another good one http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/us/07immig.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Hate Crimes Linked to Immigration Debate By DAVID CRARY | Associated Press, Mar 10

NEW YORK -- Anti-immigrant sentiment is fueling nationwide increases in the number of hate groups and the number of hate crimes targeting Latinos, a watchdog group said Monday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, in a report titled "The Year in Hate," said it counted 888 hate groups in its latest tally, up from 844 in 2006 and 602 in 2000.

The most prominent of the organizations newly added to the list, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, vehemently rejected the "hate group" label, and questioned the law center's motives. FAIR said the center was using smear tactics to boost donations and stifle legitimate debate on immigration.

"Their banner may be 'Stop the hate' but it's really 'Stop the debate,'" said FAIR's president, Dan Stein. "Apparently you can't even articulate an argument for immigration reform without being smeared."

The law center's report contends there is a link between anti-immigrant activism and the significant rise in hate crimes against Latinos in recent years. According to the latest FBI statistics, 819 people were victimized by anti-Latino hate crimes in 2006, compared with 595 in 2003.

"The immigration debate has turned ugly and the result has been a growth in white supremacist hate groups and anti-Latino hate crime," said Mark Potok, director of the law center's Intelligence Project. "The majority of anti-Latino hate crimes are carried out by people who think they're attacking immigrants, and very likely undocumented immigrants."

Potok said hate groups were proliferating because a growing number of Americans were agitated by the immigration debate. He said many new groups had appeared in the border states of California, Texas and Arizona where illegal immigration has been a particularly volatile issue.

Critics of the law center, including FAIR, contend that the periodic reports on hate groups exaggerate the threat to public safety and inflate the total by including entities that are little more than Web sites or online chatrooms.

Potok acknowledged that some of the groups may be small and said it is impossible for outsiders to gauge the membership of most of the groups.

Among the largest categories of hate groups, Potok said, are neo-Nazi, white nationalist, racist skinhead and those with links to the Ku Klux Klan.

FAIR, which is frequently quoted by the media and whose officials often have testified before Congress, advocates an end to illegal immigration and tighter controls on legal immigration. In pursuing these goals, it says, "there should be no favoritism toward or discrimination against any person on the basis of race, color, or creed."

The law center said its decision to designate FAIR a hate group was based in part on the ideology of various people who established it, worked for it or donated to it over its nearly 30-year history. The center has issued a detailed report outlining its allegations, although little of that report deals with FAIR's recent activities.

The center's critique of FAIR was endorsed by a major Latino group, the National Council of La Raza. The council's vice president for advocacy and legislation, Cecilia Munoz, said FAIR's leaders were polished in public forums, but represented "a very unsavory set of views."

Stein described the assertions of bigotry as "a total fantasy."

Both FAIR and law center are relatively well known in the ranks of advocacy groups. The law center, which started as a small civil rights group in 1971, has amassed an endowment fund totaling $200 million as of October and it received nearly $29 million in grants and contributions in fiscal 2007.

FAIR claims more than 250,000 members and reported more than $4 million in contributions in 2006.

Stein, in addition to rejecting the "hate group" label, questioned the law center's linking of anti-immigrant sentiment to the recent increase in anti-Latino hate crimes. The data on such crimes is inexact and prone to misinterpretation, and some of the incidents classified as anti-Latino hate crimes involved violence between Latino gangs and non-Latino rivals, Stein said.

The law center has listed numerous incidents not fitting that profile. In one such assault, in February 2007, three men broke into a mobile home in Wright City, Mo., yelling "immigration enforcement" and beat an illegal immigrant from Mexico with a piece of lumber, according to police reports.

In Arkansas, where the Latino population has grown rapidly, there have been several recent violent incidents. In December, police said, a Hispanic man was fatally beaten in Lowell, Ark., after his nephew spoke Spanish to the assailant's girlfriend.

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Yearning for Words of Tolerance Growing Hispanic Church Community Hopes Visit Will Help Heal Society's Rifts By Pamela Constable | Washington Post, Mar 10

When Pope Benedict XVI comes to Washington next month, he will set foot in a Roman Catholic community that is now one-third Hispanic. It is a vibrant and fast-growing segment of the regional church whose members overflow Spanish-language Masses and high-energy revival shows but who often say they feel socially isolated and harassed under local and national laws.

Their hopes for the visit of El Papa widely echo those expressed by Lilian Castillo, a housecleaner from El Salvador and mother of three who is a regular worshiper at St. Camillus Church in Silver Spring.

"Our community is facing persecution and poverty. People are being deported, even members of our own church," said Castillo, 46. "I hope the pope can be a bridge to bring together Americans of all ages and races and levels. He is coming to bless all of us, and I hope everyone will be listening."

In addition to spiritual reinforcement, Hispanic church members and leaders in the metropolitan region are looking for moral and political support from the pontiff. They hope his visit to the nation's capital, as lawmakers continue struggling with immigration reform and the presidential race unfolds, will include a message of tolerance and inclusion toward immigrants.

The number of Hispanics among area Catholics has steadily surged in recent years; church officials estimate there are 400,000 in parishes in the District, Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland.

Yet parish leaders express frustration that this growth has not led to a parallel expansion in Hispanics' influence or integration in the greater Catholic community, let alone in the society beyond.

Many churches offer Masses in both English and Spanish, and a few are experimenting with bilingual services, but language and cultural barriers often divide congregations. In some cases, the immigration debate has further split Hispanic and non-Hispanic worshipers, especially in suburbs that have dealt with such acrimonious issues as day-laborer centers and police helping to enforce immigration laws.

"We had to struggle for 10 years to be able to hold a Spanish Mass here," said Dan Masa, an immigrant from Peru who assists at communion at St. Joseph's Church in Herndon. The parish had virtually no Hispanics once, but now more than 1,000 people pour into the Spanish Mass on Sunday afternoons. "Some of the [people] still look at us funny, but we are all children of God," he said.

Still, the sheer number of Hispanics has changed the nature of Catholic worship in the region, from the booming market for frilly First Communion dresses to the rising popularity of charismatic spectacles like "Encuentro Catolico," a sold-out stage show at the D.C. Armory this past weekend. On Saturday, a series of electrifying preachers from Latin America had 5,000 people dancing, singing, praying, hugging and weeping in the bleachers.

Many in the audience were immigrants from Central America; some mentioned their problems with immigration papers, family separations, addictions to alcohol, mortgage defaults and other woes. But by the time "Father Chelo" finished his mesmerizing, musical call to faith, the audience was humming with happiness.

The mix of worship and entertainment is also aimed at competing with evangelical Christian sects that have attracted many former Catholics by holding small services in Latino communities, often with live music, promises of help for social problems and an informal style that seems more personal than a vast, echoing cathedral.

"I used to hate the church," said Antonio Hernandez, 36, a laborer from Guatemala who wore a wooden cross around his neck and sang along with every bouncy hymn. "I drank a lot, and I almost lost my marriage. But finally God called me back." Hernandez said he was eager for the pope's visit: "This is like a family, and he is like a father to us."

The mass exodus of Central Americans from war and poverty over the past 25 years has been a major impetus for the growth of the region's Hispanic church. According to church officials, the area's first Spanish-language ministry opened in 1963, at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Northwest Washington. Today, the officials said, more than 60 churches from Gaithersburg to Herndon offer Spanish-language Masses and services, and at least one-third of all Catholics in the region are Hispanic.

The trend is similar nationwide, according to a study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. A survey found that although only 24 percent of all Americans are Catholic, more than 46 percent of foreign-born residents are. Hispanics now account for one-third of all Catholics in the United States, and their numbers are expected to grow steadily, balancing a gradual overall decline in active Catholics.

"Our community has grown tremendously, and the pope's visit will be a moment of grace and hope for all of us," said Msgr. Francisco Gonz¿***, auxiliary archbishop of the Washington Archdiocese. "Many Hispanics are living in fear because of the raids and the anti-immigrant sentiment. In many cases, they are not accepted. But no one can take Jesus away from us. You don't need a green card or a passport to live in His love."

The figure of the pontiff is especially beloved in Latin America, where the late Pope John Paul II visited numerous countries and won hearts with his humble and affectionate demeanor. Benedict XVI is not well known to Hispanic Catholics, and his visit to Washington is expected to be formal, tightly controlled and security-conscious, with little chance for intimate interaction with the public.

Still, competition for tickets to his April 17 Mass at Nationals Park is especially intense in Hispanic parishes. Church officials said tickets will be awarded to each parish through a quota system, then distributed within parishes by various systems. Several Hispanic priests said they were afraid illegal immigrants might be turned away for lack of a government-issued ID, but a spokesman for the Washington Archdiocese said "all parish members with tickets will be welcome."

At churches and parish halls in several Hispanic communities last week, many people said that whether they get a chance to see the pope in person or not, they hope his presence as a religious leader will help U.S. society welcome their presence a little more.

"If I could meet the pope, I would tell him to put his hand on people's hearts and to fight for our rights," said Margot Andino, 47, an usher at St. Joseph's.

When Pope John Paul II visited her native El Salvador in 1983, she said, she was too poor to go to the capital to see him.

"Now I have been working here for 17 years," she said, "and a new pope is coming to be an example and to save us."

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Manassas Crime Rate Drops to 5-Year Low Offenses Decline More Than 7 Percent Despite Staffing Shortage in Police Force By Theresa Vargas | Washington Post, Mar 9

Ask Manassas residents, and the perception is probably that crime is rising around them, that they "can't remember when crime was worse," Police Chief John J. Skinner said last week.

But the reality is that the city's crime rate dipped to a five-year low in 2007, with serious and violent crimes down 10 percent, Skinner said Thursday in a news conference, in which the statistics were released.

Even as calls for service rose 6 percent last year, to 61,731, there were decreases in robberies, larcenies, auto thefts and simple assaults. The total number of offenses dipped more than 7 percent, from 5,017 in 2006 to 4,656 in 2007.

The decrease in robberies, mostly street robberies targeting Hispanic immigrants, was particularly heartening because they had been increasing for years, Skinner said.

He attributed the decline to increased street-level surveillance, in which plainclothes officers patrol "hot spots." "Quickly the word gets out that the police are here," he said.

Adult arrests also dropped. A total of 2,694 adults were arrested last year, down 10 percent from the year before, even though the police force has been short-staffed.

On Thursday, 10 officers who normally would have been patrolling the streets were in training, a 20 percent reduction in the patrol force. The force has 92 officers; 50 of them are assigned to uniform patrol.

Skinner has asked the Manassas City Council to consider adding funding for six new officers in its 2009 budget. The six would include three dedicated to immigration enforcement under the federal government's 287g program. Those officers would make up the city's Criminal Alien Unit. Prince William County has a similar unit.

Skinner said that the additional manpower is "a need-based request" and that he cannot see the city launching any initiative, including on immigration enforcement, without it.

"I cannot stand in front of this community and tell them that we're going to strip any more patrol officers off the street," he said. "We have so few resources right now that are stretched to their limits."

Manassas saw increases in three types of crimes, including rape, with 14 incidents last year compared with 11 in 2006. Aggravated assault also rose 2 percent, to 91 incidents, and burglaries were up 13 percent, from 163 incidents to 185. The number of homicides, two, remained the same.

In addition to the crime statistics, the department also released its annual review of citizen and internal complaints.

Last year, the department received 27 complaints against 27 employees, 25 of whom were officers. Of those complaints, 10 resulted in disciplinary action, including at least four for unprofessional conduct.

The other complaints included improper use of force, slow patrol response and rudeness. Although Skinner could not specify cases because of privacy rules, he said the disciplinary actions included verbal reprimands, written apologies to the complainants, remedial training and suspensions. In at least one case, involving a complaint of unprofessional conduct, the person resigned at the end of the investigation.

"This is a tough job," Skinner said. "We're bound by a higher standard of conduct, and there is a higher expectation."

The department received 108 letters of commendation last year.

Students Get a Close-Up Look At the Life of a Migrant Worker Lectures Aim to Broaden Perspectives With Practical Lessons By Raymond McCaffrey | Washington Post, Mar 9

In a classroom at a private school in Annapolis, migrant worker Gerardo Reyes-Chavez addressed students who were about the age he was when he first began to work, asking whether they would leave Annapolis to labor in a foreign country.

"Would you guys leave behind everything you know to go to a country you didn't know, and know that you might not ever see your family for 10, 11 years?"

The group of more than a dozen seventh-graders at the Key School sat in silence, looking as if they couldn't comprehend the question.

"As workers, we don't necessarily come here because we want to," Reyes-Chavez continued in Spanish, as an interpreter translated. Poverty, the students learned, had forced many of the workers to go to the United States.

Reyes-Chavez, a 30-year-old native of Mexico and a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group fighting for the rights of migrant workers, spoke to students in grades 7 through 12 last week as part of the Key School's in-depth study of migrant farm laborers.

Students assumed roles in a hypothetical agricultural cooperative to learn about the marketplace. Another assignment had them on their hands and knees outside, harvesting clover with strict instructions to clear dirt from the stems. The exercises were supported by more traditional study that involved reading and writing about migrant workers.

Students were allowed to sign a petition that is part of the coalition's effort to protect migrant workers' rights.

"We teach them to be critical thinkers and critical questioners," said Becky Schou, head of the middle school's humanities department.

The Key School, with classes from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, was founded in 1958 by tutors from St. John's College in Annapolis. Like St. John's, it employs interdisciplinary teaching, said Irfan Latimer, a school spokeswoman.

In English class, Latimer said, students seek to answer questions such as: What influence does man have on society, and what influence does society have on man? In civics class, students examine the influence of people on a democratic society and how a democracy affects its citizens, she said.

Students have taken a range of positions on immigration reform and related issues, with some sympathizing with migrant workers but ultimately supporting the business side.

"They don't see any other way to make it work," Schou said.

Although last week's lectures focused on migrant workers, teachers try to make sure that students understand other points of view, such as those of the farmers and corporations, Schou said.

"I think one of the things we really try to do is present both sides of an issue," she said.

Members of the migrant farmers' advocacy group said that the students, like most everyone else, are regularly exposed to other perspectives through the media, including TV programming that focuses on the products, not the workers. "The magic of advertising also makes things like farmworkers disappear," Reyes-Chavez said.

As students listened to Reyes-Chavez talk about the battle for workers' rights, Schou reminded the class that some had supported another position -- that of the farmer in the hypothetical agricultural cooperative.

"As soon as it became apparent that you were going to have to give up something of yours, all but a very few people around this table were able to," she said.

From the lecture, students learned that the farmer is the "middle man" between the workers and the companies that sell the food gathered.

At the front of the classroom was a bucket filled with two bags of rice, which weighed about 32 pounds, so students could get a sense of how heavy a load of tomatoes is for workers to shoulder throughout the day. On a video screen, they saw images of the workers with worn hands.

Meagan Buckley, a seventh-grader from Annapolis, told Reyes-Chavez, "On a daily basis, my hands don't really look like that."

After class, Meagan said the lecture had taught her about the tough work conditions faced by many immigrants, not just those who work on farms.

"Before this," she said, "it was just in the back of my mind."

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After a Fight to Survive, One to Succeed By NINA BERNSTEIN | NYT, Mar 9

They came to New York as “displaced persons” in the early 1950s, Jewish refugees who had survived the Holocaust. Today, in film and story, such survivors are treated with a kind of awe, and their arrival in America is considered a happy ending. But a very different picture, with an oddly contemporary twist, emerges from the yellowing pages of social service records now being rescued from oblivion at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.

The files, from a major Jewish resettlement agency that handled tens of thousands of cases, show that many of these refugees walked a gantlet of resistance and distrust: disapproval of their lack of English and need for health care, threats of deportation, and agency rules shaped by a suspicion of freeloading.

An unschooled 19-year-old hoping for an education was scolded for dreaming and sent to work in a factory. A newlywed couple who arrived with four pieces of baggage, “mostly books,” were soon forced to choose whether the husband would keep his job or keep the Jewish Sabbath. An ailing, jobless father of three, facing immigration laws that called for deportation of those who sought public aid, told his caseworker, as her notes put it, that “he was more concerned and more disturbed now than he had ever been in the Warsaw Ghetto.”

Between the lines of these and other case files, chosen at random from the first boxes to arrive at the center for archival preservation, the stubborn resilience of many refugees shines through. Today we know that as a group, over time, they did exceptionally well in America. But in the files, the uncertainty of each case resonates across six decades, and poses a haunting question: What became of these people?

Tracking down the answer can provide more than a bittersweet coda to dusty documents. It can suddenly allow the past to speak to the present.

Take that 19-year-old, whose name was Hersch Wanderer, later Americanized to Harry. He was sent to work in a buckle factory and had to drop out of night school. But reached recently at his winter home in Boca Raton, Fla., Mr. Wanderer, 77, said he had done well enough in business to start two scholarships in New York, “for young people to have the chance that no one gave me.”

It will take two to three years for center archivists to process the hundreds of thousands of records being retrieved from scattered warehouses of the resettlement agency, the New York Association for New Americans, including documentation that spans later refugee migrations. Carl J. Rheins, executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, a partner of the center, called the trove one of the most significant additions to the archives in 30 years, and said he was eager to make it available to researchers, students and family members.

“This is an important chapter in American immigration history,” he said. “It’s got to figure in the dialogue about immigration, about keeping the doors of this country open.”

The doors were virtually shut in the 1920s, with highly restrictive quotas that held firm through World War II despite appeals for people fleeing fascism. At the war’s end, polls showed that as many as 72 percent of Americans disapproved of President Harry S. Truman’s proposal to allow more European refugees to come to the United States, largely based on fears of unemployment.

Patchwork legislation eventually allowed for admission of almost half a million displaced persons, as they were called, by 1951. But a cold-war climate also led to increasingly severe measures to exclude, deport and even revoke the citizenship of those who fell short of desired self-sufficiency, morality or political orthodoxy, according to Aristide R. Zolberg, a leading historian of immigration policy.

The files reflect that mood. In one, caseworkers worried that an unmarried young woman whose family had perished in the death camps could be excluded for “moral turpitude.” She was arriving with a 3-year-old child, the son of an American serviceman who had abandoned her when she was six months pregnant.

In another case, a young family was cut off from agency assistance two months after their arrival, for failing to disclose a “secret bank account” containing $138 in loans from friends. The wife, a survivor of three years in a German concentration camp and four years of exile in Russia, had found it hard to live within the agency’s $47 monthly allowance, the file said, because she “never accepts the fact that she just can’t buy as much food as she wants to give to her child.”

Many of the files reflect the families’ fear of deportation if they had to seek public aid or health care. The father of three who had survived day to day in the Warsaw Ghetto, for example, was distraught when the agency cut off aid and told him to apply for welfare in May 1952, a year after the family arrived. Even the agency was uncertain how welfare might affect their future under a pending immigration bill.

“In leaving me today he was quite disturbed and fearful,” the caseworker wrote of the father, a 46-year-old former printer with a dislocated arm, who had been studying English, taking a course in making picture frames, and hunting for night work.

His wife, 10 years younger, worked as a dressmaker at first, but had to stop because of an unplanned pregnancy and complications. The couple had even considered placing the baby for adoption, but could not bear to do it, the caseworker reported.

“He felt that the family needed money immediately,” but that in applying for welfare “he would be besmirching his children’s names,” the file said. “As he talked about this, he moved quickly to a feeling of desperation and wondered whether he would ever be able to be successful.”

An effort to trace that family for this article failed, and under the rules of access to the records, their names cannot be published without their permission. But a file about the family of Lajosh and Alice Pauker, who entered the United States in 1960, led to their two children. Mr. Pauker sought the agency’s help in November 1961, when his wife, an Auschwitz survivor from Hungary, broke down at her factory job in Brooklyn and was taken to a hospital psychiatric ward.

“He had been told to take his wife out of Kings County Hospital immediately, as otherwise she would be deported,” wrote the agency caseworker, unable to deny or confirm what Mr. Pauker had heard from friends. “He firmly believes that her ‘nervous condition’ is the result of her concentration camp experience.”

Instead of asking about that experience, however, the caseworker focused on documenting every penny of the family’s finances. The only help the agency provided was paying for the mother’s psychotherapy and tranquilizers. The father, an itinerant repairman of soda-water chargers, was later chided for not reporting the few dollars that his young son earned fixing bicycles after school. And when his daughter graduated from high school with honors, she had to give up on college to help support the family.

“I’m grateful for what they did, but basically, they were not looking at the overall picture,” said the son, Peter Pauker, now 59, an advertising consultant in Manhattan.

Atina Grossman, a historian at Cooper Union who has written about the displaced-persons camps of postwar Germany, said attitudes reflected in the case files were widespread at the time, shaped in part by pre-Depression ideas about pauperism, and by a mix of pity and contempt for the “D.P.’s,” as they were widely known.

“Nobody is thinking, ‘Oh, amazing, survivors,’ ” Professor Grossman said. “At worst they are human debris, quote-unquote; at best they are unfortunate victims who have to be resocialized. There’s this big concern on the part of the social workers that they are creating a dependent class.”

Walter Ruby, a spokesman for the resettlement agency, said the social workers showed the refugees compassion within the limits of the system. “ ‘America doesn’t take care of you’ — that was what they were telling these people,” he said.

The paradox, Professor Grossman said, was that as a group, displaced persons were very self-reliant.

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Immigration Policy in U.S. Is Criticized by U.N. Aide ASSOCIATED PRESS, Mar 8

GENEVA (AP) — The United States is not doing enough to protect immigrants’ rights, a United Nations human rights expert said Friday. The adviser, Jorge A. Bustamante, said immigrants were often subject to indefinite detention and forced deportation.

Mr. Bustamante, an expert on migrant rights at the United Nations Human Rights Council, said he had “serious concerns” about immigrants’ condition in the United States, “especially in the context of deportation and detention policies.”

He was presenting a report to the council about a visit to the United States last May.

Mr. Bustamante, a Mexican, examined the United States-Mexico border in San Diego and Tucson, two places where American officials are cracking down on illegal entry into the United States.

Indefinite detention of immigrants was “not uncommon,” the report said.

“In some cases,” it said, “immigrant detainees spend days in solitary confinement, with overhead lights kept on 24 hours a day, and often in extreme heat and cold.”

The report said that the mandatory detention of illegal immigrants must be stopped and that the United States should ensure that an independent court examined such detentions within a short time.

“The overuse of immigration detention in the United States violates the spirit of international laws and conventions and, in many cases, also violates the actual letter of those instruments,” Mr. Bustamante wrote.

Jan Levin, deputy political councilor with the United States mission to Geneva, said Washington was disappointed with the report.

Ms. Levin said it “contains significant misstatement and misinterpretations of U.S. law and policy.”

Ms. Levin said the report focused on a narrow slice of the immigrant population in the United States and failed to mention positive aspects.

“The United States has one of the most generous migration programs in the world, including a clear path to citizenship,” she told the council.

Ms. Levin added that from 2000 to 2006 the United States admitted more than six million foreigners as lawful residents and gave citizenship to more than four million people.

Mr. Bustamante’s report said an increasing number of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers of houses and workplaces had “terrorized immigrant communities.”

He said he was particularly concerned about early morning arrests of immigrants at home that involved force and separated families.

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Indian women isolated in Silicon Valley By Anastasia Ustinova | SF Chronicle, Mar 9

Reema Shahani, 26, who holds a master's degree in human rights, fills her day looking for recipes online.

Varkha Chellani, 37, a former credit analyst, keeps herself busy taking care of two children.

And former computer programmer Gomathy Kannan, 25, is taking dancing classes and writing a blog.

Shahani, Chellani and Kannan are among the thousands of women who came to the United States on the coattails of their husbands' H-1B visas, granted to highly skilled professionals to fill jobs at the software companies and technology labs of Silicon Valley. But under the conditions of their H-4 dependent visas, spouses are not allowed to work here. Often highly educated and skilled, they find themselves in the uncomfortable position of social and financial dependency on their husbands, while struggling to adjust to life in a new country.

The State Department issued more than 135,000 H-1B visas in 2006, together with about 74,000 H-4 visas for their spouses. A lot of the H-1B visas go to workers in Silicon Valley: The area's companies employ about 35,000 H-1B holders, estimates the Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association. And the majority are workers from Asia, according to the Department of Homeland Security - nearly 45 percent of all H-1B petitions approved in fiscal year 2005 were for workers born in India.

In Silicon Valley, many of the Indian women's stories are similar. Most were born into higher castes in India, graduated with college degrees in computer science or business, worked in fast-paced companies, had a support network of friends and family. Moving to the United States seemed like a great opportunity, but all too often there was little discussion about the terms of their immigration status. Now, while their husbands are climbing the career ladder, they stay at home alone, isolated.

"There is a high level of depression in that community because those women are not integrating into society by working, and it prolongs the homesickness," said immigration lawyer Shivali Shah, who did a survey of 100 H-4 holders. "They usually arrive during their prime working years, and it is very demoralizing for them."


Killing time

Reema Shahani swapped the turmoil of city life in Delhi for a quiet suburban apartment in Santa Clara.

While her husband has a thriving career in a giant high-tech company, Shahani spends her days browsing the Internet and watching the Food Network. When she arrived in 2006, she did not have a driver's license and her world was reduced to the size of a two-bedroom apartment.

"It is really sad. You sit alone the whole day and don't do anything," Shahani said. "I would always tell my husband, 'Why should I be here? It's a complete waste of my time.' "

After the first year, frustrated with the monotony of her new life, Shahani began volunteering at the Indian Community Center in Milpitas, where she met other women in the same situation.

Many women prefer the immigration forums and chat rooms on the Internet, where they can pour their hearts out anonymously. Malathy Jey, founder of Indusladies.com, a networking site for Indian women based in Austin, Texas, estimates that her site receives about 2 million page views a month.

Jey, 32, who worked as an IT specialist for Ford Motor Co. in Chennai, India, before moving to Austin on an H-4 visa with her husband, said she came up with the idea for the Web site during long days spent at home looking for things to do.

Indusladies.com offers relationship advice and recipes, as well as the opportunity for women to share their frustrations with the immigration process.

"I got married to an H-1B visa holder, which put me in H-4 visa status - yes, that dreaded H-4," wrote one of the users. "Being H-4, I can't work or earn a single dollar and all I can do is stay at home and stare at the four walls."

While couples can apply for permanent residency, or a green card, which would allow the dependent spouse to work, the process can take years, and Indian and Chinese immigrants face annual quotas set by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

"I've gone through my ups and downs and was even regretting being here," said Varkha Chellani, who has been waiting for seven years for a green card, while her friends achieve career success in India.


Potential benefit

Chellani, who brings her 2-year-old daughter Vidhi to weekly play dates at the community center, is interested in early childhood education and has been volunteering at the center developing classroom curriculum for the kids. She would like to go back to school, she said, but paying tuition while living on one income and supporting two kids is a challenge.

Volunteering is another common strategy for the women, who are afraid future employers are going to question gaps in their resumes, and many local nonprofit groups are taking notice, said John Power, executive director of the matching service Thevolunteercenter.net, which works with agencies in San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

"They are individuals who have had a professional background and are looking for some proper ways to continue their careers," Power said. "It's very desirable to find people with such skills, and the potential benefit is huge."

Some women, including Kannan, who sometimes had to stay in the office in Chennai until 3 a.m., see their H-4 status as an opportunity to take a break and do the things they never had time for, such as painting or dancing. Kannan, however, also volunteers as a computer specialist at the Indian Community Center once a week.

"It really helps me to do something useful," Kannan said. Her husband agrees.

"He feels that I should be working with the technology. Otherwise I will be lagging behind."


Skilled visa holders

135,000 approximate number of H-1B visas issued by the State Department in 2006

74,000 approximate number H-4 visas for spouses issued the same year

35,000 approximate number of H-1B workers in Silicon Valley area companies Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVvNEQTRBcKr1H77I1lD06ZPkCbAD8VAU14O0

GOP Moves to Force Immigration Vote

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS – 13 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are trying to force action on a Democratic-written immigration enforcement measure, the latest GOP attempt to elevate the volatile issue into an election-year wedge.

Republican leaders hope that by pushing the bill — endorsed by 48 centrist Democrats and 94 Republicans — they can drive Democrats into a politically painful choice: Backing a tough immigration measure that could alienate their base, including Hispanic voters, or being painted as soft on border security in conservative-leaning districts.

The plan is fraught with political risks for both parties. A full-blown immigration debate could call attention to Republicans' divisions at a time when their expected presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, is fighting to gain the trust of the GOP base.

McCain, R-Ariz., played a prominent role in failed legislative efforts to grant some of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already here a path to legal status, which conservatives deride as "amnesty." He now says he would consider such a plan only after the borders have been fortified.

House Republicans are eyeing a bill by Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., that would do just that, as well as mandate that employers verify that their workers are in the U.S. legally.

Leaders are expected later this week to use a parliamentary tactic that would eventually force a vote on the measure if 218 lawmakers — a majority of the House — demand it. Republicans are pressuring Democratic backers of the measure — including several first-termers and dozens from swing districts, all facing tough re-election fights — to defy their leaders and sign the petition.

"Lots of Republicans and lots of Democrats would like to see something done," Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the No. 2 whip, said Friday.

The move would be a rebuke to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who opposes the Shuler bill unless it's paired with measures to allow undocumented workers a chance at legal status and allow legal immigrants to bring more family members to the United States. Democratic leaders have been working behind the scenes to craft an alternative that could dissuade their more conservative members who back Shuler's bill from joining the GOP effort to press forward on it.

They are considering pairing a widely popular measure by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., to allow more seasonal workers to come to the United States under so-called H-2B visas with proposals aimed at speeding the process of granting immigrants' spouses and minor children visas to join their parents in the U.S., among others. Also under discussion is a bill that would allow nonresident immigrants serving in the military to become citizens.

It's not clear whether Republicans can gather enough support for a vote on the bipartisan enforcement bill, which couldn't take place until April at the earliest. GOP leaders relish the idea of calling attention to Democrats' rifts on the issue in advance of Congress' 14-day Easter recess starting next week. They plan to blast Democrats who have endorsed the legislation but not signed onto the effort to force a vote on it.

"I think it makes it harder for the majority to do nothing," Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla, said of the idea last week. "On a district-by-district basis, there will be places where this is an important issue."

Shuler has said he would sign the petition. He's one of several conservative-leaning freshman lawmakers whose elections in Republican or swing districts gave Democrats control of the House in 2006, handing Pelosi the speaker's gavel. He won his race amid Republican efforts to tie him to Pelosi, including an ad that accused him of plotting with Democrats "to take over Congress with the votes of illegal immigrants."

"He does support the (legislation) and would like to see an up-or-down vote," said Andrew Whalen, Shuler's spokesman. "He would prefer that it didn't become a political issue."

Some Democrats said they are eager to debate the legislation.

"It's a very big issue. I hear a lot about it, and that's why I want to bring it to the floor," said Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., another first-termer who is co-sponsoring the bill. "We need to address it. Let's just bring it all to the floor and see what wins."

Even some Democrats who back Shuler's bill bristle at the idea of joining Republicans to force a vote on it, voicing concern that they're being used as political pawns.

"For their presidential candidate to have supported amnesty and for them to be pulling a stunt like this is pure politics," said Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., a co-sponsor of Shuler's bill.

In the Senate, a group of mostly conservative Republicans last week unveiled a package of legislation to crack down on illegal immigration and secure the border. They, too, said they would use procedural tactics to get Democrats on the record on the volatile immigration issue.

Democrats are trying to turn the tables, hoping that Republicans' efforts to push get-tough immigration measures will hurt McCain with Hispanic voters and independents, two groups that have supported him in the past.

In a letter to McCain last week, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., called on the Arizonan to reject the GOP leaders' plans, calling them "draconian and divisive."

"Such a rejection will let this nation's 44 million Latinos know that demonizing them for political purposes will not be tolerated and that the more hateful rhetoric in the immigration debate has no place in our country's civic discourse," Menendez wrote.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5605684.html

Houston & Texas News

Illegal immigrants slip as hot voter issue

March 9, 2008, 11:21PM
CAMPAIGN 2008


By SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Once billed as the hot-button issue for the 2008 presidential race, pollsters and pundits expect illegal immigration to fade from the spotlight heading into the November general election.

With Sen. John McCain clinching the Republican nomination, immigration essentially has become a non-issue in presidential debates, said Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor. The Arizona senator co-sponsored a bipartisan immigration bill that would have granted legal status to illegal immigrants in the U.S. — a proposal that alienated a portion of his party base.

That means the three remaining leading candidates for president — including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama — have supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

The cooling down of immigration as a hot election-year issue is backed up by recent polls.

Roughly one in 10 Harris County voters identified immigration as the most important issue in determining his or her vote in the general election, according to a recent poll commissioned by the Houston Chronicle. The poll, conducted by Zogby International, found immigration was far more important among GOP voters, with 20 percent of Republicans ranking it as their top issue — compared with 3 percent of Democrats.

It is doubtful any major immigration legislation will pass in an election year. However, given the position of the three White House contenders, the next president may revive immigration next year.

Some experts warn that opposition to legalization remains strong in many communities.

"It's just too much of a controversial issue," said Marisa Abrajano, an assistant political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. "Certainly, I think there are many legislators who want to talk about immigration and get things done, but it's something the candidates wouldn't want to debate right now."


Pollster: 'Dud issue'
Late last summer, immigration seemed destined to be a major factor in the presidential race. In the first months of the primary campaign, some Republican candidates campaigned heavily on an anti-illegal immigration platform.

McCain's presidential bid stalled last summer amid a massive grass-roots effort to kill an immigration bill he supported. Since then, McCain has tried to distance himself from talk of legalization, focusing instead on border enforcement.

In the end, immigration appears to be a "dud" issue for Republican candidates, said Republican pollster David Hill, whose Houston-area firm has conducted polling for Republican candidates since the 1980s.

Tom Tancredo, a Republican congressman from Colorado, ran on an anti-illegal immigration platform. Exit polls in Florida showed Mitt Romney may have been hurt by his anti-illegal immigration rhetoric.

Hill said campaigning on illegal immigration could help in states with recent and rapid growth in immigrant populations, such as Illinois or Iowa.

In Texas, a diverse border state, he credited talk radio and cable TV with "stoking the flames" over immigration. Voters tend to have strong feelings about immigration but often vote based on issues they think have a greater impact, Hill said.

"I think people wake up worrying about their heath care bills, or costs or inflation," Hill said. "I don't think anybody woke up — even in Houston, Texas, this morning — worried about an invasion of illegal aliens."

In the Chronicle poll, 35 percent of those surveyed name the economy as their most important issue. Fifteen percent named the war in Iraq, and 11 percent said health care.

Gary Suydam, a 59-year-old computer network consultant, ranks immigration as his top issue. He voted for Mike Huckabee in the GOP primary, he said, largely based on immigration.

"I feel immigration is the number one domestic issue we face today," he said. "When you take into account the cost of illegal immigration on health care or on the prison system or the schools or anything else, you solve a lot of things with the economic crisis."


No consensus
Nationally, polls have shown a majority of Americans support legalization. A May New York Times/CBS News poll showed 62 percent of respondents said illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for two years or more should be allowed to apply for legal residency.

The recent Chronicle poll found that by a narrow margin — 48 percent to 42 percent — Harris County voters would support a path toward citizenship for illegal immigrants. About 10 percent reported they were undecided.

Despite the polls, many Americans deeply oppose illegal immigration. Arizona enacted legislation punishing employers who hire undocumented workers. Oklahoma passed laws making it harder for illegal immigrants to get benefits.

Emilie Brown, a 68-year-old Houston native, said she was open to legalization, "as long as they go through the system." The wife of a retired Houston police officer, Brown said she was not opposed to anyone trying to "live the good life."

"It's the illegal stuff that bothers me," she said.

Among Democrats, there still is a significant split on legalization. About 54 percent of Democrats in the Chronicle poll said they would support legalization, compared with about 40 percent of Republicans.

"I think everybody has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — regardless of which side of the river they're born on," said 56-year-old Jean Crandall, who voted in last week's Democratic primary.

Jaime Galindo, 39, another Democrat, is conflicted about legalization, saying he generally would oppose legalizing undocumented residents. He and his pregnant wife, a legal immigrant from the Philippines, are having trouble paying their bills earning $12.50 and $9.50 an hour, respectively, working at a Houston grocery store.

"It's hard because we're the people trying to do the right thing, and we're struggling," he said. "And people keep coming in here illegally. I just don't know. That may play into my taxes."