE STOBBE AP Medical Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press
Jan. 16, 2008, 7:03PM

ATLANTA — Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years.

The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies, too.

An Associated Press review of birth numbers dating to 1909 found the total number of U.S. births was the highest since 1961, near the end of the baby boom. An examination of global data also shows that the United States has a higher fertility rate than every country in continental Europe, as well as Australia, Canada and Japan. Fertility levels in those countries have been lower than the U.S. rate for several years, although some are on the rise, most notably in France.

Experts believe there is a mix of reasons: a decline in contraceptive use, a drop in access to abortion, poor education and poverty.

There are cultural reasons as well. Hispanics as a group have higher fertility rates — about 40 percent higher than the U.S. overall. And experts say Americans, especially those in middle America, view children more favorably than people in many other Westernized countries.

"Americans like children. We are the only people who respond to prosperity by saying, `Let's have another kid,'" said Nan Marie Astone, associate professor of population, family and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University.

Demographers say it is too soon to know if the sudden increase in births is the start of a trend.

"We have to wait and see. For now, I would call it a noticeable blip," said Brady Hamilton, a statistician with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Demographers often use the word boomlet for a small and brief baby boom.

To many economists and policymakers, the increase in births is good news. The U.S. fertility rate — the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime — reached 2.1. That's the "magic number" required for a population to replace itself.

Countries with much lower rates — such as Japan and Italy, both with a rate of 1.3 — face future labor shortages and eroding tax bases as they fail to reproduce enough to take care of their aging elders.

But the higher fertility rate isn't all good. Last month, the CDC reported that America's teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years.

The same report also showed births becoming more common in nearly every age and racial or ethnic group. Birth rates increased for women in their 20s, 30s and early 40s, not just *****. They rose for whites, blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and Alaska Natives. The rate for Asian women stayed about the same.

Total births jumped 3 percent in 2006, the largest single-year increase since 1989, according to the CDC's preliminary data.

Clearly, U.S. birth rates are not what they were in the 1950s and early 1960s, when they were nearly twice as high and large families were much more common. The recent birth numbers are more a result of many women having a couple of kids each, rather than a smaller number of mothers, each bearing several children, Astone said.

Demographers say there has been at least one boomlet before, around 1990, when annual U.S. births broke 4.1 million for two straight years before dropping to about 3.9 million in the mid-1990s. Adolescent childbearing was up at the time, but so were births among other groups, and experts aren't sure what explained that ***p.

The 2006 fertility rate of 2.1 children is the highest level since 1971. To be sure, the fertility rate among Hispanics — 3 children per woman — has been a major contributor. That's the highest rate for any group. In 2006, for the first time, Hispanics accounted for more than 1 million births.

The high rate probably reflects cultural attitudes toward childbirth developed in other countries, experts said. Fertility rates average 2.7 in Central America and 2.4 in South America.

Fertility rates often rise among immigrants who leave their homelands for a better life. For example, the rate among Mexican-born women in the U.S. is 3.2, but the overall rate for Mexico is just 2.4, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington-based research organization.

"They're more optimistic about their future here," said Jeff Passel, a Pew Center demographer.

Some complain that many illegal immigrants come here purposely to have children.

"The child is an automatic American citizen, thus entitled to all benefits of American citizens. This gives a certain financial incentive for people coming from other countries illegally to have children here," said John Vinson, president of the Virginia-based American Immigration Control Foundation.

Fertility rates were also relatively high for other racial and ethnic groups. The rate rose to 2.1 for blacks and nearly 1.9 for non-Hispanic whites in 2006, according to the CDC.

Fertility levels tend to decline as women become better educated and gain career opportunities, and as they postpone childbirth until they are older. Experts say those factors, along with the legalization of abortion and the expansion of contraception options, explain why the U.S. fertility rate dropped to its lowest point — about 1.7 — in 1976.

But while fertility declines persisted in many other developed nations, the United States saw the reverse: The fertility rate climbed to 2 in 1989 and has hovered around that mark since then, according to federal birth data.

Hans-Peter Kohler, a University of Pennsylvania sociology professor, and others say the difference has more to do with culture than race. For example, white American women have more children than white European — even though many nations in Europe have more family-friendly government policies on parental leave and child care.

But such policies are just one factor in creating a society that produces lots of babies, said Duke University's S. Philip Morgan, a leading fertility researcher.

Other factors include recent declines in contraceptive use here; limited access to abortion in some states; and a 24/7 economy that provides opportunities for mothers to return to work, he said.

Also, it is more common for American women to have babies out of wedlock and more common for couples here to go forward with unwanted pregnancies. And, compared with nations like Italy and Japan, it's more common for American husbands to help out with chores and child care.

There are regional variations in the United States. New England's fertility rates are more like Northern Europe's. American women in the Midwest, South and certain mountain states tend to have more children.

The influence of certain religions in those latter regions is an important factor, said Ron Lesthaeghe, a Belgian demographer who is a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. "Evangelical Protestantism and Mormons," he said.

An immigration raid aids blacks for a time

Wednesday, January 17, 2007
By Evan Perez and Corey Dade
The Wall Street Journal

STILLMORE, Ga. -- After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75 percent of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town.

But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant. An advertisement in the weekly Forest-Blade newspaper blared "Increased Wages" at Crider, starting at $7 to $9 an hour -- more than a dollar above what the company had paid many immigrant workers. The company began offering free transportation from nearby towns and free rooms in a company-owned dormitory near to the plant. For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area's state-funded employment office -- a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider -- most of them black -- the plant hired about 200.

A customer at a convenience store in Douglas, Ga., told April Paulk, a part-time clerk, that a recruiter was in town looking for workers. Ms. Paulk passed the word to her husband, 32-year-old Germaine Royals, who had just been laid off from the latest in a series of temporary jobs. Both are African-American.

Less than a month after the raids on illegal immigrants, Mr. Royals and three other workers met at a gas station parking lot and piled into a van sent by Peacock Poultry Inc., one of several contractors hired to fill the ranks of Crider's production lines. Two hours later they pulled into an austere complex of brown dormitories owned by Crider that three weeks earlier had teemed with Hispanics. Mr. Royals stashed two small bags of belongings and a boom box in a dingy room and took his place the next morning on a production line at the chicken plant.

For the first time since significant numbers of Latinos began arriving in Stillmore in the late 1990s, the plant's processing lines were made up predominantly of African-Americans.

The sudden reversal of economic fortunes in Stillmore underscores some of the most complex aspects of the pitched debate over immigration: Do illegal immigrants take jobs from low-skilled American workers? The answer in Stillmore initially appeared to be yes.

But in the months since Crider began hiring hundreds of African-Americans, the answer has become more complex. The plant has struggled with high turnover among black workers, lower productivity and pay disputes between the new employees and labor contractors. The allure of compliant Latino workers willing to accept grueling conditions despite rock-bottom pay has proved a difficult habit for Crider to shake, particularly because the local, native-born workers who replaced them are more likely to complain about working conditions and aggressively assert what they believe to be legal pay and workplace rights.

Americans avoid such labor because "they can't live on those wages, and refuse to," says Debra Sabia, a professor at nearby Georgia Southern University who founded a social-service organization for the area's Latino immigrants. "If you gave a survey to Americans and asked them where they'd want to work, a slaughterhouse would not be on the list. These are not jobs we aspire for our children to take."

The impact of immigration on low-wage workers is likely to come under increasing scrutiny as the new Congress prepares to tackle immigration reform. Last month, federal officials raided facilities owned by meat processor Swift & Co. in six states, which resulted in the arrests of about 1,200 people on alleged identity theft and immigration violations.

Georgia, and particularly the Atlanta region in the north of the state, is home to a large concentration of wealthy and middle-class African-Americans. But in struggling rural towns, the scarcity of work is particularly felt by low-skilled African-Americans who by virtue of poor education, lack of transportation or choice have been unable to follow jobs as they moved away.

Stillmore began the 20th century as a timber and cotton town, sitting at the intersection of three rail lines connecting the busy port town of Savannah to the center of Georgia's cotton kingdom. For decades, anyone willing to grasp a hoe could find at least minimal work every spring and fall, when cotton was planted and harvested. But by the 1950s, cotton was fading, the rail lines were abandoned and a chicken-processing plant -- later acquired by Crider in 1977 -- had become the hub of the local economy.

Until the late 1990s, the plant employed a majority black production line, with whites and some blacks as supervisors, according to current and former employees. By 2000, Latino migrant workers who had long come and gone with the cotton and onion seasons were putting down roots, part of a national trend. The NAFTA free trade agreement hurt many Mexican farmers, prompting a surge of illegal immigration. At the same time U.S. immigration crackdowns made crossing the border more treacherous, prompting workers to settle in the U.S. The South became home to more than a third of the nation's Hispanics. Georgia's share tripled during the 1990s to 435,227, according to U.S. Census estimates. In 2005, the number of Hispanics topped 625,000 in Georgia, making up 7 percent of the population.

The influx of Hispanics meant Crider could maintain its Stillmore roots while drawing on a pool of low-skilled foreign workers to do jobs that held little appeal for native-born Americans. A 2005 Government Accountability Office report on working conditions in the meat and poultry industry found injury rates among the highest of any U.S. industry and cited slippery floors and cold temperatures among the harsh conditions workers endure. Federal workplace-safety inspectors cited Crider in 1997 for a forklift accident in which a worker was run over and killed. Other plants in Georgia have even higher incidences of violations, according to federal records.

With the arrival of so many immigrants willing to toil for rock-bottom wages on brutal round-the-clock shifts, the number of black workers at Crider declined steadily to 14 percent in early 2006 from as high as 70 percent a decade ago, the company says. Wages stagnated at about $6 an hour, just above the U.S. minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, current and former workers say. Crider says it also paid incentives and bonuses not accounted for in hourly wages. As African-Americans left, seeking better pay or to escape the difficult and often bloody work, most were replaced by Latinos, employees say.

Crider officials say the transformation to majority Hispanic work force happened gradually over most of a decade, without any encouragement by the company. David Purtle, Crider's president, says any impression that the company didn't want to hire African-Americans then was "concocted in people's minds who don't know what's going on. The first people you see in our employment office are African-Americans. ... We've never skewed our hiring toward any ethnic group."

But he says Crider faces the same problems that employers in many small towns grapple with. "We have to find a source of employees, and Stillmore will not provide that source. It's not big enough," he says. "We want people who want to work and are willing to work every day."

The presence of so many illegal workers became routine at Crider too. Jose Sauceda first came to the U.S. as an illegal immigrant in 1979 but qualified for legal status under a Reagan administration amnesty program and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. He arrived at Crider in 2004. His wife, Socorro, whom Mr. Sauceda had paid smugglers to sneak across the border, followed him to the poultry plant. As she filled out a job application at the plant, she tried to use for a Social Security number a taxpayer identification number starting with the number "9." According to Ms. Sauceda, a Crider clerk stopped her and said valid Social Security numbers never begin with a nine. "She was very helpful," Ms. Sauceda says. "She kept saying, 'Perhaps you meant to put down a four, or a six?' And I was nervous, so I just chose a six. And that worked." Her application was accepted. Ms. Sauceda went to work on the production line.

Crider officials said recently they doubted Ms. Sauceda's account of her hiring, and that the company wasn't "aiding and abetting" illegal Hispanic workers. Mr. Purtle, the company president, said in an interview that Crider never knowingly violated U.S. immigration laws and wasn't aware that so many of its Latino workers were illegally in the U.S. "Our personnel people have always complied with the hiring laws," Mr. Purtle said.

The company was "taken aback" when federal agents showed up in May asserting that about 700 of its workers were suspected of having false work documents, Mr. Purtle says. Two Crider employees were among four men arrested for allegedly running a document mill, churning out fake green cards and other fake documents. Immigration officials initially worked with Crider over several months to gradually weed out those workers who couldn't prove legal worker status. Then, federal officials became much more aggressive, launching the raid over Labor Day weekend. Agents hauled away about 120 mostly Mexican immigrants, according to immigration officials.

The rest fled Stillmore or went into hiding nearby. Some women and children hid for days in the scrubland and pine woods outside of town without food or shelter while they waited for immigration agents to leave. In the week after the raids, dozens of Latinos crowded a vacant lot beside a bodega, across from Stillmore's city hall, to get on buses operated by a Mexican bus line leaving for other cities in the U.S. or back to Mexico.

For African-Americans, the departure of the Hispanics was a boon. Lisa Shinhoster, 45, and Chris Butler, 22, heard about Crider when an acquaintance of a Crider recruiter walked into an after-hours bar where they were playing cards and announced to the patrons: "Anybody want a job?" The two were soon working at the plant gutting chickens.

For Mr. Royals, the new opportunities at Crider amounted to a windfall after months of erratic work through a temporary labor agency. A high-school dropout who earned his General Equivalency Diploma two years ago, Mr. Royals previously worked nights at a succession of factory jobs. He had just been laid off for the second time in a month when Ms. Paulk came home with word of the Crider recruiter.

Mr. Royals went to Crider with a plan to work as many hours as possible -- he sometimes worked 17 hours a day -- and earn enough to save for a new home and pay off bills. His wife recently took a full-time job as a private nurse for an elderly woman and attends classes at a technical college to earn a license as a practical nurse.

Mr. Royals rose daily before dawn, often eating a breakfast of grits, eggs and sausage served shortly after 5 a.m. at the Crider cafeteria. Mr. Royals was assigned to the plant's packing department, where his squat burly frame and muscular arms made him a natural fit, lifting crates of processed chicken. He says he enjoyed the physical nature of the work and the quick pace made the hours go by quickly.

But for some of the African-American workers who surged into the plant, the unexpected chance to work at Crider didn't turn out well. They described long, arduous schedules, alleged health and safety hazards, and unrelenting supervisors. A Crider spokeswoman says the allegations are the sentiment of "people who are not intent on working."

On Oct. 10, Barbara Smiley, a gregarious and tall 42-year-old from Mount Vernon, about two hours away, was reaching for a chicken that had fallen off a conveyor belt when she smacked her head into a solid steel pole. She went to the nurse's station for an ice pack and then the bathroom to wash down a pain reliever. She says her supervisor reprimanded her for leaving her post, igniting an argument. Ms. Smiley was fired.

"They cussed at me," Ms. Smiley said after the incident , a lump visible in center of her forehead in the shape of a half-dollar coin. "I'm 42 years old. If you cuss at me, I'm going to cuss you back."

The company spokeswoman said Ms. Smiley suffered a mild injury and quit but couldn't confirm other details of the incident.

Legal Hispanic workers who remained at Crider after the raid complain that the new black production line workers are getting higher pay but don't work as hard as their Latino cohorts did. When the plant operated with majority Latino laborers, says Mr. Sauceda, his six-person assembly line produced 80 pallets of poultry daily, with each pallet holding 48 32-pound boxes of chicken. Now, with 15 workers on the line, most of them black, only 45 pallets a day are completed, he says. "The blacks sit in the cafeteria and don't come to the line until the chickens are brought in, but the Hispanics, we spend the time cleaning and doing things that need to be done," says Mr. Sauceda, who has subsequently left the company. Mr. Royals counters that blacks work just as hard as Latinos. He says he sees groups of Hispanics taking extra rests on overnight shifts. "I'm thinking to myself, man, I don't get that many breaks," he says.

Several African-American workers found themselves in pay disputes. Since the illegal immigrants were run out of the plant, Crider no longer directly employs many entry-level workers. Instead, Mr. Royals and many others are classified as independent contractors, working under an agreement between Crider and Allen Peacock, an African-American owner of a recruiting business. Crider paid Mr. Peacock a set rate for the hours his employees work, and he paid the workers. Using Mr. Peacock allowed Crider to quickly hire workers, since the contractor has provided laborers to the poultry industry for years

Every Friday, Mr. Peacock pulled into the parking lot of the dormitory complex and handed out checks, most of which he cashed on the spot -- leaving his employees with no documentation of how much they received in wages or paid in taxes, according to several workers.

After a few weeks on the job, Mr. Royals and other black workers claimed Mr. Peacock was short changing them on hours worked. They said taxes were being deducted even though workers never filled out federal and state tax forms. At one point, Ms. Paulk, Mr. Royals's wife, telephoned Mr. Peacock and demanded an explanation about the paychecks.

Mr. Peacock denied mishandling their wages. "Everybody has to pay taxes," he said in an interview. Mr. Peacock said his workers were all being fully paid and that their taxes were properly collected.

Despite his frustrations, Mr. Royals vowed to keep working. But one morning, Mr. Peacock arrived at the Crider dormitory complex and several workers gathered to register their complaints about wages. In front of the other employees, Mr. Royals says, Mr. Peacock fired him.

Mr. Royals says Mr. Peacock seemed upset that Ms. Paulk had called him on his cellphone on her husband's behalf. "He said I couldn't put my wife in her place," Mr. Royals says. Mr. Peacock didn't respond to subsequent calls seeking comment.

Mr. Royals moved to Augusta, Ga. where he began doing landscaping work.

Since the raids, African-Americans have made up about 65 percent of Crider's work force, while whites are 30 percent and Hispanics 5 percent, according to the company. Turnover has been high. The population of workers hired since last September's immigration raids has turned over three times, according to Crider.

Still struggling to fill its ranks, Crider began busing in felons on probation from a state prison and residents of a homeless mission from nearby Macon. Crider also hired another labor contractor who specializes in Hispanic workers. In recent weeks, dozens of mostly Hispanic workers have appeared at the plant, largely on the overnight sanitation shift. A Hispanic worker at the plant said he recognized some of the new workers as among those who had been dismissed prior to the federal raids for having false immigration documents. A few weeks later, immigration agents returned to Stillmore, and were seen questioning Hispanics at a grocery store.

Crider says it has ended its relationship with the temporary labor provider that rehired some former illegal Crider workers. It says it has also ended its relationship with Mr. Peacock, saying it was a financial decision based on the additional fees they had to pay to the staffing company.

But Crider is still about 300 people short of its work force before the immigration raids. It is now bringing Laotian Hmong immigrant workers and their families from Minnesota and Wisconsin, with hopes that they'll stay on the job and build new roots in Stillmore.

Lawyer indicted on fraud charges

By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Jan. 16, 2008, 10:25PM

A Houston attorney has been indicted on immigration fraud charges for allegedly filing more than 70 false asylum claims for Chinese immigrants by instructing clients to pose as Christians fearing persecution if returned to China.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston on Wednesday announced the charges, which were outlined in a sealed six-count federal indictment filed in August against attorney Shelly Winn, 40, and two assistants, Elizabeth Jones, 50, and Honglian Feng, 49, also known as Diane Feng.

Winn and Feng were arrested in November and were released on bond. The indictment was unsealed this week after Jones — who is also known as Elizabeth Tsai — was arrested in Hong Kong on Jan. 10, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Winn and her assistants filed the asylum claims between April 1999 and February 2004. The law firm provided the clients with written statements about religious persecution and instructed them to copy it in their handwriting, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.


Undercover operation?
Winn and Jones coached their clients prior to asylum interviews by suggesting they give false statements to make their claim more believable, the statement said. The case was investigated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Attempts to reach Winn at the Houston offices of S. Winn and Associates, were unsuccessful. Jones and Feng could not be reached for comment.

Winn's defense attorney, Richard Kuniansky, said his client is an honest lawyer who was victimized by a government undercover agent.

''She's a highly ethical attorney, and she's done absolutely nothing whatsoever against the law, or anything unethical," he said. ''An undercover agent went into her office and lied to her. The only thing she's guilty of is not knowing he was a liar."

The defense attorney said Winn took the agent's statement and submitted it as part of an asylum claim.

''An undercover agent meets with her, and claims he's being persecuted in China," Kuniansky said. ''She goes over his statement, he lies and claims all these terrible things happened to him in China. And she files an application on his behalf seeking asylum. That's what immigration lawyers do."


Trial set for Feb. 1
As for the 70 other cases, Kuniansky said Winn's office filed asylum claims ''on behalf of a number of people but there is no evidence that there's anything fraudulent about those."

Winn has been a licensed attorney in Texas since 1992 and is a graduate of the University of Texas law school in Austin.

Longtime immigration lawyer Gordon Quan said he had not heard of Winn nor of the scheme the government alleged the lawyer used to obtain immigration benefits for clients.

Quan said the large number of claims from Winn alleging religious persecution would have raised red flags. ''One attorney filing the same claim over and over would stick out like a sore thumb," Quan said.

The Chinese clients were first charged $6,000 for the asylum process, but once the immigration documents arrived they were kept at Winn's law office until additional fees were paid by clients, the government said.

The three are charged with conspiracy, immigration document fraud and encouraging immigrants to reside in the country knowing they are not legally entitled to do so. Winn and Jones are also charged with two counts of mail fraud.

Trial for the three women is scheduled for Feb 1.

james.pinkerton@chron.com

Credit for Working Families Underused

By EILEEN PUTMAN Associated Press Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press
Jan. 15, 2008, 1:28PM

WASHINGTON — The IRS is making a big push this year to make sure certain taxpayers know they can take the earned income tax credit, a benefit for lower income workers and working families that goes unclaimed by up to 25 percent of those who are eligible.

The EITC is intended to offset a portion of Social Security and Medicare taxes, thus boosting take-home income in low-wage jobs and providing an incentive to work. It's a "refundable" credit, meaning that after it is figured against your tax liability, the IRS sends you any money you're due.

For 2007 tax returns, the maximum credit is worth up to $4,716 for people with two or more qualifying children, though it's also available to some taxpayers without children.

"For families eligible for the maximum it's almost a quarter of their income," said David R. Williams, IRS director of Electronic Tax Administration and Refundable Credits. "That is such a significant amount of money. It can mean so much for a family."

But the rules and qualifications can be confusing. People overlook the credit because they believe it's too complicated, they don't have children or their income is so low they don't have a legal obligation to file taxes. Many aren't native English speakers.

As many as 5 million people are probably eligible for the credit but are not taking it, the IRS says.

To reach out to them, the IRS has "EITC Awareness Day" on Jan. 31 _ about the time people get their W-2 forms from employers and start thinking about income taxes. The agency also works with 12,000 volunteer tax preparation sites for people who need help with this and other benefits.

The credit is calculated on IRS worksheets, available in English and Spanish. There is also an English-Spanish "EITC Assistant" tool on the IRS Web site at http://www.irs.gov. Many EITC filers can file for free online using the IRS Free File partners, providing they access those partners from the IRS Web site. The agency is also reaching out to Native Americans, people with disabilities and those in rural areas who may be eligible for the credit.

Congress originally approved the tax credit legislation in 1975. For tax year 2005, more than 22 million taxpayers received over $41 billion through the EITC credit, an average credit of $1,797, the IRS said. For tax year 2006, 22.4 million taxpayers received $43.7 billion as of last November. But only about 75 percent of those eligible claim this benefit, the agency says.

Most who claim the credit use a paid tax preparer. The IRS says taxpayers should avoid preparers who offer upfront to qualify them for EITC or ask them to sign a blank 1040. They should also avoid preparers who charge high fees for refund anticipation loans, a short-term advance of quick cash using the expected refund as collateral. Those who can't afford a paid preparer should use volunteer tax prep sites run by community organizations, the IRS says.

To get the earned income tax credit, you must file a tax return, even if you didn't earn enough money to be obligated to file.

If in 2007 you had less than $37,783 ($39,783 for married filing jointly) in income and had two or more qualifying children, you are eligible for the credit. People with no qualifying child can still be eligible for a credit of up to $428 if their income was less than $12,590 ($14,590 for joint filers). Those with one qualifying child and income under $33,241 ($35,241 for joint filers) are also eligible.

What's a qualifying child? There are three tests: the child's relationship to you, age and residency. A qualifying child can be a son, daughter, stepchild, foster or adopted child, or descendant of any of them; brother, sister, half brother or sister, stepbrother, stepsister or their descendant. The child must have been under 19 at the end of 2007 or a full-time student under age 24. Someone permanently and totally disabled also qualifies, regardless of age. The child must have lived with you in the United States for more than half the year.

People claiming the EITC, and their qualifying children, must have valid Social Security numbers.

It's possible some of those eligible for the credit don't claim it because they have illegal immigrants in the household and fear the IRS will share their information with immigration authorities. The IRS says it doesn't do that.

"We divulge that information to no one," Williams said. "We would not be divulging Social Security numbers or taxpayer identification numbers to other third parties."

Another reason people may hold back from filing for the credit is fear that the refundable money may adversely affect welfare benefits. But in most cases, EITC payments are not used to determine eligibility for Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, food stamps, low-income housing or most Temporary Assistance for Needy Families payments.

For more information, see Publication 596, "Earned Income Credit."

Minutemen's adoption of road draws objections

Border activists get part of highway in California that has a checkpoint

By RICHARD MAROSI
Los Angeles Times
Jan. 12, 2008, 11:33PM

SAN DIEGO — The Knights of Columbus have adopted a highway. So have the Japanese American Citizens League, biker groups, Indian casinos and the International House of Pancakes. Now add the San Diego Minutemen.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has granted an Adopt-A-Highway stretch of Interstate 5 to the ardent foes of illegal immigration — and not just any stretch. The two miles the Minutemen will be charged with beautifying include the U.S. Border Patrol Checkpoint near San Clemente.

"How great is that," Jeff Schwilk, the group's founder, told his members in an e-mail.

Critics disagreed, saying Caltrans ignored its own rule that bars groups that advocate violence or discrimination from participating in the program.

"The Adopt-A-Highway program was designed to allow organizations to show pride in the state of California ... and it is unfortunate that the Minutemen, whose approach ... includes advocating violence, have been allowed by Caltrans into the program," said Tina Malka, associate director of the San Diego branch of the Anti-Defamation League.

Schwilk denied his group advocates violence and said no member has been arrested for immigrant-related violence.

Caltrans spokesman Edward Cartagena said the Minutemen got the stretch of I-5 by chance. The group submitted its application in November, he added, and it complied with the rule.

"The Department will not discriminate against groups that otherwise meet the program criteria based on the fact that some members of the public might disagree with the particular group's agenda or reputation," Caltrans said in a statement.

The group's two signs — one on each side of the freeway — went up in late December. Members have been given a safety course on how to clean the freeway. Their first cleanup day is set for next Saturday.

Schwilk said Caltrans rules bar demonstrations, and he and his crew would just be beautifying the roadway.

"We'll be out there in ****y-looking vests, hard hats and goggles, picking up trash. That's all we're allowed to do," he said. "We're a community activist group, so why wouldn't we take other steps to help our communities?"

Enrique Morones, president of the Border Angels, a San Diego-based immigrant rights group, questioned the Minutemen's motives.

"They're desperate to get attention, even if it means sweeping the freeway," he said.

Robert Camp leaves the Bob Casey Federal Courthouse Wednesday in Houston. The federal complaint alleges that Camp, through his company Camp Landscaping, hired Juan Quintero knowing that he had been deported previously for a crime and was back in the country illegally.
Melissa Phillip: Chronicle

Worksite enforcement debate flares

By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Jan. 11, 2008, 12:46PM

The high-profile harboring case against a landscaping company owner who employed an illegal immigrant charged with murder in the slaying of a Houston police officer has heated up the debate over worksite enforcement.

Prosecutors hailed the arrest of owner Robert L. Camp as an example of the consequences of harboring or employing illegal immigrants, but some Houston construction officials say the arrest won't deter the hiring of undocumented workers.

Other critics questioned the fairness of linking the officer's slaying with Camp's role in allegedly harboring the illegal immigrant accused of killing him. The case raises complicated questions of how much responsibility should residents bear if they hire or help an illegal immigrant who later commits a serious crime.

Camp, 47, of Deer Park, faces up to 10 years in prison on charges of harboring longtime employee Juan Leonardo Quintero and encouraging him to return unlawfully to Houston following his 1999 deportation. The Mexican citizen faces capital murder charges, allegedly gunning down Houston police officer Rodney Johnson in September 2006, after the officer stopped him for a traffic violation while driving one of Camp's company trucks.

Camp's lawyer, Jimmy Ardoin, declined to comment Thursday, and has advised his client to do the same.

Meanwhile, a leader in Houston's construction industry and a union official doubted the case would curtail the hiring of undocumented workers.

''I don't think it's going to slow down somebody hiring a day laborer, but it will have an effect if someone has a previous deportation," said Robert Wilkinson, executive director of the Independent Electrical Contractors Association in Houston, who stressed that his members do not condone violatio