Indians win HSMP case against UK govt

London: Tens of thousands of Indian immigrants Tuesday won the right to live and work in Britain after a British court ruled that retrospective changes made to their visas were illegal.

The landmark ruling by Justice Sir George Newman followed a legal challenge mounted by the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) Forum, a pressure group consisting mostly of Indian migrants.

In his judgment, Newman said the terms of the original scheme "should be honoured" and that there was no good reason why those already on the scheme should not enjoy the benefits of it as originally offered to them.

"Good administration and straightforward dealing with the public require it. Not to restrain the impact of the changes would, in my judgment, give rise to unfairness and is an abuse of power," he added.

A majority of the 49,000 HSMP visa holders - most of them Indian - and their families faced the prospect of having to leave Britain and find jobs in other countries after the British government made abrupt and retrospective changes to the original visa regime.

Existing HSMP visa holders would have had to re-qualify under a new points based system, which makes it mandatory for applicants to have earned at least 40,000 pounds in the previous year and awards more points to younger applicants, conditions that the HSMP Forum described as "unfair."

"The immigration department was obsessed with defending their decision and were not open to any reasoning. We had no other recourse but to approach the judiciary and we are glad that our trust in the democratic system has finally been restored," said Forum executive director Amit Kapadia.

Tweaking immigration
Three narrowly targeted reforms could ease the green-card problem while helping the economy.
August 8, 2008

The public outcry that derailed last year's push for comprehensive immigration reform hasn't stopped lawmakers from trying to change immigration law. It has merely scaled back their ambitions. Prodded by advocacy groups on both sides of the issue, members of Congress are considering various narrowly targeted proposals -- "rifle shots," in Washington parlance -- to ease or tighten the limits on legal entry. These include bills to allow more guest workers to be hired by farmers and other seasonal employers, relieve the backlog in visa requests by foreign workers with high-tech skills, and reauthorize the program that verifies applicants' eligibility for employment.

We still believe that federal immigration law needs an overhaul, not just a tune-up. Some of the expansions sought in guest worker programs could help reduce illegal immigration, but they should be considered as part of a broader approach that addresses complaints about the current temporary-visa system. That's particularly true for skilled or specialty workers' H-1B visas, which in the last two years have been snapped up the first day applications could be filed. Supporters agitate for a huge increase in the H-1B program, but opponents say it drives down wages and prevents guest workers from leaving jobs they don't like. And it's hard for the public to accept the need for more short-term foreign workers when the economy is slowing and unemployment is mounting.


Nevertheless, there is an interim step Congress could take that would help the economy in general and the high-tech industry in particular: Make it easier for skilled foreign workers to obtain green cards and become permanent U.S. residents. Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services makes 140,000 green cards a year available to foreigners sponsored by American employers, with preference given to the most educated or talented applicants. About 226,000 more cards are available for foreigners sponsored by relatives here. Just because a card is available, however, doesn't mean it will be issued. Tech firms complain that thousands of foreign workers in the U.S. fail to receive green cards each year because of bureaucratic holdups, creating a vast backlog and increasing the demand for H-1B visas.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) and a handful of Republican allies have introduced three bills that would ease that backlog. One, HR 5882, would increase each year's allotment of green cards by the number left over from previous years, effectively turning the ceiling into a floor. The measure would apply to both employer-sponsored and family-related applicants. Another, HR 6039 (along with a matching Senate bill, S 3084), would provide employer-sponsored cards to any foreigner with a U.S. job offer who earns an advanced degree in science, technology, math or engineering from a U.S. college or university. And a third, HR 5921, would remove the per-country caps on employer-sponsored cards.

Because the first two measures would clearly increase the population of legal immigrants, they are opposed by groups such as NumbersUSA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which want Congress to push the limits in the other direction. One of their main arguments is that more U.S. jobs should be reserved for U.S. workers. But high-tech companies have long complained that U.S. schools aren't producing nearly enough graduates interested in or prepared for careers in math, science and engineering. A survey last year of 17 California colleges and universities lends credence to that argument; it found that nearly 40% of all master's degrees in engineering that year had gone to foreign students, as had almost two-thirds of the engineering PhDs.


Even if there were no shortage of Americans with high-tech skills, it would be a mistake to assume that limiting foreign workers automatically yields more jobs for citizens. The competition for jobs is increasingly global, and firms are chasing talent (and lower costs) wherever it's concentrated. Look at Microsoft -- it expanded into Vancouver, Canada, last year in part because of the problems posed by U.S. immigration caps. Increasing the supply of green cards would allow more talented foreigners to stay here, where they were educated and trained, and where their productivity and entrepreneurial drive can create jobs. Over the last 15 years, immigrants have launched a fourth of the start-ups in the U.S. that attracted venture capital dollars. With the economy slipping, that statistic alone makes a persuasive argument for more green cards.

Coast Guard interdicts, repatriates 29 Cuban migrants

MIAMI -- The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Nantucket repatriated 29 Cuban migrants Friday to Bahia de Cabañas, Cuba. The migrants were interdicted during four separate cases.

Two groups of migrants were located Monday. The crew of the Cutter Shrike safely embarked six migrants about 60 miles south of Key West, Fla., and the crew of the Virginia-based Cutter Forward safely embarked 10 Cuban migrants about 43 miles southwest of Key West.

A boat crew from Station Islamorada, Fla., responded to a call Sunday from a good Samaritan stating they located a raft carrying nine Cuban migrants about nine miles south of Islamorada. The boat crew safely embarked the migrants without incident.

The crew of the Cutter Shrike interdicted a rustic vessel Saturday carrying five Cuban migrants about 15 miles north of Havana.

The Coast Guard interdicted 2,868 Cuban migrants during fiscal year 2007, from Oct. 1, 2006 to Sept. 30, 2007.

Since Oct. 1, 2007, the Coast Guard has interdicted 2,140 Cuban migrants, representing about a 25-percent reduction from the previous fiscal year.

Full article

Immigrants get 'a better test' for U.S. citizenship

By John Woolfolk
Mercury News

Article Launched: 09/27/2008 06:00:00 PM PDT

Quick, fellow citizens, what are the colors of our national flag? OK, what color are its stars? How about this: Name the form immigrants fill out to apply for U.S. citizenship. Anyone? What, you never heard of Form N-400?

For years, scholars, historians and policy makers have mocked the inane questions on the naturalization examination that immigrants must pass to gain U.S. citizenship, arguing that it tested trivia and minted new Americans who lacked meaningful knowledge about their adopted country's history and governance.

But that's set to change Wednesday, when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rolls out a redesigned naturalization exam.

"We're trying to encourage civic learning and attachment," Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the Office of Citizenship, said in an interview during a stop in San Francisco. "The test is not harder. It's just a better test. It follows a basic U.S. history and civics curriculum. It's more on concepts than on rote memorization."

The current test was developed in 1986, but without guidance from scholars or historians. And it wasn't always administered consistently: Immigrants in some cities were given multiple-choice answers, while others had to recite from memory.

The redesign began in 2000 and involved help from test development contractors, the National Academy of Sciences, a panel of history and U.S. government scholars, and English-as-a-second-language experts.

Full article

Illegal immigration declines as U.S. economy falters

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 2, 10:57 AM ET


Illegal immigration, which has sparked political and social turmoil in communities across the nation, is on the wane, according to an independent report released Thursday.

The number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has slowed significantly the past few years, falling below the number of those entering the country legally, according to the report by the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington think tank.

The report estimates there were 11.9 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. as of March. That would be a decline of 500,000 from the center's estimate a year ago. However, the change was not statistically significant because of the large margins of error.

The Pew study does not address why the decrease occurred, but other researchers cite the nation's struggling economy and stepped up enforcement of immigration laws.

"The decline in job prospects in construction, service and other low-skilled jobs are communicated through extended networks of would-be movers from Mexico and Latin America," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, another Washington think tank. "It also may propel more return migration."

Census data released last month showed that overall immigration slowed dramatically in 2007, though the Census Bureau does not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants are notoriously difficult to count. Many researchers, including the federal government, estimate there are about 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

That's a big increase from the start of the decade, when the Pew Hispanic Center estimated there were about 8.5 million.

From 2000 to 2004, about 800,000 illegal immigrants a year entered the U.S., the Pew report estimates. Since then, the average has dropped to about 500,000 a year.

A decade ago, the number of newly arrived illegal immigrants began to outnumber those legally entering the country, said the report, written by the Pew Hispanic Center's senior demographer, Jeffrey Passel, and senior writer, D'Vera Cohn.

"The reverse now appears to be true," the report said.

Illegal immigrants make up about 30 percent of all immigrants, according to the report. About four in five come from Latin America, with most coming from Mexico.

Congress has passed several measures designed to increase border enforcement, and the Bush administration has stepped up raids on businesses. Some local communities have also passed ordinances to address the issue.

Congress, however, has failed to pass a comprehensive package addressing illegal immigration, despite several attempts.

Illegal immigration has not been a big issue in this year's presidential election in part because both of the major parties' nominees, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, support comprehensive immigration packages that include increased enforcement and an eventual path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants.

___

On The Net:

Pew Hispanic Center: http://pewhispanic.org/


Source

Group Seeking Immigration Curbs Launches Web Ads

June Kronholz reports on immigration and the 2008 election.

Immigration has largely disappeared as a campaign issue. But to make sure it’s not forgotten, the immigration-restrictionist group NumbersUSA is launching a $1 million Web-based ad campaign targeting voters worried more about population growth and competition for resources than illegal border crossers.

The group says it will spend another $1.5 million raised from its members for other election-related activities this fall, including promoting the scorecards it keeps on the immigration positions of the presidential candidates and the immigration votes cast by every member of Congress.

On those scorecards, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his Republican rival, John McCain, get grades ranging from “poor” to “abysmal” on most of 12 measures. Obama gets his only “good” for his votes to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants and McCain gets his only “good” for promoting tougher border-security plans.

NumbersUSA mobilized the telephone barrage that flooded the Senate switchboard and derailed an immigration overhaul bill last year. Since then, politicians have been wary of the group, which sends its members almost daily updates on immigration legislation, their congressman’s position, and suggestions on what they can do to influence him or her.

The ads, which are running on national internet news sites, use the tagline “Let’s talk about numbers, let’s talk about immigration” and focus on projections that the U.S. will add another 100 million people by mid-century. Roy Beck, founder of the group, predicted in an interview that that message will resonate with moderate voters, aged 25 to 45, who are concerned about pressures put on the health-care system, the jobs market and the environment by rapid population growth.

Beck says his supporters see little difference between McCain and Obama on immigration. Both favored a White House-backed bill that would have offered a path to citizenship to most of the 12 million immigrants thought to be in the U.S. illegally.

Beck said the group’s focus instead is on Congress, which could stop an immigration overhaul bill that the new president, whoever he is, is widely expected to bring up. “It’s a matter of people pushing Congress, and Congress standing up to the president,” Beck said.

Source

I got this from the ILW newsletter and reposting just in case somebody missed it.

quote:

Originally posted by Mrs. B.:
Immigrants get 'a better test' for U.S. citizenship

By John Woolfolk
Mercury News

Article Launched: 09/27/2008 06:00:00 PM PDT

Quick, fellow citizens, what are the colors of our national flag? OK, what color are its stars? How about this: Name the form immigrants fill out to apply for U.S. citizenship. Anyone? What, you never heard of Form N-400?

For years, scholars, historians and policy makers have mocked the inane questions on the naturalization examination that immigrants must pass to gain U.S. citizenship, arguing that it tested trivia and minted new Americans who lacked meaningful knowledge about their adopted country's history and governance.

But that's set to change Wednesday, when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rolls out a redesigned naturalization exam.

"We're trying to encourage civic learning and attachment," Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the Office of Citizenship, said in an interview during a stop in San Francisco. "The test is not harder. It's just a better test. It follows a basic U.S. history and civics curriculum. It's more on concepts than on rote memorization."

The current test was developed in 1986, but without guidance from scholars or historians. And it wasn't always administered consistently: Immigrants in some cities were given multiple-choice answers, while others had to recite from memory.

The redesign began in 2000 and involved help from test development contractors, the National Academy of Sciences, a panel of history and U.S. government scholars, and English-as-a-second-language experts.

Full article

However, if you have applied for Citizenship before Oct 1st 2008, you can still use the old test questions until Oct 2009.

Reunion gives Vietnamese political prisoners a chance to share new lives

By JESSICA MEYERS / The Dallas Morning News
jmeyers@dallasnews.com

Hieu Huynh can quantify much of his life: the 17 years he spent in 13 North Vietnamese re-education camps, the 53 pounds he lost during that time, the eight years after his release he spent with his wife before she died.

But the former South Vietnamese lieutenant colonel can't begin to count the number of friends he made after his arrest in 1975.

Until this weekend, when he and fellow prisoners will gather for perhaps the first and last time at the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association reunion in Dallas and Garland. More than 3,000 people from across the United States and Canada are expected to attend, connected by their stories of buried sacrifice and cautious redemption.

"I'd like to know who is living, who has passed away ... so many friends, and so many stories," said the 76-year-old Garland resident, who speaks carefully about his experience because he worries how the Vietnamese government might react.

The hesitancy of once-imprisoned South Vietnamese to speak directly about their experience is not unique to Mr. Huynh, one of more than 300,000 "re-educated" Vietnamese who resettled in the U.S.

That lingering silence motivated Khuc Minh Tho, president of Virginia-based Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association, to organize the first national reunion of its kind in North Texas. A similar event was attempted 10 years ago in Houston, but it drew mostly local Vietnamese.

"After 20 years, they are already settled and have freedom and have rebuilt their new lives with their children," said Ms. Tho, the wife, sister, cousin and aunt of former political prisoners. "We want to all see each other again one more time before we die."

She chose the Dallas area – with a population of around 80,000 Vietnamese – over the larger enclaves of Orange County, Calif., and Houston because of its sizable number of third-wave Vietnamese immigrants.

Those immigrants arrived in the early 1990s after the U.S. and Vietnam signed an agreement that allowed political prisoners and their families to move to the U.S. The Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association helped coordinate the pact.

About 1,000 Vietnamese families in the area house camp survivors, said Han Nguyen, a former prisoner now living in Irving and chairman of Humanitarian Operation, a nonprofit organization that helps Vietnamese political prisoners resettle.

Mr. Nguyen is helping organize this weekend's reunion, which runs today through Sunday, and he has already made plans with friends from Arizona and Chicago whom he hasn't seen in years.

"We can talk about the advantages we have, how our families are successful," he said. "We will look at each other and empathize."

Mr. Nguyen, 61, spent seven years in re-education camps scattered around Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City.

The first three years were the hardest, he said, adding little more. He returned to Saigon in 1982 after his release thinking he could re-establish a life with his family. But he found it difficult to get work or even obtain Vietnamese citizenship because "you were those kind of people" – meaning on the other side of the Communist regime.

Now a legal assistant who has been in the U.S. for 15 years, he said the reunion means much more than friendly banter and extra preening.

"There's a deep impression about the old days," Mr. Nguyen said. "In the camp you lived side by side. We had each other to survive. And now the chance we have today ..." he said, his voice trailing off.

Source

It would be interesting for a few posters here to talk to these survivors and what the Vietnam War was really about, among other things.

Thanks Brittie for that info. Hudson's story is one of reunion here in the US. This story from the ILW is about one family leaving the US. It caught my attention since they were based in Atlanta.

After life in U.S., migrant children struggle with return to Mexico
People and places are unfamiliar, and some feel sting of discrimination.
By Jeremy Schwartz
MEXICO CITY BUREAU
Monday, October 06, 2008

CIUDAD HIDALGO, Michoacn — After nearly seven years in the United States, Edgar Gutiérrez was back in a hometown he hardly recognized.

Returning as a 16-year-old, Gutiérrez found relatives he couldn't remember. Kids thought he was stuck up because he had lived in the U.S. Teachers scolded him when he pronounced his name with an American accent.

Gutiérrez had spent his early life in these mountains of Central Mexico, but now he felt like a stranger.

Officials in Mexico say he and his family, who lived for years in Atlanta, are among a rapidly growing number of undocumented immigrants moving back to Mexico to start over. Some are drawn by a desire to return home after meeting their financial goals; many more are pushed by the faltering U.S. economy.

In their hometowns, mostly in rural Mexico, they find the same grinding poverty that originally drove them out. Returning migrants face a gantlet of challenges, from finding a job to reconnecting with family and friends.

But experts say the burden falls most heavily on the children who spent their formative years in American schools, watching American TV, wearing American clothes and listening to American music.

They are returning to a homeland they know mostly through stories and photos. Some speak no Spanish. Others speak both Spanish and English with an accent.

For most, the biggest challenge is adapting to a different educational system.

"What happens is, the kids stop studying because (the adjustment) becomes too hard and there is no one helping them," said Arturo López, who runs the municipal migrant aid office in Ecatepec, a suburb of Mexico City.

Gutiérrez struggled at his new school in the state of Michoacán. His English teacher sent him to the principal's office when he corrected her pronunciation. He couldn't understand the Spanish terms in his science class so he found translations on the Internet.

It was a long way from high school in Atlanta, where he was in Junior ROTC and dreamed of joining the U.S. Navy.

Eventually, the strain became too much, Gutiérrez said. He quit school and spent his days in his new neighborhood of unfinished concrete homes and dirt streets.

Though no precise figures exist for the unfolding phenomenon, officials in states including Michoacán and Zacatecas are warning of an impending flood of returnees.

"There's no work for them (in the U.S.) so they figure it's better to come back to their own country," said Griselda Valencia Medina, secretary of immigration for the state of Michoacán. "As bad as it is here, they at least have a place to live and to eat."

In Obrajuelo, a tiny farming village in Guanajuato state, Lourdes Pérez has just returned to her hometown after six years in Austin. Her 8-year-old daughter, who finished first grade at Odom Elementary in South Austin, is getting back to normal after the initial shock of the move, she said. Her 6-year-old son keeps asking when they are going back.

Pérez said she returned because it became increasingly hard to find a job as an undocumented worker.

"It's slow (in Austin) for everything — restaurants, construction, everything," she said.

Pérez said she feels a little shellshocked herself but said she's concentrating on enrolling her children in school, something that's turning into more of a bureaucratic problem than she expected.

Other parents also say they face discrimination.

Omar Martínez, 32, said school officials refused to enroll his 4-year-old son, who was born near Oakland, Calif., at a kindergarten in Ecatepec.

"They said they don't want foreigners," he said.

Martínez and his brother, Ivan Martínez, returned to Mexico over the summer, moving their families when their mother fell gravely ill. Both said they spent weeks trying to find schools that would accept their children, ages 4 to 13. They eventually found a welcome from Cinco de Mayo elementary school and Principal Patricia Cervantes.

Cervantes said the school has taken in several migrant students over the past few years and strives to give them extra attention. "It's our job to help them integrate into society," Cervantes said.

But experts say the situation shows how ill-prepared most Mexican schools and other government entities are for the expected flow of returning migrants.

"The authorities know that the migrants are the ones that help the country the most (through sending money home), but then they don't help them when they come back," López said.

In Michoacán, where it's estimated that a quarter of the population has migrated to the U.S., officials are scrambling to put together economic plans to deal with the potential return of thousands to rural areas.

Back in Ciudad Hidalgo, Gutiérrez, now 17, has decided to return to school. After initially being overwhelmed by the move to Mexico, he said he's determined to make the most out his new beginning.

He said he didn't go out much at first but now attends dances and plays soccer with new friends and long-lost cousins.

He's also reconnecting with grandparents who didn't recognize him when he returned.

But Gutiérrez said he still feels caught between worlds.

"It's like ... a new life. Everything is new. New friends, new neighborhood. It's hard to come back."

Source

Bush announces visa waiver for 7 countries

WASHINGTON – President Bush, trying to eliminate a major source of contention with allied nations, announced Friday that the United States is rescinding visa requirements for citizens of six European countries and South Korea.

Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and South Korea will be added to the U.S. visa waiver program in about a month. Each of those countries allows U.S. citizens to visit without obtaining a visa.

more...

Immigration raid takes bite out of nation's kosher-meat supply
By Grant Schulte and Tony Leys, USA TODAY

POSTVILLE, Iowa — Financial problems at the company that was the target of one of the largest immigration raids in U.S. history have triggered a shortage of kosher meat and raised prices nationwide.

Six months have passed since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided Agriprocessors kosher-meat plant here on May 12 and detained 389 illegal immigrant workers. The company's beef operation has ceased operating and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this past week

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-11-12-raidsixmonthslater_N.htm

We had a similar case in San Jose where a supervisor was giving out fraudulent green cards to Koreans. The Koreans complained and got DiFi and Boxer to press the issue and they will not be deported. Squeeky criminal wheel gets the grease.

quote:

Originally posted by Brit4064:
Immigration raid takes bite out of nation's kosher-meat supply
By Grant Schulte and Tony Leys, USA TODAY

POSTVILLE, Iowa — Financial problems at the company that was the target of one of the largest immigration raids in U.S. history have triggered a shortage of kosher meat and raised prices nationwide.

Six months have passed since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided Agriprocessors kosher-meat plant here on May 12 and detained 389 illegal immigrant workers. The company's beef operation has ceased operating and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this past week

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-11-12-raidsixmonthslater_N.htm

A clear indication the company was being mismanaged. If they had to hire slave labor to stay afloat then their problems were more significant than handcuffs and green trucks.

Just goes to show that there is a standard of living to be expected. They obviously tried to stuff third world wages into a first world work force. Which included 9311 child labor violations. Doesn't work which is why they are going to slaughter.

quote:

Originally posted by speed_025:
Bush announces visa waiver for 7 countries

WASHINGTON – President Bush, trying to eliminate a major source of contention with allied nations, announced Friday that the United States is rescinding visa requirements for citizens of six European countries and South Korea.

Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and South Korea will be added to the U.S. visa waiver program in about a month. Each of those countries allows U.S. citizens to visit without obtaining a visa.

more...

Open borders are coming by way of GWB agenda. New work force available to employers

Just what we need, more gypsies.