THE NOSTALGIA CONNECTION

Small Firms in Arizona, Sonora launch plan to market Hispanic foods, goods via black merchants in South

By Gabriela Rico
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona
Published: 08.12.2007

Have you ever tried to find a decent coyota in Tennessee? How about a sugary churro in Arkansas?

As the Hispanic population explodes in the South, so does demand for the traditional Mexican pastries.

For now, many new Southerners must live with only the craving. But a unique partnership of business groups in Southern Arizona and northern Mexico is working to change that.

The Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce, the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and a "microbusiness" program in Sonora are developing a "nostalgic market" to serve the Hispanic market in the South.

Small-business owners in Arizona and Sonora will supply black merchants in seven Southern states with food, religious icons and artwork to peddle to the region's Hispanic community, which has swelled over the past two decades.

The targeted states are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, which have seen the largest percentage increase of the Hispanic population in the country in the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

For example, in North Carolina, the census counted 76,726 Hispanics in 1990 and 593,896 in 2006 "” a 674 percent increase. In Georgia, the number of Hispanics grew 546 percent, from 108,922 to 703,246 in that same period.

"They have to be going through withdrawal," quipped Lorenzo Almada, vice president of business development for the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Serving that population gives small businesses in Southern Arizona and Sonora a boost by marketing their crafts and baked goods, he said.

"That spelled economic opportunity for me," Almada said. "In this community, economic development is regional."

On Aug. 24, 100 small-business owners "” half from Southern Arizona and half from Sonora "” will participate in the International Microbusiness Expo in Tucson to showcase their products and learn the ins and outs of import/export rules.

The next day, the group is scheduled to tour the new Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce headquarters at 1443 E. Broadway, where the international project will be housed.

Tucson business owners Gabriel and Veronica Sandoval, who make iron crucifixes and other religious icons, plan to participate in the project.

The couple has been surprised to receive orders from Hispanic families on the East Coast looking for Mexican-style religious items, Gabriel Sandoval said.

"I am very interested in selling to those in the South," he said.

Small merchants are excited about providing food and goods to their countrymen in the South, said Jorge Valenzuela, director of Save the Children, an organization that provides small loans to women in Mexico whose husbands have left the family to work in the United States. The funding comes from Tucson-based Portable Practical Education Preparation Inc. through its microloan program.

Valenzuela said the notion of creating the "nostalgic market" piqued the women's interest because their thoughts turned to their husbands and how the men must miss home cooking.

"Providing well-made tortillas, chorizo and food with the flavor of Mexico was exciting to them," Valenzuela said in Spanish.
Clarence Boykins, president of the Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce, said he could relate to the yearning for traditional food.

Raised eating Caribbean food, he stills longs for meals such as **** chicken or curry goat. Family visits and care packages from home satisfy his craving.

"That made it a passion issue for me," Boykins said of the project. "I remember one time my mom came to visit and she brought lemons. I said, 'Mom, we do have lemons.' "
The project has a larger goal of coalescing the two communities, he said.

Because the Hispanic community tends to settle near the black community in their new states, Boykins said the aim is to have the small, family-owned stores stocked with items that will draw Hispanic patrons.

Specific merchants have not yet been identified, and Boykins said the Tucson chamber is working to get the National Black Chamber of Commerce involved.

"It's coming together," he said of the project. "And more importantly, it is the two communities getting together."

● Contact reporter Gabriela Rico at 573-4232 or grico@azstarnet.com.


[Comment by Explora:] Future sales might need near what they expect if employers boot people out of jobs because of bogus social security cards.

THE NO-MATCH NON-SOLUTION
140,000 LETTERS TO BE SENT

NY Times
Editorial
August 13, 2007

Who kept telling the country that immigration reform through enforcement alone was doomed to fail? President Bush, for one. "All elements of this problem must be addressed together," he warned, "or none of them will be solved." So what can be said about Mr. Bush's latest stab at a policy, which fixates almost entirely on barricading the border, rooting out illegal workers and punishing their employers?

Maybe he forgot.

Or maybe he just gave up, and decided that the pile of enforcement measures his administration shoveled forth on Friday is the best he can do, and that he might as well paper over his grand failure on immigration with some talking points.

There are 26 of them, and 18 have to do with getting tough. They include reheated proposals for fencing the border, bulking up detention capacity, speeding deportations and adding state and local police to the immigrant hunt. Among the most infuriating and potentially dangerous is the crackdown involving "no-match letters," which the Social Security Administration sends to companies when discrepancies exist between employee records and its database.

The agency plans to send 140,000 letters this year to businesses with 10 or more employees with apparent data inaccuracies. The businesses have to resolve the problems or fire the workers.

Hard-liners are cheering. Employers across our immigrant-dependent economy are bracing for hardship and chaos. But not all of those 1.4 million workers are lawbreakers. A report last December by the Social Security Administration's inspector general found that the database is plagued with a 4.1 percent error rate: data entry mistakes, misspellings and name changes involving about 17.8 million records. Those are the records on which no-match letters are based, making them a dangerously unreliable indicator of someone's immigration status or authorization to work.

It is impossible to know how many workers will be unjustly driven from their jobs by the no-match crackdown and stepped-up workplace raids. In a climate of bureaucratic confusion and fear, workers with no-match problems could be summarily fired by employers who don't want to bother resolving them. The presumption of guilt will be an invitation to discriminate against native-born Latino and Asian workers, too.

Mr. Bush wants a militarized border and an illegal-immigrant-free economy, but without more visas to clear backlogs and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, illegality will remain chronic. It will get worse as people forced off the books by the federal government try to survive by finding more furtive employment. As workers go further underground, shady employers will, too. Some will relocate abroad. Some will set up businesses making better forged documents.

Mr. Bush has predicted the failure of the enforcement-only strategy many times. He should have listened to himself.

DPS HALTS PROGRAM TO TRACK CONTACT WITH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

The Associated Press
August 13, 2007

DALLAS "” The Texas Department of Public Safety tracked state troopers' encounters with illegal immigrants for two years as part of a program to gauge the state's immigration situation, a spokesman said.

Critics of the program said the agency may have gathered the information illegally by asking people about their immigration status. They also questioned whether the data was built on racial profiling.

After receiving questions about it from The Dallas Morning News, the agency said last week that the program was being stopped. The newspaper learned about the program through an open records request.

The "gathering of this data was designed to be a temporary snapshot of the situation. This has been accomplished and the numbers are inconclusive," DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said in a written statement.

The study, which began in June 2005, had troopers document the number of stops that involved illegal immigrants; the number of them released with no action; the number of them released to immigration authorities; and the number jailed. Regional reports were submitted monthly to the Highway Patrol chief.

Luis Figueroa, a San Antonio lawyer with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said state troopers either violated the law by asking about immigration status, "which they're not supposed to be doing, or they're racially profiling based on the way somebody looks."

Texas law doesn't give officers without special immigration training the authority to make arrests for civil immigration violations. Illegal immigrants are not conducting criminal activity by being in the United States, but most of them are violating a federal civil offense.

"We believe there should be a clear division between the enforcement of immigration law between federal and state," Figueroa said. "State and local should only be involved in the enforcement of criminal activities. The majority of immigrants have not committed criminal activities; they've only violated the civil provisions of immigration law."

Vinger wouldn't speculate on how troopers assessed whether someone was an illegal immigrant. He said there were no specific rules. Racial profiling is against DPS policies, and federal authorities are responsible for determination of immigration status, he said.

"These reports don't change that fact," he said. "I wouldn't read too much into these numbers. It's an unscientific gathering of information."

According to the study, DPS officers' contacts with illegal immigrants decreased slightly over the two years, while the number of those people jailed or turned over to immigration officials remained about the same. The DPS said officers encountered nearly 49,500 illegal immigrants during the two years.

"The perception was that the contacts with illegal immigrants were increasing, but there was no record baseline available," Vinger said.

Immigration advocates said they were suspicious about the study's purpose and concerned that it could will be started again.

Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso, claimed some troopers asked Hispanic drivers for Social Security numbers or immigration papers to determine immigration status. The group has received about 10 reports a month of troopers checking immigration status after stopping somebody for a minor traffic violation, he said.

"They are sending their own message to our community that the function of DPS is enforcing immigration law," Garcia said.

Vinger would not give details on how the reports, which were not publicized, would ever be used.

The governor's office was not aware of the study and had not asked for copies of the results, said Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry.

She said law enforcement officials investigating a crime who encounter possible illegal immigrants should refer them to immigration officials.

"I'm not saying (state troopers) should be asking this, but if they're tracking this and then do nothing about it, it doesn't measure up," Cesinger said.

New Toll-Free Immigration Line Opens For Military Members

August 13, 2007
2007 The Associated Press

DALLAS "” Military members trying to check on immigration petitions for themselves or their families can now call a toll-free help line designated especially for them, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Monday.

By calling the help line, troops and their families can obtain information from Citizenship and Immigration Services staff whether they are in the United States or overseas.

They can find out about citizenship procedures, change their address or duty station; check on the status of a pending petition; receive information on bringing a spouse, fiance or child to the U.S.; or submit an application for expedited processing. Families also can check on obtaining posthumous citizenship for a member of the armed services.

"Thousands of immigrant soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have made extraordinary sacrifices for America," Citizenship and Immigration Director Emilio Gonza*** said in a statement. "As such, at USCIS, we are committed to exhausting every effort to ensure that the application process for immigrant service members is convenient, quick and secure."

Only people with legal status can join the U.S. military. About 40,000 non-U.S. citizens are serving in the military. An estimated 6,000 to 7,500 service members have become citizens in the past two years, with many being naturalized while serving on active duty outside the country, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Service members and their families can call toll-free using the base telephone operator or Defense Switched Network. Those who call after hours will receive an e-mail address so they can contact Citizenship and Immigration Services.

___

On the Net:

Citizenship and Immigration Services Military Help Line, 1-877-CIS-4MIL

http://www.uscis.gov/military

TROOPS WORRY RELATIVES COULD BE DEPORTED

By JULIANA BARBASSA
Associated Press Writer
August 10, 2007

Yaderlin Jimenez was an illegal immigrant facing deportation. Her husband, a U.S. citizen and soldier, couldn't help her because he was missing after an insurgent attack in Iraq.

The military has not been able to find Army Spc. Alex Jimenez, of Lawrence, Mass., after he was apparently snatched in May during a raid on his unit south of Baghdad. His capture drew national attention to his wife's deportation case, prompting Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to ask immigration officials to halt the proceedings.

Jimenez's wife then became a legal resident, but the couple's plight put a public face on the private anguish of a growing number of military families in similar straits.

About 35,000 legal immigrants without citizenship are now serving in the military, and nearly 34,000 other service members have taken the citizenship oath since 2001. That means when immigrant soldiers ship off to Iraq, they may carry with them a worry their American-born counterparts are less likely to share: that their family members might be deported while they are away.

"Every base has immigration problems," said Margaret Stock, an Army reservist and immigration attorney teaching at United States Military Academy at West Point. "The government they're fighting for is the same government that's trying to deport their families."

Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Eduardo Gonza*** is a citizen whose wife entered the country illegally from Guatemala when she was 5 years old. Now a young adult, she is in deportation proceedings.

"If I'm willing to die for the United States, why can't I just be allowed to be with my family?" Gonza*** asked.

Supporters of tighter immigration controls say giving the relatives of service members a free pass would only create an incentive for immigrants to enlist to legalize undocumented family members. They also oppose narrow solutions addressed at individual cases like that of Yaderlin Jimenez.

The Pentagon has long recognized that military life can be a strain on service members' families, and that ensuring their well-being is a crucial part of maintaining troop morale. But troops' families do not enjoy any special treatment when it comes to immigration infractions, Stock said.

"We give relief to soldiers from everything else "” from oppressive loans, from a landlord that's trying to evict them while they're deployed," Stock said. "Someone at the top needs to decide which is most important "” to keep soldiers' families together, because we know it's important for morale, or break them up in the interest of enforcing immigration law."

The federal government encourages immigrants to enlist by streamlining their citizenship applications, eliminating fees and making it easier for them to file paperwork while serving abroad. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has also postponed deportation of immigrants on active duty until they are discharged.

As the number of immigrants serving in the military grows, so do the chances of military families getting caught in an immigration bind.

The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment on the treatment of service members' undocumented family members. Department of Homeland Security officials said all immigration cases are dealt with individually.

Gonza*** left in July for his third deployment to the Persian Gulf, where he manages a team of helicopter mechanics on an aircraft carrier. He hopes to return in time for his wife's deportation hearing in June.

"The only way I can go and do my job well is to know my wife and son are safe here and doing well," he said.

At an immigration hearing in June, Mildred Gonza*** was given 60 days to leave the country voluntarily. After learning her husband was about to redeploy, the judge, an ex-military man, granted her a one-year extension.

Sometimes reaching out to the military for help can backfire.

Before deploying to Iraq last September, Army Spc. Angel Rodriguez sought help from the legal office at Fort Polk, La., for his wife, Haydee, who had entered the country legally as a 13-year-old tourist from Honduras but overstayed her visa.

Haydee Rodriguez was afraid she would be deported while her husband was overseas, which would leave her 2-year-old son in limbo. She decided to move to California to be near her husband's family.

His mother, his mother's boyfriend and Angel Rodriguez's brother drove to Louisiana to pick her up. As visitors to the base, they were asked for identification.

His brother and the mother's boyfriend were both detained. His brother, who is here legally, eventually produced valid identification and was released. But his mother's boyfriend, an illegal immigrant, was deported to Mexico.

"I joined the Army and I take pride in what I do," Angel Rodriguez said. "But it's hard being away and defending a country that doesn't want your family."

Base officials said they were required by law to alert immigration authorities.

Because Haydee Rodriguez did not enter without authorization, she can still be legalized. She's scheduled to meet Aug. 14 with immigration officials who will quiz her on the validity of her marriage, among other issues. If they are convinced, she could walk out a legal resident.

"I'm really nervous," she said. "I'd feel so much safer if he (Angel) were here with me."

FLORIDA


IMMIGRANT RULES RAISE FEARS FOR FL BUSINESS

By MARILYN GEEWAX
Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service
Saturday, August 11, 2007

WASHINGTON "” The Bush administration's new crackdown on illegal immigration could have a devastating impact on key industries in Florida, business and legal experts said Friday.

Forcing companies to fire employees whose Social Security numbers and names don't match government records may seriously disrupt the state's agricultural, construction and hospitality industries, they predicted.


Florida's foreign-born workers

Share of civilian employees who are foreign-born: 23 percent (ranks fourth nationally)

Growth of foreign-born workers since 2000: 36.5 percent (ranks 22nd nationally)

Percent of foreign-born workers who are noncitizens: 55.9

Top occupations of foreign-born workers (percent): Educational services, health care and social assistance 16.4; construction 13.2; retail trade 11.4.

Where foreign-born workers are from (percent): Latin America 76.9, Asia 9.6, Europe 9.2, North America 2.6, Africa 1.6, Oceania 0.1.

Source: Migration Policy Institute, from the Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey
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"Growers are definitely concerned that they are going to lose their labor force," said Kevin Morgan, director of agricultural policy for the Florida Farm Bureau. Forcing companies to fire employees whose Social Security numbers and names don't match government records may seriously disrupt the state's agricultural, construction and hospitality industries, Florida experts predicted.

"Growers are definitely concerned that they are going to lose their labor force," said Kevin Morgan, director of agricultural policy for the Florida Farm Bureau.

"In Florida, our primary crops are very labor-intensive crops - citrus, fruits and vegetables and nursery products," he said.

He said that means employers often hire large numbers of immigrants, many of whom may be in the country illegally.

Foreign-born workers make up 23 percent of Florida's civilian workforce, census figures show, and more than half of those are noncitizens, including many illegal immigrants.

The top occupations for the foreign-born workers in Florida are educational, health and social services; construction; and retail trade.

Michael Lucas, who heads the labor and employment practice of the Birmingham, Ala., office of Burr & Forman LLP, said much of the Southern economy could be hit hard by the new rules.

While the impact will be felt in the Northeast in places such as restaurants and golf courses, he said, the South has entire industries that depend heavily on immigrant labor, such as chicken processing, vegetable growing and hospitality.

"I think you'll see the major impact on small- to medium-sized businesses," Lucas said. "There are many businesses that couldn't operate without illegal immigrants."

Morgan said Congress' failure to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill has left employers struggling to comply with the law.

"We support using legal workers, but we've got to fix the system," he said. "We need a workable guest worker program."

Under the rules announced Friday by the Department of Homeland Security, companies that need employees to pick peppers or process chickens will risk criminal prosecutions and financial penalties if they employ illegal immigrants.

Employers who receive "no-match" letters that identify discrepancies in a worker's tax records will need to take action within 90 days.

Such irregularities often suggest the employees may be using a phony Social Security number to qualify for work.

Currently, companies often ignore no-match letters because of unclear guidelines about what to do. Indeed, employers who did act on such letters faced the possibility of discrimination lawsuits from workers.

J. Luis Rodriguez, trade adviser for Lake Worth-based Florida Farmers Inc., said Florida farmers and growers check prospective employees' Social Security cards and submit the numbers to the government for verification. Often, by the time a no-match letter is received, the employee will have moved on, he said.

"The bottom line is, we are not the police," Rodriguez said. "They need to create a foolproof ID system that you can scan immediately."

Some business owners said even some U.S. citizens could become unemployable because of mix-ups in their Social Security records.

"We're not looking to punish people for honest mistakes, clerical errors, you know, or imperfections in process," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

Enrique Soriano is facing deportation that would separate him from hiw wife, Cleotilde and his children, including son Kevin, 6, left. The family's oldest son, Armando, died in Iraq in 2004.
Nathan Lindstrom: For the Chronicle

FATHER OF FALLEN SOLDIER NOW BATTLING DEPORTATION

RELATIVES OF THOSE KILLED IN SERVICE ARE SOMETIMES GRANTED LEGAL STATUS, BUT OTHERS LEFT IN LIMBO

By SUSAN CARROLL
Houston Chronicle
August 6, 2007

The shrine to Pfc. Armando Soriano fills two china cabinets and spills over onto the top of the TV, where he smiles in a framed prom picture.

All his life, the eldest son of illegal immigrants from Mexico dreamed of doing big things. Before his vehicle rolled off a road in Iraq, Armando had planned to help his family get out of a run-down apartment complex on Houston's south side and into a house of their own. The U.S.-born soldier also told his parents he was going to help them become American citizens.

In death, Armando partially succeeded.

After he was buried with military honors in Houston in 2004, the U.S. government gave Enrique and Cleotilde Soriano the opportunity to apply for green cards. The family benefited from the government's unofficial policy "” a kind of very specific amnesty "” that gives the relatives of service members who die in war the chance to become legal immigrants.

Armando's mother, Cleotilde, is now a lawful permanent resident. But his father is facing deportation. Enrique's application for a green card alerted U.S. authorities to his immigration record. After taking Armando for a visit to Mexico and trying to return to Houston illegally, Enrique was formally deported in 1999, making him ineligible for any immigration benefits.

The family's plight has compelled one Houston lawmaker to propose a private immigration bill in January to help Enrique Soriano get a green card.

The Soriano case is not an isolated one "” the immigrant wife of a U.S. soldier missing in Iraq was recently threatened with deportation; the father of another soldier who died after becoming ill in Iraq was deported to Mexico in 2003.

For Enrique, the dilemma is a decidedly urgent one. Sitting at his kitchen table on a rainy Friday afternoon, the 47-year-old construction worker said he knows immigration agents can come for him at any time.

"I worry for my family; they are all here, and Armando, he is buried here," he said. "But it is up to God. Only he knows his plan."


A path to citizenship

Soriano's case highlights the duality of immigration law, which is often punitive, but in rare circumstances forgives sins in light of sacrifice. U.S. officials rarely discuss such immigration cases publicly, but it is often reported anecdotally that after the death of a U.S. military service member on active duty, surviving family members who are illegally in the country are encouraged to apply for legal permanent residency, the first step toward citizenship.

The issue has become more urgent in recent years, as the ranks of so-called "green-card soldiers" have grown. Since President Bush waived the three-year residency requirement for naturalization, more than 32,000 military personnel have become citizens.

As of May 2006, the most recent statistics available, more than 68,000 foreign-born military personnel were on active duty, roughly 5 percent of the total active-duty force. Since the start of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has counted more than 100 foreign-born casualties.

There are no estimates available for the number of U.S.-born soldiers killed overseas who, like Soriano, have undocumented family members. Immigration and military officials seem to handle the cases on an individual basis, with widely varying results.

Recently, officials with the Department of Homeland Security stopped the deportation of Yaderlin Jimenez, an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic who was married to a U.S. soldier, Army Spc. Alex Jimenez, of Lawrence, Mass. Jimenez disappeared May 12 in Iraq along with another soldier during an insurgent attack.

Yet the family of Zeferino Colunga Jr. reported that they felt betrayed after his death in August of 2003. The 20-year-old Army specialist became ill in Iraq and was diagnosed by military doctors with leukemia. He died in Germany and was returned to Texas for burial. Four months after his death, his father was picked up by immigration agents and deported from Bellville, a town 60 miles west of Houston, to Mexico.

Zeferino Colunga Sr. had been previously deported from the U.S. in 1993 after pleading guilty to possession with the intent to distribute marijuana.


Waiting for word

Laura Keehner, a spokeswoman with the Department of Homeland Security, said U.S. immigration officials try to work with the families of missing and deceased soldiers on legalization issues, within reason.
"We obviously support our soldiers, and we recognize that (a death) would be an extenuating circumstance" for surviving family members, she said. "Their loved ones gave their lives for our freedom."

In Enrique Soriano's case, immigration officials denied his petition for a green card based on his prior deportation, said Isaias Torres, Soriano's attorney. Enrique and Cleotilde emigrated from Mexico in the 1980s. Over the years, they returned to Mexico periodically to visit family members and attend weddings and funerals and quinceañeras, crossing back into the U.S. illegally.

In 1999, Enrique Soriano was formally deported after falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen, but he snuck back across the Rio Grande to rejoin his family in Houston. Immigration officials apparently didn't know he was back in the U.S. until his green card application was filed, Torres said.

Today, Enrique Soriano is in a state of limbo, waiting for word about his case. His work authorization expired in January. Marilu Cabrera, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, said such cases are reviewed for their merits individually.

"We've requested the file, and if there's anything we can do under the law for this person who lost a son in the war, we will."

Congressman Gene Green, D-Houston, has introduced a private immigration bill to help Enrique Soriano become a lawful permanent resident. So far, the bill remains in committee, but Green is hoping to schedule a hearing soon, he said.

"I think it would be a travesty for these parents to be deported after their son died in Iraq fighting for this country," he said.


'He just wanted to help'
Since he was 12 or 13, Armando Soriano had been working odd jobs, in construction or in restaurants, telling friends how he was going to help get his parents and four siblings out of a run-down apartment complex on Winkler Street and into a house of their own.
He was 20 when he died. If he had lived to age 21, he would have been eligible to apply for residency on his parents' behalf, though his father's prior deportation likely would still have been an issue under those circumstances, officials said.

"He helped us with everything," his father recalled. "From the time he was young, he just wanted to help."

Armando Soriano joined the Army two months after graduating from South Houston High School in 2002. He died in Haditha, Iraq, on Feb. 1, 2004, when his vehicle, traveling in a convoy along a supply route, slid off a road and rolled over during bad weather, according to the Department of Defense.

They buried him in Houston, where he was born. Hundreds turned out for his funeral.

Some of his friends and fellow soldiers told stories about how he was nicknamed "Monkey," because he was small, fast and strong. At 5 feet 6 inches, Soriano lifted 100-pound artillery shells as part of his job driving a 155 mm cannon through Iraq. When he died, Soriano was assigned to the howitzer battery, 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, in Fort Carson, Colo. His unit in Iraq was attached to the 82nd Airborne Division of Fort Bragg, N.C.

Torres, Enrique Soriano's attorney, has told him that there's not much more he can do since the green card petition was formally denied.

Cleotilde Soriano, who works in the washroom of an elder-care home, said she is nervous. She and her husband have four other children, three of them U.S. citizens. She has petitioned for a green card for her daughter, Areli, who was born in Mexico.

"If they take him now," Cleotilde said of her husband, "I don't know what we'll do."

Since Armando's death, the family has moved into a modest, 1960s-era home in Pasadena. There is not a speck of dust on the glass of the china cabinet that holds the mementos of Armando's life. The flag that covered his coffin is neatly folded on the top shelf, next to the dog tags that hung around his neck.

Enrique Soriano said he is waiting for the summer rains to stop, so he can go to his son's grave and wipe down his marble headstone. It bothers him when it's dirty. If he's deported and the family returns to Mexico, he said, they couldn't leave Armando behind.

"We'd have to bring him with us," he said.

susan.carroll@chron.com

FLORIDA

FLORIDA COULD BE HIT HARD BY RULES

By MARILYN GEEWAX
August 11, 2007

WASHINGTON | The Bush administration's new crackdown on illegal immigration could have a devastating impact on key industries in Florida, business and legal experts said Friday.

Forcing companies to fire employees whose Social Security numbers and names don't match government records may seriously disrupt the state's agricultural, construction and hospitality industries, they predicted.

"Growers are definitely concerned that they are going to lose their labor force," said Kevin Morgan, director of agricultural policy for the Florida Farm Bureau.

"In Florida, our primary crops are very labor-intensive crops - citrus, fruits and vegetables and nursery products," he said.

The said that means employers often hire large numbers of immigrants, many of whom may be in the country illegally.

Foreign-born workers make up 23 percent of Florida's civilian work force, census figures show, and more than half of those are noncitizens, including many illegal immigrants.

The top occupations for the foreign-born workers in Florida are educational, health and social services; construction; and retail trade.

Michael Lucas, who heads the labor and employment practice of the Birmingham, Ala., office of Burr & Forman LLP, said much of the Southern economy could be hit hard by the new rules.

The South has entire industries that depend heavily on immigrant labor, such as chicken processing, vegetable growing and hospitality.

"I think you'll see the major impact on small- to medium-sized businesses," he said. "This greatly increases the risks," so they will have to fire illegal workers, he said.

Employers who follow the law may be unable to fill jobs, Lucas said.

IMMIGRATION RULES: AN ECONOMIC DISASTER?

Homeland Security's Plan To Crack Down On Emmployers Will Gut Industries Of Workers and Drive More Immigrants Underground, Say Opponents

Immigration
August 14, 2007
by Moira Herbst

Employers and immigrant rights groups are speaking out against rules announced Aug. 10 by the Bush Administration requiring employers to fire workers without valid Social Security numbers. Opponents argue that the regulations, effective in one month, will create a disastrous ripple effect in the U.S. economy and disrupt the lives of an estimated 12 million undocumented people in the U.S.

"Throwing this rock in the pond will have devastating consequences," says Craig Regelbrugge, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform and spokesman for the American Nursery & Landscape Assn. "The anti-immigrant crowd hasn't thought through what would happen if this entire workforce went away. Who will be there to put meat and vegetables on American dinner tables? The only unaffected group will be Americans who do not eat."

Industries that employ large numbers of undocumented workers, such as agriculture, construction, cleaning, and maintenance, will be disproportionately affected by the rules. Regelbrugge estimates, for example, that fully 70% of all U.S. agricultural jobs are now occupied by undocumented immigrants. "There's panic right now in the agricultural sector," says Regelbrugge. "[The policy] will force employers to either fire experienced, trained workers or put their head down and hope law doesn't catch up with them."

Clear Guidelines

The rules, released following Congress' failure in June to pass comprehensive immigration reform, mandate that employers get rid of workers whose names do not match up with their reported Social Security numbers. Companies have 90 days after the Social Security Administration (SSA) sends out a "no-match" letter"”detailing when a number submitted to the SSA isn't consistent with the name on file"”to resolve the discrepancy or fire the worker. The regulations were announced by Homeland Security Dept. Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez during a press conference last week.

Employers who fail to comply will face fines of up to $11,000 per worker and up to six months' jail time. Administration officials also announced that they would speed up construction of fences along the Mexican border, hire more border patrol agents, and detain more undocumented immigrants caught crossing the border.

Until now, the government did not issue clear guidelines for employers to follow upon receipt of "no-match" letters from the SSA. Under a 1986 law, employers must ask job applicants for documents to verify they are U.S. citizens or authorized to work in the U.S. Many undocumented workers obtain false identification papers in order to work. It is estimated that 75% of the undocumented population is currently working with false Social Security numbers, with the remaining quarter in the cash economy.

Strong Reactions

Asked about employers' reaction to the announcement, Homeland Security Dept. Spokesman Russ Knocke says he expects compliance, and the department will aggressively pursue those who fail to do so. "Everyone understands we have a job to do, and we're very serious about getting that job done," says Knocke. "Now there is an opportunity to do the right thing or the wrong thing. And if employers do the wrong thing, they're really going to regret it."

But critics say the changes are damaging and a far cry from the even-handed immigration reform many had hoped for. "This isn't so much reform as it is a power grab from the Department of Homeland Security to do through regulation what failed in legislation," says Angelo Amador, director of immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, like many business groups, has favored a guest worker program.

"The bottom line is that this punishes employers for the lack of action by our legislature," says Mark Gould, president of Gould Construction, a heavy construction and highway contractor based in Glenwood Springs, Colo. "One month ago, Bush said he was for a guest worker program, and now he says, 'Go and fire them all.' The dots aren't connecting for me." Gould says his workforce of 125 are legal immigrants, but argues that businesses need more workers to have a legal path to employment in the U.S. to solve a labor shortage. His firm has 10 open positions he cannot fill.

The agricultural sector, which depends heavily on migrant labor, may be the hardest hit. "It's going to be crazy," says Eli Kantor, a Beverly Hills-based immigration attorney: "There will be major disruptions to the economy of Southern California, [which is] heavily dependent on immigrant labor. There will be crops rotting in the fields." Kantor says he expects some of his clients to lay staff off, while he expects others will "take their chances."

Degrees of Impact

Others warn of unintended consequences including job losses for immigrants and native-born Americans alike. "The consequences for the economy will ripple out far beyond the individual immigrants who lose or change their jobs," says Douglas Rivlin, a spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy organization in Washington. "Businesses may close or move off-shore because of the loss of workers and the costs of compliance while downstream processing, shipping, and retailing businesses will also feel the impact. This will hurt many native-born workers who depend on these jobs"”all so we can appear to be 'getting tough.'"

Some companies say the stepped-up rules will not impact their businesses because they are in compliance with the law. "We already take action on no-match letters from the Social Security Administration," said Libby Lawson, spokesperson for Tyson Foods (TSN) in an e-mail statement. "For years, it's been our practice to actively respond when the government notifies us of a problem with a worker's Social Security number."

Labor unions, which in previous decades sought to restrict immigration, are now speaking out in support of undocumented workers, who are among their members. "This rule change is the wrong solution to the problem," says Eliseo Medina, executive vice-president of the 1.4 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU). "It's a knee-j.e.r.k. reaction to the failure of immigration reform in the Senate. It will cause a whole lot of misery for workers, and huge problems for the economy."

An Informal Economy?

Medina warns that apart from causing hardship for workers and severe labor shortages in some industries, the new rules could have the unintended consequence of expanding the underground economy. "It's going to create a cat-and-mouse game," says Medina. "Workers will be forced into an informal economy where employers pay cash and operate entirely off the books. This is dangerous for immigrants, and will only pull down wages and benefits for American workers. Bottom-feeding employers are going to have a field day with this."

Medina says fear is spreading throughout the immigrant community, and that the SEIU is developing a program to inform workers of their legal rights. The SEIU is also in discussions with employers, cooperating at times to voice opposition to the new rules.

In the meantime, many employer and immigrant advocates say they don't expect positive steps in immigration reform until Congress manages to pass legislation. "This thing will get worse until we figure out how to reform immigration laws," says Medina. "I'm afraid we're entering into a very difficult period."

Mexico Slayings Suspect To Be Extradited

By MARK SCOLFORO
The Associated Press
Friday, August 10, 2007; 12:10 AM

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A federal judge Thursday ordered the extradition of a man who reportedly confessed to more than 10 killings in Mexico, but it was unclear how soon he would be released from a federal prison.

U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Andrew Smyser said there was probable cause to extradite Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz to Mexico, who has about two years left to serve on a U.S. sentence for an immigration violation.

Granados de la Paz, 29, a Mexican citizen, allegedly admitted to Mexican and Texas authorities last year that he killed women in Mexico.

The U.S. attorney's office in Texas could petition a judge to have him returned before his current sentence ends, said William Behe, a federal prosecutor in Harrisburg.

"When they return him, whether they reduce his sentence to get him back there more quickly, I don't know," Behe said. "That's what I would do, because time certainly affects the witness memory and preservation of evidence."

James Wade, the suspect's federal public defender, did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment Thursday.

The extradition request focused on Granados de la Paz's alleged confession to stabbing Mayra Juliana Reyes Solis in June 2001. Her body, and the remains of four other women, were found five months later in a canal in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Last year, construction worker Edgar Alvarez Cruz was arrested in Denver on charges he killed Reyes Solis. Another man, Alejandro Delgado Valles, allegedly admitted helping kidnap some of the women but claimed not to have participated in killing them.

During the decade that ended in 2003, more than 100 women disappeared in Ciudad Juarez, their bodies often dumped in the desert nearby.

Woman Claims $20,000 Stolen From Brother Who Died In Federal Custody

By John Hilliard
Daily News staff
Fri Aug 10, 2007

MILFORD -
The day Edmar Alves de Araujo died in the custody of federal immigration officials in Rhode Island, his sister told police an estimated $20,000 was stolen from his Pearl Street apartment.

Araujo's family has said police in Woonsocket, R.I., and Milford did not help family members get critical medicine to Araujo while in custody.

"(The officers) are emphatic: She never told them her brother was sick, that her brother needs medication," said Milford Police Chief Thomas O'Loughlin, who questioned his officers.

On Tuesday, Araujo died while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Providence, R.I. According to family members, Araujo suffered from epilepsy and needed phenobarbital, an anti-seizure medication.

Family representative Vera Dias-Freitas said Irene Araujo went to Milford Police to ask officers for help, but she was unsuccessful.

O'Loughlin said Irene Araujo went to the Milford Police Station on Tuesday, but to report a break-in at her brother's apartment.

When officers visited the apartment with Irene Araujo that day, they found no sign of a break-in and many valuables apparently in place. A safe was found undamaged and open - from which Irene Araujo said the money had been taken, O'Loughlin said.

The break-in was logged by Milford Police at 4:44 p.m. Tuesday - almost half an hour after Araujo was declared dead in Rhode Island. It is not clear when she learned of her brother's death.

Irene Araujo said she estimated the $20,000 sum based on money her brother was saving, said O'Loughlin.

Officers responding to Araujo's home - including one who is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish - found no evidence of a break-in, said O'Loughlin. Irene Araujo entered the apartment with her own key, he said.

Irene Araujo told Milford Police her brother was in the custody of Woonsocket Police and expected her brother would be handed over to ICE agents because he had not attended a hearing with immigration officials, said O'Loughlin.

Irene Araujo asked to take possession of her brother's belongings from his Milford apartment and officers agreed, so long as she gave police a list of the items she took, said O'Loughlin.

Irene Araujo could not be reached for comment last night.