SCHUECK STEEL CONSTRUCTION SITES


OFFICIALS SEEK LEGAL STATUS OF 19 HISPANIC STEELWORKERS

DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Posted on Thursday, September 13, 2007

The Missouri State Highway Patrol and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency are investigating the legal status of 19 Hispanic men employed by a Little Rock firm working on a construction project at a Hannibal cement plant, the Highway Patrol said Wednesday.

Working on a tip, patrol officers went Wednesday morning to Continental Cement in the northeast Missouri town.

“Nobody was detained, nobody was taken into custody,” patrol Lt. Nelson Elfrink said. “This was about gathering some information.”

As the off icers checked names, the workers kept working.

Elfrink said three of the 19 had proper documentation and were not illegal immigrants.

One of the workers was probably in the country illegally, Elfrink said.

“On those other 15, we were able to find no documentation on them at all in our database,” he said.

Their names were turned over to immigration officials.

The workers are with Schueck Steel of Little Rock.

Thomas Schueck, Schueck Steel’s founding owner and president and chief executive officer of the firm’s Little Rockbased parent company, Lexicon Inc., said Wednesday he was unaware of the work-site visit by authorities.

Schueck said company policy required workers to have on file two separate forms of legal identification.

“This is something we have to watch constantly,” he said. “We’re very strict about it and we do what the government tells us we are supposed to do. If it turns out it wasn’t enough, I guess we’ll have to do more.”

The workers in Hannibal are helping build a new $ 150 million kiln.

Calls by the Associated Press to Continental’s Hannibal plant and corporate office in suburban St. Louis were not returned.

Elfrink did not say who provided the tip or why it was believed the workers were in the U. S. illegally.

The Quincy (Ill. ) Herald-Whig reported the tip came from an unidentified local legislator.

Late last month, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt announced a two-pronged crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Blunt directed the Highway Patrol to check the immigration status of every person incarcerated by the patrol and he directed the state’s Department of Economic Development to tighten oversight of contractors that receive state tax breaks or funding.

Hispanic advocates say the crackdown will lead to racial profiling and could foster an atmosphere of hostility.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the construction project in Hannibal receives state funding or tax breaks, or if those could be jeopardized if the workers are determined to be illegal.

Calls by the Associated Press to Blunt’s office and the state economic development office were not returned. Information for this report was contributed by Jacob Quinn Sanders of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

EDDY CUENCA

NEWEST U.S. CITIZENS PROVIDE INSIGHT INTO NEW YORK IMMIGRATION

Updated: 9/13/2007 7:38 AM
By: Steve Ference

ALBANY, N.Y. -- It was a big day, not only for Eddy Cuenca, but for his family as well.

"It's a big step for me," he said.

"I'm very proud of him," said his wife.

That's because he's one of four immigrants granted citizenship as part of the Federal Executive Association's Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration. It's appropriate, because all four are from Latin America.

"My parents moved me here because they knew it offered better opportunities for me, and it has," said Cuenca, originally from Ecuador, though her grew up in Brooklyn.

Those opportunities he spoke about include government aid for school, the result of serving six years as a Marine.

"When you look at he or she who's sitting next to you, when you look at me, and you look at the mirror in yourself, unless you can trace your heritage to a Native American, we're all immigrants," said U.S. District Court Judge Gary Sharpe.

Newest U.S. citizens provide insight into New York immigration

We hear plenty about immigration issues and controversies in the news, with illegal immigrants catching the attention of people across the country. But there's also plenty of legal immigration going on as well.

Years of paperwork and interviews ended with a simple half-hour ceremony where American flags colored in by local students covered the tables.

The small group in many ways mirrors the larger picture. The Census Bureau's latest numbers show a record 37.5 million immigrants in the U.S.

Nearly half of all immigrants in New York have come from Latin America. Twenty-five percent only speak English. Over half of those who do speak English, speak it "very well," according to the survey.

"It has a lot to do with your effort to learn the language, and to keep up with it," said Juany Ramirez, a nurse, who also became a citizen.

Teacher Sheila Ramirez said, "I think if you live here, you should know English. Because that's the main language of this country. But I believe people should keep their own natural language.”

Sharp put the day in perspective. "We don't simply assimilate them. They assimilate us. And we all benefit," said the Judge.

Which might be more true than we usually hear. While Eddy Cuenca followed his culture's tradition, giving his son the same name, it was American-born Eddy Jr. who colored in his dad's U.S. flag.

IMMIGRATION -- U.S. BRAIN DRAIN? DON'T BLAME CANADA

By SEAN O'DRISCOLL
The Associated Press
September 12, 2007


Peter Hamlin AP Photo Illustration
A U.S. visa policy is keeping skilled foreign workers out, so Microsoft is moving one of its centers to Canada.
soundoffasap@ap.org

A new group of refugees is crossing the U.S. border, seeking asylum from the policies of ... the United States.

Dozens of skilled workers who can't get U.S. work visas will soon be headed to Vancouver, Canada, filling vacancies at a Microsoft Corp. research center that the software giant opened this week to accommodate them. In a press release announcing the decision, Microsoft said the decision to open the center in Canada "allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S."

By the end of the year, the Microsoft Vancouver Development Centre is expected to employ more than 300 people. Of those, Microsoft spokeswoman Megan Manazir says a vast majority will be foreign nationals with specialized skills who couldn't get U.S. work visas.

Jenna Adorno, a Microsoft technical recruiter, writes in her blog that she has been inundated with e-mails from new recruits, with questions on everything from Canadian pet immunization rules to ways of getting a discount on a Canadian bus pass.

"The good news is, that I am now emerging from the bottom of my e-mail and I have nearly every SDET (Software Design Engineer in Test) and SDE (Software Development Engineer) who was impacted by the H1B visa cap placed in a job in Vancouver," she writes.

Though Microsoft has five similar development centers, including two in the United States, it doesn't take an economist to realize that the deliberate move to Canada to end-around the U.S. visa hurdle signals a trend that could have serious implications for the U.S. economy.

---

RULES ARE RULES

Congress authorizes the federal government to issue a maximum of 65,000 new H1B visas - earmarked for skilled workers - per fiscal year.

The cap is hailed by groups such as the tech-savvy Programmers Guild, which says it protects American jobs and innovations. Those against the visa cap, including Microsoft and a host of Silicon Valley tech companies, say that the limit is a pittance compared to the number needed to fill specialized jobs.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates told the Senate in March that he'd like to see the number increase to 300,000.

The visa reform movement says immigrant innovation was highlighted by a report last month which found that foreign nationals are responsible for up to one in four of international patent applications filed in the U.S. The report, a third in a series by researchers at Harvard, Duke and New York universities, found that the U.S. could face chronic innovation problems unless the visa situation is resolved.

The chief coordinator of the study, Vivek Wadhwa, a Harvard Law School fellow, says that the U.S. is denying itself an economic bargain -access to the brainpower of tens of thousands of creative young people whose education was paid for elsewhere.

"Look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on educating U.S. workers, from their first days in school right through grad school," Wadhwa says. "The US can hire young people just after they are educated by another country and ready to pay taxes. The US is getting a massive savings and it is throwing it away."

---
THE RED-TAPED

Surendra Lingareddy, an expert in semiconductors and security systems, moved from India to study in the U.S., and has been battling both the visa and green card system ever since. A job switch for better pay has put him at the back of the waiting line for visas and permanent residency.

"Rather than let the system ride me, I felt it was good to pursue opportunities that came along the way," he says of his decision.

The most frustrating detail is not being able to use his entrepreneurial skills - because he didn't have a visa to set up his own company. So for now, he languishes in the visa system, hoping one day to be granted permanent residency.

Leigh Plimmer, a chartered accountant, moved from South Africa to Atlanta in 2000 and is on a H1B visa. He, too, feels frustrated because he can't change jobs.

"My career is stagnating," he says bluntly.

And because his wife is on a dependent visa, she's unable to work. "Her job is to sit at home; our temporary status has not allowed her to do anything," he says.
---

LOVE IT AND LEAVE IT

The issue of security still hangs over the visa question in the U.S. After all, some of the Sept. 11 hijackers were educated men with college degrees who could've qualified as skilled workers.

What of the argument that, just maybe, one in a million of those visa applicants is the next Mohammed Atta?

"What if that one in a million is the next Albert Einstein?" says Vivek Wadhwa - pointing out that the world's most celebrated physicist might not have been allowed to stay in the U.S. under the current system.

"The U.S. benefits enormously, both financially and culturally, from foreign workers. ... The vast majority of immigrants love the United States and want to be part of it. That is the greatest security America has ever had."

---
asap contributor Sean O'Driscoll is based in New York, where he writes for the Irish Times.

ARTIST'S WORK REFLECTS IMMIGRATION MAZE


Isadora Machado Lecuona's drawings incorporate pieces like official stamps, her immigration forms and her "alien number," all reflections of her maddening odyssey through the U.S. immigration system. The White Plains High School graduate lives in Norwalk, Conn.

By LEAH RAE
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: August 18, 2007)
In her self-portraits, Isadora Machado Lecuona is a little girl staring out from giant postage stamps.

She is surrounded by signs of bureaucracy. Penciled into the edges are names of immigration forms she's filed over the years. Her "alien number," which goes on every form, takes the place of a signature. There are official seals and postmarks, and sweeping around her head are the wings of butterflies - a kind that spends an entire life span migrating one way.

The 29-year-old artist, a White Plains High School graduate, is not the first person to take a long, winding and uncertain trip through the U.S. immigration process. Her own bid for permanent residency has taken 20 years and counting. But Isadora decided to use her art to communicate what the process feels like.

Born in Spain, she came to the United States with her family at age 9. Assorted delays in her green-card application, none of them very unusual, have kept her living year to year on temporary visas that limit her ability to work and travel.

"I always thought it was funny that a 1-cent stamp, at times, could travel further or more easily than I could around the world," she said.

Isadora's portraits have won accolades, most recently the grand prize in an exhibit at the Carriage Barn Art Center in New Canaan, Conn. Her talents are on display next to the children's pool at the White Plains Family YMCA, where she volunteered her time to paint swirling scenes of fish.

At the moment, her portrait collection hangs in her apartment in Norwalk, Conn., a bright studio lined with jars of pencils and paintbrushes. The poster-size drawings are filled with minuscule detail, hiding poems and symbols in what looks like a shadow.

One portrait is dominated by the Spanish words "sin pais," or "without country," reflecting her doubts about where she stood, legally and culturally, during her life in immigration limbo. The works are modeled on postage stamps from Spain.

When she was 4, Isadora's family moved from Spain's Canary Islands to Guadalajara, Mexico. Her multicultural education continued at a German school in Mexico, and in the United States. Her family came to New York when she was 9 and to White Plains 1 1/2 years later. Her parents separated, and her mother, Milagros Lecuona, continued to work here under a professional visa. She was sponsored by an architectural firm, Peter Gisolfi Associates in Hastings-on-Hudson.

In 1999, her mother and brother received green cards, or permanent residency. Isadora received a denial and a threat of deportation. During the six years it took to process the family's case, she had outgrown her status as a minor child on her mother's application. At 21, as an art and business student at Albany University, SUNY, Isadora had to start all over trying to immigrate to a country she considered home.

While her mother and younger brother went on to become U.S. citizens - her mother is running for White Plains Common Council this year - Isadora remained at square one.

"In the jargon, she 'aged out,' " said her attorney, Thomas Biow. Immigrants now have a recourse in such situations under the Child Status Protection Act. Passed in 2002 - too late for Isadora - it freezes an applicant's age earlier in the process, so that they don't lose all when they turn 21.

Isadora interrupted her final exams to leave the country and come back in on a student visa. She was allowed to work for one year after her graduation - she tried everything from tattooing to working for an insurance company -but she went through periods in which she was not authorized to work at all. In 2001, when she was volunteering her time at a local art gallery, her predicament was described in The Journal News.

Since then she has obtained a professional visa, and teaches Spanish at the New Canaan Country School. The school is sponsoring her quest for a green card.

In a self-portrait, she includes a tiny notation in the shadow of her face, thanking the school and informing the viewer: "The INS strictly prohibits the sale of this piece. As a legal immigrant, the sale of my work falls out of the limitations set by my H-1B visa."


Also embedded is a poem:

I need art to buy my
freedom. I need art to set me free
so that I can live in freedom
drawing my blissful life away

In describing her frustrations - and the fear she once felt over being deported - Isadora says she doesn't mean to minimize the importance of the bureaucracy at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The agency plays a critical role in national security, she said.

But few people seem to understand what's required to immigrate legally, she said.

"The steps, they do not make sense. And you wouldn't know this unless you lived through it," Isadora said. "There are so many steps to do the right thing. They make it easier to do the wrong thing."

In recent years Isadora started speaking about her immigration experience at the annual People of Color Conference, organized by the National Association of Independent Schools.

She often turns to metaphor in describing her situation. "It's like being in an adopted family," she said.

"The mom and all the siblings are telling you how much they love you and how you're such a part of the family, because you've been part of it now 20 years. But there's this one parent that every day is reminding you that you're not good enough, and you're always having to prove yourself over and over and over again."

She has spent hours being questioned at John F. Kennedy International Airport and waiting at agencies "where they're just upset that I'm there."

A sense of humor has helped, she said, even when her college friends woke her up in the middle of the night yelling, "Immigration!"

The vast complexity of USCIS procedures is frequently critiqued, most recently by the agency's ombudsman in his 2007 Annual Report to Congress. USCIS raised its fees July 30 as part of its plan to improve service and efficiency.

Like tens of thousands of other professionals applying for green cards, Isadora got her big break in July. A government bulletin gave her a sudden green light to advance to the final stage. She filed a key application with USCIS this week, which will give her more freedom to travel in and out of the country.

It's not clear how many more years it will take to receive a green card, but her attorney says she will finally reach that goal.

"And then the saga of Isadora may end," Biow said. "I mean it will end. It's going to end."

Isadora said she was trying to stay calm as she gathered the requisite medical exams and filing fees.

After trying to get her point across in the painstaking portraits, she is putting a new kind of artwork on her walls. Freeing her mind, she began painting abstracts. One is called "Wasabi Dream," inspired by Mexican patterns and the color of wasabi paste.

"It was just pointless. It was just pattern," she said. "That's when I understood Picasso."


A drawing by Isadora Machado Lecuona.

IMMIGRATION|Artist's work reflects struggle with bureaucracy

Reach Leah Rae at lrae@lohud.com or 914-694-3526

On the Web
www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/CISOMB_Annual_Report_2007.pd

IMMIGRATION: A CRITIQUE OF THE PROCESS

Prakash I. Khatri, ombudsman to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, outlined "pervasive and serious problems" with the immigration bureaucracy in his 2007 Annual Report to Congress. Among them:

- Complexity: Efforts to explain the complex laws and regulations have created "a hodgepodge of disconnected, overlapping, and contradictory rules." The ombudsman pointed to contradictory instructions on where certain applications should be filed.

- Backlogs: With an infusion of funding, USCIS has reduced the overall backlog from 3.85 million cases in 2004 to about 1 million in 2006. By March of this year, the figure had grown to more than 1.2 million.

These cases do not include those that are frozen because of delays beyond the agency's control. Also, because of limited data capabilities, the agency says it cannot break out the backlogs in specific categories, such as job-based green-card applications. As many as 170,000 more applications for green cards could enter that pipeline this year as the U.S. Labor Department, also involved in the immigration process, clears its own backlog.

- Complex cases: Because of budget pressures, newer, "easy" cases are handled more quickly while the older cases are increasingly backlogged. The ombudsman recommended greater attention to clearing the old cases.

- Job-based immigration: About 140,000 job-based immigrant visas are made available each year for those waiting in line for green cards. But because of processing delays, 10,000 visas went unused during the 2006 fiscal year. The ombudsman recommended better coordination between the three federal agencies involved in the process: the Labor Department, State Department and USCIS. Specifically, he advised that a visa number be assigned to a case when the application is filed, rather than when it is approved.

USCIS says it is still reviewing the report and preparing a detailed response. "The observations made in the Ombudsman's report are consistent with our overall strategy and will allow us to continue an open and transparent dialogue about the agency," director Emilio Gonza*** said in a statement in June. "We look forward to studying the report and its recommendations more closely."

On the Web
www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/CISOMB_Annual_Report_2007.pd

quote:

Originally posted by explora:
IMMIGRATION -- U.S. BRAIN DRAIN? DON'T BLAME CANADA

By SEAN O'DRISCOLL
The Associated Press
September 12, 2007


Peter Hamlin AP Photo Illustration
A U.S. visa policy is keeping skilled foreign workers out, so Microsoft is moving one of its centers to Canada.
soundoffasap@ap.org

A new group of refugees is crossing the U.S. border, seeking asylum from the policies of ... the United States.

Dozens of skilled workers who can't get U.S. work visas will soon be headed to Vancouver, Canada, filling vacancies at a Microsoft Corp. research center that the software giant opened this week to accommodate them. In a press release announcing the decision, Microsoft said the decision to open the center in Canada "allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S."

By the end of the year, the Microsoft Vancouver Development Centre is expected to employ more than 300 people. Of those, Microsoft spokeswoman Megan Manazir says a vast majority will be foreign nationals with specialized skills who couldn't get U.S. work visas.

Jenna Adorno, a Microsoft technical recruiter, writes in her blog that she has been inundated with e-mails from new recruits, with questions on everything from Canadian pet immunization rules to ways of getting a discount on a Canadian bus pass.

"The good news is, that I am now emerging from the bottom of my e-mail and I have nearly every SDET (Software Design Engineer in Test) and SDE (Software Development Engineer) who was impacted by the H1B visa cap placed in a job in Vancouver," she writes.

Though Microsoft has five similar development centers, including two in the United States, it doesn't take an economist to realize that the deliberate move to Canada to end-around the U.S. visa hurdle signals a trend that could have serious implications for the U.S. economy.

---

RULES ARE RULES

Congress authorizes the federal government to issue a maximum of 65,000 new H1B visas - earmarked for skilled workers - per fiscal year.

The cap is hailed by groups such as the tech-savvy Programmers Guild, which says it protects American jobs and innovations. Those against the visa cap, including Microsoft and a host of Silicon Valley tech companies, say that the limit is a pittance compared to the number needed to fill specialized jobs.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates told the Senate in March that he'd like to see the number increase to 300,000.

The visa reform movement says immigrant innovation was highlighted by a report last month which found that foreign nationals are responsible for up to one in four of international patent applications filed in the U.S. The report, a third in a series by researchers at Harvard, Duke and New York universities, found that the U.S. could face chronic innovation problems unless the visa situation is resolved.

The chief coordinator of the study, Vivek Wadhwa, a Harvard Law School fellow, says that the U.S. is denying itself an economic bargain -access to the brainpower of tens of thousands of creative young people whose education was paid for elsewhere.

"Look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on educating U.S. workers, from their first days in school right through grad school," Wadhwa says. "The US can hire young people just after they are educated by another country and ready to pay taxes. The US is getting a massive savings and it is throwing it away."

---
THE RED-TAPED

Surendra Lingareddy, an expert in semiconductors and security systems, moved from India to study in the U.S., and has been battling both the visa and green card system ever since. A job switch for better pay has put him at the back of the waiting line for visas and permanent residency.

"Rather than let the system ride me, I felt it was good to pursue opportunities that came along the way," he says of his decision.

The most frustrating detail is not being able to use his entrepreneurial skills - because he didn't have a visa to set up his own company. So for now, he languishes in the visa system, hoping one day to be granted permanent residency.

Leigh Plimmer, a chartered accountant, moved from South Africa to Atlanta in 2000 and is on a H1B visa. He, too, feels frustrated because he can't change jobs.

"My career is stagnating," he says bluntly.

And because his wife is on a dependent visa, she's unable to work. "Her job is to sit at home; our temporary status has not allowed her to do anything," he says.
---

LOVE IT AND LEAVE IT

The issue of security still hangs over the visa question in the U.S. After all, some of the Sept. 11 hijackers were educated men with college degrees who could've qualified as skilled workers.

What of the argument that, just maybe, one in a million of those visa applicants is the next Mohammed Atta?

"What if that one in a million is the next Albert Einstein?" says Vivek Wadhwa - pointing out that the world's most celebrated physicist might not have been allowed to stay in the U.S. under the current system.

"The U.S. benefits enormously, both financially and culturally, from foreign workers. ... The vast majority of immigrants love the United States and want to be part of it. That is the greatest security America has ever had."

---
asap contributor Sean O'Driscoll is based in New York, where he writes for the Irish Times.

This was one of the most interesting articles I've read regarding immigration. Shows a different side to the picture - eh?

IOWA

Immigration Raid Nets 51
Sept. 14, 2007
© 2007 The Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa — Fifty-one workers were arrested during an immigration raid at six DeCoster egg farms in Wright County, where agents have conducted several other raids in recent years, federal officials said Thursday.

The workers, most of them from Mexico, have been transported to various detention facilities in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and elsewhere, said Tim Counts, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A judge will decide their fate at deportation hearings in Omaha, Neb., Counts said.

Federal agents conducted the 2 1/2-hour raid Wednesday. Some of the workers, including some juveniles and parents, were released and told to appear for their scheduled hearings, Counts said.

Austin "Jack" DeCoster, the founder of DeCoster Farms, has previously been investigated by ICE for hiring illegal immigrants. Agents have raided his farms at least four times since 2001, the last one in June 2006 when about three dozen workers were detained.

Counts said ICE is investigating the incident but has not charged DeCoster in connection for the latest raid.

"We go where the evidence leads us," Counts said. "It's too early" to know if charges will be filed.

Forty-three of the workers arrested Wednesday were from Mexico, four were from Guatemala, three from Honduras and one from El Salvador, Counts said.

The DeCoster family, among the nation's largest egg producers, has also had environmental problems in Iowa. In the late 1990s, Iowa classified DeCoster as a habitual violator of environmental regulations for problems that included manure runoff into waterways.

IMMIGRATION BACKLASH: BILL HITS CITIES THAT BAN PROFILING

September 14, 2007
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Fed up with illegal immigration, a state legislator wants to crack down on communities with ordinances that prohibit the profiling of immigrants and minorities by hitting the municipalities in the pocketbook.

Under a bill introduced this week by State Rep. Kim Meltzer, R-Clinton Township, cities such as Detroit would lose millions in state revenue sharing money if they have laws that prohibit police and other city employees from targeting people based on appearance.

The Detroit City Council passed an anti-profiling ordinance in May after receiving complaints from immigrants and U.S. citizens who said they were being pulled over by police and asked about their immigration status based on how they look. Hamtramck is considering a similar ordinance.

But Meltzer said she's tired of the government having to pay for bilingual programs for students and those who are in the United States illegally. National security also is a concern, she said.

"We've had enough of this," Meltzer said. "It's so unfair and wrong ... let's push back."

Supporters of the anti-profiling ordinances say that Meltzer's bill ignores the fact that the ordinances allow police investigating crimes to ask people about their immigration status.

"There's nothing radical at all about this ordinance," Juan Escareño said of the Detroit anti-profiling law. He works on immigration issues for Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES), a Detroit-based coalition of 65 groups in southeastern Michigan that led the push for the Detroit ordinance. "In fact, it's based on the U.S. Constitution," which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures.

He and others said Meltzer's bill was a publicity stunt that divides the region.

"All this ordinance does is clarify a person's constitutional rights," Escareño said of the Detroit anti-profiling ordinance. "Instead of writing this bill, she should spend time reading the U.S. Constitution and think about the state budget crisis."

Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was one of the supporters of the Detroit anti-profiling ordinance.

"It's really shameful that an elected official is using proposed legislation to cause more racial division in Michigan," Walid said. "Michigan is a state that is in a dire fiscal crisis and does not need to be seen ... as an immigrant-unfriendly state. ... How can a person just look at someone and suspect whether they're legal or not?"

Meltzer's bill may have a tough time getting passed because Democrats control the House. But she has support from some state residents.

Nancy McClean, 65, of Warren said she's concerned about the growing number of immigrants coming to Michigan.

"They're letting in so many people, but we can't take care of our own," McClean said. "They're too many coming in, and we have to put a stop to it."

The Detroit anti-profiling ordinance prohibits police and city employees from stopping and questioning people on the basis of race, ethnicity, religious dress, physical appearance or immigration status.

Under the ordinance, police can't ask people for their immigration papers unless it is related to a crime. Detroit, which has one of the lowest percentages of foreign-born residents among major U.S. cities, was trying to make the city more hospitable to all when it passed the ordinance.

Meltzer's bill, called the Sanctuary Policy Prohibition Act, would require Michigan communities to make sure their employees comply with immigration enforcement rules. It also would require communities to provide written confirmation to the state that they are complying with such rules.

And the communities must keep the state updated on how many times they have reported immigration scofflaws to federal authorities. Communities that fail to comply would have their state funding slashed.

"I'm bothered by the fact there's this, 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy," Meltzer said. "These are the same people asking us to fund ... subsidized language programs for those kids who are here as a result of illegal immigration."

COMMUNITY RALLIES FOR IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

Sept. 15, 2007
Author: Rick Nagin
People's Weekly World Newspaper

CLEVELAND — At a rally for immigrant rights here Sept. 10, a standing-room-only crowd applauded as the 8-year-old son of Elvira Arellano, recently deported to Mexico, appealed for an end to the inhumane assaults on families by federal authorities.

His head barely clearing the podium at the Nueva Vida church, Saul “Saulito” Arellano asked the crowd to “tell President Bush to stop the raids and deportations so my mom and other families can stay here.”

His mother, arrested last month outside a Catholic church in Los Angeles and later deported, made national headlines after taking refuge for a year in a church in Chicago. Previously she had worked as a custodian at O’Hare International Airport.

Emma Lozano, Saulito’s guardian and executive director of Centro Sin Fronteras (Center Without Borders), charged that the boy’s mother had been forced to migrate to the U.S. illegally because of U.S. trade policies.

Referring to the thousands of Mexican farmers driven off their land by hard times, she said, “No one wants to talk about why they leave. The Arellano family were corn farmers and because of the free trade agreement, the U.S. flooded Mexico with cheap corn.”

Lozano called for CNN to “fire Lou Dobbs,” whose nightly broadcasts whip up a “hate campaign against immigrants.”

“If they come for Mexicanos now, they will come for you next,” she warned.

Stanley Miller, director of the Cleveland NAACP, said the raids reminded him of the actions of slave catchers in the 19th century.

“This issue,” he said, “transcends ethnic boundaries and exposes ugly racial insensitivity” that is resurfacing in the U.S.

Miller cited the recent burning of the garage of a Black family in a predominantly white Cleveland neighborhood where the arsonists painted swastikas and racist epithets on the walls. He promised to make the fight against the immigration raids a top priority for the NAACP in Ohio.

Veronica Dahlberg, director of the Hispanic rights group HOLA, said immigration raids in Ohio have gotten worse since 46 nursery workers were arrested in Painesville in May.

She described how 180 poultry workers were arrested in August when 300 armed agents with helicopters descended on the Koch Chicken Processing plant in Butler County near Cincinnati.

Most are still in prison, said Jorge Neri, an organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers, which is trying to form a union at the plant. “I was in the homes of some of the workers the day before the raid,” he noted.

Pastor Joshua Colon said, “Families are being destroyed and the immigration authorities say they are going after the employer, but the night of the raid the employer resumed production.”

“These are people who worked hard all day trying to feed and clothe their families, and they are called criminals. I will be proud to stand with them anytime,” he said. “This is wrong.”

The Rev. Walter Coleman of the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, who gave Elvira Arellano refuge, called the raids “the largest ethnic cleansing operation in U.S. history.”

The government, he said, will soon send out 9 million “no-match letters” ordering companies to discharge employees with discrepancies in Social Security numbers.

At the same time, he said, there is legislation in Congress to alleviate the situation including a bill to give “safe harbor visas” to parents of minor children like Saulito who are U.S. citizens so as not to break up families.

ricknagin @yahoo.com

September 14, 2007

DEPORTED ACTIVIST, SON REUNITE IN MEXICO


Immigration activist Elvira Arellano appears with her son Saul, 8, upon his arrival in Mexico.

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) -- A boy, 8, has joined his mother in Mexico following her loss in a yearlong fight to stay in the United States despite her status as an undocumented migrant.

Elvira Arellano told a news conference Thursday in Tijuana that her son Saul, who was born in the U.S. and is an American citizen, will enter third grade in her native state of Michoacan.

But Arellano said she will continue to travel and work for immigration reform in Mexico City and the border city of Tijuana on behalf of her Latin Family United organization.

"I am not going to stay away from Tijuana," where she has been invited to participate in a church-supported migrant-aid project, Arellano said.

Saul did not speak to reporters and spent most of the news conference in a Tijuana hotel hugging his mother or hiding behind her.

Arellano had lived in the United States illegally for several years when she came to the attention of immigration authorities. She took sanctuary at a Chicago, Illinois, church for about a year in defiance of a deportation order, but left in August and was arrested and deported after giving a speech on immigration in Los Angeles, California.

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Immigration activist arrested after year in church
Saul has spent the last year appearing at rallies across the United States, on television and at meetings with lawmakers, and on Wednesday participated in a protest of about 150 activists inside the halls of the U.S. Congress.

But he often has seemed distracted and ill-at-ease in the media spotlight, and his role in immigration activism had raised questions because of his age and his separation from his mother.

In Mexico, he apparently will participate in a project to teach English to local children. Arellano said Saul originally wanted to stay in the United States, but after meeting his grandfather and cousins on a previous visit, he became happier at the prospect of moving to Mexico.

They will live at her sister's home in Maravatio, Michoacan, she said, until they can fix up an abandoned home there owned by her parents.

MIGRANT DEATHS AHEAD OF RECORD PACE ALONG ARIZONA-MEXICO BORDER

Associated Press
September 15, 2007 12:23 AM ET

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Deaths along much of the Arizona-Mexico border are reported ahead of the record pace set two years ago. That's despite tightened border security that was expected to discourage migrants from making the often dangerous crossing.

The office of the Pima (PEE'-muh) County medical examiner has tallied 181 bodies or sets of remains recovered between January 1st and September 8th.

Last year, 148 bodies were recovered during that period. In 2005, the number of deaths was 166 during those months.

Many of those victims will have died because of the heat, which regularly exceeds 100 degrees during the hottest part of the Arizona summer.

A Border Patrol spokesman in Washington says it's likely more skeletal remains are being found because the agency has more agents out patrolling remote, treacherous terrain.

But one immigrant-advocate says efforts to shut off migration have just forced illegal immigrants to cross even more dangerous ground.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

IMMIGRANT GROUPS LAUNCH BOYCOTT OF WESTERN UNION OVER MONEY TRANSFER FEES

www.democracynow.org
Thursday, September 13th, 2007

A network of over 150 immigrant organizations across the country have launched a boycott of money transfer giant Western Union. The organizations accuse Western Union of charging immigrants exorbitant fees and non-standard exchange rates when they try to send money home. We speak with a coordinator for the Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action, the umbrella organization coordinating the Western Union boycott. Immigration reform might have died in the Senate earlier this summer, but the movement for immigrant rights is very much alive.

Although Democratic hopefuls at the first Spanish-language Presidential debate broadcast Sunday focused on the importance of border security, immigrant rights advocates aim to steer the debate in another direction. They are emphasizing the economic security of migrant workers.

A network of over 150 immigrant organizations across the country have launched a boycott of money transfer giant Western Union. The organizations accuse Western Union of charging immigrants exorbitant fees and non-standard exchange rates when they try to send money home. The boycott organizers say that Western Union's annual profit of over one billion dollars comes from the fees paid on remittances sent by migrant workers to their home countries. Yet, Western Union, they say, reinvests only 41 cents for every $100 of profit back into these immigrant communities.

Kayhan Irani, New York - New Jersey regional coordinator for TIGRA, the Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action. TIGRA is the umbrella organization coordinating the Western Union boycott.