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.â€
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.â€
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.
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A federal court has temporarily, at least, barred enforcement of a Homeland Security rule regarding employer responses to Social Security no-match letters. Experts advise HR leaders to be prepared for such regulations to take effect at some point, however.
Human Resource Executive Online By Tom Starner September 17, 2007
During the past summer, the Department of Homeland Security put the hammer down on employers, saying employers should use Social Security Administration "no-match" letters as the starting point in Homeland Security's quest to root out illegal immigrants working in America.
But two weeks ago, a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily barred the SSA from mailing those letters -- which would have included information about the new DHS regulations -- so the DHS hammer is being held back, for the time-being.
No-match letters, of course, refer to notifications sent to employers when Social Security numbers submitted by employees do not match those in the SSA database. Each year, the SSA sends out thousands of the letters letting employers know their wage reports include names and Social Security numbers that do not match agency records. The IRS sends similar letters.
While the no-match letters may be evidence a company is employing illegal immigrants, bad matches can also be mistakes (misspelled names or wrong numbers).
In the past, companies have mostly ignored the letters -- an approach that seemed to meet federal concerns about the potential for national-origin or racial discrimination by employers.
With the DHS rules, employers must respond to no-match letters within 90 days.
Federal Judge Maxine Chesney's decision came out of a lawsuit filed by the AFL-CIO, American Civil Liberties Union and California labor groups. The lawsuit argues that the new rules would lead to the firing of thousands of legal workers and discrimination against Latino workers.
Chesney's decision said that the lawsuit raised "serious questions" over the legality of the federal government's get-tough stance on illegal workers. She scheduled an Oct. 1 hearing on a preliminary injunction to further block the rule until trial.
"DHS did not comply with the requirements of the Regulatory Flexibility Act when it concluded the new regulation would impose no 'new or additional costs' on employers. This is clearly wrong," says Robin Conrad, executive vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's National Litigation Center, which filed its own lawsuit to stop the DHS rules.
"At the very minimum, employers would have to expend significant amounts of time and effort simply to understand the regulation and to train their human resource professionals on how to handle no-match letters when they are received," he says.
Despite Chesney's decision, employers will have to eventually deal with the illegal immigrant situation in some way, shape or form, experts say.
Jacob Monty, managing partner of the Houston law firm Monty Partners, says the judge's decision, while offering a reprieve for employers, probably will not stop the DHS' efforts to deal with the illegal-immigrant situation.
"It's a step, and it buys some time," says Monty, whose firm is the largest Hispanic-owned firm in the Southwest. "But whether it's Oct. 2 or Dec. 30, employers are going to have to deal with the mismatched Social Security numbers issue.
"The decision is welcomed from an employer's point of view," he says, "but is the lawsuit going to carry the day and abrogate the no-match rule? I'd say no."
Monty Partners has developed a niche by advising companies on employee eligibility and hot-button immigration issues. For example, Monty Partners employs 25 former INS/ICE (the DHS enforcement arm) officers who perform mock audits for clients, reviewing stacks of employment documentation to point out any bogus SSA numbers and other immigration violations.
Monty explains that, at the very least, the DHS rules provide some standards in the effort to manage the illegal-immigrant situation, and also offers employers a "safe harbor" provision, which is better than what exists right now.
"There are many onerous aspects to the DHS rules, but one bit of good news is the safe-harbor provision," he says. It means if an employee says he or she can't get a mismatched SSA number resolved for any number of legitimate reasons (such as new legalized status), an employer can accept that reason, as long as they verify it. The safe harbor is they have shown good faith in trying to get the match-letter situation resolved.
"On the other hand, comprehensive immigration reform is still needed, and document counterfeiters will still work this system," Monty adds. "Smart employers should be focusing on these new match rules."
Rebecca Sigmond, a partner and head the immigration practice at Powell Goldstein LLP, in Atlanta, says her main advice to employers is to stay mindful of this regulation, because something is going to happen eventually on the immigration front.
"We've always suggested that clients be proactive checking Social Security numbers anyway," Sigmond says. "Social Security ID is ripe with fraud, as the cards are so easily reproducible. Five out of every 10 people with mismatched numbers are using fraudulent documents."
Elena Park, a partner and the immigration practice chair at Cozen O'Connor, a Philadelphia law firm, says that while the Judge's ruling does not alter an employer's strategies in managing the illegal alien situation per se, she strongly believes that the DHS no-match regulation would likewise would have done nothing to help employers manage the illegal alien situation.
She also feels that that the no-match regulation is contrary and outside the scope of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
"It expands the definition of 'constructive knowledge' in the statute, and flies in the face of reality," she says. "A mismatch letter from the SSA has virtually nothing to do with a person's immigration status. A request for green card sponsorship says nothing about the person's current status. Therefore, to state that employers have constructive knowledge of an employee's illegal status if confronted with these two circumstances is itself illegal."
For now, Park, who advises Fortune 500 clients, says employers need to continue to do their best to make sure their employees are legal.
"The judge's ruling maintains the status quo," she says. "So employers can continue to determine the proper steps and timeline as fits the particular situation or the employer's policy.
"In the end, I believe the final outcome will be that the court will permanently block the regulation, or the Bush administration will change the wording of the regulation in an attempt to circumvent any judicial bar," Park says.
LAWS TARGETING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION GO ONLINE WEDNESDAY
Hourly Update Arizona Daily Star Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.17.2007
Several measures to deal with illegal border crossers that were approved by lawmakers in the last session take effect this week.
Among the changes taking effect Wednesday is one allowing those here illegally to be held without bail for up to a week without charging them with anything.
The law is designed to ensure prosecutors can get their sworn statements, which then can be used to prosecute the people who smuggled them into this country. Otherwise the charges may have to be dropped because the witness is back in Mexico.
Another law tightens the voter-approved measures limiting some benefits to those here legally, by requiring applicants to provide documents showing legal status, and not just giving a sworn statement.
And lawmakers agreed only U.S. citizens and permanent legal residents can be notaries.
The major new law to punish employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers is not set to take effect until January.
Anyone who is here in this country illegally, no matter what RACE they are - deserve only one thing and that is a free ride back HOME and to never come back. That includes people who overstay visitor or student Visas and the ones who pay coyotes to sneak into our country.
WE HAVE LAWS AGAINST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND WE AIM TO HAVE THEM ENFORCED WITH OR WITHOUT THE COOPERATION OF THIS TRAITOROUS GOVERNMENT.
Illegals you better pack your bags because ICE is coming for you soon.
Adrian Humphreys, National Post, with files from CanWest News Service
Published: Thursday, September 20, 2007
A sudden outpouring of illegal foreign migrants from the United States is crossing into Canada because of bogus claims by unscrupulous immigration consultants, a scam that has blossomed into an urban myth so pervasive the influx is clogging refugee services in some cities.
A fraudulent sales pitch touting an open-door policy and "economic refugee" program in Canada, aimed largely at Mexican and Haitian migrants living illegally in the United States, is proving remarkably attractive to migrants already facing crackdowns in some U.S. states.
While several hundred are said to have paid for useless immigration services, many more have heard the message and are heading north on their own.
The Canadian Council for Refugees, a non-profit umbrella organization working to protect refugees, issued a warning this week of the scams and the burgeoning myth and asked the federal government to intervene.
For some, it is already too late.
In Windsor, local refugee aid organizations have been told to brace for 4,000 to 8,000 refugee claimants entering Canada through Windsor and other border points.
"We are being inundated with them," said Wilfred Harbin, administrator for the Salvation Army Windsor Community and Rehabilitation Centre.
"What are we going to do with them? We're running out of beds," he said.
The Salvation Army has put up 50 families, some with up to nine children, at four city hotels. The bills, including those for meals, are being sent to the city's social services department. Another 30 single men are staying at a Salvation Army shelter.
In Montreal, hundreds of Haitian asylum seekers have been victimized by consultants, usually in the guise of community or religious groups who charged $400 to $500 for false promises of guaranteed refugee status, said Rivka Augenfeld, with the Canadian Council for Refugees.
"There have been hundreds and hundreds. They come up expecting things that are just not possible," Ms. Augenfeld said.
In the Niagara region, there has been a marked increase in Haitian refugee claimants in the last few weeks, said Jean D'Amelio Swyer, a CBSA spokeswoman.
And in Toronto, immigration lawyers are being flooded with questions about the non-existent special programs.
"I have received numerous calls in recent weeks from Mexicans living illegally in the United States who claim that several 'consultants' have set up telephone numbers in the Florida area, then advertise them heavily on television," said Sergio Karas, a Toronto immigration lawyer and chairman of the Ontario Bar Association's Citizenship and Immigration Section. "It appears that the problem is widespread."
The number of refugee claimants from Haiti has jumped dramatically, with almost as many Haitians seeking refugee status in Canada in the first half of this year than in the previous two years combined, according to numbers from the Immigration and Refugee Board.
There were 1,008 refugee claimants from Haiti from January to June, 2007, compared with 769 in all of 2006.
In the first half of 2007, there were 3,043 claimants from Mexico, making it the top source country. There were 4,958 in all of 2006.
The figures do not reflect the recent surge from both countries that seems to have started in earnest this summer.
The claims of an open-door refugee policy fly in the face of statistics. Only 13% of Mexicans who claimed refugee status in the first half of the year were accepted. For Haitians, the acceptance rate was 66%.
Aid workers fear the influx will overwhelm the IRB.
"It would take some time for a large influx of refugee claims to be referred to the IRB," said Charles Hawkins, a board spokesman. "If it occurs, the IRB would take steps to deal with them in an appropriate manner."
The sales pitch is particularly attractive to Haitian and Mexican migrants because of their unique positions when they reach Canada. Canada has a moratorium on deportations to Haiti, so they will be able to remain in Canada until conditions in their homeland improve.
Canada does not require Mexican visitors to have visas, so they too are allowed into Canada to make their claims despite having previously lived in the United States. If turned down, however, they face removal to Mexico.
The "Safe Third Country Agreement" between Canada and the United States, in force since 2004, requires most refugee claimants to seek protection in the first country they reach. That has left refugee seekers other than Mexicans and Haitian who arrive because of the false promises in dire straits: They have been turned over to U.S. border authorities, often leading to detention and likely deportation to their homeland.
The sales pitches started this spring in Florida, preying on unease over state crackdowns on non-status workers. One outfit based in Naples, Fla., told clients they could swap a U.S. deportation order for refugee status in Canada for a $400 fee. Some said Canada offers an "economic refugee program" for Mexicans.
A pastor in Boston was charging clients $500 for relocation to Canada under false pretenses. Other illegal migrants, including those living in New Jersey and North Carolina, heard that if they headed north, they could resettle immediately in Canada.
"It is one of those things that started in one place and now we don't even know who is pushing it. Unfortunately, it has really taken off," said Ms. Augenfeld.
"Some are out-and-out criminal in what they are doing; others are very naively repeating what they have heard. They are targeting desperate people, they are targeting people who are looking for a way to improve their lives, people who tend to believe these stories, and making a lot of money in the process.
"I'm supposed to be the bleeding-heart [non-governmental organization], but I have no mercy for these people who exploit their own and put them in danger," said Ms. Augenfeld.
""SBA SUGGESTS DHS SHOULD HALT 'NO-MATCH RULE,' HINTS IT MAY JOIN LAWSUIT
"A federal office that advocates on behalf of small businesses announced Sept. 18 that it is encouraging the Homeland Security Department to halt the final "no-match rule" and that it is prepared to join the lawsuit to stop the rule because DHS failed to consider the cost for small employers." Daily Labor Report, Sept. 20, 2007.""
""SBA to Chertoff: Stay "No-Match" Rule
"I am writing to inform you that I agree with the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) claim raised by the Plaintiffs-Intervenors, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, et al., and I am extending an offer to help DHS satisfy their requirements under the RFA. ... Given the potential cost and impact of the no-match rule on small businesses, Advocacy believes a proper RFA analysis is of critical importance. Moreover, Advocacy believes that a proper RFA analysis will provide DHS/ICE with information that will improve the rule. Accordingly, Advocacy recommends that DHS stay the final rule pending completion of a proper RFA analysis. That analysis will allow the agency to determine whether a factual basis exists to certify the rule under the RFA, or whether an IRFA (including a discussion of feasible alternatives) is required." Letter dated Sept. 18, 2007 to DHS Sec. Chertoff from Thomas M. Sullivan, Chief Counsel for Advocacy, Small Business Administration.""
___________________________________________________________________ "The letter of the law is a sword that killeth; its intent is a spirit that giveth life."
___________________________________________________________________ "The letter of the law is a sword that killeth; its intent is a spirit that giveth life."
[ICE and the Census Bureau may need to resolve their public differences before outreach efforts get underway for Census 2010. It will be interesting to see how the undercount in 2010 compares to the one in 2000 (although, how would one figure out the magnitude of the undercount among undocumented immigrants?)]
Official: No immigration raids for ‘10 census August 17, 2007 Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Census workers know it will be difficult counting illegal immigrants for the 2010 population tally and even tougher if those immigrants are hiding from enforcement agents.
“If you have federal officials going door to door trying to count people, and federal officials going door to door trying to deport people, it doesn’t work,†said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
To make it easier, the Census Bureau wants immigration agents to suspend enforcement raids during the population count, the Census Bureau’s second-ranking official said in an Associated Press interview.
Deputy Director Preston Jay Waite said immigration enforcement officials did not conduct raids for several months before and after the 2000 census. But today’s political climate is even more volatile on the issue of illegal immigration.
Enforcement agents “have a job to do,†Waite said. “They may not be able to give us as much of a break†in 2010.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman declined to say whether immigration officials would halt raids. “If we were, we wouldn’t talk about it,†Pat Reilly said.
“For us to suspend that enforcement would probably take a lot more than one meeting,†Reilly said. “We would have to discuss this at the highest levels of both agencies.â€
The issue arises as the U.S. struggles to resolve the fate of an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. After Congress failed to pass an immigration overhaul sought by the president, the Bush administration last week said it would step up efforts to enforce immigration laws.
One lawmaker said she thinks “it’s nuts†for the Census Bureau to ask for a break in enforcement.
“I don’t know what country the Census Bureau is living in,†Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., said in a telephone interview from her district. “I can tell them the American people have grown sick and tired of their immigration laws not being enforced. They are not going to tolerate enforcement being suspended for any amount of time.â€
The Constitution requires the Census Bureau to count everyone, including illegal immigrants. The once-a-decade population count is then used to apportion seats in Congress and to appropriate billions of dollars in federal spending each year.
Miller has introduced a constitutional amendment that would apportion seats in Congress based only on the number of U.S. citizens in each state.
The Census Bureau plans to approach all federal agencies for help in getting an accurate count, Waite said.
Illegal immigrants are notoriously hard to count, although outside experts estimate that census workers count 85% to 90% of them.
Census workers ask immigrants if they are citizens; they do not ask if they are in the country legally.
“We’re supposed to count every resident. If you go out and ask, ‘Are you here illegally?’ they are going to run,†said Kenneth Prewitt, who directed the Census Bureau during the 2000 census.
Prewitt said the public already is suspicious of government workers knocking on their doors and asking personal questions. Those suspicions are amplified among illegal immigrants, even though personal information collected by Census Bureau is private by law.
Prewitt said immigration officials informally agreed to cooperate with the Census Bureau during the 2000 census by not conducting any large-scale raids.
“If they had a reason to think it was important to carry out an action, they would have done so,†Prewitt said. “But they did offer to cooperate as much as possible so they didn’t create a climate of fear. They did not carry out any major raids.â€
Reilly, the immigration enforcement spokeswoman, said she could not confirm any informal agreements to scale back enforcement during the 2000 census.
She said the agency “continued to perform its duty to enforce the nation’s immigration laws by continuing to investigate, pursue and arrest criminal and other egregious violators.â€
Vargas said the intense debate over immigration has made immigrants even more suspicious of the government today.
“The Census Bureau has a job to do,†said Vargas, who belongs to a committee that advises the bureau on the 2010 census. “They need to convince people that they need to report themselves to the federal government and that it’s going to remain confidential. That’s a hard sell.â€
Supporters of stricter immigration laws said the whole discussion of suspending raids shows that the immigration system is broken.
“If you don’t enforce your laws, this is what you are going to get, one agency asking another agency to subvert the law,†said Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stricter enforcement of immigration laws.
___________________________________________________________________ "The letter of the law is a sword that killeth; its intent is a spirit that giveth life."
Illegal Immigrants Chase False Hope to Canada By MONICA DAVEY and ABBY GOODNOUGH New York Times, September 21, 2007
WINDSOR, Ontario, Sept. 20 — Fleeing stepped-up sweeps by the American authorities, illegal immigrants to the United States, mostly Mexican, are arriving in growing numbers at the foot of the bridge in this Canadian border town seeking refugee status.
Still more immigrants, mostly Mexicans living illegally in Florida, have begun trying to make their way past America’s northern border at other locations, the majority of them flying into the airport in Toronto, Canadian officials said Thursday.
The arrivals here began suddenly three weeks ago, just a family or two at first, fueled by the notion — largely unfounded, the authorities here say — that Canada would grant them asylum.
The journey, some of the immigrants said, was first suggested by an organization in Naples, Fla., which charged a fee for assisting with the paperwork. Now the idea has spread on the Internet and through social networks.
By Thursday, at least 200 people had turned up here, across the border from Detroit, with as much of their lives as they could shove into suitcases, boxes and garbage bags in their cars. Thousands more, refugee advocates and Canadian officials say, may be on their way.
Advocates for immigrants issued urgent warnings to Mexicans pondering similar journeys, and expressed fury at groups that were encouraging them. In truth, refugee status for Mexican citizens is relatively unusual in Canada. Only 28 percent of such claims by Mexicans were approved in Canada last year, compared with 47 percent of claims from all nationalities.
“It’s an outrage that money is being taken to provide false information and dangerous information to these people,†said Rivka Augenfeld of the Canadian Council for Refugees, a nonprofit umbrella organization focused on the rights and protections of refugees. “This idea is just out there and growing.â€
Windsor officials, who scrambled to arrange a meeting Thursday in a community center for some of the new arrivals so they could apply for social services, said they were overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught and deeply worried about the days ahead.
Already, they have filled a shelter with 30 single men and are now paying four motels to house families, said Maj. Wilfred Harbin, administrator for the Salvation Army here. Meals were being delivered to the families by taxi cab.
“We have no idea what we are going to do,†said Major Harbin, who said he had heard that as many as 7,000 Mexicans might be seeking refugee status in the coming weeks.
Eddie Francis, the mayor of Windsor, faxed a letter Wednesday to Canadian federal authorities seeking financial help.
“I empathize with the challenges but we don’t have the ability to manage this,†Mr. Francis said. “We have never seen anything like this.â€
Many of the families who drove here said they had learned about the possibility of fleeing to Canada from a Naples, Fla., organization, the Jerusalem Haitian Community Center, which promoted “Information required for Canadian Refugee Status Application†on its Web site. The group, some refugees said, collected $400 for adults and $100 for children and assured them that there would be jobs and shelter.
“I don’t know if what I was told about coming here was correct or not, but what am I going to do about it now?†said Pedro Palafox Marin, who said he paid $800 to the organization before driving around the clock to Windsor with his wife and children.
“In Florida,†Mr. Marin said, “every job I got, everywhere I went, we were getting a lot of pressure from immigration. Being illegal was always on my mind. Now, I can relax.â€
Illegal immigrants have been especially frightened of deportation in recent months, people in Naples and surrounding Collier County said. The community has been filled with tales of immigrants’ being caught and deported and the sending of government letters to employers warning them not to employ illegal immigrants.
The Collier County Sheriff’s Office recently became the first local law enforcement agency in Florida to send its deputies for Immigrations and Custom Enforcement training, which gives them the authority to detain suspected illegal immigrants.
In Naples on Thursday, Jacques Sinjuste, the general director of the Jerusalem Haitian Community Center, denied that he had urged undocumented immigrants to seek asylum in Canada or told them jobs would be waiting there. Mr. Sinjuste said he and a small group of volunteers at the center had merely helped immigrants fill out applications for asylum, he said.
“We fill it out for them and that’s the end of our job,†he said. “Many people are taking the name of my organization with them when they go to Canada and saying I sent them. But I don’t know anything about that.â€
Mr. Sinjuste, a Haitian immigrant who founded the center in 2000, said he had first heard about the possibility of seeking asylum in Canada from a client who brought one of the applications to his office two years ago. Since then, he said, the center has helped about 300 undocumented immigrants fill out Canadian asylum applications, charging $400 per person.
Mr. Sinjuste said he had recently fired a lawyer who worked for the center for describing the charge as a “fee†on the center’s Web site.
“It’s not a fee; it’s a donation,†he said. “Mostly it goes to pay the volunteers who help us do the job and to buy ink and paper.â€
In some cases, he added, money collected from the immigrants helped finance their travel to the Canadian border.
“Right now we do not have anything left,†Mr. Sinjuste said. The center’s bank account, he said, contains about $1,900.
“We don’t want to make money off people,†he said. “My position is to defend minorities, not to rip them off.â€
He said the center, a nonprofit charity, mostly helped Haitian immigrants but had recently seen an influx of Hispanics seeking services.
Haitians have long migrated to Canada, and particularly to Montreal, the largest French language city in North America. But immigration lawyers say Haitians are far more likely to be allowed to stay here as refugees than Mexicans are.
To win refugee status from the Refugee and Immigration Board of Canada, immigrants must show “a well founded fear of persecution†linked to their race, religion, nationality or political background, said Charles Hawkins a spokesman for the board. Last year, 53 percent of Haitians who applied as refugees were admitted here. But even those who are rejected will not be returned to Haiti: the government has put a temporary freeze on deportations there, given Haiti’s turmoil.
No such moratorium exists for Mexico. Although Mexicans who have lived in the United States are permitted to seek asylum in Canada, they will be deported to Mexico if they are turned down.
Several lawyers said they were pessimistic about these immigrants’ odds of being granted asylum, a process that can take 6 months to 2 years. Even so, most of the Mexicans here said they were hopeful. They spent Thursday looking for apartments to move into, cleaning out cars, filling out paperwork.
“Maybe they’ll have compassion for us,†Manuel Gonza***, 46, said of his request for asylum. “All we want to do is live and follow the rules and work hard.†Referring to the help Canadian authorities have already given them, Mr. Gonza***, who traveled from Naples, said, “What we didn’t have in the United States we had here in a second.â€
Carina Gonza***, who drove her red Suburban from Naples a few weeks ago, said she had lived in the United States for 10 years. When she reached a customs agent as she crossed into Canada, she recalled, she felt deeply nervous but also relieved.
Ms. Gonza*** said that she had worked in a grocery store in the United States but that her employers had been asking more and more questions about her documents and her legal status.
“I could smell the freedom when I crossed over,†said Ms. Gonza***, 25. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but the pressure of worrying about getting caught never let you sleep well.â€
Monica Davey reported from Windsor, and Abby Goodnough from Naples. Additional reporting was contributed by Julia Preston, Ian Austen and Lynn Waddell.
___________________________________________________________________ "The letter of the law is a sword that killeth; its intent is a spirit that giveth life."
[COMMENT BY EXPLORA: Heads Up! The following paragraph is from the above-referenced article posted under IME topic by CollegeStudent.
Please be aware that this must be one of many of ICE's evil schemes. If you know of anyone under order of deportation or other immigration issues, please be careful of these type of schemes. I'm sure there's many more we're unaware of. If anyone knows of other tactics used by ICE, please post.]
...ICE agents, Monroy said, claimed that they would not arrest him and his sister if they disclosed their dad's whereabouts. So Monroy, an undocumented college student, told them they could find his dad working at a construction site.
U.S. BARRED AGAIN FROM CRACKING DOWN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS' BOSSES
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, October 1, 2007
(10-01) 17:32 PDT SAN FRANCISCO - A second federal judge blocked the Bush administration today from notifying the nation's employers that they face possible prosecution for knowingly employing illegal immigrants unless they fire workers whose Social Security numbers do not match federal records.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer extended for up to 10 days a temporary restraining order issued Aug. 31 by another federal judge in San Francisco, preventing the rule from taking effect. Breyer said he would rule within those 10 days on whether to issue a preliminary injunction, sought by labor unions and business groups, that would suspend the administration's plan indefinitely.
His comments during a two-hour hearing in San Francisco suggested that he was likely to issue the injunction.
"There would be irreparable harm, serious irreparable injury," to legally employed workers if the government went ahead with its plan to send 140,000 letters to employers of 8 million workers in the next few months, Breyer said.
At another point, he told a government lawyer that the advice the letter contains for employers is "not an accurate statement of the law."
Justice Department attorney Thomas Dupre said the government objected to the extension of the restraining order, which was scheduled to expire today. Breyer replied that the government could ask a higher court to intervene. Dupre did not indicate his intentions.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the rule Aug. 10 as a means of toughening the little-enforced 1986 law that subjects employers to criminal prosecution or civil penalties for knowingly employing illegal immigrants.
Employers can satisfy the law under current rules if they obtain specified documents from newly hired workers. After that, the government notifies employers if the Social Security number of a worker's W-2 tax form doesn't match the number in the Social Security database. That worker does not have earnings credited for Social Security benefits, but no action is taken against the employer.
Under the new rule, employers receiving such a "no-match" letter would have to fire the worker or face possible civil fines and criminal penalties if the discrepancy isn't cleared up within 93 days.
Unions that filed the suit argued that the rule would lead to firings of thousands of legal employees who couldn't navigate government bureaucracies to resolve differences in Social Security numbers in the required time, and would also give rise to wholesale discrimination against workers with foreign names or appearances.
They said employers or the government commonly make clerical errors in recording Social Security numbers, and that name changes after marriages or divorces can also result in "no-match" letters.
The unions also argued that the 1986 law required only a document check of newly hired workers' immigration status, and did not authorize the government to order additional verification or use Social Security records for immigration enforcement.
But the government said the new rule merely gives employers one option to resolve uncertainties about their employees' status and avoid liability.
Court Extends Order That Blocks Government From Implementing Flawed Social Security No Match Rule (10/1/2007)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: media@aclu.org
SAN FRANCISCO - After a hearing today, a federal judge extended an order that temporarily stops the government from implementing a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rule that would cause U.S. citizens and other authorized workers to lose their jobs, and which would illegally use error-prone social security records as a tool for immigration enforcement. The judge's order also stops the Social Security Administration (SSA) from beginning to send notices to approximately 140,000 employers across the country notifying them of the new rule, which would impact approximately eight million workers. The temporary restraining order is not to exceed ten days.
"We are pleased that the judge saw the need to continue to block this rule that would lead to increased exploitation of workers,†said John Sweeney, President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). “More than 70% of SSA discrepancies refer to U.S. citizens but the DHS regulation would encourage employers to fire any worker based on these erroneous discrepancies, especially if she has an accent or is perceived to be foreign born.â€
Today’s order comes as a result of a lawsuit filed in August by the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the Central Labor Council of Alameda County along with other local labor movements. In
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