PRINCE WILLIAM IMMIGRATION, HOUSING ILLS SEEN AS LINKED
By Nick Miroff Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 5, 2007; Page A01
Prince William County's home prices and its Hispanic population rose in tandem during the first half of this decade, a result of a home-building frenzy that became a powerful magnet for immigrant laborers. They arrived by the thousands, sending housing values even higher.
Many did not come legally. But in the blur of swinging hammers and flying dollar signs, that detail was often overlooked. Illegal immigrants had little trouble finding jobs and not much trouble getting mortgages.
That arrangement has unraveled. Prince William has some of the highest foreclosure rates in the region, with a glut of unsold, depreciating homes. And its elected officials have embarked on one of the most ambitious efforts in the nation to drive out and deport illegal immigrants.
That combination -- an excess of housing and new anti-illegal immigrant policies -- is likely to exacerbate the county's weak real estate market, agents and lenders say. Regardless of one's views on immigration, they say, simple arithmetic dictates that if a lot of residents leave the county, the housing meltdown will only worsen.
"If I'm not welcome somewhere, I'm going to sell my house," said Jose Luis Semidey, a real estate agent whose business in Prince William shut down in August when he laid off 40 employees and moved the company to Reston. The county's anti-illegal immigrant measures, which he and a coalition of other Latino businessmen are fighting, "have accelerated the collapse of the real estate market in the minority community," he said.
In August, the region had the lowest unemployment rate of any metropolitan area in the country. But stories abound in Prince William about Hispanic families leaving for Maryland, the Carolinas, Texas and elsewhere. There are no hard numbers indicating if many residents have left or how many are likely to leave, nor is there a clear picture of what their departure could mean for the county's retailers and other businesses.
The town of Riverside, N.J., tried to target illegal immigrants through several measures last year but reversed course last month under legal and economic pressure and voted to rescind the laws. When a sizable portion of the town's Latin American immigrants left, several businesses closed, and others took a big hit.
In Prince William, an early indicator of the impact of the anti-illegal immigrant policies is likely to be seen in the real estate sector, and the county is a gloomy place in a grim regional market. In two years, from August 2005 to August 2007, home sales fell 66 percent in Prince William, 52 percent in Loudoun County and 49 percent in Fairfax County. The number of properties on the market in Prince William more than doubled, from 2,753 to 6,515.
About 900 of the homes on the market in August were "properties in distress": bank-owned or sliding into foreclosure, said Michael T. Minnery, president of the Prince William Association of Realtors. That is a tenfold increase from 2005, he said.
Many distressed properties are in Zip codes with high concentrations of Latino residents. One county resident told supervisors at a board meeting this week that a house up for auction on her street didn't draw a single bidder, despite an opening price of $259,000. The house used to be worth $400,000, she told the board.
Minnery said it is too soon to know whether Prince William's recently introduced anti-illegal immigrant measures are driving Hispanic residents away or discouraging potential buyers from moving to the county. The association does not have an official position on the policies, but Minnery said he thinks that "anything that puts limits on the housing market is bad."
"Everyone should be able to own a home in this country," he said. "Everyone has the right to home ownership, no matter if they are a U.S. citizen or not."
That was the prevailing view in Prince William for years, said several lenders who worked with Hispanic immigrants. Customers with little more than a tax identification number and a pay stub were able to secure 100 percent financing on mortgages. The lack of a driver's license -- let alone a green card -- was hardly an obstacle to getting loans.
To cover high mortgages on low wages, many immigrant families rented rooms in their homes to men working in the construction industry.
"All those people who rented rooms are gone," said Carlos Aragon, a Woodbridge real estate agent who said he sells one-third as many properties as he did two years ago. "And now these measures come along to finish killing off the market," he said.
County supervisors unanimously approved a resolution in July seeking to deny certain public services to illegal immigrants. They also directed police to check the residency status of anyone caught breaking the law if there is probable cause to think a suspect is an illegal immigrant. Although the measures have not been implemented, Hispanic leaders and residents say the policies have created a climate of fear in the Latino community and will lead to racial profiling.
The board has not discussed the potential impact of the measures on the county's housing market, said Supervisor W.S. Covington III (R-Brentsville). But Covington said Prince William would save on school expenditures and other costs if thousands of illegal immigrants leave.
"How many are going to leave naturally because of opportunities in the housing market drying up, and how many are leaving because of our policies?" Covington said in an interview. "If there is a significant number of departures, I think we'll be a more financially stable county."
Nearly 20 percent of the county's population is Hispanic, according to the most recent census estimates. Covington said he thinks that a significant portion of all county residents -- perhaps 7 to 8 percent -- are illegal immigrants. If one-third to one-half leave the county voluntarily or by deportation, he said, "maybe you do have some real savings, or you just don't grow as much."
"I don't see it as a bad thing," he said. Complaints about overcrowding in schools and neighborhoods have been a driving force behind the county's new measures.
But many real estate agents shudder at the prospects of a drop in population and more foreclosures. With little equity in their properties and adjustable-rate mortgages adjusting sharply upward, some immigrant families are gathering up their belongings and walking away from their homes in the middle of the night, several real estate agents have said.
"These people are slammed," said Mary Donaldson, a former mortgage settlement consultant. She's now a loss-mitigation specialist who negotiates refinancing agreements and short-sales for homeowners who fail to sell their properties at the original purchase price. "They've lost their jobs because the construction industry has slowed or shut down, and when they get into trouble, they don't read their mail. A lot of them just don't understand the process, and they're so afraid that they can't talk to the bank."
Several of Donaldson's Hispanic customers have recently cited Prince William's policies as a reason to move.
"They're not going to stay if some of their family members are being forced out because of the new laws," she said. "I think the banks may end up with a lot of houses they didn't suspect they'd end up with."
But credit concerns, not immigration policies, are on the minds of most market watchers eyeing Prince William, said Rob Heltzel, president of the local chapter of the Virginia Mortgage Lenders Association.
Is immigration policy "being wildly talked about in my sector of the industry?" he said. "No. Our conversations are purely about the availability of funds."
As for the accusation that county supervisors have exacerbated the county's real estate pains, Heltzel said he doubts that the struggling industry factored into their policy decisions.
"I think the issue was a lot greater than the housing market," he said.
A LOCKUP FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT LAWBREAKERS SOUNDS GOOD IN AN ELECTION YEAR. BUT IS IT SOUND POLICY?
The Washington Post Editorial Friday, October 5, 2007; Page A20
VIRGINIA prides itself on being a well-governed state. So why would it get into the business of building what would be the nation's first state-run, dedicated detention center for illegal immigrants -- especially when the federal government, which has primary responsibility for immigration matters, isn't asking for such a facility and may not want one?
On its face, the answer has to do with the absence of any workable national immigration policy, a state of affairs that has resulted in the presence of 12 million undocumented immigrants in states and localities that are increasingly trying to fill in the holes that the federal government's failure has left. One such hole is the inability of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deal with the thousands of illegal immigrants who are charged with or convicted of crimes by state authorities every year. Of about 12,000 such individuals incarcerated in Virginia last year, ICE picked up just 690 of them, according to state officials; most others, having been charged with or convicted of crimes that do not carry long prison sentences, were released.
According to state Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, a Virginia Beach Republican, that is the impetus behind a proposal before the State Crime Commission, which he chairs, to build a detention center of up to 1,000 beds specifically for illegal immigrants. Since the feds, who have bed space for just 27,500 such detainees across the country, lack the resources to hold illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, Virginia could help by supplying more capacity, says Mr. Stolle.
There is a real problem here. States, including Virginia, have been frustrated by ICE's policies regarding illegal immigrants charged with crimes. Sometimes the agency will seek a detention order for an immigrant charged with driving under the influence, sometimes not. But the idea of a state-run detention facility is somewhat fanciful. It has the look of playing into the Virginia Republicans' electoral strategy for this fall's legislative and local races, which is to seize on illegal immigration as a wedge issue.
For one thing, there is little chance that ICE would be able to furnish the state with a definitive list of the offenses for which it would seek a detention order, without which, Mr. Stolle says, a state-run center is a non-starter. In addition, the financing notion floated by Virginia officials -- that ICE would assume both the construction and operating costs of a detention center by means of a daily payment per detainee -- is doubtful at best. In the case of illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes, the state can and should try, convict and sentence them to long terms in prison. But it makes no sense to lock up every illegal immigrant who commits a garden-variety violation, even in states where politicians are feeling the heat on what has become a hot-button political issue.
To read today’s testimonies, listen to podcasts about inadequate medical care in immigration detention and learn more about the ACLU’s work to stop mistreatment in detention go to:
SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT MAKES MAJOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT BUST
Oct 5, 2007 08:12 AM EDT
COLUMBIA, Tenn. - The Maury County Sheriff's Department rounded up half a dozen suspected illegal immigrants.
Deputies said Thursday's arrests stemmed from a complaint by a construction business owner that the men had used false documents to gain employment.
It's the first major bust of suspected illegal immigrants since the department was sued in federal court earlier this year.
That suit accused deputies and federal immigration agents of entering the homes of illegal immigrants without warrants and unlawfully detaining them. _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ BUSINESS REPORTS SUSPECTED ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
Oct 6, 2007 01:55 AM EDT
COLUMBIA, Tenn. - The Maury County Sheriff's Office has arrested dozens of undocumented immigrants this year.
But the latest arrest is the first of its kind.
This time, deputies received help from the public.
The sheriff's office has worked with agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track down undocumented immigrants. The agencies have held several raids at construction sites, during traffic stops and at immigrants' homes.
This time the information came to them.
Local human rights groups said a recent raid is just the latest in a deliberate effort to target the Hispanic community.
"This is the first time a business has called us and said hey, help us out," said Capt. Nathan Johns of the Maury County Sheriff's Office.
Johns said a local construction company contacted him earlier this week.
"They had hired some workers who had given them fraudulent documents in order for them to hire them," Johns said.
The company's owner suspected the men emigrated illegally. ICE agents analyzed the documents and decided to arrest the six men with the help of the Maury County Sheriff's Office.
So far, more than 60 illegal immigrants have been arrested in Maury County this year.
"We think this is an immigrant witch hunt," said Catalina Nieto, public awareness coordinator at the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. "They're encouraging suspicion of people who sound different. They're targeting foreign-born people."
Nieto thinks the sheriff's office is encouraging employers to turn in employees just because they look different.
"There is a trend in Maury County," Nieto said. "We've seen the raids. Now this. ...There is a factor of fear in the community."
Nieto believes the crackdown is unfair to immigrants in the country legally. She said it also hurts community because immigrants are a major part of the work force.
"I want to make sure Tennessee knows the contributions that immigrants make to the state," she said.
The sheriff's office did not release the name of the business that gave them the tip because that business is helping them on other ongoing investigations.
The six men arrested Thursday were held in Maury County Jail. They will be transferred to federal custody.
Court asked to require warrants for immigration raids
BY SUSANA ENRIQUEZ | susana.enriquez@newsday.com
Several families and individuals from Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester counties filed a request Friday for a temporary restraining order to prevent federal immigration officials from conducting further raids without court-issued search warrants.
"This cannot be allowed to go on unless they seek permission, as they should, from the courts," said Foster Maer, an attorney for the Manhattan-based Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed the request along with a private law firm.
The request, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, comes on the heels of a string of operations in Nassau County by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that drew criticism from Latino and immigration advocates, as well as Nassau County Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey.
Mulvey said agents acted like "cowboys" by pointing their weapons at officers and rounding up undocumented immigrants who were not named in warrants.
The request for the restraining order names 27 plaintiffs who are also listed in a class-action lawsuit filed Sept. 20 that claims that raids in Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester counties in February, March and September violated their constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches by the government.
It asks that agents not enter or search homes without a court-issued search warrant.
"No one has ever seen any warrant authorizing ICE for them to be arrested," said attorney Donna Gordon of Manhattan, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The request also asks that they not contact, retaliate against, arrest, prosecute or deport the plaintiffs or any witnesses.
"They have threatened our clients with coming back, [saying], 'You haven't seen the last of us,'" Maer said.
Lastly, the request asked that ICE not transfer any detainees to out-of-state facilities without notifying the court and the plaintiff's attorney.
Mark Thorn, a spokesman for ICE, said the action is under review. The U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District, he said, will be representing the agency in court.
"We believe that a review of the law, the facts and the merits will be in favor of ICE and its authorities," Thorn said.
The action was applauded by Latino advocates.
"Although it's a little late, it certainly is needed," said the Rev. Allan Ramirez, a pastor at Brookville Reformed Church. "Someone has to hold ICE accountable for what they are doing."
___________________________________________________________________ "The letter of the law is a sword that killeth; its intent is a spirit that giveth life."
THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE NOW CAN ENFORCE FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS
By KEVIN CANFIELD World Staff Writer 9/19/2007
Twenty-seven Tulsa County sheriff's deputies graduated Tuesday from a training program that will allow them to enforce federal immigration laws.
The Sheriff's Office is the first law enforcement agency in the state to take part in the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement's program.
"I feel today . . . that Tulsa truly has become a safer place -- not just the city of Tulsa, but the entire county of Tulsa," Undersheriff Brian Edwards said.
The Sheriff's Office checks the nationality of everyone who is booked into the jail.
With the training complete, it will now be able to access ICE records directly when a person's immigration status is unclear.
Previously, the Sheriff's Office had to call ICE for that information, a process that was often time-consuming and cumbersome.
In addition, deputies now will be able to place and release detainers -- or holds -- on inmates who are found to be in violation of immigration laws.
They also will assist in the deportation process.
The Sheriff's Office will be working in conjunction with and under the supervision of ICE.
The training program was paid for by ICE, with the Sheriff's Office covering the salaries of its employees.
District Attorney Tim Harris stressed that the program is not about singling out a particular group of people.
"Let me reiterate: This is not racial profiling. Let's just put that to rest," he said.
Harris said the program simply allows law enforcement officers to do a better job of protecting people.
"Law enforcement for eons has used criminal history and criminal information to identify individuals that make our lives unsafe," he said.
"This is just one more tool in the tool box."
U.S. Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla., who has made immigration a top issue, said the program will give the Sheriff's Office the authority, training and tools it needs to crack down on the growing criminal illegal immigrant population in Tulsa County.
"With the training these Tulsa County sheriff's deputies received, criminal illegal aliens will be put on notice that their days of harming our communities and evading the law is coming to an end," he said.
The Sheriff's Office will assume the immigration duties immediately.
Kevin Canfield 581-8313 kevin.canfield@tulsaworld.com
FEDERAL JUDGE PUTS BRAKES ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN
By Javier Erik Olvera Mercury News Article Launched: 10/10/2007 04:17:21 PM PDT
Dealing a major blow to the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, a federal judge Wednesday put on hold new rules that would require businesses to fire employees whose names don't match their Social Security numbers.
U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer, warning that the push could hurt businesses and documented workers, issued a preliminary injunction to stop any penalties until he can hand down a final ruling on whether they are legal, likely in several months.
The effort, announced this summer, was the focus of a renewed push by President Bush to combat illegal immigration in the wake of Congress' failure to pass a comprehensive immigration reform policy. If the government mounts any appeals, the case could carry on through the 2008 presidential campaign and into the next administration, leaving the ultimate fate of the plan murky.
Breyer, in his 22-page ruling, said the plan "would result in irreparable harm to innocent worker and employers." He said it would place a financial burden on employers and lead to legal workers being fired because of errors.
Immigrant and employee rights advocates - pushing for a pathway to citizenship for the United States' estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants - hailed Breyer's ruling a triumph in their quest.
"Workers scored a significant victory against the Bush administration," said Ana Avendano, an attorney with the AFL-CIO, one of several human rights, labor and business groups that sued in U.S. District Court in San Francisco to block the plan.
In a statement issued shortly after the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security, the agency tasked with enforcing the penalties, said it was "disappointed" and that the Department of Justice is reviewing all options, including an appeal.
Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group calling for tougher border security, says the government should do just that.
"The judge seems to be overstepping his authority," said Mehlman, citing the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which made it unlawful for employers to hire undocumented immigrants.
Wednesday's decision presents yet another hurdle for the White House plan, which administration officials have conceded could be difficult to enforce because of communication gaps.
Among the challenges, activists and illegal immigrants say news of the plan, which has been well-documented in countries such as Guatemala and Mexico, hasn't kept people from entering the United States illegally. Also, in many cases, illegal workers could still hop from job to job without being caught.
The crackdown relies on letters that the Social Security Administration sends annually to employers who have several employees whose Social Security numbers don't match their names, either because of fraud or human error.
The so-called "no match" letters were largely ignored by employers until the Department of Homeland Security announced this summer it would add another letter informing employers they had 90 days to fire workers whose IDs couldn't be verified or face punishment, including fines and prosecution.
The Social Security Administration planned to begin mailing 140,000 no-match letters - affecting more than 8 million employees - to business across the country in mid-September.
But the lawsuit - filed Aug. 30 - led Breyer to bar the enforcement letters from being sent.
Breyer wrote the plan would place a financial burden on employers by requiring them to develop a system to check mismatches and could result in the firing of people legally authorized to work in the country.
"There can be no doubt that the effects of the rule's implementation will be severe," wrote Breyer, noting that it could have take longer than 90 days for some people to resolve errors between their Social Security numbers and names.
The Social Security Administration did not have an official statement, and is still considering whether to send the no match letters, without the enforcement letters, as it has done for several decades, said spokesman Lowell Kepke.
Business leaders nationwide also were pleased with the injunction, saying, among other things, that it will buy them time as the nation pursues the next phase of immigration reform.
The state's more than $32 billion agricultural industry, which relies on immigrants for the majority of the 450,000 employees it needs each harvest, would have been among the hardest hit.
Experts estimate that as many as 70 percent of California farmworkers use false paperwork - known in the fields as "papeles chuecos" - to receive their weekly checks.
The California Farm Bureau - representing 92,000 farmers - is now looking at supporting several possibilities, including immigration policies that would allow field workers to continue working as well as guest-worker programs.
"This gives us breathing room to look for other options," said Jack King, the farm bureau's national public policy director.
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Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose agency issued the rule, said the government would consider its options, including an appeal to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
PRELIMINARY INJUNCION ON IMPLEMENTATION OF NO-MATCH RULE
October 10, 2007
On October 10, 2007, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted a motion for a preliminary injunction. Although a preliminary injunction is not a final adjudication of the merits of the claims, it does serve to prevent SSA and DHS from implementing the no-match rule until the issues addressed in the injunction order are resolved in a trial on the merits.
The injunction order does not prevent the Social Security Administration from sending out the kind of no-match letters that it had been sending out for over a decade before this rule. To do so, SSA would have to remove DHS's no-match insert and all language related to the no-match rule from the letter.
US District Judge Breyer's recently decided to grant the motion for a preliminary injunction of the DHS final rule regarding no- match letters (see below in news). This will likely not stop the use of social security data by the government to weed out the undocumented as well as ensnare individuals authorized to work in the US. Despite the government's admission that the Social Security Administration's system is rife with errors, heightened scrutiny of social security data will likely emerge within the scope of I-9 audits. While employers across the board may be spared from the rule because of the preliminary injunction, those that face an audit will bear the additional burdens of the temporarily enjoined rule by administrative interpretation during the course of the audit. We suspect that that has already begun in I-9 audits and will likely increase with time. Immigration attorneys would be wise to plan accordingly.
We welcome readers to share their opinion and ideas with us by writing to mailto:editor@ilw.com. _________________________________________________________________
Likewise, the DHS is poised to undertake employer record "audits" based on Form I-9's. Haha, it calls for another flurry of labor group lawsuits? Talk of aiming your guns at a moving target! Go ahead, while fruits and vegetables are rotting in the fields. It's a joke. It's funny. And that's an understatement.
___________________________________________________________________ "The letter of the law is a sword that killeth; its intent is a spirit that giveth life."
Originally posted by Rough Neighbor: Likewise, the DHS is poised to undertake employer record "audits" based on Form I-9's. Haha, it calls for another flurry of labor group lawsuits? Talk of aiming your guns at a moving target! Go ahead, while fruits and vegetables are rotting in the fields. It's a joke. It's funny. And that's an understatement.
This is what our vegetables will look like if we lose the migrants as those shown in the photos. The anti-immigrants need to view these photos and envision themselves in these peoples' shoes. They will need to memorize a phrase first. It goes like this... ANTI-IMMIGRANTS BEND OVER AND REACH!!!
This message has been edited. Last edited by: explora,
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