I will follow this up with a long awaited update on Paco. After 3 years of hearings and worry Paco received a favorable ruling from the immigration court and his removal was cancelled. He now is a permanent resident of the U.S. For all those folks that gave sincere advise, I thank you. For those that were hateful I hope you can accept that in this case justice has been served.
Here in mid america we have gone from 0% Hispanic to approximately 7%. Some say 75% may be undocumented. A larger Mexican restaurant here has many young males working at no pay. They only get tips. We have just completed a 3 year ordeal challenging a removal order which turned out successful with a cancellation of removal order. Now the work is to try to get higher education at an affordable cost (in state tuition) for a H.S. honor student. Finding many pitfalls in this quest also. For student-any of these may fit your thesis material.
Originally posted by chuck: I hope these folks have necessary documents. If not, the path to higher education is full of landmines. I'm working with a young man that came to the U.S. uninspected when he was 3. Now a H.S. honor graduate with one year community college, 3.4 GPA. Having many disapointments in quest for affordable higher education.
Originally posted by chuck: I will follow this up with a long awaited update on Paco. After 3 years of hearings and worry Paco received a favorable ruling from the immigration court and his removal was cancelled. He now is a permanent resident of the U.S. For all those folks that gave sincere advise, I thank you. For those that were hateful I hope you can accept that in this case justice has been served.
Originally posted by chuck: Here in mid america we have gone from 0% Hispanic to approximately 7%. Some say 75% may be undocumented. A larger Mexican restaurant here has many young males working at no pay. They only get tips. We have just completed a 3 year ordeal challenging a removal order which turned out successful with a cancellation of removal order. Now the work is to try to get higher education at an affordable cost (in state tuition) for a H.S. honor student. Finding many pitfalls in this quest also. For student-any of these may fit your thesis material.
RESEARCHERS SAY BACKLOG COULD SPUR 'REVERSE BRAIN DRAIN' MANY GREEN CARD SEEKERS WAIT SEVEN YEARS OR MORE
By John Boudreau Mercury News Article Launched: 08/22/2007 01:34:02 AM PDT
For more than 1 million immigrant professionals and their families, applying for green cards is the bureaucratic equivalent of an interminable phone tree: Please hold and hold and hold, according to a new study to be released today.
The backlog can be seven or more years, a frustrating experience that could eventually lead to a "reverse brain drain" as engineers, researchers and doctors give up and return to their home countries, the report's authors said. However, they do not provide data that backs their suspicions.
As of Sept. 30, 2006, there were more than 500,000 workers, and another 555,000 family members, waiting for green cards, according to the report, a third in a series under the title "America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs." It was prepared by researchers at Duke, New York and Harvard universities.
The study is part of ongoing research that looks at the importance of immigrant entrepreneurs to the U.S. economy. In addition to immigration backlog estimates, the report reveals that foreign-national inventors file large numbers of patents from the United States.
New York University sociologist Guillermina Jasso culled reports from the U.S. Department of Labor and the Citizenship and Immigration Services to come up with her estimate of the backlog of 1 million highly skilled immigrants and their family members awaiting permanent resident status in the United States.
Every year, the United States grants green cards to about 120,000 of these applicants. So even those who have cleared bureaucratic hurdles still must wait as long as seven to 10 years, she said.
One reason for the long wait is federal law limits the number of visas issued to immigrants from any one of the major sending countries to just 7 percent of the total employment-based visas available every year. So immigrants from China, India, Mexico and the Philippines who populate the American workforce could end up waiting much longer than those from, say, Iceland.
There is no single federal agency that compiles backlog numbers, Jasso said. "We are using the best available data to try to come up with a number," she said.
Report co-author Vivek Wadhwa said the research is designed to spotlight highly skilled immigrant workers whose plights have been overshadowed by the debate in Washington about illegal immigrants.
Earlier this year, Wadhwa reported that 52 percent of Silicon Valley start-ups had at least one immigrant as a key founder.
The latest report reveals that foreign nationals living in the United States were named as inventors or co-inventors in 25 percent of patent applications filed from the United States in 2006, and they accounted for 36 percent of the patent applications from California.
Foreign-national innovators also played a major role in international patent applications filed by numerous large U.S. companies. In 2006, they contributed to 72 percent of Qualcomm's international patent applications, 60 percent of those filed by Cisco Systems, 58 percent for Intel and 38 percent for Hewlett-Packard. They also represented 41 percent of the patent applications filed by the U.S. government.
The arduous green-card application process could trigger a wave of immigrant professionals returning to their home countries, Wadhwa said.
Immigrants awaiting green cards can find themselves in career limbo for many years. If they change job titles, even within their sponsoring companies, they must begin the green card application process again, said Wadhwa, who is executive-in-residence at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke.
"These guys can't go anywhere," he said. "You can't go from being a programmer to a project manager because that's a different position.
"The difference between the skilled workers and the unskilled workers is, the unskilled workers are in desperate situations. They are not going back," Wadhwa said. Indian and Chinese engineers, on the other hand, can return home and find themselves in great demand, he said.
At the moment, though, there is no research that shows a vast exodus of highly skilled immigrants, Jasso said.
"There is no question that if someone faces a seven-year wait, they may become discouraged and go elsewhere," she said. "But we just don't know. Even if someone leaves, it does not mean they leave forever. Immigrants have demonstrated they want to go where their skills and knowledge will be put to the best use."
GREEN CARDS NOW EASIER FOR CUBANS BORN ABROAD THE UNITED STATES HAS MADE IT EASIER FOR PEOPLE BORN TO CUBAN PARENTS OUTSIDE CUBA TO OBTAIN GREEN CARDS UNDER THE CUBAN ADJUSTMENT ACT
Posted on Wed, Aug. 22, 2007 BY ALFONSO CHARDY
A recent decision by federal immigration authorities will make it much easier for people born outside Cuba to obtain a U.S. green card if at least one of their parents was born in Cuba.
Under the decision, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will no longer require that those born outside Cuba file documents specifically saying they are Cuban citizens. Cuban consular papers saying they are children of at least one Cuban parent will be enough to prove Cuban citizenship.
The July 31 decision is likely to benefit thousands of foreign nationals born abroad of Cuban parents -- particularly Venezuelans whose parents fled Cuba shortly after Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.
The Cuban expatriate community in Venezuela, numbering between 25,000 and 50,000 people, is one of the largest after the one in Miami.
Increasing numbers of Venezuelans are leaving their homeland as President Hugo Chávez steers the South American country toward socialism.
The new green card decision is based on a Miami case in which the application of a Venezuelan born of Cuban parents was rejected by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in May 2006 on the grounds he could not conclusively prove he was a Cuban citizen.
Venezuelan-born Armando Vázquez was elated at the decision.
''I've been waiting for this for a long time,'' said Vázquez, 42, who works in the construction industry. He and his wife arrived with their 8-month-old daughter in 1999, one year after Chávez was first elected.
His parents fled Cuba in 1961 and resettled eventually in Venezuela.
They have now left Venezuela and are living in South Florida, Vázquez said.
''I'm so happy this decision went in my favor because I don't want to go back to Venezuela the way things are going there,'' Vázquez said.
Vázquez's Miami immigration attorney, Larry Rifkin, appealed the government's denial in his client's case to the service's administrative appeals office -- and won.
''This decision will benefit thousands of people, mainly Venezuelans of Cuban ancestry, who desperately need this,'' Rifkin said.
He added that the effort to reverse the previous immigration service position was ''unnecessary'' because the Cuban Adjustment Act already contained language that enabled Cubans born abroad to qualify for U.S. green cards.
The Vázquez case reverses a June 2006 decision that restricted green cards to foreign nationals who could produce Cuban documents specifically saying they were Cuban citizens.
The 2006 case revolved around a green card application filed by Liliana Lozano Buschini, a Venezuelan whose mother had been born in Cuba. Buschini's application, however, was denied because she did not have a Cuban passport, birth certificate or government-issued certificate.
She had only certified letters from a Cuban consular official.
Buschini's attorney, Stephen Bander, appealed the denial to the immigration service's administrative appeals office and won, arguing a consular document saying the person was a Cuban citizen was sufficient to prove citizenship.
Rifkin, Vázquez's attorney, also appealed his client's case and won the July 31 decision, which eliminates the Buschini requirement.
Now all applicants need to show is a Cuban birth certificate, a passport or a consular paper saying they are the children of Cuban parents or at least one Cuban parent.
In the case of Vázquez, he had a Cuban birth certificate issued by a Cuban consulate in Venezuela -- but it did not say he was a Cuban citizen.
There is nothing to fear from shifting demographics. So why has it become so common to hear people denigrate immigrants?
We think a few xenophobes have used their access to some rather big microphones to feed off this nation's fear of the future - a fear that is quite remarkable, given the success the United States has built with the help of past and present immigrants.
There has been such a long run of slurs that we figure a little balance is in order.
We're not the only ones.
On a campaign swing through New Hampshire, Sen. John McCain said: "I'd also like to tell you that in my state of Arizona, we like the Hispanic heritage. We like the food. We like the music. We like to have Hispanic influence on our state, and we are enriched by it."
What's more, Mexican culture is extremely family-centered, has a remarkable work ethic and demonstrates a reverence for religion and the elderly that seems downright old-fashioned by American standards.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also spoke up for immigrants: "Immigration is what's kept us alive and thriving. It keeps adding to our language and our culture and our cuisines and our religion. I can't think of any laboratory that shows better why you need a stream of immigrants than New York City."
We need more public figures to tell Americans that there is no monster under the bed.
Latinos are the nation's largest minority group with a population of about 44.3 million. They made up nearly half the growth in the period from July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006. They are largely the reason that Anglos have become a minority in nearly one out of 10 counties.
In Maricopa County, Latinos accounted for about 55 percent of population growth between July 1, 2005, and July 1, 2006, according to a recent analysis by the Census Bureau.
Demographers estimate that about one-quarter to one-third of Latinos are undocumented. That's a problem that needs to be addressed in an orderly and humane way. But legitimate discussions about the need to legalize this population, create a guest-worker program and regain control of the border too often disintegrate into nasty rhetoric that insults all Latinos and encourages racial profiling.
It's important to counter that kind of talk, both for the sake of Latino-Americans and for the sake of our shared interest in furthering comity among the many groups in this country.
It is also important to remember that immigration isn't the only factor in the nation's shifting demographics.
Latinos, who are primarily of Mexican heritage in Arizona, are also becoming a larger segment of the U.S. population because of high birth rates. Nationwide, the school-age population of the non-Latino Whites has dropped by 4 percent since 2000, but the Latino school-age population has increased 21 percent.
These numbers alarm some restrictionists who think the culture and language are at stake. The fear of change gets exploited. The result is divisiveness, bigotry and resentment.
But demographers understand that these young people will keep our economy dynamic in years to come.
For our own sake, we need to do our best to educate all children and help them become productive adults. Doing that effectively means letting them know their community values them, their culture and their contributions.
It also means believing in the power of our "American Dream" machine to transform immigrants into Americans.
The nature of this nation's population is changing. But the change will make us better and stronger. It always has.
NORTH COUNTY -- In the wake of a series of robberies targeting day laborers, some workers say that they are wary -- but still returning to the scenes of the crimes in hope of earning a wage.
"We're even scared to get in any car now," Omar Ventura said Thursday though a Spanish translator as he waited to be picked up at a Vista site for day laborers.
The San Diego County Sheriff's Department reported Friday that more than 40 victims have now been identified in a two-month North County crime spree. In each incident, robbers posed as employers, drove workers to remote sites and threatened them with knives to get cash and other items of value, according to police.
A combination of misconceptions and job conditions make day laborers particularly vulnerable, according to police and advocates.
At the same time, their unpredictable income means day laborers don't always make profitable prey. While at least one man reportedly lost slightly more than $100, another victim's wallet is said to have been empty before the robbers got to him.
Money motive
Despite that, authorities believe that the four North County residents charged in the crimes were motivated by money, not an anti-immigrant mentality.
Sheriff's Sgt. Art Wager said there is a widespread belief that many day laborers are undocumented immigrants and would rather let a crime against them go unreported than risk an inquiry into their immigration status. That is a misconception that makes the workers vulnerable, according to Wager.
Ventura, a 39-year-old undocumented immigrant, said he probably wouldn't contact police if someone robbed him. He also said he didn't expect to find a sympathetic ear at a police station.
"Just for being Latino, they don't listen to us anyway," Ventura said.
But Sgt. Wager said this case had revealed many people like Jesus Aguirre, who said through a translator Thursday that he had been robbed this summer, along with two other men picked up at the Vista site. Aguirre said he went to police and would encourage other workers to do the same.
"(The police) took me and they asked me questions, but they treated me very well," said Aguirre, who was back at the Vista site looking for work Thursday morning.
New precautions
The men said they now take precautions such as writing down license plate numbers and descriptions of people picking them up. A camera phone would be added protection, some said, but is too expensive.
Aguirre, 43, said this is his third trip to the United States as a documented immigrant. He said he stays about six months before returning to Mexico. Never, he said, has he had any trouble with employers or been the victim of a crime.
"I never thought of it," Aguirre said.
A study released in 2006 by UCLA suggests that Aguirre may be in the majority, but just barely.
Researchers for "On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States" reported that nearly half of 2,660 workers surveyed in 2004 said they were victims of nonpayment or underpayment by employers in the two months before the survey. In western states, where researchers estimated there were nearly 50,000 day laborers in 2004, the figures were slightly lower.
Of day laborers surveyed in the West, 17 percent reported being subjected to some kind of violence by people who hired them in those two months, while 24 percent said that employers insulted them, according to the study.
Risk factors
Day laborers face particular risks, police said.
As Sgt. Wager put it, "There aren't too many segments of our population that will get in to a stranger's vehicle."
Making matters worse, day labor is part of a cash economy and many workers don't use banks. They carry cash and can be easy -- if inconsistent -- targets.
Aguirre said he lost $80 to the robbers. Another man lost more than $100 in the same incident, but a third had nothing to give, Aguirre said.
Police had questioned the immigration status of 17 percent of workers surveyed in western states, according to the UCLA study.
North County law enforcement agencies consistently said they do not question any victims about immigration status.
"We're not asking that," Wager said. "A victim is a victim."
Consequently, it's hard to tell whether immigration status has influenced victims' decisions to report robberies, he said.
Jurisdictional matters
Law enforcement officials from multiple agencies said there is a line between their duties and those of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Local officers don't turn victims over to immigration officers, according to police. Nor are immigration officers likely to pick up the trail of an undocumented immigrant who came forward as a victim of crime, they said.
That's true even in Escondido, where an immigration officer works out of the Police Department offices, according to police Lt. Bob Benton.
"Believe me," Benton said, "he's busy enough with the criminal aliens ...
"If we start inquiring about the immigration status of these victims, they're going to stop calling us."
Claudia Smith, an immigrants rights activist with California Rural Legal Assistance, said she believes that most police agencies refrain from immigration enforcement.
Perceptions
In Carlsbad, she said, the perception among day laborers is that police are working "hand-in-glove" with immigration officials, with police questioning workers at pickup sites with immigration enforcement following close behind.
"Certainly, that's gotten around," she said. "Then you do not have victims coming forward, or witnesses, should they be undocumented."
Carlsbad police Capt. Mike Shipley said the department has a directive prohibiting officers from questioning the immigration status of victims.
"A victim should be secure in contacting us to report their victimization," Shipley said.
Likewise, there is a directive to notify immigration officials if a suspect in a crime is an undocumented immigrant, he said.
Passing information on to immigration officers in other situations is not "standard operating procedure," but nor is it out of the question, Capt. Shipley said.
"We frequently have people complain about certain issues, and we might pass that info along," Shipley said. "Generally, we're not fishing for migrant workers without documentation."
Hate versus opportunity
Tina Jillings, co-founder of the advocacy group known as the Coalition for Peace, Justice and Dignity, said attacks on migrants fall into one of two categories, or a combination of both.
"Sometimes it is a crime of opportunity, but in other cases, it is a hate crime," she said.
Authorities say these robberies appear to have a strictly economic motive.
On Friday, police made a fourth arrest in the multiagency investigation. April Marie Lewis, 24, of Escondido, joined the ranks of suspects Nicole Couch, 32, and Thomas Malcolm Graham, 32, both of Escondido, and Kevin Anderson, 32, of Vista. All were arrested last week and all know each other, officials said.
Detective Daniel Laibach of the Encinitas Sheriff's Station got a break in the case after day laborer who had been robbed in July spotted his assailants 10 days ago.
"They were in different cars, but ... he recognized them," Laibach said.
Laibach said the suspects, though some share an upper-class Escondido address, are unemployed. They don't own the home they lived in, Laibach said. A relative does.
Drugs involved
Laibach said suspects Couch and Graham told him they committed the robberies to support a drug habit. Couch possessed drugs at the time of her arrest and Anderson was caught with drug paraphernalia, according to county booking logs.
Booking charges against the other two suspects did not involve drug offenses, logs showed.
Jillings believes anti-illegal immigration activity by groups such as the Minutemen has influenced attacks against day laborers.
"In this climate of racist activities becoming acceptable and so blatant ... people don't really look at it as a crime," Jillings said.
Day laborer Ventura said that Latino immigrants are often depicted as thieves or worse, but that the stereotype stands in contrast to the Anglo names of the suspects.
"(Critics) say that we are thieves and we came here to steal but, as you see, it's not us," he said.
Opposes violence
Michael Spencer, leader the Vista Citizens Brigade, said his group opposes illegal immigration, but doesn't support violence against undocumented immigrants.
"None of us condone anything ... that's really violating a human being, regardless of his immigrations status," Spencer said. "People who do that should be prosecuted."
Ultimately, the district attorney's office decides what charges to bring against defendants.
Prosecuting attorney Bryn Kirvin said that no hate crime charges have been filed in the case and none are anticipated.
"That's not to say that this (crime) isn't taking advantage of a population that we assume doesn't call the police," she said. "But we don't believe that the (suspects) have any association with the Minutemen or that these (victims) were targeted for anything related to their status."
WASHINGTON -- As of this writing, the three-way summit between the leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico is only beginning, so one can only imagine what new "triumphs" will emerge from these negotiations, especially with our eternally troubled border-crossing neighbor to the south.
Beneath the surface of the endless bickering with Mexico City over immigration, there are now sufficient indicators of real change in intent and mentality that, if we had smart diplomats and policy-makers, we could totally transform the crucial American-Mexican relationship.
The first hopeful indicator is Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderon, elected last year on the program of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). For the first time in its melodramatic but ill-governed history, beautiful Mexico has a serious "presidente." Little of the old charming but destructive Mexican "machismo" here. Instead, Calderon is a serious businessman who has already moved to create jobs, combat poverty and fight crime. Realizing that the drug mafias had become so powerful that they were suborning many in Mexico's two federal police forces, Calderon is wisely lobbying his congress to replace them with a single professional organization modeled on European agencies.
Is it possible that Mexico -- with its horrendously unequal wealth, its internal corruption and its tradition of exporting its poor and its aggressive to other countries -- is actually going to take responsibility for itself at last?
Listen to an amazing interview with the new Mexican ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, which recently appeared in The Washington Times. For the first time in my long experience with Mexico, we hear a distinguished Mexican diplomat arguing unequivocally for serious and responsible policy regarding the border.
"It is very hard for Mexico to preach to the North what it does not do to the South," the ambassador said, referring to his country's cruel treatment of those caught on its southern borders. "Unless we correct the fundamental challenge of the violation of human rights of Latin American or Central American migrants crossing the border into Mexico, it's very hard for me to come up and wag a finger and say you guys should protect the rights of my citizens in this country."
And if there were an attack by outsiders who came to the United States across the Mexican border? "The day that happens, this relationship, as we have known it, is over ..." he said soberly. Then he summed up, "The end game for us, the Mexican government, is to ensure every single Mexican who crosses this border does so legally."
This, of course, is quite amazing for a government that, until only recently, was providing its citizens road maps showing them how to cross the border illegally.
In addition to these changes, when I was in Mexico a year ago, I found demographic developments that have largely gone unnoticed in the United States. A "population revolution" has occurred there; Mexico is effectively approaching population stabilization. Groups like the International Planned Parenthood Organization told our group the time is rapidly coming when there will be little or no more population growth.
In 1972, the average Mexican family had seven children, according to Mexico's National Population Council. Today, the number is 2.1 children per family. The population is growing by only 1.4 percent per year, and the rate is declining, compared to 3.4 percent in the 1970s. That predictably means that the population, which had catapulted to 100 million in the year 2000, will stabilize, and this will have enormous effects on American immigration problems.
Yet, the greatest problem that will face the leaders of the three countries meeting this week in Montebello, Quebec, is something even graver than immigration. It is the extraordinary growing ugliness of the narcotics trade across the Mexican-American border.
In a recent article published by the Foreign Policy Association, one of our finest Mexico scholars, George W. Grayson of the College of William and Mary, follows this sobering problem. He asserts that by the time Calderon took office, "his No. 1 priority had become curbing the activities of the powerful cartels. During the five months between his victory and his swearing-in, drug-related violence had taken the lives of more than 1,000 people. By mid-August 2007, there were 1,539 such deaths for this year to date."
What's more, the violence has been becoming more barbarically gruesome. In Uruapan, the traffickers lobbed five human heads onto a dance floor; whole portions of the country, including zones near the U.S. border, are out of Mexican control; the University of Miami, citing Interpol reports, states that Russian mafias were now operating in the Tijuana-San Diego corridor. Calderon's welcome response: a determination to "take back the country from criminals."
This is all tentatively hopeful, if not at all easy, because professor Grayson sees the core of the problem as an overall "weakening of the Mexican state," which started in the 1980s when the traditional single party of power, the PRI or Institutional Revolutionary Party, began to lose power. The potential reform of Mexico, as welcome as it is, also unseated the harsh controls that the PRI alone could wield over the police and thus over the druggies.
Still, we stand at a special moment in time with Mexico. All of these opportunities could be grasped if we had a creative foreign policy toward our frustrating neighbors and if our best thinkers would work with them at this welcome moment of positive change.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007 By SUZANNE GAMBOA Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON "” Hundreds of thousands of legal residents whose green cards don't have expiration dates may have to pay $370 to replace them, or risk criminal penalties.
A division of the Homeland Security Department on Wednesday proposed requiring legal residents with those cards to pay a $290 replacement application fee plus $80 for electronic fingerprints and a photo.
Those who repeatedly fail to comply face up to 30 days in prison and a $100 fine, under the proposal.
Citizenship and Immigration Services estimates about 750,000 legal permanent U.S. residents were issued green cards between 1977 and 1989 that lack expiration dates.
Green cards are proof of authorization to live and work in the United States. Legal residents must carry the cards at all times.
Under the proposal, legal residents would have 120 days to replace their cards.
If they fail to apply for a replacement, their green cards would eventually be terminated on a date to be set later. A terminated card would not invalidate an immigrant's status as a legal resident, but could make it hard to travel or get a new job.
Legal residents with cards that need to be replaced would not be individually notified.
The proposal is not final, but legal residents can begin applying now for a replacement if they choose.
The government wants to redo the photos and fingerprints to make sure the cards are updated and accurate.
"It's a security issue," said Bill Wright, Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman. "It's making sure the right person has the right card."
For some legal residents who have criminal records, applying for a new card could lead to deportation. Immigrants who commit crimes varying from shoplifting to murder are considered deportable even if the crime occurred years ago and the immigrant completed a jail sentence or paid a fine for the crime.
"This is a way of asking people to come report themselves," said Crystal Williams, associate director for programs at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Citizenship and Immigration Services said in the Federal Register that it had considered expiring all pre-1989 cards and lowering the fee for replacing the cards.
But it ultimately decided against that because the agency would have to charge other immigrants to cover the costs.
In a news release, the agency said updating the card also will allow it to update cardholder information, conduct background checks and store fingerprint and photo information.
Williams questioned the agency's plan to publicize the card replacements mostly through its Web site and field offices. Since these are legal residents who have been in the country at least 18 years, many have little reason to visit immigration offices or the agency's Web site, she said.
Public comment on the proposal will be taken online at the Federal Register or by mail at Citizenship and Immigration Services through Sept. 21.
FAIRFAX CHAIRMAN FIRES BACK AT PRINCE WILLIAM OVER IMMIGRATION
Associated Press August 22, 2007
FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) - Fairfax County Chairman Gerry Connolly is firing back at Prince William County officials over illegal immigration. Connolly says the crackdown planned by Prince William is unworkable and will lead to racial profiling.
The Prince William plan calls for police to question criminal suspects about immigration status if they have probably cause.
Connolly says he wonders how probable cause will be defined. He says decisions are likely to be made on the basis of someone's accent or appearance, and that's profiling.
But Prince William County Chairman Corey Stewart says police will have objective criteria that don't have anything to do with a person's looks or the way they talk.
Stewart has criticized Fairfax County for being too lax on illegal immigration.
MOUNT KISCO - Three men nabbed by federal immigration authorities in the village last week are in the process of being deported.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents apprehended Cesar Humberto Mejia at 108 Grove St. around 6:30 a.m. Aug. 14, according to a Mount Kisco police report.
Mark Thorn, a spokesman for the agency, said ICE's fugitive-operations team was seeking Mejia because he's been ordered deported.
"Because he has already received due process, he is being expeditiously removed," Thorn said.
ICE officials on Aug. 14 also visited 345 and 343 Lexington Ave. around 7 a.m., and took Hector Vasquez-Perez and Ruben De Jesus Morales-Teas into custody, according to village police reports.
Thorn said ICE officials went to Lexington Avenue looking for another fugitive wanted for deportation. The fugitive wasn't found, but Thorn said the agents did encounter two others. He identified them as Morales-Teas and Perez-Vasquez.
Both men entered the country illegally after having been deported before, Thorn said, and were being deported again.
Edwin Aragon of Esquipulas Multiservice knew Morales-Teas as a customer.
"I called the Guatemalan consulate to find out where he was," Aragon said. He found out that Morales-Teas was being held in Texas and facing criminal charges for violating an order of deportation. He said he would try to call the consulate in Texas to argue that Morales-Teas be deported instead of serving a jail term.
Village police, as they have in the past, assisted federal agents by establishing a perimeter around the raided residences.
In March, ICE officials arrested 30 people in a pair of operations on Main and Spring streets in Mount Kisco.
Carola Bracco, executive director of the Neighbors Link community center, which provides services for immigrants, didn't want to comment at length, other than to say the immigration operations create "unease" in the community.
Thorn said the federal agency was working to ensure public safety and the "integrity of the immigration system."
Jim Russell, chairman of Westchester-Rockland Citizens for Immigration Control, said although the raids may get a lot of media attention, he does not see them as an effective tool in stopping illegal immigration.
"I don't think it's the real solution to the immigration problem," Russell said. "The best solution is to enforce the laws as it applies to employers of illegal aliens. That's more effective than occasional roundups or deportations."
The Fayetteville Observer August 22, 2007 A staff report
Seven people have been detained by federal immigration officials in early morning raids in Cumberland, Robeson, Hoke and Bladen counties, sources say.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials would not confirm details of the raids, except to say they are "targeted" arrests as a result of a probe of people involved in falsifying documents.
Agents began their searches between 3 and 6 a.m., sources say. The sources said agents were at the Smithfield Packing Plant in Tar Heel, the Robeson County towns of Shannon, Rennert and St. Pauls, Hope Mills in Cumberland County and Raeford in Hoke County.
EXCLUSIVE: ILLEGAL ALIENS' IMPACT ON AMERICAN JOBS- PART 1
The Editors Author: The Editors Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc. Date: August 22, 2007
Far from being a "victimless" crime, illegal immigration impacts many people – from students looking for part-time work, to legal immigrants waiting for their American Dreams to be realized. FSM Editors take a look at some of the ways illegal immigration hurts everyone.
ILLEGAL ALIENS' IMPACT ON AMERICAN JOBS - PART 1
By The Editors
Some people say that illegal alien immigration is not a real crime because it is "victimless" and that the illegal aliens are "only doing the work that Americans won't." In actual fact however, illegal immigration distorts the law of supply and demand in a capitalistic society. In fact, regarding wages, it is hypocritical to want to raise the minimum wage on one hand while the other hand wink at illegal immigrants working at far below prevailing wages. The victim, then, is the American worker and taxpayer.
But don't take our word for it: read the following to see just how bad this situation is, and how illegal alien populations have changed the working prospects of America's middle class:
The National Academy of Science reported in "Dropping Out – Immigrant Entry and Native Exit from the Labor Market, 2000-2005" that from 1980 to 1995 there was a 44% of the decline in the real wages of high school dropouts as a result of immigration.
A commentary, "Mass Immigration Takes Greatest Toll on African-Americans," by Dan Stein, Executive Director, Federation for American Immigration Reform, notes that:
In some cases the influx of immigrants has allowed native-born workers to move up the ladder. But in all too many other instances, mass immigration has moved American workers off the ladder entirely, particularly black Americans. According to a report by the National Academy of Sciences done during the economic boom of the late-1990s, the dramatic rise in immigration was a direct cause of dramatic declines in jobs and income for Americans with a high school education or less.
If one tracks the economic progress of African-Americans, or the lack of it, over the past century there is an unmistakable correlation with patterns of immigration. Blacks have made the greatest economic advances during periods of low immigration, while economic conditions have stagnated or regressed during period of high immigration.
The prestigious Wall Street investment firm Bear Stearns published a report, "The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface," which claims that the illegal alien population is double the official government estimates and that the Government vastly underestimates the cost of illegal immigration. According to Bear Stearns:
· The illegal alien population of the U.S. is about 20 million - roughly the population of New York State.
· The report asserts that there are between 12 and 15 million jobs in the U.S. currently held by illegal aliens, or about 8% of the work force.
· Between 4 and 6 million jobs have shifted to the underground economy since 1990. These are not "jobs Americans won't do, but rather jobs Americans used to do.
· On the revenue side, the United States may be foregoing $35 billion a year in income tax collections because of the number of jobs that are now off the books.
· There are approximately 5 million illegal workers who are collecting wages on a cash basis and are avoiding both income and FICA taxes.
· The United States is hooked on cheap, illegal workers and is deferring the costs of providing public services to these quasi-Americans.
Long before the nation was flooded with illegal aliens, somebody picked the crops, mowed the grass, flipped burgers, dug the ditches, and cleaned hotel rooms. These entry level jobs were often held by the working poor, legal immigrants and, in the summer, by students.
As Victor Davis Hanson noted in "Rethinking Illegal Immigration":
Areas in the United States that have experienced far less illegal immigration seem to have no insurmountable problems manning restaurants, cutting lawns or serving the needs of hotel guests. Travel to the Midwest, for example, and you'll see students are employed as cooks and maids. Construction relies on legal laborers. The evidence suggests massive illegal immigration causes as much upheaval inside Mexico as it supposedly prevents – while aggravating, not solving, problems in the United States.
When illegal aliens take these jobs they not only take jobs from American ***** and drive the wages down but also deny entry level work and the ladder of opportunity from the working poor and legal immigrants – thus making the American Dream harder to obtain.
As noted by Frosty Wooldridge in "Our Country Coming Undone":
Illegal immigration hurts America's poor. In a recent account in the New York Times, black children suffered 50% greater poverty in the past 10 years due to immigration. Illegal immigrants compete for jobs normally done by America's poor. A study by the Center For Immigration Studies wrote "Mexican immigration is overwhelmingly unskilled and it's hard to find an economic argument for unskilled immigration because it tends to reduce wages for U.S. workers.
Woodbridge concludes:
Cheap labor from illegal immigration is not "cheap." It's subsidized by all of us in the form of our tax dollars paying for their services. It makes a few employers wealthy at the expense of all of us.
Steven Malanga notes in "How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy," "A handful of industries get low-cost labor, and the taxpayers foot the bill." Sounds like a great deal for some employers but, as usual, the taxpayers are the ones getting ripped off.
An October 16, 2006 article in the Boston Globe, by Andrew M. Sum and Paul E. Harrington, "Two kinds of immigration," notes:
The overall effects of new immigrant inflows from 2000 to 2005 on American labor markets are unprecedented... new immigrants accounted for 86 percent of the total gain in employment that the nation experienced over the past five years. Our analysis suggests that close to two-thirds of these new immigrant arrivals were unauthorized. Among males, all of the net growth in employment between 2000 and 2005 was attributable to new immigrants. This extraordinary finding casts serious doubt on the common contention that new immigrants simply take jobs that Americans do not want.
Worse still, the impact of this displacement of native-born workers and established immigrants was concentrated among young people....Available evidence shows that there has been a high rate of displacement of younger, native-born male workers and younger women without four-year college degrees by newer immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants. Our own statistical analysis of native-born adults under 25 revealed that higher inflows of new immigrant workers in their state of residence hurt their ability to find jobs. The negative effects were larger for young men than for women, for young adults with no postsecondary schooling, and for native-born black and Hispanic males.
The notion that there is a shortage of unskilled, low-educated workers in the United States and in Massachusetts is a canard. The evidence - ranging from employment rates to measures of changes in annual earnings, weekly wages, and employee benefits - reveals a surplus of less- educated workers in both national and state labor markets. The lifetime earnings of adults without high school diplomas over the past 25 years have declined catastrophically, and these declines have imposed increasing fiscal burdens on the rest of the taxpaying public.
Come on America...this is YOUR problem and only YOU can clean it up. Your elected officials will not do this unless you tell them to. Your thoughts do matter!
If you are a reporter or producer who is interested in receiving more information about this writer or this article, please email your request to pr@familysecuritymatters.org.
Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
EXCLUSIVE: ILLEGAL ALIENS' IMPACT ON AMERICAN JOBS - PART II
Author: The Editors Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc. Date: August 23, 2007
"Victimless crime"? In this second part of a two-part series, FSM Editors detail how not only illegal immigration hurts American workers, but also how abuses of the guest worker system add to the problem.
The mainstream media report ad nauseam that illegal aliens are doing work that Americans won't do, but that is mostly because the compensation is artificially depressed and illegal aliens are the only ones who will do the work for such low wages. However, as noted in the Education report, it also probably has something to do with the very low education level of the vast majority of illegal aliens. In any case, illegal aliens are not just picking strawberries and cleaning toilets any more. It wasn't that long ago that being a dry-waller, brick-layer, house framer, painter, carpet layer, plumber, or electrician was a decently compensated, middle class trade. Now it is increasingly becoming the work for illegal aliens at far less than the free market rate. While illegal alien workers are only a small portion of many of those job categories, their willingness to work at dramatically lower rates artificially drags down the compensation for all workers.
A side effect is that it also increases the load on the welfare systems, as there are fewer working poor and more welfare recipients. Additionally, many unscrupulous employers pay illegal aliens in cash, off-the-books, avoiding all taxes which also makes the illegal alien worker have little or no income "qualifying" them for welfare benefits.
A May 8, 2006 article in the Washington Times, "Immigrants and wages," reports:
Examining more closely the pattern within the 2000-2005 period provides compelling evidence illegal immigrants have been used deliberately to force down wages. In most industries that use illegal immigrants heavily, inflation-adjusted wages rose modestly during the first years of the current decade. Yet soon after, they dropped significantly. Obviously, the nation's restaurateurs, hoteliers, contractors and cleaners decided paying workers $12 per hour and often less, with few or no benefits, was outrageous. In response, they stepped up efforts to bring Mexican and Central American labor markets and standards into the United States.
The wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make it clear these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They're facing shortages of native-born workers who will accept poverty-level pay. If the president and Congress have any interest in ensuring American immigration policy helps raise and not depress living standards, they'll tell these employers to stop the special-interest pleading and do what their predecessors throughout U.S. history have done: Raise pay high enough to attract the U.S. workers you need, and if your business models aren't good enough to accommodate living wages, invest in developing new labor-saving technologies.
Denying pauper-wage industries the crutch of a wage-depressing flood of illegal immigrants is essential for keeping the United States a high-wage, First World economy. It is also essential for offering real economic opportunity to legal immigrants and native-born low-income Americans. The wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make it clear these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They're facing shortages of native-born workers who will accept poverty-level pay.
Steven Malanga states in "How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy":
Consequently, as the waves of immigration continue, the sheer number of those competing for low-skilled service jobs makes economic progress difficult. A study of the impact of immigration on New York City's restaurant business, for instance, found that 60 percent of immigrant workers do not receive regular raises, while 70 percent had never been promoted. One Mexican dishwasher aptly captured the downward pressure that all these arriving workers put on wages by telling the study's authors about his frustrating search for a 50-cent raise after working for $6.50 an hour: "I visited a few restaurants asking for $7 an hour, but they only offered me $5.50 or $6," he said. "I had to beg [for a job]."
Similarly, immigration is also pushing some native-born workers out of jobs, as Kenyon College economists showed in the California nail-salon workforce. Over a 16-year period starting in the late 1980s, some 35,600 mostly Vietnamese immigrant women flooded into the industry, a mass migration that equaled the total number of jobs in the industry before the immigrants arrived. Though the new workers created a labor surplus that led to lower prices, new services, and somewhat more demand, the economists estimate that as a result, 10,000 native-born workers either left the industry or never bothered entering it.
In an Associated Press report, "Hispanics' immigration to South raises tensions with blacks – Groups have same goals, could be allies, some say," it was noted:
"We've just never been friends and buddies, ˜said Isabella Brooks, the president of the NAACP in Colquitt County, near Tifton. She said she has no white neighbors and doesn't socialize with the Hispanics up the street because of the language barrier."
and
"In places such as Houston and Los Angeles, where blacks and Hispanics have long lived side by side, the two groups most often fight for jobs, notably low-income jobs that were often held by unskilled black workers."
Note that the language barrier creates greater balkanization and the job displacement fuels resentment.
As noted in "Debating," the effect of undocumented workers affects the least-skilled among us:
Workers who have been most affected by the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States over the past five years are low-skilled, young native-born workers, according to a recent study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.
"It appears that employers are substituting new immigrant workers for young native-born workers," economists Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington and Ishwar Khatiwada wrote. "The negative impacts tended to be larger for in-school youth compared to out-of-school youth, and for native-born black and Hispanic males compared to their white counterparts."
The study concluded that the rise in immigrant employment, especially among illegal workers over the past decade, has contributed to a breakdown in the nation's labor laws and labor standards, undermining the unemployment insurance and Social Security systems and basic worker protections that have evolved over the last century.
And, as noted by T.J. Bonner in Judicial Watch's "Special Report, New Fronts In The Immigration Battle":
You cannot convince me that if you paid a decent wage to American workers, that they would not take many of these jobs. Drywall hangers, for example, used to make $18, $20 an hour; now the going rate [is] $8 to $10 an hour. These are jobs that Americans cannot afford to work in because they cannot afford to live in sub-standard living conditions. On the other hand, people who have no interest in this country, [who] live [with] 15 adult males, unrelated, in a one-bedroom apartment...[and] send most of their money back home – They are more than willing to take those jobs.
Harvard Professor George Borjas has reported that illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion dollars in 2005. Does that sound like a "victimless crime"? By any conceivable measure, the answer has to be no, especially if you are one of the displaced workers.
A related immigration issue that has a negative impact on jobs and wages is the abuse of the guest worker program. In case you think this program is just for allowing temporary workers in to pick lettuce, think again.
Listed below are some of the jobs that H-1B visas are being issued for:
Besides a legitimate guest worker program for the seasonal agriculture industry, American companies and universities are allowed to import "temporary" workers for all sorts of jobs that they need workers for. Often the reason given is that there are no workers available, but usually it is that there are no workers available at the lower wage rates required by the employer. Does that sound familiar? In any case, the program has no serious safeguards to protect American workers from being replaced, and is often abused to simply provide cheap foreign labor to increase bottom line profits.
The Immigration act of 1990 established an annual quota of H-1B visas to allow the best and brightest workers in where there are legitimate shortages in the U.S. workforce. In a capitalistic society, supply and demand take care of shortages and surplus in a more efficient way than government programs could ever do.
In March 2003, the American Engineering Association reported that the US high tech sector lost 560,000 jobs between January 2001 and December 2002. While this corresponded with the dot-com bust, it is worthwhile to note that during the same period companies sponsored more H-1B and other "temporary" visas than the numbers of jobs lost. Obviously, there could not have been a shortage but employers simply wanted cheaper labor.
In 2001 it was reported that 9 out of every 10 new job openings for computer/IT were taken by H-1Bs, and the (former) INS issued 312,000 visas in 2002.
More and more frequently, companies are using the program as part of their job outsourcing plans where the foreign worker is brought in and trained by the American worker. Only when the foreign worker goes home, the job goes with him – and the American worker is then laid off.
So there you have it: reduction in wages, job displacement, and billions of dollars out of the pockets of American workers for a "victimless crime."
TELEGALERIA TO LAUNCH SPANISH-LANGUAGE HOME SHOPPING CHANNEL IN THE U.S.
LIFESTYLE HOME SHOPPING CHANNEL PROVIDES HISPANICS WITH VALUE, CONVENIENCE AND A PATHWAY TO AN EMPOWERED LIFESTYLE
Los Angeles, CA--(HISPANIC PR WIRE)--August 21, 2007--TeleGalerÃa, a Spanish-language lifestyle home shopping channel, today announced its plans to launch this fall on Spanish-language television nationwide. TeleGalerÃa will broadcast its original programming weekly and online 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on multiple Spanish language networks. The breakthrough lifestyle home shopping channel will embrace the language and preferences of Hispanic consumers, offering viewers an unrivaled blend of the hottest brands, an entertaining shopping experience and program variety.
"TeleGalerÃa will engage customers by focusing on the entire shopping experience rather than just the products," said Fredrick Ackourey, CEO of TeleGalerÃa. "By embracing the language, culture and preferences of Hispanics, TeleGalerÃa will connect brands to the Hispanic consumer's lifestyle."
TeleGalerÃa will engage customers by focusing on the entire shopping experience rather than just the products
The channel will offer a one-stop destination where Hispanic consumers can find popular brand name products they desire at a great value in a hassle-free, secure and entertaining shopping environment.
All products will be shipped and handled from fulfillment centers located on either coast of the country to expedite the distribution process effectively and efficiently to customers. Additionally, call centers will be located in South America and Mexico and staffed by hundreds of customer service professionals to guide customers through their shopping experience. TeleGalerÃa will also offer alternative payment options and a 30-day money back guarantee on all purchases.
"Home shopping continues to grown in popularity globally. In the U.S., the home shopping market will exceed $13 billion and that growth trend is expected to continue as demographics widen due to a more diverse product mix, better media distribution and more entertaining and engaging formats," said Ackourey.
Tune in to TeleGalerÃa's Unique Themed Lifestyle Programming
TeleGalerÃa will use its unique episodic-themed entertainment segments to feature the most popular brand name products in the categories of fashion, jewelry, home, entertainment and electronics. Through its Web site, http://www.telegaleria.com, viewers will be able to access TeleGalerÃa's virtual community any time to search for more products, interact with other shoppers, and engage the online lifestyle magazine featuring topics on education, beauty, family and even the customer's own local community.
Through its broadcasts and Web site, TeleGalerÃa will bring viewers the products they want at affordable prices, while entertaining them with special product demonstrations, guests, celebrities and experts that appeal to Hispanic sensibilities.
Select TeleGalerÃa's programming includes:
"Cocinado a Moda Latino" – Guest chefs, talented culinary artists from Latin America and chefs to the stars, prepare quick and easy meals with kitchenware available on TeleGalerÃa.
"Unicos" – Viewers will have a chance to purchase one-of-a-kind jewelry exclusively available on TeleGalerÃa. One collection features never before seen designs made from exotic metals like titanium and magnesium fused in a vacuum furnace with colored silicates producing a one of a kind gem of unique beauty.
"Al Estilo Hollywood" - Will offer a sneak peek in to the closets of the hottest Hispanic celebrities. Celebrity guests will discuss the features and benefits of each product and provide viewers with personal insight into what they value and their unique sense of style.
TeleGalerÃa is led by Frederick Ackourey and Alan Cordover, whom together have over 30 years of experience in television marketing, creative product development, licensing and merchandising.
About TeleGalerÃa TeleGalerÃa is one of America's leading Spanish language home shopping channel destination for Hispanic consumers. TeleGalerÃa offers the hottest name brand products that Hispanics desire at an affordable price. Available nationwide on Spanish-language television and online 24 hours a day, seven days a week at http://www.telegaleria.com, customers can find an array of products in the categories of fashion, jewelry, home, entertainment and electronics. Visit http://www.telegaleria.com for more information.
CONTACT Media Contact: Laura Castillos 310-854-8261 o Dean Schnider 805-496-6275
CITIZENSHIP ROADBLOCK AFFECTS LOCAL RESIDENTS ACLU SUIT FOCUSES ON FBI NAME CHECKS
By Leslie Berestein UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER August 23, 2007
SAN DIEGO – Four county residents who have been waiting years for FBI name checks to clear them for naturalization are plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed yesterday against the federal government by the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties.
Among them are a Russian-born University of California San Diego professor, a Kurdish Iraqi who assisted U.S. troops in Iraq in 1990, and two immigrants from Iran. All are legal residents who successfully completed their citizenship interviews more than two years ago, and under normal circumstances would have long ago been granted U.S. citizenship, said David Blair-Loy, legal director of local ACLU. "They have cleared all the hurdles, but they are stuck in this indefinite limbo because of this so-called name-check program," he said.
FBI name checks, used in addition to fingerprint checks to screen applicants for citizenship, have caused substantial processing delays for some applicants. Most name checks are resolved within a matter of weeks, and more than 99 percent are resolved within six months, said Marie Sebrechts, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
However, she said, the less than 1 percent that remain can take years to clear.
"The fact that an application is delayed in security check does not implicate the applicant," she said. "When a check is pending it means that some kind of match has been found that must be resolved through a manual process that may involve physically reviewing files, which leads to delays."
In June, a Citizenship and Immigration Services ombudsman's report stated that "FBI name checks may be the single biggest obstacle to the timely and efficient delivery of immigration benefits."
According to Darrell Foxworth, a spokesman for the FBI in San Diego, a backlog was created after Citizenship and Immigration Services resubmitted more than 2.7 million names in December 2002 "in an abundance of caution after 9/11."
Part of the problem is that files must be retrieved from more than 265 locations, Foxworth said. One solution the agency is working on is to create a central repository of records, he said.
Last year, Citizenship and Immigration Services stopped scheduling citizenship interviews for those who had not yet cleared name checks, further frustrating those who are stuck waiting.
Foxworth said some Arabic and Chinese names can take longer than others to check due to common names and variations in spelling; however, applicants from several nations, even Canada, have complained about getting mired in the process.
Among the plaintiffs in the San Diego lawsuit, the one who has waited the longest is Daniel Tartakovsky, a UCSD professor who according to the complaint successfully completed his citizenship interview in June 2003. Mehdi Hormozan, a legal resident from Iran, successfully completed his interview in September of that year, according to the complaint.
The complaint also states that Zahra Jamshidi, a native of Iran, completed her interview in February 2004; Mohammad Hashim Nasseem, a native of Iraq, completed his in March 2005. The San Diego lawsuit is one of several that has been filed on behalf of immigrants awaiting name-check clearance; a similar class-action lawsuit was filed last February by the ACLU in San Francisco on behalf of naturalization applicants in Northern California.
FAIRFAX CITES PROGRESS AGAINST CROWDED HOMES COUNTY FACES STAFFING AND OTHER OBSTACLES
By Bill Turque Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 23, 2007; Page B06
Nearly three months after launching a crackdown on crowded housing and other neighborhood problems, Fairfax County officials say that they have made progress but that the plodding pace of litigation and the ease with which new violations can unravel cases thought to be closed pose challenges.
The work of the county's "Enhanced Code Enforcement Strike Team," formed this spring after a surge of complaints, has resulted in three prosecutions and 31 other cases in which problems were remedied without court action. An additional 127 cases are under active investigation.
"We've made a lot of progress. We also understand that we have a lot more work to do," Deputy County Executive Robert A. Stalzer told more than 300 people Tuesday night during a meeting of the Springfield Civic Association.
Many Springfield neighborhoods, with a mix of relatively inexpensive 1950s ranch houses and new mini-mansions, have attracted increasing numbers of immigrant families and day laborers seeking rented rooms. Those areas, in the county's Lee District, have been a major source of complaints about crowding, illegal home additions, abandoned vehicles and trash.
The stepped-up enforcement comes as illegal immigration continues to resonate as a local political issue. Fairfax officials are under mounting pressure from neighboring jurisdictions to take a more aggressive approach. The Prince William Board of County Supervisors has passed a resolution directing police to check the immigration status of crime suspects, and Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R) said last week that Fairfax risks becoming "the illegal immigrant sanctuary in Northern Virginia, particularly for the criminal element."
Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) has said he wants the county's efforts focused "on outcomes and behavior," not immigration status. Stalzer essentially reinforced that view Tuesday for the overwhelmingly white audience at Crestwood Elementary School.
In Fairfax and most other Virginia localities, no more than four people unrelated by blood or marriage can live in a single-family house. Families can have no more than two nonmembers in permanent residence.
Asked whether the county had help from federal immigration authorities in determining family relationships, Stalzer said that was "not a part of the strike team's effort."
County officials told Springfield residents that there was no quick fix to the crowding problem and that investigations and court action take time.
"You can see from the open cases that we're not there yet," Stalzer said. "We've got a number of open cases, and we've got to get some success with those."
One strike team leader said some of the cases that have been successfully closed, either with court action or voluntary compliance, are likely to reopen as new tenants and owners emerge at a property.
"I expect it to happen," said David McKernan, deputy chief of the Fairfax Fire and Rescue Department and a strike team leader.
Despite the crackdown, some real estate agents still advertise houses with separate apartments, or "mother-in-law suites," which is a violation. Because agents are licensed by the state, county officials said, they have no recourse but to refer the cases to regulators in Richmond.
Another issue is staffing. The strike team's two 10-member working groups, consisting of zoning, housing, fire and health personnel, are not enough to address the problem, Stalzer said. He said county officials will ask supervisors next month for funds to add 10 staff members, including a lawyer to help with court cases.
Many Springfield residents credited the county with making a decent start with the strike team but vented their frustrations nonetheless. Margaret Whitfield, who has watched a large new home go up next to her 1954 ranch house in the Monticello neighborhood, said she fears it will soon be a boarding house.
"How am I going to sell my house now?" asked Whitfield, who said she was counting on money from her house to one day finance long-term care if she needs it. "I'm so angry about what's been taken from me."
Debbie Lucier, who lives with her husband, Gary, in Crestwood, credits the county with closing down a boarding house in her neighborhood but said it has remained empty and apparently abandoned, creating new issues.
"It's a blight just as much as having 50 people there," Lucier said.
Harry Gault, who lives in the 6300 block of Dana Avenue, said that the house next door is "still a motel" but that "the population has gone down" as the county began increasing pressure on the owner.
County officials successfully prosecuted the former owner, Raimundo Guevara, for a fire code violation (blocked emergency exit). He was fined $1,000. According to tax records, Guevara has since sold the house to his son, Raimundo Guevara-Mendieta, who has been cited with crowding violations. The case is pending. Guevara-Mendieta could not be reached for comment after calls were made to his home yesterday.
Supervisor T. Dana Kauffman (D-Lee), who complained for months about county inaction, said that overall he was pleased with the strike team's progress.
"The bottom line is that we're beginning to see changes," he said. "I'll be frank. It's overdue, but I've seen real changes."
The Washington Times By Stephen Dinan August 23, 2007
If President Bush is serious about getting tough on U.S. employers who hire illegal aliens, he can start with his own administration, which employs thousands of unauthorized workers, says the top Republican on the House immigration subcommittee.
A 2006 audit showed federal, state and local governments are among the biggest employers of the half-million persons in the U.S. illegally using "non-work" Social Security numbers "” numbers issued legally, but with specific instructions that the holders are not authorized to work in the U.S.
"Let's clean up our own house, let's especially clean up the federal employment of all those working for the federal government," said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee.
The Social Security Administration used to, but no longer does, issue non-work numbers to legal aliens who were not authorized to work but needed a number to obtain a federal or state benefit or service. Still, hundreds of thousands of those immigrants used the numbers to get a job.
According to the 2006 audit by the Social Security inspector general, 17 of the 100 worst employers using employees with non-work numbers were government agencies: seven federal agencies, seven state agencies and three local governments. That means the government knows who those employees are, but usually does not go after them.
Earlier this month, Homeland Security and Commerce departments announced a new crackdown on illegal entry that includes stricter enforcement against employers. The departments said they will encourage businesses to use E-Verify to check employees' Social Security numbers, and said the federal government will write new rules requiring all private contractors and vendors that do business with it to use E-Verify.
Under current law, neither business nor federal agencies are required to use E-Verify, formerly known as the Basic Pilot Program.
Mr. King said the administration shouldn't wait for new rules to begin checking federal employees against the non-work list.
"There's a lot more they can do, but the federal government's at least got to run their non-work Social Security numbers against their own employee database, and then they've got to require states to do that, and local governments to do that," he said.
The problem is broader than just federal hiring. The latest figures from the Social Security Administration, reported in March, found 521,426 non-work Social Security numbers had earnings credited to them for work done in 2005 and credited during calendar year 2006.
Social Security provides a list of those numbers to Homeland Security every year, but the department has been reluctant to use them for enforcement, arguing to Congress in testimony last year it would take a significant amount of resources and could distract from national security priorities. Homeland Security also says a high percentage of the non-work numbers turn out to be clerical errors or workers who later obtained authorization.
The inspector general says those cases do occur, but more often than not "” about 60 percent of the time "” the employees are in fact not authorized to work in the U.S. The audit said for government agencies, the percentage is slightly lower: 44 percent of the government workers identified in their sample were unauthorized for employment in the U.S. The inspector general did not name the 100 worst employers on its list.
The inspector general said as long as workers are using invalid numbers, homeland security is threatened, and said telling employers directly about employees using invalid numbers could help stem the flow of illegal workers.
In a sample of 275 individuals using non-work numbers, the inspector general found two were found to have warrants for deportation already lodged against them. The inspector general said it forwarded that information to Homeland Security for action.
Meanwhile, Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican and presidential hopeful, says Mr. Bush is falling behind on construction of the U.S.-Mexico border fence that he signed into law last year.
In a letter to the president, Mr. Hunter said just 17.9 miles of the new double-tier fencing has been constructed as of Aug. 10 "” putting the administration off the pace he said it needs to build 392 miles by May 30. All told, he said the fence is supposed to reach 854 miles which, because of the region's geography, will seal off about 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Washington Times reported earlier this month the U.S. Border Patrol sent out a memo calling for agents to volunteer to help build fencing because they are going to fall short of their goal.
Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the White House, said they are trying to secure the border by adding Border Patrol agents and vehicle barriers. He said there are 100 miles of fencing on the border, and they want a total of 145 miles by September, though those figures include single-tier fencing and fencing that was built in prior years.
New Jersey's Attorney General Anne Milgram set a policy Wednesday to require all local police officers to ask about the immigration status of suspects charged with serious crimes, and to notify federal immigration authorities if there is reason to believe the suspect is in the country illegally, according to The Star Ledger newspaper.
The requirements, which go into effect immediately, apply to suspects arrested for indictable offenses and for driving while intoxicated, said Milgram, who is pictured here at a press conference earlier this month.
If the suspect is unable to prove he or she is legally in the United States, the police officer is required to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she said, according to the paper.
The policy was sparked by a recent triple murder in Newark, N.J. One man arrested in connection with the execution style killings is an illegal immigrant from Peru who was on bail on charges of raping a child when the murders occurred.
Another man arrested in the case is an illegal immigrant from Honduras, according to the New York Times.
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