ILLEGAL-WORKER CRACKDOWN COMING
EMPLOYERS WON'T BE ABLE TO IGNORE 'NO-MATCH' LETTERS'

By Hernan Rozemberg
San Antonio Express-News
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.04.2007

The Department of Homeland Security will unveil a new policy next week making employers responsible for knowing their employees' immigration status.

The department argued that for too long U.S. employers have been able to shrug off the consequences of hiring illegal workers.

The new policy will help Homeland Security prosecute employers who have been notified by the Social Security Administration that employees on the payroll don't show up on Social Security rolls.

"There's going to be no more excuses for employers who have blatantly violated the laws and sought to game the system," said Russ Knocke, the department's press secretary.

The Social Security Administration sends out "no-match" letters when workers' Social Security numbers don't line up with the agency's records.

The policy, in practice since 1979, was created to assist the Internal Revenue Service in tax collection. The cause for the discrepancy can range from people getting married or divorced to clerical errors, but it's widely accepted that most cases involve illegal workers.

Under the new policy, Homeland Security will be able to seek the no-match information from employers already being investigated by the agency.

If employers get Social Security letters or a notification from Homeland Security, the managers will have to prove they tried to solve the problem. That includes showing they fired workers who failed to comply.

"The regulation will make it perfectly clear what needs to happen for employers to show they're following the law," Knocke said. "They will have a paper trail showing they acted in good faith."

The government will go after employers who received the letters but failed to resolve the problem within two months. Companies found in violation will face fines of $250 to $10,000 per violation.

Various trade groups, representing industries including restaurants, landscaping and agriculture, have opposed the federal government's move, speaking apocalyptically of the expected economic hit.

The change is not a new law. It's tweaking existing tax policy to clarify what employers must do when they're notified that their payrolls show workers whose identities don't match information listed by the government.

The modifications were proposed a year ago but were shelved as leaders in Washington launched an ill-fated quest to overhaul the entire immigration system.

"For us, this is not very ****. It's about wage reporting," said Mark Hinkle, a spokesman for Social Security, noting that an average of 140,000 letters are dispatched each year.

Not firing workers who fail to produce documentation of their immigration status also would be grounds for investigation.

It will be left up to employers to call the government's bluff or to see if "we're about to witness the dawn of a new era of immigration enforcement," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

If Homeland Security is serious, it should prepare to ask Congress for the increased funding it will need to enforce the new regulations, Papademetriou said.

SURGE IN IMMIGRATION LAWS AROUND U.S.

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: August 6, 2007

State legislatures, grappling with the failure of the federal government to overhaul the immigration laws, considered 1,404 immigration measures this year and enacted 170 of them, an unprecedented surge in state-level lawmaking on the issue, according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Spurred by rising resentment in the country over illegal immigration and by the collapse of a broad immigration bill in the Senate in June, state legislators nationwide adopted measures to curb employment of unauthorized immigrants and to make it more difficult for them to obtain state identification documents like driver's licenses.

While the political tide ran generally against illegal immigrants, some states adopted measures to help them by protecting them from exploitation and by extending education and health care to their children. Fifteen states adopted laws intended to punish immigrant smugglers, especially if their victims were foreigners coerced into prostitution or other sexual commerce.

State lawmakers have introduced about two and half times more immigration bills this year than in 2006, and the number that have become law is more than double the 84 bills enacted last year, according to the conference, a nonpartisan organization that includes all the state legislatures. The report was scheduled to be released today.

"States will act in a vacuum," said Leticia Van de Putte, a Democratic state senator from Texas who is the president of the conference this year. "The states are stepping up to the plate and doing what they can, because not to act would be irresponsible."

Every state debated immigration issues, and 41 states adopted immigration laws. A large number of new laws cracked down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. The broadest measure was passed in Arizona and signed into law by Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, in July. Arizona employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants face suspension of their business license for the first offense and the permanent loss of their license for a second offense within three years. The law requires employers to verify the status of job applicants with a federal immigration database known as Basic Pilot.

"The message loud and clear from our constituents was their frustration that the federal government has not taken the necessary action to secure the border," Timothy S. Bee, a Republican who is the president of the Arizona Senate, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Tennessee made it a criminal offense, rather than a civil one, to "recklessly employ" an illegal immigrant, with fines up to $50,000. Several states passed laws denying state contracts to employers of illegal immigrants, and other laws barred those immigrants from collecting unemployment benefits. In all, 26 laws on employing immigrants were passed in 19 states "” covering the nation from Hawaii to Arkansas to Georgia "” with most of the measures intended to curb illegal immigrants' access to jobs.

But in Illinois, lawmakers barred the state from requiring employers to verify job applicants through the Basic Pilot system. The legislators called the system unreliable and error-prone.

Several states "” including Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana and Nevada "” passed new laws or hardened existing ones to bar illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses.

The toughest law was adopted in Louisiana, which now requires applicants' names to be checked against a federal immigration database as well as the Department of Homeland Security's terrorism watch list.

Eleven states enacted 15 laws on public benefits, most of them denying state assistance to illegal immigrants. In May, Minnesota passed a version of a federal law that makes illegal immigrants ineligible for most medical aid.

Univision Plans To Make Its Own History By Airing The First U.S. Presidential Debates In Spanish Sept. 9 and 16 In Miami

Houston Chronicle
Immigration Chronicles
Blogging the issue with the Chronicle staff
August 05, 2007


Presidential Debates in Spanish? Sí

If it was good enough for YouTube shouldn't it be good enough for Univisión? The omnipresent video sharing site made headlines when it partnered with CNN to broadcast a presidential debate last month. Now Univisión plans to make its own history by airing the first U.S. presidential debates in Spanish Sept. 9 and 16 in Miami. Questions at the live debate would be simultaneously translated into English.

But there are, naturally, some issues.

I just returned this weekend from the annual Asian American Journalists Association convention in Miami where I first heard about the story.

Jorge Marsuli, executive director of Mi Familia Vota/Democracia USA and vice president of People for the American Way, raised the issue during a "Town Hall" meeting I attended on "The Impact of the Emerging Immigrant Vote on the 2008 Election." Apparently, Hillary Clinton has declined to attend the Univisión debate while Barack Obama is thinking about it. Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd have said sí. (The latter two would have an upper hand since they speak Spanish.)

The Miami Herald reported on Thursday that John McCain "became the first and only Republican to agree" to the Sept. 16 debate. Mitt Romney has said no thanks.

So what should we make of all this?

The Hispanic vote looms large in the 2008 election especially in key swing states such as Florida. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, about 5.6 million Hispanics voted in the 2006 mid-term election which always draws significantly fewer voters than a presidential election.

In the last six months we've seen all sorts of indicators that the pool of registered Hispanic voters will markedly increase come 2008. A dizzying list of advocacy groups has launched successful citizenship and voter registration drives since the historic immigrant marches of spring 2006. We've seen significant increases in the numbers of immigrants -- many of them Hispanic -- applying for citizenship in the last year.

So with all those votes to gain why would a presidential candidate not want to get some free advertising on the No. 1 Spanish media outlet? I'm no expert, but one word comes to mind: immigration.

All the exit polls in the 2006 midterm election showed that immigration was the most important issue for Hispanics.

And you know immigration would be front and center on Univisión -- unlike the YouTube debate where it was conveniently ignored.

I just don't see too many candidates, Republican or Democrat, wanting to go there on this complex and contentious issue that -- for politicians seeking votes -- has no easy answer. If you come out sympathetic to the plight of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., you'll anger countless voters demanding the government enforce its immigration laws. But if you show support for tough laws such as the Hazleton ordinance you might get labeled anti-Hispanic.

Or maybe some candidates are treating Univisión like it was kryptonite because of a more basic reason: language. Perhaps the very idea of participating in a debate for the White House in Spanish -- in a country where there's a growing English-only movement -- is unnerving to the likes of Romney and Clinton.

Posted by Mizanur Rahman at August 5, 2007 06:48 PM

Reports Say States Taking Up Slack In Migrant Policies

By STEVE LEBLANC
Associated Press

BOSTON "” State lawmakers are increasingly stepping into the void created by the failure of Congress to approve sweeping changes to immigration policy, a new report finds.

State legislatures have passed bills dealing with a range of immigration issues, from employment and health care to driver's licenses and human trafficking "” creating a sometimes uneven patchwork quilt of immigration law across the country.

Arkansas approved a law barring state agencies from contracting with businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

Louisiana has a new law barring the state from issuing driver's licenses to foreigners until their criminal background has been checked.

Oregon made it illegal for anyone other than lawyers to do immigration consultation.

In the first six months of the year, 171 immigration bills became law in 41 states.

That's more than double the 84 immigration laws in 50 states approved in all of 2006, according to the report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, being released today at the group's annual meeting.

More than half of the states have considered bills seeking to toughen or clarify laws related to driver's licenses or other identification. Nineteen have studied immigration laws that would affect the ability of immigrants to find jobs.

While the states have been taking action, Congress failed this summer to pass President Bush's immigration plan, which would have legalized as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants while fortifying the border.

Though immigration previously was largely a concern of border states, it has become a national concern and lawmakers in all 50 states are weighing legislation this year, according to Sheri Steisel, NCSL immigration policy director.

Francisco Ramos, A Carpenter, Still Hasn't Been Paid For Framig He Did A Month Ago.

NICK de la TORRE: CHRONICLE
July 30, 2007, 11:25AM

Day Workers Plagued By Wage Theft

Local advocates hope to recoup pay in problem plaguing nation

By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

THE DAILY ROUTINE
"On The Corner," a national day labor study by UCLA researchers, reports that 117,600 people daily are looking for day-labor jobs or working as day laborers.

Nearly 50 percent of these workers are employed by homeowners and renters for help with moving, cleanup and gardening projects. Forty-three percent are hired by contractors for construction and landscaping jobs.

They perform a variety of manual-labor work. The majority of day laborers are hired repeatedly by the same employer; 83 percent of day laborers rely on day-labor work as their sole income source.

To see the full report, visit www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/csup
Francisco Ramos worked a 40-hour week in June, framing houses in south Houston for promised wages of $320. But on payday, the 26-year-old carpenter got nothing.

His contractor dropped him off later that evening empty-handed.

A month later, he's still waiting for his wages "” as are thousands of other immigrants across the U.S. and Houston.

Wage theft is widespread among mostly illegal immigrant workers, especially those who are recruited on street corners and work in the shadows of the American labor force. And that work-related exploitation appears to be growing along with the country's immigrant population.

In the nation's first comprehensive study of day laborers, called ''On the Corner," UCLA researchers interviewed 2,660 workers at 264 hiring sites in 20 states, including Texas and the District of Columbia. The 2006 study concluded that almost half of all day laborers experienced at least one instance of wage theft in the two months prior to being surveyed.

In Houston, a national worker's advocacy group opened an office near downtown in April to recover wages lost by mostly immigrant workers. The Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center is handling cases of wage loss mostly among immigrants hired by small businesses, contractors and individuals.

But if an immigrant "” undocumented or not "” is working for an employer with revenues exceeding $500,000 annually, a complaint can be referred to the U.S. Department of Labor's wage and hour division.

In the department's Houston district, the number of immigrants bringing wage complaints has risen dramatically, with 842 seeking back pay in fiscal 2006. That is up from the 371 in 2005 and 172 the year before, according to the Labor Department.

In the Houston district, the department identified $2.9 million in back wages owed to immigrants in fiscal 2006, up from $607,000 the year before. For 2006, the department collected backwages of $475,000 owed to 453 immigrant workers.

The labor department cases involve workers who were not paid, or paid less than minimum wage, or not paid for overtime hours.

The UCLA study indicated the day labor force is predominantly immigrant and Latino. Nearly 60 percent of the workers are from Mexico and 28 percent from Central America. The third largest group, at 7 percent, are U.S-born.

And while 75 percent of day laborers are undocumented, the rest are either U.S. citizens or legal immigrants seeking permanent residency.

Groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform say exploitation of immigrant workers by employers is another reason why the U.S. needs to control illegal immigration.

''It's the next best thing to slavery "” they hold all the cards," said Ira Mehlman , a FAIR spokesman, referring to unscrupulous employers. ''They have a whole class of workers who have a limited ability to complain about conditions they're faced with."


Unfair advantage
Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County AFL-CIO, described wage theft among immigrant workers as a "big problem" in Houston.

Shaw said wage theft not only exploits immigrants but hurts legitimate businesses that pay their workers fair wages.

''When workers work for free ... it drives down wages for everyone else in the community," Shaw said. ''So if you're going into the lawn-care business legitimately, you're competing against employers who don't pay their workers."

Longtime Houston immigration activist Maria Jimenez, who visited a hiring site in Kingwood on Thursday, said three of 15 workers told her their employers owed them money. She said two were U.S.-born "” an Anglo and a Mexican-American.

''It's a pretty serious situation ... and it's gotten worse over the years," Jimenez said. ''It's because of the presence of immigrants in these trades where it's easy not to pay them "” like landscaping or construction "” because (employers) know they can get away with it."

City officials say a major obstacle to recovering wages is fear "” many undocumented immigrants won't file complaints because they are afraid of being deported. Others immigrants, desperate not to lose additional earnings, consider the process of filing complaints or going to small claims court too time-consuming.

Since beginning operations in 2001, the Mayor's Office of Immigrant & Refugee Affairs has logged 727 complaints of employment problems experienced by immigrants, including wage theft.

''It's a very serious problem. Immigrants are vulnerable to this kind of situation," said Benito Juarez, director of the immigrant and refugee affairs offices. ''The problem is a lot of people don't report it."

Carlos Garcia, who heads the protection department at the Mexican Consulate General in Houston, said solutions to wage theft are few ''because there are no regulations to deal with the problem."

Since opening its doors in April, the nonprofit Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center has begun work on 20 cases involving 48 immigrant workers who are owed money, said staff member Laura Boston.

''If you go to a day labor center and say have you heard of anyone not being paid, everyone raises their hand," Boston said. "If you ask have you not been paid, half to a third will raise their hands."

Staff from the center give workers' rights presentations at day labor centers, churches and other sites.

The center's largest case so far took place in early June, when 20 workers were cheated by a subcontractor for a Houston home builder. Each worker is out wages of $1,296 for more than 100 hours of work, or a total of $25,900, Boston said.


Principle involved
One of the center's clients is Ramos, the Guatemalan immigrant.
While his lost pay has caused a hardship for Ramos, who supports a wife and young son, he decided to file a claim to stop employers from exploiting workers.

''It's true the money is important, but they have to realize it's not right to take advantage of people. It's not just," Ramos said.

Workers at the center attempt to recover the money by contacting the employer. If there is no response, police can be called or a case filed in small claims court. So far, the center has returned an immigrant's pay in one case.

It is hard to determine how many wage theft cases are referred to police. Houston Police Department and Harris County Sheriff's officials said these cases cannot be separated from the wider category of theft of service, which includes driving off without paying for gasoline or skipping a restaurant tab.


Chasing ghosts
Often, immigrants who are scammed provide little information to help investigators locate a contractor, said Cpl. Felipe Gallegos, with the Pct. 6 constable's office. They jump in a truck, may jot down a license plate, but know little else about the employer.
''So it's hard to find them because the immigrant doesn't have a name, an address, nothing," Gallegos said. ''I've got one right now where one guy is owed $160, and all he has is the guy's cell phone. It's like chasing a ghost."

At first, Mexican immigrant Genaro Morgado decided not to complain after he quit his job at an auto repair shop and his last, $350 paycheck bounced.

He knows other laborers who have gone unpaid and done nothing, fearing deportation.

''I was going to leave it like this," he said. ''But my friend said you shouldn't, or next time they'll do the same."

james.pinkerton@chron.com

National Day Labor Study

THE DAILY ROUTINE

"On The Corner," a national day labor study by UCLA researchers, reports that 117,600 people daily are looking for day-labor jobs or working as day laborers.

Nearly 50 percent of these workers are employed by homeowners and renters for help with moving, cleanup and gardening projects. Forty-three percent are hired by contractors for construction and landscaping jobs.

They perform a variety of manual-labor work. The majority of day laborers are hired repeatedly by the same employer; 83 percent of day laborers rely on day-labor work as their sole income source.

To see the full report, visit www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/csup

Work, Then Play
Day Laborers At Night, Blurring The Border Between Life And Art

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 6, 2007; Page C01



Emihio Ortiz, left, and Marvin Guillen performing at a day laborer culture celebration Saturday in Silver Spring. (By Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)

Thin and frenetic, banging on his guitar in a Silver Spring union hall, Omar León is like a dream of labor balladeer Joe Hill, singing out in Spanish.

"La voz, la voz, también es un arma!"

"La voz, la voz, también es un arma!"

The voice, the voice also is a weapon! he chants, while a couple hundred day laborers, organizers and allies dance and sing along.

Not too many years ago, León, 31, was a guy from Mexico in a ball cap waiting for work outside a Home Depot in Hollywood. Now he's a professional organizer and amateur troubadour. His group -- Los Jornaleros, or the Day Laborers -- has two self-published CDs out.

But León is just one voice. While Congress, critics of illegal immigration, employers and neighbors push and pull over this spreading yet still somewhat inscrutable population, day laborers are fashioning a culture. In the immigration wars, they have been defined two ways -- by the work they do, and by the way many entered the country. Now they would define themselves another way: through theater, painting, poetry -- and especially music.

Budding day laborer culture was on display Saturday into the early hours of yesterday morning at the National Labor College on New Hampshire Avenue next to the Beltway.

More than 200 workers and organizers from the Washington area and nationwide were attending a four-day convention to lobby for change and to attend workshops. This was the party after the politicking.

"When a people celebrates its struggle for work, for life and for rights, through song, poetry and painting, then art and culture become tools of resistance and liberation," Pablo Alvarado, director of the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, says in Spanish to open the program.

This is homemade, outsider art, tinged with homesickness and longing, fired by hope and defiance. The photographs on the walls show men in vacant lots waiting to be hired, the lucky ones at construction sites. Paintings depict a stylized mythic river dividing two realities: on one side, shacks and hunger; on the other, fields, factories and skyscrapers.

Most of the artists decline to disclose their individual immigration status in a newspaper story, even as their art portrays a common lot as hardworking people whose only "crime" was to come seeking work.

"That question bothers me," says Victor Galicia, 40, a poet and house painter from Portland, Ore., who recited his sentimental sonnet against injustice, "La Reina de las Flores." "That's what the bosses ask."

"We believe everyone has the right to work," Leon says.

On Friday night conference participants marched in Herndon to protest a proposal to limit the day labor center there to legal residents. That battle is unfolding just as Prince William and Loudoun counties are considering withholding some services from illegal immigrants.

Alvarado says he can understand that some think it's wrong for people to sneak across the border. But "it is honorable for a father and a mother to say, 'I want to do my best for my family,' " he argues, when, for example, children are living in harsh conditions. If history were different, and Latin America were the prosperous side of the border, North Americans would do the same, he says.

Suddenly bursting into the middle of the hall, a cast of a dozen day laborers presents scenes from a play called "Los Illegals," which was performed to the public in Los Angeles in June. It is set near a Home Depot, where a Minuteman character protests and the manager complains that too many laborers are congregating in the parking lot.

"We want people to know who we are and give a face to those invisible human beings," says Juan Jose Mangandi, the lead actor, who says he left three daughters in El Salvador. "We want to break the mistrust."

Most of all, every movement needs a soundtrack. Music is the emotional engine through which people united in a struggle tell stories to each other, recruit new members, educate the wider public and, ultimately, leave a record of their journey. The union labor movement had Hill ("There Is Power in a Union") and his followers. The civil rights movement took inspiration from gospel and spirituals ("We Shall Overcome"), while the anti-Vietnam War movement borrowed pieces of black and white folk traditions ("Blowing in the Wind").

Alvarado dates the birth of day laborer music to March 1996, in a vacant lot outside Los Angeles. Day laborers were lined up at a mobile health clinic to receive AIDS testing when suddenly immigration agents raided the site. One of the day laborers who got away went home and wrote a ballad about what happened. He played it for his fellow workers on a guitar he had salvaged from the trash. The first verse, translated:

I'm going to sing to you friends

Something that comes with passion

One day in front of the Kmart,

Upon us pounced Immigration."

Out of that inspiration, Los Jornaleros was formed. Now Alvarado says day laborer bands are active in suburban New York and Phoenix, and a group in Maryland called La Nueva Cosecha (the New Harvest) sometimes includes day laborers.

Leon wrote all the songs on the Los Jornaleros' recently released disc, "¡Ãšnete Pueblo!" -- "Unite, People!" One is an amused account of the plight of a day laborer who can't get a driver's license (because in many states they are denied to undocumented immigrants). Another is an ode to a domestic worker named Juana, an unrecognized heroine who conducts a veritable "concert of cleaning" with all her tools, and when she scrubs the floor she sees her own reflection, bathed in sweat.

Leon says he writes his songs not just to cheerlead for day laborers. "If you're outside a supermarket singing about people's lives, someone will listen to you," he says. "I start singing my songs and people ask me about the lyrics. Some people who are not familiar with the immigrant's struggle get very interested, and they want to hear more about our stories."

But this is a night to rally the rank and file. The day laborers' reality, rendered into art, can become a buffer and balm from that very reality.

At the conclusion of the play, when the characters have just demonstrated the value of solidarity, Leon jumps onstage to perform a day laborer cumbia, which gets the actors dancing. More performers take turns onstage. A thin young man dedicates his performance to his dad -- then sings a mournful a cappella about a son who bids his father, a farmer, goodbye in Mexico, only to return after the old man's death.

A trio with traditional Mexican eight- and four-string guitar-like instruments sings "El Barrio," written by Marco Amador, an organizer with the day laborer network. A translation:

Every day the sun comes up

And the people go to work

With their arms and their backs

To wait on the corner.

Before the music fades by 2 a.m., Leon is back onstage jamming with the rest of the musicians, striving to give those people on the corner a voice.

Mexican Tycoon Loses Election In Border State

Reuters
Monday, August 6, 2007

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - A Mexican billionaire with a gambling empire who is accused of links to drug cartels lost a gubernatorial election in a state bordering California, results showed on Monday.

Jorge Hank, who has a huge private zoo and once caused outrage by comparing women to animals, trailed National Action Party candidate Jose Guadalupe Osuna in the Baja California state election.

Civil Rights Attorney Oliver Hill is shown in this Jan. 15, 1999 file photo, in his office in Richmond, Va. Hill, who was at the front of the court fight that led the Supreme Court to end racially segregated schools, died Sunday, Aug. 5, 2007. He was 100. (Eric Brady- File - AP )

With 90 percent of polling stations reporting, Osuna received around 50 percent support to some 43 percent for Hank.

Hank ran for the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which governed nationally for 71 years until 2000 and was renowned for being corrupt and authoritarian.

During campaigning, critics claimed Hank's run had been funded by drug gangs. Hank denied the accusations and said they were an attempt to derail his campaign and discredit him.

The U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center accused Hank of using his betting business to launder drug money in a 1999 report that was leaked to the media but later discredited by then Attorney General Janet Reno.

Baja California is home to the busiest border crossing in the world, just south of San Diego, Calif.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent the military to fight powerful drug cartels who have killed around 1,400 people this year in a brutal turf war.

A LESS AMBITIOUS APPROACH TO IMMIGRATION

By Arlen Specter
Monday, August 6, 2007

The charge of amnesty defeated comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate this summer. It is too important, and there has been too much legislative investment, not to try again. The time to do so is now.

Certainly the government should implement the provisions it has already enacted to improve border security and crack down on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. But the important additions on those subjects contained in the bill defeated in June will not be enacted without also dealing with the 12 million-plus undocumented immigrants and the guest worker program.

So let's take a fresh look and try a narrower approach.

There is a consensus in Congress on most objectives and many remedies for immigration reform: more border patrols, additional fencing, drones and some form of a guest worker program. Modern technological advances provide foolproof identification so employers can -- justifiably -- be severely sanctioned if they don't verify IDs and act to eliminate the magnet attracting illegals to penetrate the border. Yet Congress is unlikely to appropriate $3 billion for border security without dealing simultaneously with the illegal immigrants already here.

The main objective in legalizing the 12 million was to eliminate their fugitive status, allowing them to live in the United States without fear of being detected and deported or being abused by unscrupulous employers. We should consider a revised status for those 12 million people. Let them hold the status of those with green cards -- without the automatic path to citizenship that was the core component of critics' argument that reform efforts were really amnesty. Give these people the company of their spouses and minor children and consider other indicators of citizenship short of the right to vote (which was always the dealbreaker).

This approach may be attacked as creating an "underclass" inconsistent with American values, which have always been to give refuge to the "huddled masses." But such a compromise is clearly better than leaving these people a fugitive class. People with a lesser status are frequently referred to as second-class citizens. Congress has adamantly refused to make the 12 million people already here full citizens, but isn't it better for them to at least be secure aliens than hunted and exploited?

Giving these people green-card status leaves open the opportunity for them to return to their native lands and seek citizenship through regular channels. Or, after our borders are secured and tough employer sanctions have been put in place, Congress can revisit the issue and possibly find a more hospitable America.

Some of the other refinements of the defeated bill can await another day and the regular process of Judiciary Committee hearings and markups. Changing the law on family unification with a point system can also be considered later. Now, perhaps, we could add green cards for highly skilled workers and tinker at the edges of immigration law, providing we don't get bogged down in endless debate and defeated cloture motions.

It would be refreshing if Congress, and the country, could come together in a bipartisan way to at least partially solve one of the big domestic issues of the day.

The writer, a senator from Pennsylvania, is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee

I THINK I MIGHT BE A CITIZEN

Law had quietly altered immigration stutus in 2001.

DEPORTED BY MISTAKE

JOSEPH DITS
Tribune Staff Writer

Hilario Bueno Jr. sat in prison, fully believing he'd messed up his green card.

He says a friend simply gave him a gun. The charges say he received stolen goods and carried a handgun without a license.

However you look at it, these felonies are deal breakers for those with legal permanent residency.

An immigration agent had found him in jail and promised him deportation.

Then Bueno chatted with a fellow inmate about his life and how and when his parents came from Mexico. That inmate tipped him off: Maybe, just maybe, Bueno was already a U.S. citizen.

He pitched it to the judge and failed. So Bueno was deported. His wife and son went with him, and four months later, they sneaked back into the United States.

Now, more than a year later, a local attorney says without doubt: Bueno was then and still is a citizen, thanks to immigration laws that quietly changed on the young man.

But if immigration agents picked up Bueno today, they'd immediately see a current order to deport him again.

It's indicative of a complex immigration system.

Citizens -- at least those who don't realize that they are -- are deported all the time, says Chicago immigration attorney Donald Kempster, who teaches law at Kent College of Law.

Attorney Tom Nuttle of Elkhart is trying to document Bueno's citizenship and ask a judge to remove the deportation order.

"I still can't believe I'm a citizen," 23-year-old Bueno says in his Mishawaka apartment, where his 3-year-old son plays with their two new puppies.

He admits to a previous life dabbling in gangs. He talks of putting that behind him and of spending time on family, not in jail.

How it happened

After his dad came to the United States in the early 1980s, Bueno says he followed with his mom and siblings a decade later.

His dad gained green cards for the family through a program in the 1980s that allowed certain people to gain legal status -- people who'd lived in the United States a certain amount of time and certain agricultural workers, Nuttle explains.

Then his dad was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in the mid-1990s through the normal procedure.

The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 had quietly made Hilario Bueno a citizen.

Going into effect Feb. 27, 2001, it made a citizen out of anyone younger than 18 who had a green card and was the child of a U.S. citizen.

"On that day, he (Bueno) woke up and was a U.S. citizen," Nuttle says.

But Bueno didn't know it.

Those aggravated felonies became a deal breaker for his green card thanks to a toughening of immigration laws in 1996, Nuttle says.

At that court date while he was living in prison, Bueno says he told the judge, "I think I might be a citizen."

So the judge asked him: Are your mom and dad together?

Yes, Bueno replied.

Then you're not a citizen, the judge said, reasoning that his dad didn't have full custody of him.

Nuttle says the judge's question was an outdated test for citizenship.

Bueno says he became angry in court, figuring, "You know, get me out of here, send me back to my country."

This spring, a year after he sneaked back to the United States, he was caught driving without a license. So he started doing community service, then jail time, where immigration officials found him. That landed him in federal court in South Bend for coming back to the United States after being deported. Bueno faced a maximum of 10 years in prison or, more realistically in his case, four to five years.

Bueno persuaded Nuttle to represent him. Nuttle says he verified that Bueno was indeed a citizen and pointed it out to U.S. attorneys, who dropped the charges a couple of hours later, just before the court hearing.

Since then, Nuttle has been scratching his head over how to remove the deportation order.

"I've talked with a lot of people about this," Nuttle says.

He plans to file a motion to open the case and ask the judge to remove the order.

This spring, Bueno heard that one of his dad's friends is going through a similar drama, turning a citizen and not knowing it until much later.

Going home

Bueno is lining up documents to get his passport. That, actually, is most urgent on his mind. He wants to return to Mexico with his wife and son. His grandmother there is ill. He wants to visit his brother, whose 3-year-old daughter died from leukemia in late June. The child used to play with Bueno's son.

He says he wouldn't stay more than two weeks.

When he was deported, he at first thought he'd relocate his family's lives there. He says he soon discovered: "It was too hard over there for me." Besides, most of his relatives live in Goshen.

His family in Mexico lives in a tiny rural town where it takes three hours to reach the closest hospital, he says.

His brother works the crops in Mexico, where Bueno says the long hours can earn you just $60 to $70 a week. Unlike Bueno, his brother didn't automatically become a citizen in 2001 because he was older than 18 at the time.

Immigration officials threatened to send his brother back to Mexico. So, Bueno says, his brother went to Mexico on his own four years ago and has been working ever since to gain a green card -- legally -- and return to the United States.

Staff writer Joseph Dits:
jdits@sbtinfo.com
(574) 235-6158

Predictions For October 2007 Priority Dates Of Employment Based Immigrant -- Good News!

by Jan Pederson

Government sources have advised us that we can expect more good news when the new pool of visa numbers is released for the fiscal year which begins on October 1, 2007. The priority date information listed is to be taken as educated predictions, not carved in stone. Expect the following:

1. Worldwide, other than India and China, EB1, EB2, EB4 and EB5 immigrant visa categories will be current as of October 1, 2007. It may be necessary to retrogress them later in 2007 or 2008.

2. EB1 for India and China will likely be current in October, 2007.

3. EB2 for India, China and worldwide will likely have a cut-off date in October 2007 close to the cut-off dates for January 2007, which were:

India--January 8, 2003
China--April 22, 2005

4. EB3 cut-off dates for October 2007 also will likely have a cut-off date close to the cut-off dates for January 2007, which were:

Worldwide (other than India and China)--August 1,2002
India--May 8, 2001
China--April 22, 2005

Please note that these are predictions subject to change depending on the number of cases approved by USCIS during the next two months.

Other Visa Gate Factoids

1. During fiscal year 2007 (October 1, 2006 through July 2007),USCIS processed over 18,000 EB3 cases for persons born in India and of that number, 8,000 were processed during June 2007 and 7,000 were processed during July 2007. This represents five years worth of allocated visa numbers. The annual limit for India is 2,800 per year in the EB3 category.

2. When the Visa Bulletin indicates that visas numbers are unavailable for an employment based category and country, H-1B applicants who have reached the six year limit in H-1B status, may obtain three year extensions under AC 21. This means if the Visa Bulletin reflects "U", the per country limit has been reached.

3. The unofficial reports are that the Texas Service Center received approximately 40,000 I-485 applications during the first day or two in July and the Nebraska Service Center received approximately 35,000 I-485 applications during the same period of time.

4. During the first eight months of fiscal year 2007 (October 2006 through May 2007), USCIS requested 66,600 EB visa numbers. During June and July , 2007, CIS requested 66,800 numbers.

We will provide you with updates as they become available and Jan Pederson will provide a Web seminar to discuss the Visa Gate and related issues later this month.
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About The Author

Jan Pederson has been dedicated to the practice of immigration and nationality law for over twenty years. She is a leading advocate for the rights of J-1 Physicians in the United States and has been key to the passage of legislation to benefit them. She served as president of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA); as an elected director of the national Board of Governors of AILA for eighteen years.
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The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of ILW.COM.

Copyright © 1999-2007 American Immigration LLC, ILW.COM

States Pick Up Congres' Slack on Immigration

August 6, 2007

BOSTON - As the prospects for federal immigration reform dwindled, state legislators took matters into their own hands and enacted 170 immigration-related bills in 41 states, more than double the number of enacted legislation in 2006 according to a new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"Congress' failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform has really forced the states' hands," said Texas Senator and NCSL President Leticia Van de Putte. "Since the federal ship has sunk, there have been 50 lifeboats in the water seeking a solution. Once again, states have taken the lead on one of the most critical public policy challenges facing our country."

Immigration-related introductions in 2007 have jumped more than 240 percent over last year's introductions. 1,404 bills in all 50 states have been considered thus far this year. The legislation encompasses a wide range of policy areas including employment issues, education, human trafficking, law enforcement and public benefits among others.