RE: Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party

Flood of Legal Immigrants Seeks to Become Citizens


By JULIA PRESTON
Published: July 4, 2007
NY Times

The number of legal immigrants seeking to become United States citizens is surging, officials say, prompted by imminent increases in processing fees for naturalization applications, citizenship drives across the country and new feelings of insecurity in immigrant communities.

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Times Topics: ImmigrationThe citizenship campaigns have tapped into the recent uneasiness that legal immigrants, especially Hispanics, say is the result of months of caustic national debate over an immigration bill that failed in the Senate last week. While illegal immigrants were the center of attention in the debate, it prompted many legal immigrants who have set down roots in this country to seek the security of citizenship, as well as its voting power, immigrant advocates said.

Numbers of new naturalized citizens have been growing steadily in recent years, to 702,589 in 2006 from 463,204 in 2003. But a big jump came this year, with the number of naturalization applications rising every month, to 115,175 in May compared with 65,782 in December 2006.

More than 4,000 new Americans were sworn in yesterday in tradition-steeped Fourth of July ceremonies around the country, as well as some not so traditional events. About 1,000 people from 75 countries took their oaths together by the spires of Cinderella’s Magic Kingdom castle at Disney World in Orlando, as Gloria Estefan crooned “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In Iraq, 325 foreign-born soldiers who are fighting in the United States military took the oath in two separate ceremonies.

For many immigrants, worry turned into action after a Jan. 31 announcement by the federal agency Citizenship and Immigration Services that it would raise its application fees. Under the new fees, which take effect July 30, it will cost $675 to become a naturalized citizen, up almost 69 percent from the current $400.

Immigrants have also been mobilized to press ahead with naturalization applications by a television and radio campaign that Univision, the national Spanish-language network, began in California in January. The campaign, drew support form personalities like the Los Angeles radio host Eduardo Sotelo, known as El Piolín or Tweety Bird, has directed immigrants to some 350 workshop centers run by churches and community organizations in 22 cities. There they receive English lessons and advice about meeting requirements and filling out forms.

One radio listener was Angel Ivan Alvarez, a 24-year-old legal immigrant from Mexico who said he never thought of becoming a citizen until last week when the Senate bill was voted down. The bill, a bipartisan compromise supported by President Bush, would have granted legal status to illegal immigrants, among other measures. After it was rejected, Mr. Alvarez, a realtor from Whittier, Calif., took down information from Mr. Sotelo’s show and registered in a local citizenship workshop.

“I realized that I want to be able to vote and speak up for my people because they are not getting enough support,” Mr. Alvarez said in a telephone interview yesterday. “I want everybody to be able to come out of the shadows.”

Federico Gutiérrez, 53, a longtime legal resident of Chicago who was born in Mexico, said that big immigrant protests in March of last year in support of an immigration overhaul made him decide it was time to engage in American politics. When the debate turned angry, he wanted to be able to influence lawmakers whom he believed were pro-immigrant, Mr. Gutiérrez said.

He prepared his application and brushed up on his American history and English in classes offered by the New Americans Initiative, a citizenship campaign financed by the state of Illinois. He became a citizen in May.

“Now if I don’t like the way things are going, I can let the government know my opinion,” Mr. Gutierrez said in a telephone interview.

Some legal immigrants, particularly Hispanics, have said they were unfairly tarred in the debate over the Senate bill, which was defeated in part due to vehement opposition from conservatives who said it was amnesty for immigrant lawbreakers.

“A lot of people who are here legally are made to feel like lepers,” said Rachel Duverge, 24, a Florida resident born in the Dominican Republic who was among the new citizens sworn in today in Orlando. Ms. Duverge said she became a citizen in part because she is eager to vote in the presidential election next year. President Bush, she said, “has not handled immigration well.”

To become citizens, immigrants must be legal permanent residents who have lived continuously in the United States for five years. They must have a clean criminal record and pass tests to show they are proficient in English and have a basic knowledge of American history and government.



Times Topics: ImmigrationImmigrant advocates say the looming fee increase has been a decisive incentive to working class immigrants to take action, especially when more than one family member is eligible to become a citizen.


“Before, they said, I can do it anytime,” said Catherine Salgado, spokeswoman for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in Chicago. “Now it’s not anytime anymore.” She said the new fee of $675 is a week’s wages for many of the immigrants who have applied to naturalize through workshops organized by the coalition.

The immigration agency is also redesigning the civics and English tests that citizenship candidates have to pass, and many immigrants fear they will become more challenging.

The Univision citizenship campaign had a greater impact than even its organizers expected, especially in California, said Maryam Banikaram, chief marketing officer for the company. She said the campaign was planned as part of Univision’s regular nonpartisan public service efforts.

“If you become a U.S. citizen you have better opportunities,” she said, explaining the thinking behind the campaign. “We’re just giving you the tools to make that a reality.”

The campaign took off after the immigration debate became major news for Univision and Mr. Sotelo used his racy comic radio show as a soapbox to support legal status for illegal immigrants.

Other immigrants are concerned about locking in economic gains they have made as legal residents.

“A prime motivator is security for the family and for employment,” said Javier Angulo, director of civic education for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, a national Hispanic group that organized workshops in connection with the Univision campaign. “People don’t feel that being permanent residents is enough to secure their future in this country. They would just feel more secure as citizens,” he said.

Mr. Gutiérrez, the new citizen in Chicago, said he started out life in a corn-growing village in central Mexico, and has been employed as a factory worker most of the time since coming to the United States in 1979. He has two adult sons who are United States citizens.

“I will always have Mexican blood,” Mr. Gutierrez said, enjoying a day of rest on his first Fourth of July as an American. “But my heart is here.”

Dennis Blank contributed reporting from Orlando.

Kuff's World

She's baaaack

June 29, 2007

Hispanic voters love Hillary

Awhile back, I noticed that Hillary Clinton polled very favorably among Hispanic voters here in Texas, which was something I wasn't exactly expecting. This USA Today story on the shrinking support that Hispanic voters have for President Bush and the Republican Party offers some reasons why this might be.

Like no Republican before him, George W. Bush drew Hispanics to the GOP.
In the 2004 election, at least 40% of the voters in the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group backed Bush, double the share of Hispanics who had supported Republican Bob Dole eight years earlier. But the inroads Bush made are vanishing.

The chief beneficiary for 2008 so far is Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

[...]

Patti Solis Doyle, campaign manager for Clinton and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, says the New York senator is determined to reverse the gains Bush made.

"We did see President Bush make some real inroads among Hispanics, and she is very aggressively going after those votes," says Solis Doyle, Clinton's former scheduler and the first Latina to head a major presidential campaign. Her office is decorated with photographs of her husband and two children, a Diego Rivera print and framed copies of three Time magazine covers featuring Clinton.

The campaign has hired a leading Hispanic pollster, a director of Hispanic outreach and a liaison to Spanish-language media. Clinton also has landed some prized endorsements from top Hispanic officeholders, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez.

In part, Clinton's strength among Hispanics reflects the fact that she is the best-known candidate. Many Hispanics also have lingering affection for her husband, who got 62% of the Latino vote in the 1992 presidential election and 72% when he was re-elected in 1996.

"I like Hillary," Margaret Crutchfield, a 61-year-old Mexican-American, says after the San Antonio rally for Obama, whom she says she also likes. Then Crutchfield adds, brightening: "I love Bill Clinton."


So there you have it.

Ratings for Bush, Congress Sink Lower

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 4, 2007
Filed at 5:43 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Like twin Jacques Cousteaus of the political world, President Bush and Congress are probing the depths of public opinion polling as voters exasperated over Iraq, immigration and other issues give them strikingly low grades.

In a remarkable span, the approval that people voice for the job Bush is doing has sunk to record lows for his presidency in the AP-Ipsos and other polls in recent weeks, dipping within sight of President Nixon's levels during Watergate. Ominously for Republicans hoping to hold the White House and recapture Congress next year, Bush's support has plunged among core GOP groups like evangelicals, and pivotal independent swing voters.

Congress is doing about the same. Like Bush, lawmakers are winning approval by roughly three in 10. Such levels are significantly low for a president, and poor but less unusual for Congress.

''The big thing would be the war,'' said independent Richard MacDonald, 56, a retired printer from Redding, Calif. ''I don't think he knew what he got into when he got into it.'' As for Congress, MacDonald said, ''It's just the same old same old with me. A lot of promises they don't keep.''

Bush was risking more unpopularity by commuting I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby's prison term in the CIA leak case, and his refusal to rule out a full pardon. Polls in March after the former White House aide's conviction showed two in three opposed to a pardon.

The public's dissatisfaction may be more serious for Republicans because even though Bush cannot run again, he is the face of the GOP. He will remain that until his party picks its 2008 presidential nominee -- and through the campaign if Democrats can keep him front and center.

''Everything about this race will be about George Bush and the mess he left,'' Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., a member of the House Democratic leadership, said about 2008. ''He'll be on the ballot.''

Congress' numbers could signal danger for majority Democrats, since they echo the low ratings just before the GOP 1994 takeover of the House and Senate, and the Democratic capture of both chambers last November.

But unlike the president, Congress usually has low approval ratings no matter which party is in control, and poor poll numbers have not always meant the majority party suffered on Election Day. Voters usually show more disdain for Congress as an institution than for their own representative -- whom they pick.

A majority in a CNN-Opinion Research Corp. survey in late June said Democratic control of Congress was good for the country. Yet only 42 percent approved of what Democratic leaders have done this year -- when Democrats failed to force Bush to change policy on Iraq.

Republican strategists hope the dim mood will help the GOP in congressional elections.

''The voters voted for change and they expected change, and they see an institution still incapable of getting anything done,'' said GOP pollster Linda DiVall.

The abysmal numbers are already affecting how Bush and Congress are governing and candidates' positioning for 2008.

Last Thursday's Senate collapse of Bush's immigration bill showed anew how lawmakers feel free to ignore his agenda. Republican senators like Richard Lugar of Indiana and George Voinovich of Ohio have joined increasingly bipartisan calls for an Iraq troop withdrawal.

This year's GOP presidential debates have seen former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arizona Sen. John McCain and others criticize Bush or his administration for mishandling the war and other issues. Some Republican congressional candidates have not hesitated to distance themselves from Bush.

''President Bush is my friend, and I don't always agree with my friends,'' said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., facing a tough re-election fight next year. ''And on the issues of Iraq and immigration, I simply disagree with his approach.''

Bush's doleful numbers speak for themselves.

In an early June AP-Ipsos poll, 32 percent approved of his work, tying his low in that survey. Other June polls in which he set or tied his personal worst included 27 percent by CBS News, 31 percent by Fox News-Opinion Dynamics, 32 percent by CNN-Opinion Research Corp. and 26 percent by Newsweek.

The Gallup poll's lowest presidential approval rating was President Truman's 23 percent in 1951 and 1952 during the Korean war, compared with Nixon's 24 percent days before he resigned in August 1974. Bush notched the best ever, 90 percent days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The AP's June survey showed that compared with an AP exit poll of voters in November 2004, Bush's approval was down among swing voters. His support dropped from about half of independents to a fifth; from half to a third of Catholics; and from nearly half to a fifth of moderates.

Among usually loyal GOP voters, his approval was down from about eight in 10 to roughly half of both conservatives and white evangelicals.

Congress had a 35 percent approval rating in a May AP-Ipsos survey. Polls in June found 27 percent approval by CBS News, 25 percent by Newsweek and 24 percent by Gallup-USA Today.

Congress' all-time Gallup low was 18 percent during a 1992 scandal over House post office transactions; its high was 84 percent just after Sept. 11.

In the AP poll, lawmakers won approval from only about three in 10 midwesterners, independents and married people with children --pivotal groups both parties court aggressively.

AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

July 2

Northeast (Tupelo) Mississippi Daily Journal, on immigration impasse:

Illegal immigrants continue pouring northward across the U.S.-Mexico border, and the congressional impasse on an immigration reform bill supported by President Bush does nothing to remedy the problem. ...

The problem is bipartisan, decades in the making, and only a bipartisan solution will begin the steps necessary to bring it under control. ...

Critics who say immigration law enforcement has been broken for a long time are right. How else would a total of 12 million illegals come to live in our country? ...

The best honest outcome would be for bipartisan leadership in the White House and on Capitol Hill to agree before the 2008 election on a workable plan, honestly admitting past failures stretching over four administrations since the last major reform: Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush. Shared failure, not shared success across the past 21 years.

Much can happen if political will develops and sets itself to make it happen.

For now, there are no winners.

U.S. Withdraws Offer of 60,000 Job-Based Visas, Angering Immigration Lawyers

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: July 4, 2007
NY Times

Immigration lawyers raised unusually irate protests yesterday after the State Department and the immigration service abruptly withdrew tens of thousands of job-based visas they had offered last month to foreign professionals hoping to become permanent residents in the United States.

The outcry was provoked by a terse announcement on Monday in which the State Department said it would not grant any more visas for the 2007 fiscal year to foreigners applying to become permanent residents based on their job skills. That notice reversed one the department had issued on June 13 announcing a two-month window starting July 2 for aspiring, high-skilled immigrants from around the world to present applications for visas known as green cards.

The State Department said the 60,000 visas it had expected to offer would no longer be available because of “sudden backlog reduction efforts” by Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that processes applications for the visas offered by the department.

In a statement yesterday, the American Immigration Lawyers Association accused the two agencies of perpetrating a “hoax” and a “bait and switch” against hopeful legal immigrants who played by the book.

“Here people followed the rules and did everything right, yet without warning or explanation the door was slammed in their faces,” said Kathleen Campbell Walker, the president of the association.

To apply, immigrants must undergo medical examinations and assemble documents to prove their job skills and show that a United States employer has sponsored them. Foreigners must be in the United States when they present their applications, which are processed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Because of backlogs for employment-based visas, foreigners have had to wait many years just to be allowed to file their applications.

Thousands of medical and technology professionals, including many working here on temporary visas, scrambled for weeks to get their documents together, in some cases canceling travel plans, in order to file their applications on Monday, the first day of the window. The State Department and the immigration agency closed the window without accepting a single application.

“I am concerned that such action may violate the law and could threaten the integrity of our immigration system,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California who is chairwoman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, wrote in letters yesterday to Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state. Ms. Lofgren warned that the federal government could face costly litigation because of its change of course.

The State Department said it would begin accepting applications on Oct. 1 for 2008 visas. On July 30, the immigration agency will raise its processing fees by an average of 66 percent.

Op-Ed Contributor

The Founding Immigrants

By KENNETH C. DAVIS
Published: July 3, 2007
Dorset, Vt.

A PROMINENT American once said, about immigrants, “Few of their children in the country learn English... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

This sentiment did not emerge from the rancorous debate over the immigration bill defeated last week in the Senate. It was not the lament of some guest of Lou Dobbs or a Republican candidate intent on wooing bedrock conservative votes. Guess again.

Voicing this grievance was Benjamin Franklin. And the language so vexing to him was the German spoken by new arrivals to Pennsylvania in the 1750s, a wave of immigrants whom Franklin viewed as the “most stupid of their nation.”

About the same time, a Lutheran minister named Henry Muhlenberg, himself a recent arrival from Germany, worried that “the whole country is being flooded with ordinary, extraordinary and unprecedented wickedness and crimes. ... Oh, what a fearful thing it is to have so many thousands of unruly and brazen sinners come into this free air and unfenced country.”

These German masses yearning to breathe free were not the only targets of colonial fear and loathing. Echoing the opinions of colonial editors and legislators, Ben Franklin was also troubled by the British practice of dumping its felons on America. With typical Franklin wit, he proposed sending rattlesnakes to Britain in return. (This did not, however, preclude numerous colonists from purchasing these convicts as indentured servants.)

And still earlier in Pennsylvania, the Scotch-Irish had bred discontent, as their penchant for squatting on choice real estate ran headlong against the colony’s founders, the Penn family, and their genteel notions about who should own what.

Often, the disdain for the foreign was inflamed by religion. Boston’s Puritans hanged several Friends after a Bay Colony ban on Quakerism. In Virginia, the Anglicans arrested Baptists.

But the greatest scorn was generally reserved for Catholics — usually meaning Irish, French, Spanish and Italians. Generations of white American Protestants resented newly arriving “Papists,” and even in colonial Maryland, a supposed haven for them, Roman Catholics were nonetheless forbidden to vote and hold public office.

Once independent, the new nation began to carve its views on immigrants into law. In considering New York’s Constitution, for instance, John Jay — later to become the first chief justice of the Supreme Court — suggested erecting “a wall of brass around the country for the exclusion of Catholics.”

By 1790, with the United States Constitution firmly in place, the first federal citizenship law restricted naturalization to “free white persons” who had been in the country for two years. That requirement was later pushed back to five years and, in 1798, to 14 years.

Then, as now, politics was key. Federalists feared that too many immigrants were joining the opposition. Under the 1798 Alien Act — with the threat of war in the air over French attacks on American shipping — President John Adams had license to deport anyone he considered “dangerous.” Although his secretary of state favored mass deportations, Adams never actually put anybody on a boat.

Back then, the French warranted the most suspicion, but there were other worrisome “aliens.” A wave of “wild Irish” refugees was thought to harbor dangerous radicals. Harsh “anti-coolie” laws later singled out the Chinese. And, of course, the millions of “involuntary” immigrants from Africa and their offspring were regarded merely as persons “held to service.”

Scratch the surface of the current immigration debate and beneath the posturing lies a dirty secret. Anti-immigrant sentiment is older than America itself. Born before the nation, this abiding fear of the “huddled masses” emerged in the early republic and gathered steam into the 19th and 20th centuries, when nativist political parties, exclusionary laws and the Ku Klux Klan swept the land.

As we celebrate another Fourth of July, this picture of American intolerance clashes sharply with tidy schoolbook images of the great melting pot. Why has the land of “all men are created equal” forged countless ghettoes and intricate networks of social exclusion? Why the signs reading “No Irish Need Apply”? And why has each new generation of immigrants had to face down a rich glossary of now unmentionable epithets? Disdain for what is foreign is, sad to say, as American as apple pie, slavery and lynching.

That fence along the Mexican border now being contemplated by Congress is just the latest vestige of a venerable tradition, at least as old as John Jay’s “wall of brass.” “Don’t fence me in” might be America’s unofficial anthem of unfettered freedom, but too often the subtext is, “Fence everyone else out.”

Kenneth C. Davis is the author of “Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned.”

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The Public Editor Op-Ed Contributor

Use Social Security to Seal the Border


By PETER D. SALINS
Published: July 3, 2007
Stony Brook, N.Y.

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Alex Nabaum
CONGRESS failed to pass an immigration reform bill last week largely because sponsors, including the president, could not convince the American people that the legislation would end illegal immigration. In the debate that preceded the collapse of the bill in the Senate, the rallying cry of opponents was “enforcement first.” Perhaps by taking the critics’ slogan seriously, President Bush can salvage a comprehensive immigration policy this year.

Supporters of immigration reform need to demonstrate that they are serious about stopping illegal immigration through stringent enforcement at work places. Keeping new illegal immigrants from being employed is far and away the best strategy for deterring them from entering the country, easily trumping border guards and fences.

Although the failed Senate bill included provisions for worksite enforcement, Congress actually doesn’t need to pass new legislation to achieve it. The Social Security Administration has for seven decades maintained a comprehensive employment database that can keep track of every single employee, legal or not, in the United States. The Social Security database, combined with laws already on the books, provides a way to catch unauthorized workers almost as soon as they are hired.

The Senate bill proposed nationwide expansion of something called the Employment Eligibility Verification System, which is now a pilot program of the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. The idea was to create a database for an “instant background check,” similar to the database that gun dealers must consult before selling firearms to potential buyers. Any American employer, facing a job applicant, would be required to enter the applicant’s information into a new national electronic database. The employer would receive instant — or at least timely — verification that the job applicant was in the country legally.

Skeptics didn’t buy this plan for several reasons. Federal agencies, even in the wake of 9/11, have a poor track record in installing comprehensive new computer data systems. More important, numerous caveats buried in the bill would have let employers off the hook if Congress failed to authorize sufficient money for the new program. Even if that loophole were closed, the ambitious new employment enforcement database could easily be undermined by future Congresses faced with budget shortfalls, or merely the hostility of the coalition of immigrant advocates and employers that favor lax enforcement.

Political pressure from this coalition has for years prevented the government from deploying the enforcement system that is already in place. If it wanted to, here is how the Social Security Administration could run an employee verification system right now.

Under current employment law, every legal permanent resident of the United States is required to have a Social Security number. Further, employers must register their employees’ status and Social Security numbers with the Social Security Administration and make contributions to the system on their behalf. These two features together can serve as a dragnet for identifying all illegal workers.

Companies or individuals employing illegal workers “off the books” are breaking the law, as are those that submit false or stolen Social Security numbers. Admittedly, tracking down workers with no documents is a daunting task, but that would also be true under the proposed system in the stalled immigration reform bill. But the vast majority of American workers — legal and illegal — are actually working “on the books.” Their status does come to the attention of the Social Security Administration.

Illegal immigrant workers can be identified by the government in several ways. Nearly 40 percent of them, or approximately 3.5 million, may have valid Social Security numbers but have overstayed their visas. Their identities can easily be established by matching Social Security Administration data against the visa expiration dates in the files of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The other illegal immigrants working on the books have submitted fraudulent identification that, when logged by the government, shows up as being either non-existent or duplicative of existing Social Security accounts. When a fraudulent Social Security number is sent to Washington, the government deposits the accompanying money in an “earnings suspense file,” a kitty that by last October had grown to $586 billion. The Social Security Administration does not, however, determine the reasons for the discrepancy (which could be a clerical error or a legitimate name change) or alert Homeland Security and the employer that something is amiss.

Social Security administrators assert, erroneously, that they are not permitted to aid immigration law enforcement or to share data with the Department of Homeland Security. The real reason for their reticence is their fear that more aggressive electronic enforcement might invite political outrage. In 2002, the Social Security Administration chose merely to inform employers of Social Security number discrepancies by sending 950,000 “mismatch” letters. That action so angered businesses and immigration advocates that a year later the modest bureaucratic effort was largely ended.

After last week’s legislative failure, it should be clear that the passage of immigration reform requires more enforcement of immigration law, not less. Given the country’s cynical approach to worksite enforcement until now, supporters of comprehensive immigration reform who claim they intend to curtail future illegal immigration need to make sure that, for once, all government agencies participating in worksite enforcement really have the resources, the will and the political support to give it teeth. By directing the Social Security Administration to use its database to enforce our existing immigration laws, President Bush can do this now without waiting for Congress to pass a bill.

If he does, then perhaps the United States will have truly entered a promising new era in immigration policy. If he doesn’t, we will be revisiting this contentious issue a decade from now, when we face a vastly larger illegal work force.

Peter D. Salins, professor of political science at the State University of New York, is the author of “Assimilation, American Style.”

New Scrutiny As Immigrants Die in Custody


*Please Note: Archive articles do not include photos, charts or graphics. More information.

June 26, 2007, Tuesday
By NINA BERNSTEIN (NYT); National Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 1, Column , 1368 words

DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - Lawmakers and government investigators are examining deaths of immigrants who die while in custody as immigration detention system swells to meet demands for stricter enforcement of immigration laws; family members and advocates have difficulty getting information about those who die in custody of immigrant detention, patchwork of federal, private and local facilities; new Immigration and Customs Enforcement report finds that 62 immigrants have died in custody since 2004; immigration officials say that some deaths are inevitable and that sufficient outside scrutiny comes from local medical examiners; some advocates say deaths in custody are not always reported and criticize lack of independent oversight; detention standards were adopted in 2000, but they are not legally enforceable and Homeland Security Dept has resisted efforts to turn standards into regulations

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EDITORIAL

Gitmos Across America

*Please Note: Archive articles do not include photos, charts or graphics. More information. June 27, 2007, Wednesday
(NYT); Editorial Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 22, Column , 496 words
DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - Editorial sharply criticizes immigration detention facilities and warns system would become even worse under Sen Lindsey Graham's proposal for mandatory detention of all people who overstay visas; agrees that noncitizens are subject to US laws and to being deported 'if they do bad things,' but says this does not mean country 'must detain or deport everybody'

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Immigrant Detentions


Published: July 4, 2007

To the Editor:

New Scrutiny as Immigrants Die in Custody (June 26, 2007)
Editorial: Gitmos Across America (June 27, 2007) Re “New Scrutiny as Immigrants Die in Custody” (front page, June 26) and “Gitmos Across America” (editorial, June 27):

Nearly one million people came through detention facilities in the same time period covered by the articles. Each of them received taxpayer-financed medical treatment, including a comprehensive health screening, or care management provided by the Division of Immigration Health Services of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration to the tune of $259 million.

Last year alone, the division identified chronic conditions in 24 percent of detainees screened. In each case of a death, the local medical examiner is notified and makes a determination whether an autopsy or further investigation is warranted.

In a population that typically has little preventive or continuing medical care, it’s sadly unsurprising that health issues are prevalent and that some chronic conditions result in death.

We don’t believe that only healthy individuals should be accountable for violating the law, while others should get a pass. When we do detain those with illnesses, we have a moral obligation to care for them, which we uphold each and every day in a manner of which the American people can be proud. John P. Torres

Director, Detention and

Removal Operations

Immigration and

Customs Enforcement

Washington, June 29, 2007

July 1, 2007, 1:14AM

Politicians cite lack of trust in immigration bill's failure
Both parties say Americans have lost faith in government's problem-solving

By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The collapse of the Senate's effort to overhaul an immigration system that works well for virtually no one is being blamed on a volatile brew of politics, intense public pressure and its advocates' half-hearted embrace of the proposed fix.

But perhaps the dominant reason singled out by Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill was that Americans do not trust their government to take the hard, complicated steps necessary to solve this — and other — intractable problems facing the nation.

"A lot of Americans have lost faith in their government," a disappointed Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said after the Senate spurned the deal he and about a dozen other Republicans and Democrats crafted. "They don't think we can control our borders. They don't think we can win a war. They don't think we can issue passports ...

"So they ask the question, 'Why should we grant special status to people who came here illegally until we know that you're going to get serious about enforcing this new law?' "

A persistent shadow over the debate was the government's inadequate performance after Congress passed a 1986 law that pledged stiffer enforcement but delivered only on the other part of the deal: legalization for nearly 3 million illegal immigrants.


Outcry swamps Capitol Hill
Two decades later, the enforcement demand rang like a clarion call among the conservative grassroots, which savaged the Senate bill as "amnesty" for lawbreakers and fanned a huge outcry that swamped Capitol Hill with hundreds of thousands of faxes, calls and e-mail messages and crashed the Senate telephone system.
Emboldened by the outcome, the band of Southern Republicans who led the charge against the bill immediately demanded that the Bush administration, which promoted the compromise, redouble its enforcement efforts against illegal immigration at the Southwest border and in the interior.

"The first step as we leave here today is to make sure the administration got the clear message from this vote that enforcement comes first," Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said.

But a visibly frustrated Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who spent hundreds of hours in negotiations over the bill, accused its critics of sending him to war with inadequate armament.

"Secure the border, but we won't give you the weapons? Why is that a sensible solution?" Chertoff asked.

The bill's demise means no mandatory employment-verification system to weed out unauthorized workers; no increased penalties for ID counterfeiters or rogue employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants; no tamper-proof driver's licenses; and no immediate $4.4 billion infusion for border security.


Border fencing
Even though Chertoff said the current laws are insufficient to effectively end illegal immigration, he made clear that he is duty-bound to enforce them — popular or not.
So, he said, the work will go on to grow the Border Patrol to 18,000 agents; build 370 miles of fencing at the border and create a "virtual" fence of electronic surveillance; and conduct worksite enforcement raids.

"And, I have to say, you will continue to see heart-wrenching examples of families being pulled apart because I have an obligation to enforce the law, whether it's painful to do or whether it's pleasurable to do," Chertoff said. "But in order to regain the credibility with the American people that has been squandered over 30 years, we're going to have to be tough."

His warning worries Houstonians such as U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Wafa Abdin, who works closely with illegal immigrants as the supervising attorney at Cabrini Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance at Catholic Charities of Houston.

"My fear is we will see a stepping-up of the enforcement," Abdin said. Although Houston has not seen major raids of the kind other cities have experienced, she said, "I am very worried for the community, to tell you the truth, more than anything."

Jackson Lee called on the Department of Homeland Security to provide measured enforcement. "We cannot run our immigration system by sporadic raids," the Democrat said.

A day after the Senate's decision to abandon work on the issue, Abdin said many of her clients were in despair.

"Really, people are very, very disappointed, I would say," Abdin said. "There was hope for them to get some kind of (legal) status."

Employers also expressed dismay about the implosion of the bill — and the likelihood that Congress would shelve reform efforts until after the 2008 elections.

"Employers want to hire legal workers, but under the current situation they are between the devil and the deep blue sea in terms of hiring folks who appear to have legitimate documents," said Bill Hammond, head of the Texas Association of Business and a key member of the Texas Employers for Immigration Reform coalition pressing for a comprehensive bill.

Jackson Lee remains hopeful that Congress can yet take some steps — if not this year, then next — to improve the identity documents used to verify workers and increase sanctions on scofflaw employers.

michelle.mittelstadt@chron.com

Sixteen of the 23 shrimp boats in the Texas Gulf Trawlers fleet are docked in Port Isabel. Normally, the fleet is out shrimping in force this time of the year. ''They're just sitting out there waiting," said Julissa Ochoa, an administrative assistant at the company.
BRAD DOHERTY: FOR THE CHRONICLE

July 1, 2007, 4:50PM

Texas economy braces for immigration bill impact

By JAMES PINKERTON, SUSAN CARROLL and LORI RODRIGUEZ
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle


The program
• More than 59,000 foreign farm workers were certified to work in the U.S. through the federal H2A guest worker program in 2006.


The process
• Employers must file an application with the Department of Labor certifying that they have advertised a job locally and found no willing and qualified U.S. citizens. Employers pay a $100 application fee and up to $10 for each worker visa, up to $1,000.


Requirements
• Employers must also provide housing that meets government standards and provide food and transportation for workers.

In addition, employers have to agree to pay workers an "adverse-effect wage," designed to keep pay competitive for American workers. In Texas, H2A workers are guaranteed