Economic, demographic and social changes in Mexico are suppressing illegal immigration as much as the poor economy or legal crackdowns in the United States.
By DAMIEN CAVE
The New York Times
July 6, 2011
AGUA NEGRA, Mexico — The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive.
A growing body of evidence suggests that a mix of developments — expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families — are suppressing illegal traffic as much as economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the United States.
Here in the red-earth highlands of Jalisco, one of Mexico’s top three states for emigration over the past century, a new dynamic has emerged. For a typical rural family like the Orozcos, heading to El Norte without papers is no longer an inevitable rite of passage. Instead, their homes are filling up with returning relatives; older brothers who once crossed illegally are awaiting visas; and the youngest Orozcos are staying put.
“I’m not going to go to the States because I’m more concerned with my studies,” said Angel Orozco, 18. Indeed, at the new technological institute where he is earning a degree in industrial engineering, all the students in a recent class said they were better educated than their parents — and that they planned to stay in Mexico rather than go to the United States.
Douglas S. Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton, an extensive, long-term survey in Mexican emigration hubs, said his research showed that interest in heading to the United States for the first time had fallen to its lowest level since at least the 1950s. “No one wants to hear it, but the flow has already stopped,” Mr. Massey said, referring to illegal traffic. “For the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.”
The decline in illegal immigration, from a country responsible for roughly 6 of every 10 illegal immigrants in the United States, is stark. The Mexican census recently discovered four million more people in Mexico than had been projected, which officials attributed to a sharp decline in emigration.
American census figures analyzed by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center also show that the illegal Mexican population in the United States has shrunk and that fewer than 100,000 illegal border-crossers and visa-violators from Mexico settled in the United States in 2010, down from about 525,000 annually from 2000 to 2004. Although some advocates for more limited immigration argue that the Pew studies offer estimates that do not include short-term migrants, most experts agree that far fewer illegal immigrants have been arriving in recent years.
The question is why. Experts and American politicians from both parties have generally looked inward, arguing about the success or failure of the buildup of border enforcement and tougher laws limiting illegal immigrants’ rights — like those recently passed in Alabama and Arizona. Deportations have reached record highs as total border apprehensions and apprehensions of Mexicans have fallen by more than 70 percent since 2000.
But Mexican immigration has always been defined by both the push (from Mexico) and the pull (of the United States). The decision to leave home involves a comparison, a wrenching cost-benefit analysis, and just as a Mexican baby boom and economic crises kicked off the emigration waves in the 1980s and ’90s, research now shows that the easing of demographic and economic pressures is helping keep departures in check.
In simple terms, Mexican families are smaller than they had once been. The pool of likely migrants is shrinking. Despite the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, birth control efforts have pushed down the fertility rate to about 2 children per woman from 6.8 in 1970, according to government figures. So while Mexico added about one million new potential job seekers annually in the 1990s, since 2007 that figure has fallen to an average of 800,000, according to government birth records. By 2030, it is expected to drop to 300,000.
Even in larger families like the Orozcos’ — Angel is the 9th of 10 children — the migration calculation has changed. Crossing “mojado,” wet or illegally, has become more expensive and more dangerous, particularly with drug cartels dominating the border. At the same time, educational and employment opportunities have greatly expanded in Mexico. Per capita gross domestic product and family income have each jumped more than 45 percent since 2000, according to one prominent economist, Roberto Newell. Despite all the depictions of Mexico as “nearly a failed state,” he argued, “the conventional wisdom is wrong.”
A significant expansion of legal immigration — aided by American consular officials — is also under way. Congress may be debating immigration reform, but in Mexico, visas without a Congressionally mandated cap on how many people can enter have increased from 2006 to 2010, compared with the previous five years.
State Department figures show that Mexicans who have become American citizens have legally brought in 64 percent more immediate relatives, 220,500 from 2006 through 2010, compared with the figures for the previous five years. Tourist visas are also being granted at higher rates of around 89 percent, up from 67 percent, while American farmers have legally hired 75 percent more temporary workers since 2006.
Edward McKeon, the top American official for consular affairs in Mexico, said he had focused on making legal passage to the United States easier in an effort to prevent people from giving up and going illegally. He has even helped those who were previously illegal overcome bans on entering the United States.
“If people are trying to do the right thing,” Mr. McKeon said, “we need to send the signal that we’ll reward them.”
Hard Years in Jalisco
When Angel Orozco’s grandfather considered leaving Mexico in the 1920s, his family said, he wrestled with one elemental question: Will it be worth it?
At that point and for decades to come, yes was the obvious answer. In the 1920s and ’30s — when Paul S. Taylor came to Jalisco from California for his landmark study of Mexican emigration — Mexico’s central highlands promised little more than hard living. Jobs were scarce and paid poorly. Barely one of three adults could read. Families of 10, 12 and even 20 were common, and most children did not attend school.
Comparatively, the United States looked like a dreamland of technology and riches: Mr. Taylor found that the wages paid by the railroads, where most early migrants found legal work, were five times what could be earned on farms in Arandas, the municipality that includes Agua Negra.
Orozco family members still talk about the benefits of that first trip. Part of the land the extended family occupies today was purchased with American earnings from the 1920s. When Angel’s father, Antonio, went north to pick cotton in the 1950s and ’60s with the Bracero temporary worker program, which accepted more than 400,000 laborers a year at its peak, working in the United States made even more sense. The difference in wages had reached 10 to 1. Arandas was still dirt poor.
Antonio, with just a few years of schooling, was one of many who felt that with a back as strong as a wooden church door, he could best serve his family from across the border.
“I sent my father money so he could build his house,” Antonio said.
Legal status then meant little. After the Bracero program ended in 1964, Antonio said, he crossed back and forth several times without documentation. Passage was cheap. Work lasting for a few months or a year was always plentiful. So when his seven sons started to become adults in the 1990s, he encouraged them to go north as well. Around 2001, he and two of his sons were all in the United States working — part of what is now recognized as one of the largest immigration waves in American history.
But even then, illegal immigration was becoming less attractive. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration added fences and federal agents to what were then the main crossing corridors beyond Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. The enforcement push, continued by President George W. Bush and President Obama, helped drive up smuggling prices from around $700 in the late 1980s to nearly $2,000 a decade later, and the costs continued to climb, according to research from the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. It also shifted traffic to more dangerous desert areas near Arizona.
Antonio said the risks hit home when his nephew Alejandro disappeared in the Sonoran Desert around 2002. A father of one and with a pregnant wife, Alejandro had been promised work by a friend. It took years for the authorities to find his body in the arid brush south of Tucson. Even now, no one knows how he died.
But for the Orozcos, border enforcement was not the major deterrent. Andrés Orozco, 28, a middle son who first crossed illegally in 2000, said that while rising smuggling costs and border crime were worries, there were always ways to avoid American agents. In fact, while the likelihood of apprehension has increased in recent years, 92 to 98 percent of those who try to cross eventually succeed, according to research by Wayne A. Cornelius and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego.
A Period of Progress
Another important factor is Mexico itself. Over the past 15 years, this country once defined by poverty and beaches has progressed politically and economically in ways rarely acknowledged by Americans debating immigration. Even far from the coasts or the manufacturing sector at the border, democracy is better established, incomes have generally risen and poverty has declined.
Here in Jalisco, a tequila boom that accelerated through the 1990s created new jobs for farmers cutting agave and for engineers at the stills. Other businesses followed. In 2003, when David Fitzgerald, a migration expert at the University of California, San Diego, came to Arandas, he found that the wage disparity with the United States had narrowed: migrants in the north were collecting 3.7 times what they could earn at home.
That gap has recently shrunk again. The recession cut into immigrant earnings in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, even as wages have risen in Mexico, according to World Bank figures. Jalisco’s quality of life has improved in other ways, too. About a decade ago, the cluster of the Orozco ranches on Agua Negra’s outskirts received electricity and running water. New census data shows a broad expansion of such services: water and trash collection, once unheard of outside cities, are now available to more than 90 percent of Jalisco’s homes. Dirt floors can now be found in only 3 percent of the state’s houses, down from 12 percent in 1990.
Still, education represents the most meaningful change. The census shows that throughout Jalisco, the number of senior high schools or preparatory schools for students aged 15 to 18 increased to 724 in 2009, from 360 in 2000, far outpacing population growth. The Technological Institute of Arandas, where Angel studies engineering, is now one of 13 science campuses created in Jalisco since 2000 — a major reason professionals in the state, with a bachelor’s degree or higher, also more than doubled to 821,983 in 2010, up from 405,415 in 2000.
Similar changes have occurred elsewhere. In the poor southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, for instance, professional degree holders rose to 525,874 from 244,322 in 2000.
And the data from secondary schools like the one the Orozcos attended in Agua Negra suggests that the trend will continue. Thanks to a Mexican government program called “schools of quality” the campus of three buildings painted sunflower yellow has five new computers for its 71 students, along with new books.
Teachers here, in classrooms surrounded by blue agave fields, say that enrollment is down slightly because families are having fewer children, and instead of sending workers north, some families have moved to other Mexican cities — a trend also found in academic field research. Around half the students now move on to higher schooling, up from 30 percent a decade ago.
“They’re identifying more with Mexico,” said Agustín Martínez González, a teacher. “With more education, they’re more likely to accept reality here and try to make it better.”
Some experts agree. Though Mexicans with Ph.D.’s tend to leave for bigger paychecks abroad, “if you have a college degree you’re much more likely to stay in Mexico because that is surely more valuable in Mexico,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.
If these trends — particularly Mexican economic growth — continue over the next decade, Mr. Passel said, changes in the migration dynamic may become even clearer. “At the point where the U.S. needs the workers again,” he said, “there will be fewer of them.”
Praying for Papers
The United States, of course, has not lost its magnetic appeal. Illegal traffic from Central America has not dropped as fast as it has from Mexico, and even in Jalisco town plazas are now hangouts for men in their 30s with tattoos, oversize baseball caps and a desire to work again in California or another state. Bars with American names — several have adopted Shrek — signal a back and forth that may never disappear.
But more Mexicans are now traveling legally. Several Orozco cousins have received temporary worker visas in the past few years. In March, peak migration season for Jalisco, there were 15 people from Agua Negra at the border waiting to cross.
“And 10 had visas,” said Ramón Orozco, 30, another son of Antonio who works in the town’s government office after being the first in his family to go to college. “A few years ago there would have been 100, barely any with proper documents.”
This is not unique to Agua Negra. A few towns away at the hillside shrine of St. Toribio, the patron saint of migrants, prayers no longer focus on asking God to help sons, husbands or brothers crossing the desert. “Now people are praying for papers,” said María Guadalupe, 47, a longtime volunteer.
How did this happen?
Partly, emigrants say, illegal life in the United States became harder. Laws restricting illegal immigrants’ rights or making it tougher for employers to hire them have passed in more than a dozen states since 2006. The same word-of-mouth networks that used to draw people north are now advising against the journey. “Without papers all you’re thinking about is, when are the police going to stop you or what other risks are you going to face,” said Andrés Orozco.
Andrés, a horse lover who drives a teal pickup from Texas, is one of many Orozcos now pinning their hopes on a visa. And for the first time in years, the chances have improved.
Mexican government estimates based on survey data show not just a decrease in migration overall, but also an increase in border crossings with documents. In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, 38 percent of the total attempted crossings, legal and illegal, were made with documents. In 2007, only 20 percent involved such paperwork.
The Mexican data counts attempted crossings, not people, and does not differentiate between categories of visas. Nor does it mention how long people stayed, nor whether all the documents were valid.
Advocates of limited immigration worry that the issuing of more visas creates a loophole that can be abused. Between 40 and 50 percent of the illegal immigrants in the United States entered legally with visas they overstayed, as of 2005, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
More recent American population data, however, shows no overall increase in the illegal Mexican population. That suggests that most of the temporary visas issued to Mexicans — 1.1 million in 2010 — are being used legitimately even as American statistics show clearly that visa opportunities have increased.
Easing a Chaotic Process
One man, Mr. McKeon, the minister counselor who oversees all consular affairs in Mexico, has played a significant role in that expansion.
A lawyer with a white beard and a quick tongue, Mr. McKeon arrived in the summer of 2007. And after more than 30 years working in consular affairs in China, Japan and elsewhere, he quickly decided to make changes in Mexico. Working within administrative rules, State Department officials say, he re-engineered the visa program to de-emphasize the affordability standard that held that visas were to be denied to those who could not prove an income large enough to support travel to the United States.
In a country where a person can cross the border with a 25-cent toll, Mr. McKeon said, the income question was irrelevant. “You have to look at everyone individually,” he said in an interview at his office in Mexico City. “I don’t want people to say, here’s the income floor, over yes, lower no.”
This led to an almost immediate decrease in the rejection rate for tourist visas. Before he arrived, around 32 percent were turned down. Since 2008, the rate has been around 11 percent.
Mr. McKeon — praised by some immigration lawyers for bringing consistency to a chaotic process — was also instrumental in expanding the temporary visa program for agricultural workers. Called H-2A, this is one of the few visa categories without a cap.
Around 2006, as the debate over immigration became more contentious, employers concentrated in the Southeast began applying for more workers through the program. Mr. McKeon began hosting conferences with all the stakeholders and deployed new technology and additional staff members. The waiting time for several visa categories decreased, government reports show. For H-2As, Mexican workers can now receive their documents the same day that they apply.
Mr. McKeon also pushed to make the program more attractive to Mexicans who might otherwise cross the border illegally. Two years ago, he eliminated a $100 visa issuance fee that was supposed to be covered by employers but was usually paid by workers. And he insisted that his staff members change their approach with Mexicans who had previously worked illegally in the United States.
“The message used to be, if you were working illegally, lie about it or don’t even try to go legally because we won’t let you,” said one senior State Department official. “What we’re saying now is, tell us you did it illegally, be honest and we’ll help you.”
Specifically, consulate workers dealing with H-2A applicants who were once illegal — making them subject to 3- or 10-year bans depending on the length of their illegal stay — now regularly file electronic waiver applications to the United States Customs and Border Patrol. About 85 percent of these are now approved, Mr. McKeon said, so that in 2010 most of the 52,317 Mexican workers with H-2A visas had previously been in the United States illegally.
“It’s not easy to go through this process,” Mr. McKeon said, “and I think people who are willing to go through all of that and risk going back to the United States where they have to pay taxes, and withholding, I think we should look favorably on them.”
Speaking as the son of a New Jersey plumber, he added: “My bias is toward people who sweat at work because I really think that’s the backbone of our country. With limited resources, I’d rather devote our efforts to keeping out a drug kingpin than trying to find someone who works a couple of months at Cousin Hector’s body shop.”
A Divisive Topic
In the heated debate over immigration, however, this topic is inevitably divisive. Pro-immigrant groups, when told of the expansion to legal immigration, say it still may not be enough in a country where the baby boomers are retiring in droves.
Farmers still complain that the H-2A visa program is too complicated and addresses only a portion of the total demand. As of 2010, there were 1,381,896 Mexicans still waiting for their green-card applications to be accepted or rejected. And the United States currently makes only 5,000 green cards annually available worldwide for low-wage workers to immigrate permanently; in recent years, only a few of those have gone to Mexicans.
On the other side, Steven A. Camarota, a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which favors reduced immigration, said that increasing the proportion of legal entries did little good.
“If you believe there is significant job competition at the bottom end of the labor market, as I do, you’re not fixing the problem,” Mr. Camarota said. “If you are concerned about the fiscal cost of unskilled immigration and everyone comes in on temporary visas and overstays, or even if they don’t, the same problems are likely to apply.”
By his calculations, unskilled immigrants like the Orozcos have, over the years, helped push down hourly wages, especially for young, unskilled American workers. Immigrants are also more likely to rely on welfare, he said, adding to public costs.
The Orozco clan, however, may point to a different future. Angel Orozco, like many other young Mexicans, now talks about the United States not as a place to earn money, but rather as a destination for fun and spending.
Today he is just a lanky, shy freshman wearing a Daughtry T-shirt and living in a two-room apartment with only a Mexican flag and a rosary for decoration.
But his dreams are big and local. After graduating, he said, he hopes to work for a manufacturing company in Arandas, which seems likely because the director of his school says that nearly 90 percent of graduates find jobs in their field. Then, Angel said, he will be able to buy what he really wants: a shiny, new red Camaro.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/06/world/americas/immigration.html?emc=eta1
Showing posts with label Statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Statistics. Show all posts
Friday, July 8, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
ICE auditing company hiring records for violations
Federal immigration authorities are beginning a new round of investigations to make sure businesses hire only people authorized to work in the U.S., focusing on companies vital to national security and other government and economic functions.
By KATE BRUMBACK
The Associated Press
15 June 2011
Federal immigration authorities are beginning a new round of investigations to make sure businesses hire only people authorized to work in the U.S., focusing on companies vital to national security and other government and economic functions.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Wednesday it is notifying 1,000 companies that it will inspect their I-9s, the forms that new employees complete, along with documents the workers provide to show they are eligible to work in the U.S.
"The inspections will touch on employers of all sizes and in every state in the nation, with an emphasis on businesses related to critical infrastructure and key resources," ICE said in a statement.
That includes sectors such as banking and finance, commercial nuclear reactors, dams, drinking water and water treatment systems, government facilities, information technology, telecommunications and transportation systems, among others.
"Ultimately, our focus on businesses related to critical infrastructure and key resources aligns with our priority as an agency to first and foremost minimize threats to national security and public safety," said ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen.
ICE declined to name the businesses or give their locations, but said they range in size from small businesses to national brand names. Businesses to be audited are selected based on tips or intelligence that has led the agency to believe the company may be engaging in improper hiring practices, Christensen said.
The Obama administration has made cracking down on employers a key part of its immigration enforcement policy, emphasizing employer audits more than the high-profile workplace raids done during the Bush administration.
"ICE's worksite enforcement strategy focuses on employers - penalizing those who knowingly violate the law and deterring others from breaking the law," Christensen said. "ICE may arrest workers we encounter, but arresting workers in and of itself is not a strategy or the goal of the program."
The idea behind I-9 audits is to encourage a culture of voluntary compliance, Christensen said. In much the same way that many individuals and businesses pay their taxes because they figure there's a good chance they'll be audited, ICE wants to show businesses that there are consequences for hiring people who aren't eligible to work here, she said.
This is the fifth in a series of employer investigations, dubbed "I-9 audit surges," by federal immigration authorities. The most recent previous round was in February, when 1,000 businesses were audited. This new action brings the fiscal year 2011 I-9 audit total to 2,338 audits, up from 2,196 the previous fiscal year.
After receiving a notice of inspection, a company generally has three business days to present the I-9 forms. ICE generally also requests supporting documentation, which may include a copy of the payroll, list of current employees, articles of incorporation, and business licenses.
ICE can take a variety of actions against employers when violations are found, depending on the level of seriousness. In the most serious cases, violations can result in criminal arrests of employers. In fiscal year 2010, 196 employers were arrested, up from 114 the year before.
ICE can also debar a business or individual, meaning the offending employer can be kept from bidding for federal contracts. ICE took that action against 97 businesses and 49 individuals in fiscal year 2010.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015325766_apusimmigrationemployercrackdown.html
By KATE BRUMBACK
The Associated Press
15 June 2011
Federal immigration authorities are beginning a new round of investigations to make sure businesses hire only people authorized to work in the U.S., focusing on companies vital to national security and other government and economic functions.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Wednesday it is notifying 1,000 companies that it will inspect their I-9s, the forms that new employees complete, along with documents the workers provide to show they are eligible to work in the U.S.
"The inspections will touch on employers of all sizes and in every state in the nation, with an emphasis on businesses related to critical infrastructure and key resources," ICE said in a statement.
That includes sectors such as banking and finance, commercial nuclear reactors, dams, drinking water and water treatment systems, government facilities, information technology, telecommunications and transportation systems, among others.
"Ultimately, our focus on businesses related to critical infrastructure and key resources aligns with our priority as an agency to first and foremost minimize threats to national security and public safety," said ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen.
ICE declined to name the businesses or give their locations, but said they range in size from small businesses to national brand names. Businesses to be audited are selected based on tips or intelligence that has led the agency to believe the company may be engaging in improper hiring practices, Christensen said.
The Obama administration has made cracking down on employers a key part of its immigration enforcement policy, emphasizing employer audits more than the high-profile workplace raids done during the Bush administration.
"ICE's worksite enforcement strategy focuses on employers - penalizing those who knowingly violate the law and deterring others from breaking the law," Christensen said. "ICE may arrest workers we encounter, but arresting workers in and of itself is not a strategy or the goal of the program."
The idea behind I-9 audits is to encourage a culture of voluntary compliance, Christensen said. In much the same way that many individuals and businesses pay their taxes because they figure there's a good chance they'll be audited, ICE wants to show businesses that there are consequences for hiring people who aren't eligible to work here, she said.
This is the fifth in a series of employer investigations, dubbed "I-9 audit surges," by federal immigration authorities. The most recent previous round was in February, when 1,000 businesses were audited. This new action brings the fiscal year 2011 I-9 audit total to 2,338 audits, up from 2,196 the previous fiscal year.
After receiving a notice of inspection, a company generally has three business days to present the I-9 forms. ICE generally also requests supporting documentation, which may include a copy of the payroll, list of current employees, articles of incorporation, and business licenses.
ICE can take a variety of actions against employers when violations are found, depending on the level of seriousness. In the most serious cases, violations can result in criminal arrests of employers. In fiscal year 2010, 196 employers were arrested, up from 114 the year before.
ICE can also debar a business or individual, meaning the offending employer can be kept from bidding for federal contracts. ICE took that action against 97 businesses and 49 individuals in fiscal year 2010.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015325766_apusimmigrationemployercrackdown.html
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
ICE raid shakes Latinos
By Philip Ferolito and Mark Morey
Yakima Herald-Republic
January 21, 2011
YAKIMA -- A day after immigration authorities descended on Ellensburg in a sweep that netted 30 arrests, local groups are trying to settle a shaken Latino community.
Local churches are providing food and money to affected families and have brought in immigration attorneys to offer free legal advice, said Robert Siler, chancellor of the Diocese of Yakima.
"We don't have a tremendous amount of money to do that, but there are some funds available," he said. "We certainly want to support the families as much as we can."
Others are trying to find families that are either hiding or have left home out of fear of another sweep.
"We're trying to locate them now," said Philip Garrison, president of APOYO, a local nonprofit agency that runs a food bank and provides other services for Latino families. "So you've got a lot of terrified people fleeing or hiding."
Early Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carried out 11 search warrants at 22 locations in and around Ellensburg. The agency said the raids, which were mostly directed at homes, are part of a larger investigation into the manufacturing of counterfeit identity and employment documents.
On Friday, 14 of those arrested -- mostly women -- made preliminary appearances in U.S. District Court in Yakima, where innocent pleas were entered for all and bail hearings set for next week.
Nine of the defendants were indicted on a single count of using counterfeit Social Security or permanent resident "green cards" for pre-employment checks of their immigration status. The alleged violations happened as far back as 2006, according to the indictments.
Three more were charged with the same crime, plus an additional count of falsely claiming U.S. citizenship.
One was charged with being in the United States after having been deported from a California port of entry in 2002.
Court documents available Friday did not explain what led authorities to the suspects. The indictments were filed under seal earlier this month to protect the ongoing investigation.
The most detailed report was filed against a man who was arrested after agents served a search warrant Wednesday at 905 W. Cascade Court, where the defendant lived.
Investigators said they found counterfeit Social Security and green cards that the man had used to get work. The man was granted a Washington driver's license in 2008 using a Mexican birth certificate, according to charging documents.
He had been deported from Los Angeles in 2000 after showing a counterfeit visa stamp in a Mexican passport, investigators said.
The 16 others arrested Thursday remain in custody but have yet to appear in court.
None of the 30 people arrested is facing charges of manufacturing false documents, U.S. Assistant Attorney Tom Rice in Spokane said Friday during a telephone interview.
The investigation is intended to uproot the manufacturer, he said.
Standing in the lobby of the courthouse Friday, Francisco Cuevas, 17, said his 20-year-old cousin Mireya Colazo-Muguia, an assistant to an orthodontist in Ellensburg, was arrested at work.
And he said his friend, Ana Catalina Ruiz Roque, was taken from her home. Now her mother-in-law is caring for her 3-year-old son and her 14-year-old daughter, he said.
"She doesn't have a criminal record or anything," Cuevas said.
The sweep sparked fear in some parts of Ellensburg, a university and farm town of 17,230 residents. Many employees at two local hotels and a hay pressing plant didn't show up for work Friday, Garrison said.
Garrison, who is in contact with some of the families, said he's been told that during the raid, handcuffed children were left outside for a long period of time.
He also said he was told that many children had been left without supervision.
Since the raid, there have been several community meetings to assist families. During the first meeting Thursday night, mostly non-Latino residents upset about "the way their neighbors were being carted off" attended, Garrison said.
But ICE spokeswoman Lorie Dankers said the raid has prompted a flurry of false rumors.
Because she was not present at the raid, Dankers said she didn't know whether anyone was forced to wait outside while their home was being searched.
But no children were left unattended, she said.
"We interview (suspects), we find out if they have children," she said. "We identify if they have family or friends that can take care of the children. It's a very deliberative process where we make sure that no child is left without a guardian."
Ellensburg High School counselors were kept busy Thursday with about 50 students affected by the sweep, said Principal Jeff Ellersick.
On Friday, 16 of those students failed to show up for school, he said.
"Some of them saw their mother or their father or their aunt or uncle get arrested and were not sure of the circumstances surrounding that," he said.
After learning of the sweep from students that morning, school officials had to track down ICE officials at their command station in town to find out if a plan was in place for students whose parents were arrested.
"We're here to help support these kids any way we can," he said.
http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2011/01/21/ice-raid-shakes-latinos
Yakima Herald-Republic
January 21, 2011
YAKIMA -- A day after immigration authorities descended on Ellensburg in a sweep that netted 30 arrests, local groups are trying to settle a shaken Latino community.
Local churches are providing food and money to affected families and have brought in immigration attorneys to offer free legal advice, said Robert Siler, chancellor of the Diocese of Yakima.
"We don't have a tremendous amount of money to do that, but there are some funds available," he said. "We certainly want to support the families as much as we can."
Others are trying to find families that are either hiding or have left home out of fear of another sweep.
"We're trying to locate them now," said Philip Garrison, president of APOYO, a local nonprofit agency that runs a food bank and provides other services for Latino families. "So you've got a lot of terrified people fleeing or hiding."
Early Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carried out 11 search warrants at 22 locations in and around Ellensburg. The agency said the raids, which were mostly directed at homes, are part of a larger investigation into the manufacturing of counterfeit identity and employment documents.
On Friday, 14 of those arrested -- mostly women -- made preliminary appearances in U.S. District Court in Yakima, where innocent pleas were entered for all and bail hearings set for next week.
Nine of the defendants were indicted on a single count of using counterfeit Social Security or permanent resident "green cards" for pre-employment checks of their immigration status. The alleged violations happened as far back as 2006, according to the indictments.
Three more were charged with the same crime, plus an additional count of falsely claiming U.S. citizenship.
One was charged with being in the United States after having been deported from a California port of entry in 2002.
Court documents available Friday did not explain what led authorities to the suspects. The indictments were filed under seal earlier this month to protect the ongoing investigation.
The most detailed report was filed against a man who was arrested after agents served a search warrant Wednesday at 905 W. Cascade Court, where the defendant lived.
Investigators said they found counterfeit Social Security and green cards that the man had used to get work. The man was granted a Washington driver's license in 2008 using a Mexican birth certificate, according to charging documents.
He had been deported from Los Angeles in 2000 after showing a counterfeit visa stamp in a Mexican passport, investigators said.
The 16 others arrested Thursday remain in custody but have yet to appear in court.
None of the 30 people arrested is facing charges of manufacturing false documents, U.S. Assistant Attorney Tom Rice in Spokane said Friday during a telephone interview.
The investigation is intended to uproot the manufacturer, he said.
Standing in the lobby of the courthouse Friday, Francisco Cuevas, 17, said his 20-year-old cousin Mireya Colazo-Muguia, an assistant to an orthodontist in Ellensburg, was arrested at work.
And he said his friend, Ana Catalina Ruiz Roque, was taken from her home. Now her mother-in-law is caring for her 3-year-old son and her 14-year-old daughter, he said.
"She doesn't have a criminal record or anything," Cuevas said.
The sweep sparked fear in some parts of Ellensburg, a university and farm town of 17,230 residents. Many employees at two local hotels and a hay pressing plant didn't show up for work Friday, Garrison said.
Garrison, who is in contact with some of the families, said he's been told that during the raid, handcuffed children were left outside for a long period of time.
He also said he was told that many children had been left without supervision.
Since the raid, there have been several community meetings to assist families. During the first meeting Thursday night, mostly non-Latino residents upset about "the way their neighbors were being carted off" attended, Garrison said.
But ICE spokeswoman Lorie Dankers said the raid has prompted a flurry of false rumors.
Because she was not present at the raid, Dankers said she didn't know whether anyone was forced to wait outside while their home was being searched.
But no children were left unattended, she said.
"We interview (suspects), we find out if they have children," she said. "We identify if they have family or friends that can take care of the children. It's a very deliberative process where we make sure that no child is left without a guardian."
Ellensburg High School counselors were kept busy Thursday with about 50 students affected by the sweep, said Principal Jeff Ellersick.
On Friday, 16 of those students failed to show up for school, he said.
"Some of them saw their mother or their father or their aunt or uncle get arrested and were not sure of the circumstances surrounding that," he said.
After learning of the sweep from students that morning, school officials had to track down ICE officials at their command station in town to find out if a plan was in place for students whose parents were arrested.
"We're here to help support these kids any way we can," he said.
http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2011/01/21/ice-raid-shakes-latinos
Monday, December 13, 2010
Governments across globe struggling with immigration
By Daniel González and Dan Nowicki
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 12, 2010
There are more immigrants in the world today than ever before.
People are crossing the globe in unprecedented numbers, with more than 200 million living outside their home countries. That figure has grown by more than 40 percent in the past decade.
In booming economies, the immigrants, both legal and illegal, are largely tolerated, if not quietly welcomed, because they do jobs that natives can't or won't perform. But in recessions, immigrants often find themselves on the wrong side of public opinion and political will, blamed - accurately or not - for taxing strained social programs and contributing to unemployment rates by working at below-market wages.
In the United States, which has more immigrants than any nation, politicians have begun calling for tougher border security and more deportations as the economy continues to sputter. The resulting crackdowns have been criticized both as not harsh enough and too harsh, with the debate becoming more polarizing seemingly by the day.
But as the rising tension over immigrants across the globe makes clear, immigration is not a challenge just for Americans.
From Asia to Africa to Europe, governments are confronting the same questions that are vexing U.S. policy makers.
An Arizona Republic examination of global immigration issues shows the challenges are universal - and the solutions universally elusive.
For all the myriad approaches, no developed nation has devised a perfect solution, and there has been no one-size-fits-all answer to one of the world's most complex problems.
Like the United States, many countries have tried amnesty, enforcement and guest-worker programs, sometimes alone, sometimes together. Even when a country finds a workable formula, the solution has not been sustainable because immigration and economic factors always are changing.
Spain embraced immigrants for years, with wave after wave of amnesty programs. Then the economy collapsed. Today, Spain is trying to seal its borders.
In Italy, politicians shifted from accepting immigrants to pursuing anti-immigrant measures with zeal, intercepting new arrivals and rounding up and deporting other foreigners. Yet the decline in immigration there, as in the U.S., seems to be tied as much to the economy and lack of jobs as the enforcement measures.
In Germany, guest workers were welcomed for decades. But neither they nor their German-born children and grandchildren fully integrated into the rest of society, partly because they were never given the full rights of Germans. The rest of the country is still grappling with its anxiety and resentment of the group of second-class residents it created.
In the long term, global migration is expected to remain a fact of life on Earth, so immigrants and the immigration backlash will continue to challenge the ingenuity of governments everywhere.
"People are always on the move," said Apichai Shipper, a global-immigration expert and a visiting scholar at UCLA's Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies.
"People were moving before there were nations. People don't move because of nations; people move in spite of nations. I don't think that will ever stop."
Immigration on the rise
There are 214 million immigrants in the world, up 64 million, or 43 percent, from the 150 million migrants in 2000, according to the United Nations. Immigrants now make up 3.1 percent of the world's population, up from 2.9 in 1990.
Many developed countries, especially in Europe, have aging populations and low birthrates, so they depend on immigrants, legal and illegal, not only to fill jobs but also to help cover the growing social-security costs of retirees and support other welfare policies.
"The EU estimates that by 2030 a full 20 million people of Europe will have been retired, and somehow these people must be replaced," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
As countries become more interconnected, it has become easier for people to move across borders and tap into informal social networks to find jobs and housing. Inexpensive phone cards, e-mail and Internet-video connections make it easier for migrants to stay in touch with families back home.
Illegal immigration is a product of that globalization, said Jean-Philippe Chauzy, a Geneva-based spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency that tracks global migration.
There are no hard numbers for how many immigrants are illegal:
- Between 15 and 20 percent of the world's immigrant population may be illegal, Papademetriou has estimated. That would be 32 million to 42 million people based on the world's current immigrant population of 214 million.
- Between 10 and 15 percent of all immigrants in developed countries are there illegally, according to the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, a Paris-based agency made up of 33 democratic, market-based countries, including the U.S.
In the United States, which has developed a formula to approximate its undocumented population, there are an estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants out of a total of 42 million immigrants. That gives the country both the largest immigrant population and the largest illegal-immigrant population in the world.
There are 2 million to 4 million illegal immigrants living in the European Union, according to a 2008 European Commission study.
Political backlash
In different parts of the world, the nationalities of the migrants change, but the public backlash and political pressures to step up enforcement are similar.
In Washington, lawmakers are mired in a years-long stalemate over how - or whether - to reform the nation's immigration laws. Recently, that discussion has been overtaken by calls for increased border security.
Amid that debate, Arizona drew international attention this spring when Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law what is commonly known as Senate Bill 1070, which seeks to criminalize illegal immigration and enlist police in helping to enforce federal immigration laws.
Those same struggles also are playing out across the world. Europe, particularly, has increasingly viewed illegal immigration with alarm. With unemployment high and voters identifying immigration as a top concern, politicians are emboldened to crack down:
- In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy in August ordered the destruction of several hundred illegal-immigrant camps because of concerns over crime and public-health issues. As a result, more than 1,200 Roma Gypsies were expelled. The deportations have been condemned by the European Parliament, the European Union's 736-member elected assembly.
- In Britain, the coalition government led by Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron has imposed a cap on immigrants from outside the EU. Cameron says he wants to reduce net immigration from the hundreds of thousands who arrived yearly under Labor Party rule to fewer than 100,000.
Immigration issues also influence how those politicians fare at the ballot box, both in the U.S. and abroad:
- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., almost lost his party's presidential nomination in 2008 because of his support for immigration reform.
- In Sweden, where a sniper targeting immigrants has been on the loose since October 2009, members of the far-right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats in September won 20 seats in the country's 349-member Parliament. The party, which grew out of Sweden's neo-Nazi skinhead subculture, effectively capitalized on rising resentment toward Muslim immigrants to win its first-ever foothold in the assembly. Its electoral success has shaken Sweden's longtime reputation as one of the most friendly and accommodating nations toward immigrants.
Some observers suggest right-wing politicians pander to anti-immigrant feelings in times of economic distress to advance their own agendas and political careers.
"A lot of these extremist far-right groups employ the rhetoric of immigration but also are looking at a number of other key issues in terms of economies, public spending, the maintenance of the welfare state and other areas," said Elizabeth Collett, an expert on European immigration at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, who is based in Brussels, Belgium. "Immigration is often the more visible tool but not the only one."
Cracking down
The trend among nations affected by illegal immigration is increased enforcement.
In the United States, a record number of agents patrol the nation's borders, particularly the southern boundary with Mexico. Lawmakers have spent billions of dollars to build fences along the Mexico border, install sophisticated monitoring equipment and deport record numbers of illegal immigrants.
Spain has had to contend with thousands of illegal immigrants washing up on its shores in leaky boats from Morocco and other poor countries in Africa. Likewise, Italy has struggled to control illegal immigrants pouring in from poorer Eastern European countries, as well as boatloads of Africans crossing the Mediterranean from Libya. Both Spain and Italy have offered multiple amnesty programs to regularize unauthorized migrants. But more recently, the two nations have taken tougher stances, with Spain investing in border security and Italy negotiating an agreement with Libya to intercept migrants on the high seas and return them to Libya.
The stepped-up enforcement, combined with the sagging economy, has led to a drop in the numbers of people entering some countries illegally.
In the United States, 850,000 illegal immigrants entered the country annually from March 2000 to March 2005 when the economy was booming, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization in Washington, D.C. From March 2007 to March 2009, when the economy cratered, that number fell to 300,000 a year.
In Europe, illegal-immigrant apprehensions fell nearly 40 percent the first quarter of this year compared with the first quarter of last year, according to Frontex, a European Union agency in charge of controlling illegal immigration.
But cracking down on illegal immigration in one country often just shifts the problem to another. Spain and Italy have been successful in shutting down the flow from Africa, but now illegal immigration is on the rise to the east in Greece.
Likewise in Arizona, many illegal immigrants left for other states after Brewer signed SB1070. And Arizona became ground zero for illegal border crossers when security was tightened in California and Texas in the 1990s.
"Immigration officers use the analogy of squeezing a balloon," Collett said. "If you shut down one area, it opens up somewhere else."
Seeking solutions
Immigration moves in step with the economy: It rises when the economy is strong and drops when it is weak.
Today, with high unemployment in most developed nations, there are no jobs for immigrants, so they stay home and wait to seek work in wealthier nations.
"You can try the best as you can to close borders," the International Organization for Migration's Chauzy said. "But the demand for services, especially cheap services, is still there, and because they (immigrants) have no way to come legally, they will basically use the backdoor."
The challenge for governments is to find ways to manage illegal immigration in a way that benefits their countries. . . . Illegal immigration will always be there because people will always find a way to get in no matter how hard you try to close the borders," Chauzy said. "But you can minimize it. You manage it by opening the doors to the migrants you need or want."
That may sound more simple than it is.
Most developed nations have implemented multiple measures to control immigration. Yet completely effective solutions remain elusive.
Following the money
Immigrants typically move, legally or illegally, in search of better jobs and more opportunities. For example:
- In the United States, annual per capita income is $47,240, according to the World Bank. In neighboring Mexico, the country that sends the largest number of illegal immigrants to the U.S., per capita income is $8,920.
- In Spain, most illegal immigrants come from Morocco. The distance between Spain and Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar is less than 12 miles. But the disparity between incomes in the two countries is huge. Spain's per capita income is $31,870. In Morocco, it's $2,790
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/12/12/20101212global-immigration-main.html#ixzz17zZIzyMs
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 12, 2010
There are more immigrants in the world today than ever before.
People are crossing the globe in unprecedented numbers, with more than 200 million living outside their home countries. That figure has grown by more than 40 percent in the past decade.
In booming economies, the immigrants, both legal and illegal, are largely tolerated, if not quietly welcomed, because they do jobs that natives can't or won't perform. But in recessions, immigrants often find themselves on the wrong side of public opinion and political will, blamed - accurately or not - for taxing strained social programs and contributing to unemployment rates by working at below-market wages.
In the United States, which has more immigrants than any nation, politicians have begun calling for tougher border security and more deportations as the economy continues to sputter. The resulting crackdowns have been criticized both as not harsh enough and too harsh, with the debate becoming more polarizing seemingly by the day.
But as the rising tension over immigrants across the globe makes clear, immigration is not a challenge just for Americans.
From Asia to Africa to Europe, governments are confronting the same questions that are vexing U.S. policy makers.
An Arizona Republic examination of global immigration issues shows the challenges are universal - and the solutions universally elusive.
For all the myriad approaches, no developed nation has devised a perfect solution, and there has been no one-size-fits-all answer to one of the world's most complex problems.
Like the United States, many countries have tried amnesty, enforcement and guest-worker programs, sometimes alone, sometimes together. Even when a country finds a workable formula, the solution has not been sustainable because immigration and economic factors always are changing.
Spain embraced immigrants for years, with wave after wave of amnesty programs. Then the economy collapsed. Today, Spain is trying to seal its borders.
In Italy, politicians shifted from accepting immigrants to pursuing anti-immigrant measures with zeal, intercepting new arrivals and rounding up and deporting other foreigners. Yet the decline in immigration there, as in the U.S., seems to be tied as much to the economy and lack of jobs as the enforcement measures.
In Germany, guest workers were welcomed for decades. But neither they nor their German-born children and grandchildren fully integrated into the rest of society, partly because they were never given the full rights of Germans. The rest of the country is still grappling with its anxiety and resentment of the group of second-class residents it created.
In the long term, global migration is expected to remain a fact of life on Earth, so immigrants and the immigration backlash will continue to challenge the ingenuity of governments everywhere.
"People are always on the move," said Apichai Shipper, a global-immigration expert and a visiting scholar at UCLA's Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies.
"People were moving before there were nations. People don't move because of nations; people move in spite of nations. I don't think that will ever stop."
Immigration on the rise
There are 214 million immigrants in the world, up 64 million, or 43 percent, from the 150 million migrants in 2000, according to the United Nations. Immigrants now make up 3.1 percent of the world's population, up from 2.9 in 1990.
Many developed countries, especially in Europe, have aging populations and low birthrates, so they depend on immigrants, legal and illegal, not only to fill jobs but also to help cover the growing social-security costs of retirees and support other welfare policies.
"The EU estimates that by 2030 a full 20 million people of Europe will have been retired, and somehow these people must be replaced," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
As countries become more interconnected, it has become easier for people to move across borders and tap into informal social networks to find jobs and housing. Inexpensive phone cards, e-mail and Internet-video connections make it easier for migrants to stay in touch with families back home.
Illegal immigration is a product of that globalization, said Jean-Philippe Chauzy, a Geneva-based spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency that tracks global migration.
There are no hard numbers for how many immigrants are illegal:
- Between 15 and 20 percent of the world's immigrant population may be illegal, Papademetriou has estimated. That would be 32 million to 42 million people based on the world's current immigrant population of 214 million.
- Between 10 and 15 percent of all immigrants in developed countries are there illegally, according to the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, a Paris-based agency made up of 33 democratic, market-based countries, including the U.S.
In the United States, which has developed a formula to approximate its undocumented population, there are an estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants out of a total of 42 million immigrants. That gives the country both the largest immigrant population and the largest illegal-immigrant population in the world.
There are 2 million to 4 million illegal immigrants living in the European Union, according to a 2008 European Commission study.
Political backlash
In different parts of the world, the nationalities of the migrants change, but the public backlash and political pressures to step up enforcement are similar.
In Washington, lawmakers are mired in a years-long stalemate over how - or whether - to reform the nation's immigration laws. Recently, that discussion has been overtaken by calls for increased border security.
Amid that debate, Arizona drew international attention this spring when Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law what is commonly known as Senate Bill 1070, which seeks to criminalize illegal immigration and enlist police in helping to enforce federal immigration laws.
Those same struggles also are playing out across the world. Europe, particularly, has increasingly viewed illegal immigration with alarm. With unemployment high and voters identifying immigration as a top concern, politicians are emboldened to crack down:
- In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy in August ordered the destruction of several hundred illegal-immigrant camps because of concerns over crime and public-health issues. As a result, more than 1,200 Roma Gypsies were expelled. The deportations have been condemned by the European Parliament, the European Union's 736-member elected assembly.
- In Britain, the coalition government led by Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron has imposed a cap on immigrants from outside the EU. Cameron says he wants to reduce net immigration from the hundreds of thousands who arrived yearly under Labor Party rule to fewer than 100,000.
Immigration issues also influence how those politicians fare at the ballot box, both in the U.S. and abroad:
- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., almost lost his party's presidential nomination in 2008 because of his support for immigration reform.
- In Sweden, where a sniper targeting immigrants has been on the loose since October 2009, members of the far-right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats in September won 20 seats in the country's 349-member Parliament. The party, which grew out of Sweden's neo-Nazi skinhead subculture, effectively capitalized on rising resentment toward Muslim immigrants to win its first-ever foothold in the assembly. Its electoral success has shaken Sweden's longtime reputation as one of the most friendly and accommodating nations toward immigrants.
Some observers suggest right-wing politicians pander to anti-immigrant feelings in times of economic distress to advance their own agendas and political careers.
"A lot of these extremist far-right groups employ the rhetoric of immigration but also are looking at a number of other key issues in terms of economies, public spending, the maintenance of the welfare state and other areas," said Elizabeth Collett, an expert on European immigration at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, who is based in Brussels, Belgium. "Immigration is often the more visible tool but not the only one."
Cracking down
The trend among nations affected by illegal immigration is increased enforcement.
In the United States, a record number of agents patrol the nation's borders, particularly the southern boundary with Mexico. Lawmakers have spent billions of dollars to build fences along the Mexico border, install sophisticated monitoring equipment and deport record numbers of illegal immigrants.
Spain has had to contend with thousands of illegal immigrants washing up on its shores in leaky boats from Morocco and other poor countries in Africa. Likewise, Italy has struggled to control illegal immigrants pouring in from poorer Eastern European countries, as well as boatloads of Africans crossing the Mediterranean from Libya. Both Spain and Italy have offered multiple amnesty programs to regularize unauthorized migrants. But more recently, the two nations have taken tougher stances, with Spain investing in border security and Italy negotiating an agreement with Libya to intercept migrants on the high seas and return them to Libya.
The stepped-up enforcement, combined with the sagging economy, has led to a drop in the numbers of people entering some countries illegally.
In the United States, 850,000 illegal immigrants entered the country annually from March 2000 to March 2005 when the economy was booming, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization in Washington, D.C. From March 2007 to March 2009, when the economy cratered, that number fell to 300,000 a year.
In Europe, illegal-immigrant apprehensions fell nearly 40 percent the first quarter of this year compared with the first quarter of last year, according to Frontex, a European Union agency in charge of controlling illegal immigration.
But cracking down on illegal immigration in one country often just shifts the problem to another. Spain and Italy have been successful in shutting down the flow from Africa, but now illegal immigration is on the rise to the east in Greece.
Likewise in Arizona, many illegal immigrants left for other states after Brewer signed SB1070. And Arizona became ground zero for illegal border crossers when security was tightened in California and Texas in the 1990s.
"Immigration officers use the analogy of squeezing a balloon," Collett said. "If you shut down one area, it opens up somewhere else."
Seeking solutions
Immigration moves in step with the economy: It rises when the economy is strong and drops when it is weak.
Today, with high unemployment in most developed nations, there are no jobs for immigrants, so they stay home and wait to seek work in wealthier nations.
"You can try the best as you can to close borders," the International Organization for Migration's Chauzy said. "But the demand for services, especially cheap services, is still there, and because they (immigrants) have no way to come legally, they will basically use the backdoor."
The challenge for governments is to find ways to manage illegal immigration in a way that benefits their countries. . . . Illegal immigration will always be there because people will always find a way to get in no matter how hard you try to close the borders," Chauzy said. "But you can minimize it. You manage it by opening the doors to the migrants you need or want."
That may sound more simple than it is.
Most developed nations have implemented multiple measures to control immigration. Yet completely effective solutions remain elusive.
Following the money
Immigrants typically move, legally or illegally, in search of better jobs and more opportunities. For example:
- In the United States, annual per capita income is $47,240, according to the World Bank. In neighboring Mexico, the country that sends the largest number of illegal immigrants to the U.S., per capita income is $8,920.
- In Spain, most illegal immigrants come from Morocco. The distance between Spain and Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar is less than 12 miles. But the disparity between incomes in the two countries is huge. Spain's per capita income is $31,870. In Morocco, it's $2,790
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/12/12/20101212global-immigration-main.html#ixzz17zZIzyMs
Monday, November 8, 2010
Tens of Thousands of Missing Central American Migrants
By Emilio Godoy
The Inter Press Service
November 7, 2010
MEXICO CITY - The last time Estela Domínguez of Mexico saw her daughter Estela Paz was in April 2006, when the young woman left home with the goal of reaching Las Vegas, Nevada.
Paz, who was 27 at the time, planned to cross the U.S. border at the town of Altar in the northwestern state of Sonora. She was traveling without documents, and with her six-year-old son Emiliano. She was heading back to her job making bracelets.
But she never made it.
"I talked to her on the phone just before she was to cross the border, but I never heard from her again," Domínguez, a supermarket bagger in Córdoba, a city in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, told IPS. "What I want most in the world is for her to come back, and for her children to see her again."
Her grandson survived, and was reunited with his family when the "coyotes" or people smugglers contacted them in the United States. He is now living with his aunt.
Domínguez, 57, joined a protest convoy of 13 members of the Network of Committees of Migrants and Relatives of Honduras (Red COMIFAH), which set out from Honduras on Oct. 26 and reached the Mexican capital on the night of Nov. 3.
The NGO estimates that some 800 Honduran migrants have gone missing over the last decade in Mexico, on their way to the United States.
"We located one Honduran in Tapachula (a Mexican city on the Guatemalan border) and we have information about five other people," the executive secretary of Red COMIFAH, Ian Quiroz, told IPS. "Our main objective is to find the people who are missing and also forge ties with local human rights organizations."
The Honduran NGO is taking part in the Alternative World Forum for Peoples in Movement, Thursday through Saturday in the Mexican capital. Under the slogan "No Human Being Is Illegal", the event has drawn scores of activists from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
The main issues on the agenda of the forum are the promotion and defence of the human rights of migrants, and the key event is an international tribunal that will hold a symbolic trial focusing on eight cases of abuses against foreign migrants committed in different parts of the world.
Some 500,000 undocumented migrants from Central and South America cross Mexico every year in their attempt to reach the United States, according to estimates based on official statistics and figures from NGOs.
Along the way, they face the risk of arbitrary arrest, extortion, theft, assault, rape, kidnapping and murder, at the hands of youth gangs and organized crime, as well as corrupt police and other agents of the state.
Undocumented migrants cross the porous border between Mexico and Guatemala and ride what is known as the "train of death" through the southern states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Oaxaca and Veracruz, the most dangerous areas, before they head northwards towards the U.S. border.
But perhaps the most horrifying face of the phenomenon is the disappearance of migrants. A recent report by the Mexican legislature's committee on population, borders and migration affairs states that more than 60,000 Central and South Americans went missing between 1998 and 2008 in Mexico on their journey to the U.S.
In late August, 72 undocumented migrants from several Central and south American countries were killed on a ranch near the U.S. border in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, presumably by members of Los Zetas, a crime syndicate made up of former elite Mexican army commandos that dominates the kidnapping of undocumented migrants racket.
The massacre destroyed any remaining shred of credibility that Mexico's migration policy might have had.
Names like those of Honduran migrants Junior Espinoza, Carlos Valle, Jorge Osorto and Brayan García have given a face to the tragedy. Fifty of the bodies have been identified, including those of 32 Hondurans, 12 Salvadorans, four Guatemalans, and two Brazilians.
But nothing has changed since the mass killing, according to migrant rights advocates. This week, a train running between Oaxaca and Veracruz, carrying numerous migrants perched on the roof of the wagons as usual, was assaulted and a score of people were kidnapped, Catholic priest Alejandro Solalinde, one of the leading advocates for migrants' rights, complained Thursday.
Solalinde, who runs a shelter for migrants in the state of Oaxaca, said the authorities are still not doing anything to prevent or investigate the frequent kidnappings and assaults.
So far this year, 56,566 undocumented migrants have been detained in their attempt to make it to the United Status. Most of them were from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, according to National Migration Institute (INM) statistics.
"Our chief demand is for the human rights of migrants to be respected," Elvira Arellano, a Mexican representative of Familia Latina Unida Sin Fronteras, a Chicago-based immigrant rights organisation that emerged in 1987, told IPS.
"We've had enough of being seen as the goose that lays the golden egg, because of the remittances we send home. We want solutions," Arellano said.
The 34-year-old Arellano, who lives in the west-central state of Michoacán, became a symbol of the fight for migrant rights after she took refuge for a year in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, Illinois in defiance of a deportation order, to avoid being separated from her U.S.-born son.
She was deported to Mexico in 2007.
Her case, like the murders of the 72 migrants in Tamaulipas, is one of the cases that will be tried by a 20-member jury in the international tribunal, which held a first session Oct. 7-9 in Quito, Ecuador.
"We defend the right to emigrate, and we condemn Mexico's responsibility by omission in the massacre," said Quiroz, whose convoy met Thursday with the members of the congressional committee on population, borders and migration affairs.
The alternative forum was held parallel to the Peoples' Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA), held Tuesday through Friday in Mexico City.
Both events were organized ahead of the Fourth Global Forum on Migration and Development, to take place Nov. 8-11 in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico's Pacific coast.
© 2010 Inter Press Service
The Inter Press Service
November 7, 2010
MEXICO CITY - The last time Estela Domínguez of Mexico saw her daughter Estela Paz was in April 2006, when the young woman left home with the goal of reaching Las Vegas, Nevada.
Paz, who was 27 at the time, planned to cross the U.S. border at the town of Altar in the northwestern state of Sonora. She was traveling without documents, and with her six-year-old son Emiliano. She was heading back to her job making bracelets.
But she never made it.
"I talked to her on the phone just before she was to cross the border, but I never heard from her again," Domínguez, a supermarket bagger in Córdoba, a city in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, told IPS. "What I want most in the world is for her to come back, and for her children to see her again."
Her grandson survived, and was reunited with his family when the "coyotes" or people smugglers contacted them in the United States. He is now living with his aunt.
Domínguez, 57, joined a protest convoy of 13 members of the Network of Committees of Migrants and Relatives of Honduras (Red COMIFAH), which set out from Honduras on Oct. 26 and reached the Mexican capital on the night of Nov. 3.
The NGO estimates that some 800 Honduran migrants have gone missing over the last decade in Mexico, on their way to the United States.
"We located one Honduran in Tapachula (a Mexican city on the Guatemalan border) and we have information about five other people," the executive secretary of Red COMIFAH, Ian Quiroz, told IPS. "Our main objective is to find the people who are missing and also forge ties with local human rights organizations."
The Honduran NGO is taking part in the Alternative World Forum for Peoples in Movement, Thursday through Saturday in the Mexican capital. Under the slogan "No Human Being Is Illegal", the event has drawn scores of activists from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
The main issues on the agenda of the forum are the promotion and defence of the human rights of migrants, and the key event is an international tribunal that will hold a symbolic trial focusing on eight cases of abuses against foreign migrants committed in different parts of the world.
Some 500,000 undocumented migrants from Central and South America cross Mexico every year in their attempt to reach the United States, according to estimates based on official statistics and figures from NGOs.
Along the way, they face the risk of arbitrary arrest, extortion, theft, assault, rape, kidnapping and murder, at the hands of youth gangs and organized crime, as well as corrupt police and other agents of the state.
Undocumented migrants cross the porous border between Mexico and Guatemala and ride what is known as the "train of death" through the southern states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Oaxaca and Veracruz, the most dangerous areas, before they head northwards towards the U.S. border.
But perhaps the most horrifying face of the phenomenon is the disappearance of migrants. A recent report by the Mexican legislature's committee on population, borders and migration affairs states that more than 60,000 Central and South Americans went missing between 1998 and 2008 in Mexico on their journey to the U.S.
In late August, 72 undocumented migrants from several Central and south American countries were killed on a ranch near the U.S. border in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, presumably by members of Los Zetas, a crime syndicate made up of former elite Mexican army commandos that dominates the kidnapping of undocumented migrants racket.
The massacre destroyed any remaining shred of credibility that Mexico's migration policy might have had.
Names like those of Honduran migrants Junior Espinoza, Carlos Valle, Jorge Osorto and Brayan García have given a face to the tragedy. Fifty of the bodies have been identified, including those of 32 Hondurans, 12 Salvadorans, four Guatemalans, and two Brazilians.
But nothing has changed since the mass killing, according to migrant rights advocates. This week, a train running between Oaxaca and Veracruz, carrying numerous migrants perched on the roof of the wagons as usual, was assaulted and a score of people were kidnapped, Catholic priest Alejandro Solalinde, one of the leading advocates for migrants' rights, complained Thursday.
Solalinde, who runs a shelter for migrants in the state of Oaxaca, said the authorities are still not doing anything to prevent or investigate the frequent kidnappings and assaults.
So far this year, 56,566 undocumented migrants have been detained in their attempt to make it to the United Status. Most of them were from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, according to National Migration Institute (INM) statistics.
"Our chief demand is for the human rights of migrants to be respected," Elvira Arellano, a Mexican representative of Familia Latina Unida Sin Fronteras, a Chicago-based immigrant rights organisation that emerged in 1987, told IPS.
"We've had enough of being seen as the goose that lays the golden egg, because of the remittances we send home. We want solutions," Arellano said.
The 34-year-old Arellano, who lives in the west-central state of Michoacán, became a symbol of the fight for migrant rights after she took refuge for a year in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, Illinois in defiance of a deportation order, to avoid being separated from her U.S.-born son.
She was deported to Mexico in 2007.
Her case, like the murders of the 72 migrants in Tamaulipas, is one of the cases that will be tried by a 20-member jury in the international tribunal, which held a first session Oct. 7-9 in Quito, Ecuador.
"We defend the right to emigrate, and we condemn Mexico's responsibility by omission in the massacre," said Quiroz, whose convoy met Thursday with the members of the congressional committee on population, borders and migration affairs.
The alternative forum was held parallel to the Peoples' Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA), held Tuesday through Friday in Mexico City.
Both events were organized ahead of the Fourth Global Forum on Migration and Development, to take place Nov. 8-11 in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico's Pacific coast.
© 2010 Inter Press Service
Thursday, November 4, 2010
More deportation cases being dismissed
Standard Examiner
Thursday, November 4, 2010 - 11:23am
MIAMI -- Immigration judges are dismissing deportation cases in greater numbers around the country.
In August and September, for example, judges at Miami immigration court dismissed 631 deportation cases compared with 449 in June and July.
In fact, the 324 cases immigration judges dismissed in August was the highest monthly case termination figure in the last 12 months, according to statistics the Justice Department's immigration court system released last week.
Gerda Pierre, 22, was among the hundreds of immigrants in deportation proceedings whose cases were recently dismissed in Miami immigration court.
Pierre, a Bahamian-born Haitian, learned Oct. 7 when she appeared in immigration court that she no longer faced deportation and would be allowed instead to apply for a green card.
"I felt like a heavy weight was lifted off my shoulders," said Pierre, who had been in proceedings since 2006. "I felt free."
While immigration court officials would not speculate on why judges are terminating more cases than before, some attorneys said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement trial attorneys now seem more willing to drop deportation cases against certain foreign nationals.
But other attorneys in Miami said they had not noticed any change in ICE attitude and that any increase may be tied to the federal government's decision to grant Temporary Protected Status or TPS to undocumented Haitian immigrants.
"We haven't seen any significant change and have heard that some ICE officials believe the Morton memo simply reiterated existing policy," said Cheryl Little, executive director of Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. "We've had some cases terminated lately, but that likely would have happened regardless."
Still, some say ICE trial attorneys are more willing to apply recent guidelines by ICE chief John Morton that allow them to drop deportation cases against immigrants who have pending or approved petitions, known as I-130s, filed on their behalf by a U.S. relative.
"They are terminating cases of people with pending or approved I-130s; that's what's going on," said Wilfredo Allen, a prominent Miami immigration attorney. "If you have people who can adjust status through family, why keep them in court? We are seeing this on a more systematic basis, while before it was more sporadic."
Morton issued a memorandum in August outlining a new ICE policy under which trial attorneys were ordered to "promptly dismiss proceedings" against foreign nationals facing deportation who had a petition filed on their behalf by a relative.
Foreign nationals whose deportation cases are dismissed because they qualify for permanent residence through an I-130 can then seek a green card through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Homeland Security agency that oversees immigration benefits.
Gillian M. Brigham, an ICE spokeswoman, said case terminations derived from multiple factors, not just ICE trial attorneys filing motions to dismiss.
"It is important to note that administrative immigration cases can be terminated for a variety of reasons other than ICE filing a motion to dismiss," she said.
Of the cases terminated in Miami in August and September, only a few were the result of ICE motions to dismiss, she said.
"In August, approximately 26 cases in Miami were terminated based on an ICE motion to dismiss," Brigham said. "In September, approximately 30 cases in Miami were terminated based on an ICE motion to dismiss. These cases only account for a percentage of the total immigration court cases that were terminated in Miami in August and September."
http://www.standard.net/topics/courts/2010/11/04/more-deportation-cases-being-dismissed
Thursday, November 4, 2010 - 11:23am
MIAMI -- Immigration judges are dismissing deportation cases in greater numbers around the country.
In August and September, for example, judges at Miami immigration court dismissed 631 deportation cases compared with 449 in June and July.
In fact, the 324 cases immigration judges dismissed in August was the highest monthly case termination figure in the last 12 months, according to statistics the Justice Department's immigration court system released last week.
Gerda Pierre, 22, was among the hundreds of immigrants in deportation proceedings whose cases were recently dismissed in Miami immigration court.
Pierre, a Bahamian-born Haitian, learned Oct. 7 when she appeared in immigration court that she no longer faced deportation and would be allowed instead to apply for a green card.
"I felt like a heavy weight was lifted off my shoulders," said Pierre, who had been in proceedings since 2006. "I felt free."
While immigration court officials would not speculate on why judges are terminating more cases than before, some attorneys said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement trial attorneys now seem more willing to drop deportation cases against certain foreign nationals.
But other attorneys in Miami said they had not noticed any change in ICE attitude and that any increase may be tied to the federal government's decision to grant Temporary Protected Status or TPS to undocumented Haitian immigrants.
"We haven't seen any significant change and have heard that some ICE officials believe the Morton memo simply reiterated existing policy," said Cheryl Little, executive director of Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. "We've had some cases terminated lately, but that likely would have happened regardless."
Still, some say ICE trial attorneys are more willing to apply recent guidelines by ICE chief John Morton that allow them to drop deportation cases against immigrants who have pending or approved petitions, known as I-130s, filed on their behalf by a U.S. relative.
"They are terminating cases of people with pending or approved I-130s; that's what's going on," said Wilfredo Allen, a prominent Miami immigration attorney. "If you have people who can adjust status through family, why keep them in court? We are seeing this on a more systematic basis, while before it was more sporadic."
Morton issued a memorandum in August outlining a new ICE policy under which trial attorneys were ordered to "promptly dismiss proceedings" against foreign nationals facing deportation who had a petition filed on their behalf by a relative.
Foreign nationals whose deportation cases are dismissed because they qualify for permanent residence through an I-130 can then seek a green card through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Homeland Security agency that oversees immigration benefits.
Gillian M. Brigham, an ICE spokeswoman, said case terminations derived from multiple factors, not just ICE trial attorneys filing motions to dismiss.
"It is important to note that administrative immigration cases can be terminated for a variety of reasons other than ICE filing a motion to dismiss," she said.
Of the cases terminated in Miami in August and September, only a few were the result of ICE motions to dismiss, she said.
"In August, approximately 26 cases in Miami were terminated based on an ICE motion to dismiss," Brigham said. "In September, approximately 30 cases in Miami were terminated based on an ICE motion to dismiss. These cases only account for a percentage of the total immigration court cases that were terminated in Miami in August and September."
http://www.standard.net/topics/courts/2010/11/04/more-deportation-cases-being-dismissed
Friday, October 8, 2010
Census shows illegal immigrant numbers down
By James Rufus Koren, Staff Writer
The Sun
Posted: 10/05/2010
In California and across the country, illegal immigration has become a bigger issue this year than in any election year in recent memory.
Yet some experts say - and the latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau seem to show - that in California and San Bernardino County, illegal immigration is a shrinking problem, not a growing one.
Census Bureau estimates released this week show fewer noncitizens lived in the county and the state in 2009 than in any year since 2003. The bureau does not differentiate between illegal immigrants and other noncitizens.
"I think a lot of people think immigration keeps increasing, but it's been decreasing," said Emilio Amaya, executive director of the San Bernardino Community Service Center, which offers aid to immigrants. "A lot of it is misinformation."
John Husing, a Redlands-based regional economist who studies the Inland Empire, said the Census Bureau numbers are good evidence that illegal immigration is on the decline and that the emergence of illegal immigration as a campaign issue is "Republican Party and Tea Party propaganda."
He and local immigration advocates say that's a tactic aimed at mobilizing conservative voters. Some advocates argue the outrage over illegal immigration boils down to concerns that Latinos are rapidly on their way to becoming California's ethnic majority.
But activists on the other side say illegal immigration is a growing problem - they say they doubt the accuracy of the Census Bureau numbers, which are estimates from the annual American Community Survey - and that it's become an issue in this election because Californians are seeing the downsides of unchecked immigration.
"Today, there's not a city in the country that doesn't have a population of illegal immigrants and the problems that go with them," said Rick Oltman, a spokesman for the anti-illegal-immigration group Californians for Population Stabilization. "Everybody has a problem."
In San Bernardino County, the number of illegal immigrants shrunk by more than 30,000 from 2006 through 2009, from 264,889 - or 13.3percent of the county's population - to 234,359 - 11.6percent of the population.
Husing said it makes sense that illegal immigrants would have started leaving San Bernardino County after 2006 - the high-water mark, according to Census numbers - because of the Great Recession.
"People who might be here in a good time aren't here now because there's no work," Husing said.
At the same time, illegal immigrants in Southern California were much more likely to be deported in 2009 than they were in 2006.
Federal officials "are really going all out," said Jose Zapata Calderon, a professor of sociology and Chicano studies at Pitzer College in Claremont.
Over the past four years, the number of deportations has nearly doubled, from 13,337 in 2006 to more than 25,285 in 2009, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
But those statistics and the Census Bureau's estimate of noncitizens leave anti-illegal-immigration activists unimpressed. Oltman said Husing's economic argument fails because the shaky U.S. economy is still attractive to workers trying to escape the Mexican economy.
"The whole world economy has taken a hit," he said. "It's still better to live in America with a declining economy than in Mexico."
Raymond Herrera, president and founder of We the People, California's Crusader, a Claremont-based anti-illegal-immigration group, said the Census Bureau numbers can't be accurate.
"The Census Bureau is taking account of noncitizens that are willing to come forth and say, `Here I am,"' he said. "The ones I'm speaking about are in the shadows. (Illegal immigrants) don't come forward and reveal their presence or their status."
Herrera has been following immigration issues for 30 years and, about six years ago, was involved with Minuteman groups that patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border. He said he's glad illegal immigration issues have crept into the mainstream political debate, though he, like Husing, said some politicians are using it solely to boost their campaigns.
"Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon," he said. "John McCain is in trouble running against J.D. Hayworth, so he runs an ad where he's walking along the border and he's supporting the Arizona law. These are political tactics."
Amaya agreed, in a sense. He said the issue itself - not a particular candidate's stance - has been trumped up to help conservatives. Calderon said the issue of illegal immigration lets people voice fears that have more to do with ethnicity than with citizenship.
"The basis here is that the Latino population is growing," he said. "In some areas, like San Bernardino, Latinos will soon constitute a majority. And there's a fear there."
If voters are concerned about those changing demographics, about the changing face of California and San Bernardino County, it's possible they'll be attracted to anti-immigrant and anti-illegal-immigration rhetoric, Calderon said.
"People don't really go on issues - they go on emotions," Amaya said. "They think people are taking over our country. It makes sense as a political move. It's a wedge issue."
Herrera, though, said Amaya and Calderon, not conservatives and anti-illegal-immigration activists, are "playing the race card" and that illegal immigration is a serious issue that must be addressed.
"What the American people are concerned about is our democracy, our way of life and our American culture," he said. "When you allow the laws to be broken, when you don't enforce them, you have a state of anarchy."
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_16263747#ixzz1238Q5ija
The Sun
Posted: 10/05/2010
In California and across the country, illegal immigration has become a bigger issue this year than in any election year in recent memory.
Yet some experts say - and the latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau seem to show - that in California and San Bernardino County, illegal immigration is a shrinking problem, not a growing one.
Census Bureau estimates released this week show fewer noncitizens lived in the county and the state in 2009 than in any year since 2003. The bureau does not differentiate between illegal immigrants and other noncitizens.
"I think a lot of people think immigration keeps increasing, but it's been decreasing," said Emilio Amaya, executive director of the San Bernardino Community Service Center, which offers aid to immigrants. "A lot of it is misinformation."
John Husing, a Redlands-based regional economist who studies the Inland Empire, said the Census Bureau numbers are good evidence that illegal immigration is on the decline and that the emergence of illegal immigration as a campaign issue is "Republican Party and Tea Party propaganda."
He and local immigration advocates say that's a tactic aimed at mobilizing conservative voters. Some advocates argue the outrage over illegal immigration boils down to concerns that Latinos are rapidly on their way to becoming California's ethnic majority.
But activists on the other side say illegal immigration is a growing problem - they say they doubt the accuracy of the Census Bureau numbers, which are estimates from the annual American Community Survey - and that it's become an issue in this election because Californians are seeing the downsides of unchecked immigration.
"Today, there's not a city in the country that doesn't have a population of illegal immigrants and the problems that go with them," said Rick Oltman, a spokesman for the anti-illegal-immigration group Californians for Population Stabilization. "Everybody has a problem."
In San Bernardino County, the number of illegal immigrants shrunk by more than 30,000 from 2006 through 2009, from 264,889 - or 13.3percent of the county's population - to 234,359 - 11.6percent of the population.
Husing said it makes sense that illegal immigrants would have started leaving San Bernardino County after 2006 - the high-water mark, according to Census numbers - because of the Great Recession.
"People who might be here in a good time aren't here now because there's no work," Husing said.
At the same time, illegal immigrants in Southern California were much more likely to be deported in 2009 than they were in 2006.
Federal officials "are really going all out," said Jose Zapata Calderon, a professor of sociology and Chicano studies at Pitzer College in Claremont.
Over the past four years, the number of deportations has nearly doubled, from 13,337 in 2006 to more than 25,285 in 2009, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
But those statistics and the Census Bureau's estimate of noncitizens leave anti-illegal-immigration activists unimpressed. Oltman said Husing's economic argument fails because the shaky U.S. economy is still attractive to workers trying to escape the Mexican economy.
"The whole world economy has taken a hit," he said. "It's still better to live in America with a declining economy than in Mexico."
Raymond Herrera, president and founder of We the People, California's Crusader, a Claremont-based anti-illegal-immigration group, said the Census Bureau numbers can't be accurate.
"The Census Bureau is taking account of noncitizens that are willing to come forth and say, `Here I am,"' he said. "The ones I'm speaking about are in the shadows. (Illegal immigrants) don't come forward and reveal their presence or their status."
Herrera has been following immigration issues for 30 years and, about six years ago, was involved with Minuteman groups that patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border. He said he's glad illegal immigration issues have crept into the mainstream political debate, though he, like Husing, said some politicians are using it solely to boost their campaigns.
"Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon," he said. "John McCain is in trouble running against J.D. Hayworth, so he runs an ad where he's walking along the border and he's supporting the Arizona law. These are political tactics."
Amaya agreed, in a sense. He said the issue itself - not a particular candidate's stance - has been trumped up to help conservatives. Calderon said the issue of illegal immigration lets people voice fears that have more to do with ethnicity than with citizenship.
"The basis here is that the Latino population is growing," he said. "In some areas, like San Bernardino, Latinos will soon constitute a majority. And there's a fear there."
If voters are concerned about those changing demographics, about the changing face of California and San Bernardino County, it's possible they'll be attracted to anti-immigrant and anti-illegal-immigration rhetoric, Calderon said.
"People don't really go on issues - they go on emotions," Amaya said. "They think people are taking over our country. It makes sense as a political move. It's a wedge issue."
Herrera, though, said Amaya and Calderon, not conservatives and anti-illegal-immigration activists, are "playing the race card" and that illegal immigration is a serious issue that must be addressed.
"What the American people are concerned about is our democracy, our way of life and our American culture," he said. "When you allow the laws to be broken, when you don't enforce them, you have a state of anarchy."
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_16263747#ixzz1238Q5ija
Monday, September 6, 2010
Illegal immigrants down, but not in Illinois
State's population stable despite national trend
By Dahleen Glanton
The Chicago Tribune
September 01, 2010
The number of illegal immigrants in Illinois has remained stable in the midst of the recession, bucking a national trend in which the number living in the U.S. declined as jobs dwindled, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Illinois ranked No. 5 with an estimated 525,000 illegal immigrants in 2009, more than the approximately 475,000 in the state in 2008. The Pew analysts cautioned that their figures were based on a range of estimates, meaning that it is safer to say the Illinois illegal immigrant population was stable rather than to say it actually increased.
Nationwide, the total number of illegal immigrants has declined by about 1 million since 2007, to 11.1 million in 2009, representing about 4 percent of the U.S. population.
While Illinois has long been attractive to illegal immigrants, the population has fluctuated over the last two decades. Unlike many states that have experienced a clear peak and decline, Illinois grew from 200,000 to 475,000 from 1990 to 2000 and then dropped to 350,000 in 2005.
"Illinois seems to have dropped in the first half of the decade when everyone else was growing and now seems to have turned around and is going back up," said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer who conducted the survey based on U.S. census data.
The gap between Illinois and Florida and New York has tightened, Passel said, as those two states lost large illegal immigrant populations last year and Illinois gained over the last five years.
Nationwide, the study found that the most marked decline was among illegal immigrants from Latin American countries other than Mexico. From 2007 to 2009, immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America and South America decreased 22 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico, which accounts for about 60 percent of all illegal immigrants, leveled off after reaching a peak of 7 million in 2007, the study found.
"The people are drawn here by the abundance of work," said Tim Bell, an organizer for the Chicago Workers Collaborative, which advocates workers rights for immigrants. "Over the last 15 to 20 years, the immigrant population has exploded in the suburbs, where they do most of the service work."
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-09-01/news/ct-met-illinois-illegal-immigration-020100901_1_illegal-immigrants-jeffrey-passel-chicago-workers-collaborative
By Dahleen Glanton
The Chicago Tribune
September 01, 2010
The number of illegal immigrants in Illinois has remained stable in the midst of the recession, bucking a national trend in which the number living in the U.S. declined as jobs dwindled, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Illinois ranked No. 5 with an estimated 525,000 illegal immigrants in 2009, more than the approximately 475,000 in the state in 2008. The Pew analysts cautioned that their figures were based on a range of estimates, meaning that it is safer to say the Illinois illegal immigrant population was stable rather than to say it actually increased.
Nationwide, the total number of illegal immigrants has declined by about 1 million since 2007, to 11.1 million in 2009, representing about 4 percent of the U.S. population.
While Illinois has long been attractive to illegal immigrants, the population has fluctuated over the last two decades. Unlike many states that have experienced a clear peak and decline, Illinois grew from 200,000 to 475,000 from 1990 to 2000 and then dropped to 350,000 in 2005.
"Illinois seems to have dropped in the first half of the decade when everyone else was growing and now seems to have turned around and is going back up," said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer who conducted the survey based on U.S. census data.
The gap between Illinois and Florida and New York has tightened, Passel said, as those two states lost large illegal immigrant populations last year and Illinois gained over the last five years.
Nationwide, the study found that the most marked decline was among illegal immigrants from Latin American countries other than Mexico. From 2007 to 2009, immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America and South America decreased 22 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico, which accounts for about 60 percent of all illegal immigrants, leveled off after reaching a peak of 7 million in 2007, the study found.
"The people are drawn here by the abundance of work," said Tim Bell, an organizer for the Chicago Workers Collaborative, which advocates workers rights for immigrants. "Over the last 15 to 20 years, the immigrant population has exploded in the suburbs, where they do most of the service work."
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-09-01/news/ct-met-illinois-illegal-immigration-020100901_1_illegal-immigrants-jeffrey-passel-chicago-workers-collaborative
Friday, September 3, 2010
Undocumented immigrant numbers in decline; Economic downturn, stepped-up law enforcement limit illegal immigration
By CLAUDIA MELÉNDEZ SALINAS
Herald Salinas Bureau
09/02/2010
The number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States declined considerably in the past couple of years, a fact experts attribute to the economic downturn and stepped-up law enforcement.
Though the number of undocumented immigrants declined from 12 million in March 2007 to 11.1 million in March 2009, the percentage of immigrants living in California remained static, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Nearly one in four undocumented immigrants in the nation lives in California.
The Obama administration was quick to take credit for the 8 percent nationwide decline.
"This administration's unprecedented commitment of manpower, technology and infrastructure to the Southwest border has been a major factor in this dramatic drop in illegal crossings," Matt Chandler, deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a prepared statement.
While enforcement and deportations have increased during the Obama administration, the economic downturn also has had a significant effect in slowing immigration. With the lure of jobs — one of the most powerful magnets to attract newcomers — gone, the number of people coming to the United States illegally has declined.
"That's more tied up to the ups and downs of the economy," said Madeleine Sumption, policy analyst with the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. "Construction took a massive hit ... and when those jobs had an impact, you obviously expect the influx to decrease."
While an average of 800,000 undocumented people arrived per year from 2000 to 2005, the figure declined to 300,000 annually from 2007 to 2009, according to the Pew Report. Increased enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border played a role, but the number of arrests has been decreasing.
The size of the undocumented population in Monterey County is difficult to estimate, but observers believe it hasn't changed.
The population of Monterey County in general has continued to grow in the past three years by an average of 1 percent per year, according to the California Department of Finance.
Though the economic slump hit the region just as in the rest of the country, people are not leaving. Agriculture, one of the largest employers of undocumented workers, is still the No. 1 industry in the county.
"I haven't heard anything about" workers leaving, said Jim Bogart, president of the Grower-Shipper Association. "The demand for labor is still there."
Jesús López, a farmworker organizer with California Rural Legal Assistance, said though workers are laboring fewer hours, they are still needed.
"I haven't seen people leaving," he said. Harvesting machines demand a set number of farmworkers, López said.
"They can't operate with fewer people, the machine wouldn't work," he said.
In the past, before enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border reached current levels, migrants went home for the winter and came back in the spring. The fear of getting caught and the increased expense of a more difficult border crossing has forced them to stay put and to bring their families to the U.S.
While the decrease of undocumented immigrants is significant, it is a third larger than at the beginning of the decade, when there were an estimated 8.4 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
Immigration reform advocates have pushed for legalization for years, but their efforts have been stymied by a vocal segment of the population that maintains legalization is tantamount to rewarding illegal behavior.
"The number is still very high — it's significantly higher than most other advanced industrialized nations because of the geographical proximity with Mexico and Latin America," Sumption said.
"It would be foolish to suggest that concerns about illegal immigrations will disappear because of the decrease in influx. My suspicion is that illegal immigration will continue to be the driving force behind the (legalization) debate."
The Pew study is based on census and government labor statistics through March 2009. Researchers estimated the size of the undocumented immigrant population by comparing the foreign-born population in the United States with the legal resident population and subtracting the difference.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Claudia Meléndez Salinas can be reached at 753-6755 or cmelendez@montereyherald.com.
Herald Salinas Bureau
09/02/2010
The number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States declined considerably in the past couple of years, a fact experts attribute to the economic downturn and stepped-up law enforcement.
Though the number of undocumented immigrants declined from 12 million in March 2007 to 11.1 million in March 2009, the percentage of immigrants living in California remained static, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Nearly one in four undocumented immigrants in the nation lives in California.
The Obama administration was quick to take credit for the 8 percent nationwide decline.
"This administration's unprecedented commitment of manpower, technology and infrastructure to the Southwest border has been a major factor in this dramatic drop in illegal crossings," Matt Chandler, deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a prepared statement.
While enforcement and deportations have increased during the Obama administration, the economic downturn also has had a significant effect in slowing immigration. With the lure of jobs — one of the most powerful magnets to attract newcomers — gone, the number of people coming to the United States illegally has declined.
"That's more tied up to the ups and downs of the economy," said Madeleine Sumption, policy analyst with the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. "Construction took a massive hit ... and when those jobs had an impact, you obviously expect the influx to decrease."
While an average of 800,000 undocumented people arrived per year from 2000 to 2005, the figure declined to 300,000 annually from 2007 to 2009, according to the Pew Report. Increased enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border played a role, but the number of arrests has been decreasing.
The size of the undocumented population in Monterey County is difficult to estimate, but observers believe it hasn't changed.
The population of Monterey County in general has continued to grow in the past three years by an average of 1 percent per year, according to the California Department of Finance.
Though the economic slump hit the region just as in the rest of the country, people are not leaving. Agriculture, one of the largest employers of undocumented workers, is still the No. 1 industry in the county.
"I haven't heard anything about" workers leaving, said Jim Bogart, president of the Grower-Shipper Association. "The demand for labor is still there."
Jesús López, a farmworker organizer with California Rural Legal Assistance, said though workers are laboring fewer hours, they are still needed.
"I haven't seen people leaving," he said. Harvesting machines demand a set number of farmworkers, López said.
"They can't operate with fewer people, the machine wouldn't work," he said.
In the past, before enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border reached current levels, migrants went home for the winter and came back in the spring. The fear of getting caught and the increased expense of a more difficult border crossing has forced them to stay put and to bring their families to the U.S.
While the decrease of undocumented immigrants is significant, it is a third larger than at the beginning of the decade, when there were an estimated 8.4 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
Immigration reform advocates have pushed for legalization for years, but their efforts have been stymied by a vocal segment of the population that maintains legalization is tantamount to rewarding illegal behavior.
"The number is still very high — it's significantly higher than most other advanced industrialized nations because of the geographical proximity with Mexico and Latin America," Sumption said.
"It would be foolish to suggest that concerns about illegal immigrations will disappear because of the decrease in influx. My suspicion is that illegal immigration will continue to be the driving force behind the (legalization) debate."
The Pew study is based on census and government labor statistics through March 2009. Researchers estimated the size of the undocumented immigrant population by comparing the foreign-born population in the United States with the legal resident population and subtracting the difference.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Claudia Meléndez Salinas can be reached at 753-6755 or cmelendez@montereyherald.com.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
What are the costs and benefits of illegal immigrants in the U.S.?
It's hard to say. Most Idaho agencies have no way of knowing how many they serve.
BY BETHANN STEWART
The Idaho Statesman
08/16/10
In the wake of an Arizona law allowing police to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally, lawmakers in many states, including Idaho, are looking more closely at illegal immigration - even with that Arizona law recently put on hold by a judge.
But quantifiable data is hard to find, and most of the numbers bandied about are based on research by advocacy groups on either side of the debate. That makes it difficult to know both the costs of illegal workers and the benefits of a low-cost, mobile work force.
A Statesman survey of several Treasure Valley institutions shows that many of them - hospitals, school districts, universities and state agencies - have no mechanism to track the costs and benefits of undocumented workers.
This is not an issue the Idaho controller's office has studied, but many of these costs are difficult to quantify, said Chief Deputy Dan Goicoechea.
Even knowing how many illegal immigrants live in Idaho is nearly impossible.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that in 2008 between 25,000 and 40,000 illegal immigrants lived in Idaho - among the lowest in the nation. But the key word is "estimated."
"I challenge anyone to give us the data on the undocumented. We just don't know," said Margie Gonzales, executive director of the Idaho Hispanic Commission.
Complicating the statistics is the Constitution, which grants citizenship to any child born in the United States, including the offspring of illegal immigrants.
Though public schools are often cited among the costs of illegal immigration, they are constitutionally bound to educate all students.
Since federal law prohibits public schools from asking students about their immigration status, legal and illegal immigrant students often are put into the same statistical category: English-language learners.
Federal law also requires hospitals to treat patients who come to emergency rooms, regardless of their ability to pay, so local officials say they don't have reliable numbers on the costs.
Sometimes those payments come from county indigent services offices, which pay medical bills of county residents who show they can't afford them. About $18 million to $20 million per year is spent statewide in indigent funds, with another about $26 million to $30 million from the state catastrophic funds, which help the counties cover the most expensive bills, said Dan Chadwick, executive director of the Idaho Association of Counties.
"The illegal immigrant portion of this, we don't know," he said.
A Senate bill passed in 2009 cleared the way for county offices to begin collecting data on immigration status, Chadwick said. But that will not affect the availability of funds, he said. Idaho law bases eligibility on a 30-day residency in the state, not on status.
"You're not entitled to services if you're not a resident of Idaho," Chadwick said. "I haven't seen it come into play for illegal immigrants."
Taxpayers also pay to send illegal immigrants home. A weekly, and sometimes twice-weekly, deportation flight leaves Twin Falls, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to give a specific number, said spokeswoman Lorie Dankers.
"People might come from other cities, not just Twin Falls," she said. "It's one of those situations where it costs what it costs. I don't know if we can quantify the cost."
The issue isn't going away.
The Legislature's most outspoken critic of illegal immigration, GOP Sen. Mike Jorgensen of Hayden, was defeated in the primary, but others have vowed to take up the charge.
"If the feds won't do it, states are saying, 'We're going to have to do it,' " Idaho state Sen. Monty Pearce, R-New Plymouth, told the Associated Press recently.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/08/16/1304218/what-are-the-costs-benefits-of.html
BY BETHANN STEWART
The Idaho Statesman
08/16/10
In the wake of an Arizona law allowing police to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally, lawmakers in many states, including Idaho, are looking more closely at illegal immigration - even with that Arizona law recently put on hold by a judge.
But quantifiable data is hard to find, and most of the numbers bandied about are based on research by advocacy groups on either side of the debate. That makes it difficult to know both the costs of illegal workers and the benefits of a low-cost, mobile work force.
A Statesman survey of several Treasure Valley institutions shows that many of them - hospitals, school districts, universities and state agencies - have no mechanism to track the costs and benefits of undocumented workers.
This is not an issue the Idaho controller's office has studied, but many of these costs are difficult to quantify, said Chief Deputy Dan Goicoechea.
Even knowing how many illegal immigrants live in Idaho is nearly impossible.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that in 2008 between 25,000 and 40,000 illegal immigrants lived in Idaho - among the lowest in the nation. But the key word is "estimated."
"I challenge anyone to give us the data on the undocumented. We just don't know," said Margie Gonzales, executive director of the Idaho Hispanic Commission.
Complicating the statistics is the Constitution, which grants citizenship to any child born in the United States, including the offspring of illegal immigrants.
Though public schools are often cited among the costs of illegal immigration, they are constitutionally bound to educate all students.
Since federal law prohibits public schools from asking students about their immigration status, legal and illegal immigrant students often are put into the same statistical category: English-language learners.
Federal law also requires hospitals to treat patients who come to emergency rooms, regardless of their ability to pay, so local officials say they don't have reliable numbers on the costs.
Sometimes those payments come from county indigent services offices, which pay medical bills of county residents who show they can't afford them. About $18 million to $20 million per year is spent statewide in indigent funds, with another about $26 million to $30 million from the state catastrophic funds, which help the counties cover the most expensive bills, said Dan Chadwick, executive director of the Idaho Association of Counties.
"The illegal immigrant portion of this, we don't know," he said.
A Senate bill passed in 2009 cleared the way for county offices to begin collecting data on immigration status, Chadwick said. But that will not affect the availability of funds, he said. Idaho law bases eligibility on a 30-day residency in the state, not on status.
"You're not entitled to services if you're not a resident of Idaho," Chadwick said. "I haven't seen it come into play for illegal immigrants."
Taxpayers also pay to send illegal immigrants home. A weekly, and sometimes twice-weekly, deportation flight leaves Twin Falls, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to give a specific number, said spokeswoman Lorie Dankers.
"People might come from other cities, not just Twin Falls," she said. "It's one of those situations where it costs what it costs. I don't know if we can quantify the cost."
The issue isn't going away.
The Legislature's most outspoken critic of illegal immigration, GOP Sen. Mike Jorgensen of Hayden, was defeated in the primary, but others have vowed to take up the charge.
"If the feds won't do it, states are saying, 'We're going to have to do it,' " Idaho state Sen. Monty Pearce, R-New Plymouth, told the Associated Press recently.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/08/16/1304218/what-are-the-costs-benefits-of.html
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Deportations were high in Obama's first year in office
By Cristina Silva, Times Staff Writer
St. Petersburg Time
July 6, 2010
"President Barack Obama has deported more people in his first year in office than George W. Bush in his last year in office."
Jorge Ramos, Sunday in an interview on ABC's This Week
The ruling
On the July 4, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week, Jorge Ramos, a prominent news anchor for Univision, the Spanish-language television network, said that "President Barack Obama has deported more people in his first year in office than George W. Bush in his last year in office."
With immigration policy a hot political topic these days, we thought Ramos' statement was worth checking.
When we contacted Ramos, he said the information had come from the White House, which, in turn, referred us to the Department of Homeland Security.
A DHS spokesman provided deportation statistics updated through June 7, 2010. In fiscal year 2008 (which ran from Oct. 1, 2007, through Sept. 30, 2008), there were 369,221 deportations. During fiscal year 2009 (which ran from Oct. 1, 2008, through Sept. 30, 2009) there were 387,790 deportations. That's an increase of 18,569 from one year to the next, a jump of about 5 percent. So, using these numbers, Ramos is correct.
It's worth mentioning a few caveats, however.
• The fiscal years do not square precisely with presidential years. Fiscal year 2008 was entirely under Bush, while fiscal year 2009 consisted of four months under Bush and eight under Obama. So those deportation figures don't quite prove the Bush-Obama comparison.
• It's not clear that Obama policies played a significant role in the deportation increase, as Ramos implies. Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokesman for the Migration Policy Institute, said "deportation numbers have been on a steadily upward trajectory" since 2002, due to policy changes initially undertaken during the Bush administration. Indeed, between 2002 and 2008, deportations rose by 117 percent.
• DHS also provided totals for part of fiscal year 2010 - from Oct. 1, 2009, through June 7, 2010. That number was 227,163. If you prorate that amount to a full 12 months, you get a full-year total of 330,419, less than each of the two previous years. However, immigration experts said deportations aren't spaced equally throughout the year, so prorating is not necessarily valid.
These caveats add a bit of uncertainty to Ramos' claim. So we rate it Mostly True.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/deportations-were-high-in-obamas-first-year-in-office/1107334
St. Petersburg Time
July 6, 2010
"President Barack Obama has deported more people in his first year in office than George W. Bush in his last year in office."
Jorge Ramos, Sunday in an interview on ABC's This Week
The ruling
On the July 4, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week, Jorge Ramos, a prominent news anchor for Univision, the Spanish-language television network, said that "President Barack Obama has deported more people in his first year in office than George W. Bush in his last year in office."
With immigration policy a hot political topic these days, we thought Ramos' statement was worth checking.
When we contacted Ramos, he said the information had come from the White House, which, in turn, referred us to the Department of Homeland Security.
A DHS spokesman provided deportation statistics updated through June 7, 2010. In fiscal year 2008 (which ran from Oct. 1, 2007, through Sept. 30, 2008), there were 369,221 deportations. During fiscal year 2009 (which ran from Oct. 1, 2008, through Sept. 30, 2009) there were 387,790 deportations. That's an increase of 18,569 from one year to the next, a jump of about 5 percent. So, using these numbers, Ramos is correct.
It's worth mentioning a few caveats, however.
• The fiscal years do not square precisely with presidential years. Fiscal year 2008 was entirely under Bush, while fiscal year 2009 consisted of four months under Bush and eight under Obama. So those deportation figures don't quite prove the Bush-Obama comparison.
• It's not clear that Obama policies played a significant role in the deportation increase, as Ramos implies. Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokesman for the Migration Policy Institute, said "deportation numbers have been on a steadily upward trajectory" since 2002, due to policy changes initially undertaken during the Bush administration. Indeed, between 2002 and 2008, deportations rose by 117 percent.
• DHS also provided totals for part of fiscal year 2010 - from Oct. 1, 2009, through June 7, 2010. That number was 227,163. If you prorate that amount to a full 12 months, you get a full-year total of 330,419, less than each of the two previous years. However, immigration experts said deportations aren't spaced equally throughout the year, so prorating is not necessarily valid.
These caveats add a bit of uncertainty to Ramos' claim. So we rate it Mostly True.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/deportations-were-high-in-obamas-first-year-in-office/1107334
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
E-mails show ex-Farmers Branch official warned of expensive fight over immigration ordinance
By DIANNE SOLÍS
The Dallas Morning News
July 6, 2010
The Farmers Branch City Council was warned by its former city manager that litigation over its immigration ordinance would be costly and that similar issues were already being litigated by the city of Hazleton, Pa., "with somebody else's money," according to e-mails disclosed in lawsuits against the city.
Since September 2006, Farmers Branch has paid $3.4 million to fight civil suits in federal and state courts over its renter ordinances aimed at barring illegal immigrants from housing in the Dallas suburb.
In addition, two teams of lawyers have submitted $2 million in bills as the winning side in the federal suit in which a judge ruled in March that immigration regulation to be "exclusively a federal power." The city plans to appeal, and city officials said that effectively puts a hold on any payout to the law firms.
Farmers Branch was first sued in December 2006 in state court by resident Guillermo Ramos. The city was sued two more times when the City Council enacted replacement ordinances. Each time, Ramos and his attorneys alleged violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act. The e-mails and other documents were obtained through discovery proceedings in that suit by the Bickel & Brewer Storefront representing Ramos.
The city has denied violating the law and fought disclosure.
"There was no discussion of the substance of that ordinance in any executive session," said Michael Yung, the city's outside counsel and an attorney with the Strasburger & Price law firm of Dallas.
"It was considered by council in open session and debated in open session and voted in open session."
No court hearings have been scheduled. About a dozen depositions were taken this year. The city continues to fight release of certain documents it considers privileged.
Plaintiff's attorney Bill Brewer said proof of the court's concern over whether violations had occurred was the appointment of a special master in December 2008 to oversee the release of city records. The special master was the state district court judge himself, Bruce Priddy.
"It was an extraordinary step ... an example of their failure to comply," Brewer said.
Houston lawyer Margaret Maddox, who assists with a legal hotline run by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, agreed that a judge appointing himself a special master is "somewhat unusual" but said it does happen.
"Then, it won't be filtered through someone else," Maddox said. "In my opinion, that is good for the state."
The documents revealed in the lawsuit include an e-mail from City Manager Linda Groomer to council member Ben Robinson in August 2006 in which she wrote that the city's insurance wouldn't cover litigation. She also noted that a similar legal fight was under way in Hazleton, Pa.
"Therefore, the city would have to assume 100 percent of its legal costs," she wrote. "In the meantime, the very same issues are being litigated by somebody else with somebody else's money, namely Hazleton. I strongly recommend against spending local FB tax dollars to join a legal battle that will continue with or without Farmers Branch dollars."
Groomer also urged that certain code enforcement and police citation materials be printed in English and Spanish "if compliance and assimilation are the goals."
Groomer, who left the city in 2007, declined to comment.
Robinson, the Farmers Branch council member with the longest tenure, said he continues to support defense of the ordinance despite financial costs. He pointed out that residents voted in a 2007 referendum to continue the fight.
"The other issue in going forward is if we are successful in the Court of Appeals, that removes the claim that the other lawyers have for compensation" of $2 million, Robinson said.
Hazleton, a city of about 25,000, is awaiting a decision from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on an ordinance that, like the ones in Farmers Branch, was struck down by a lower court.
Other records that are part of the lawsuit discovery detail the involvement of Kris Kobach, a law school professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and senior counsel with the legal affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. Kobach has assisted states and cities in drafting or defending anti-illegal immigration ordinances and laws, including recent work in Arizona and Fremont, Neb.
At a May forum in Dallas, FAIR's president, Dan Stein, praised Farmers Branch for its role in a "national movement" that challenges federal authority over immigration law and brings balance to its administration.
Other documents show:
• As early as October 2006, Kobach was discussing legal points related to the renters ordinance in Farmers Branch. Later invoices detail the payment to Kobach on such items as the "draft ordinance" by the Strasburger & Price legal firm working for the city of Farmers Branch. And the legal affiliate's general counsel has sat in on two depositions.
• An e-mail from 2006 from Farmers Branch Mayor Tim O'Hare – who was a council member at the time – requesting that "we immediately pass an ordinance prohibiting any country's flag from being displayed other than our own."
Groomer responded, "I don't think that's constitutional."
Bob Phelps, who was mayor at the time, responded only to Groomer: "I don't think it is either. Just another instance of ??????? Bob."
It isn't clear how much of the city's legal fees are related to the state suits over the Open Meetings Act or the federal suits. At a recent town hall meeting in Farmers Branch, O'Hare said that "by far," the state suits have been most costly. City finance director Charles Cox said he bundles all costs related to immigration into a single line item.
Under state law, deliberations among elected officials must be public, with few exceptions. Among them are discussions of purchase or lease of property, personnel matters, economic development, certain homeland security matters and pending or contemplated litigation.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/carrollton/stories/DN-fbopen_06met.ART.State.Edition1.2943e44.html
The Dallas Morning News
July 6, 2010
The Farmers Branch City Council was warned by its former city manager that litigation over its immigration ordinance would be costly and that similar issues were already being litigated by the city of Hazleton, Pa., "with somebody else's money," according to e-mails disclosed in lawsuits against the city.
Since September 2006, Farmers Branch has paid $3.4 million to fight civil suits in federal and state courts over its renter ordinances aimed at barring illegal immigrants from housing in the Dallas suburb.
In addition, two teams of lawyers have submitted $2 million in bills as the winning side in the federal suit in which a judge ruled in March that immigration regulation to be "exclusively a federal power." The city plans to appeal, and city officials said that effectively puts a hold on any payout to the law firms.
Farmers Branch was first sued in December 2006 in state court by resident Guillermo Ramos. The city was sued two more times when the City Council enacted replacement ordinances. Each time, Ramos and his attorneys alleged violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act. The e-mails and other documents were obtained through discovery proceedings in that suit by the Bickel & Brewer Storefront representing Ramos.
The city has denied violating the law and fought disclosure.
"There was no discussion of the substance of that ordinance in any executive session," said Michael Yung, the city's outside counsel and an attorney with the Strasburger & Price law firm of Dallas.
"It was considered by council in open session and debated in open session and voted in open session."
No court hearings have been scheduled. About a dozen depositions were taken this year. The city continues to fight release of certain documents it considers privileged.
Plaintiff's attorney Bill Brewer said proof of the court's concern over whether violations had occurred was the appointment of a special master in December 2008 to oversee the release of city records. The special master was the state district court judge himself, Bruce Priddy.
"It was an extraordinary step ... an example of their failure to comply," Brewer said.
Houston lawyer Margaret Maddox, who assists with a legal hotline run by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, agreed that a judge appointing himself a special master is "somewhat unusual" but said it does happen.
"Then, it won't be filtered through someone else," Maddox said. "In my opinion, that is good for the state."
The documents revealed in the lawsuit include an e-mail from City Manager Linda Groomer to council member Ben Robinson in August 2006 in which she wrote that the city's insurance wouldn't cover litigation. She also noted that a similar legal fight was under way in Hazleton, Pa.
"Therefore, the city would have to assume 100 percent of its legal costs," she wrote. "In the meantime, the very same issues are being litigated by somebody else with somebody else's money, namely Hazleton. I strongly recommend against spending local FB tax dollars to join a legal battle that will continue with or without Farmers Branch dollars."
Groomer also urged that certain code enforcement and police citation materials be printed in English and Spanish "if compliance and assimilation are the goals."
Groomer, who left the city in 2007, declined to comment.
Robinson, the Farmers Branch council member with the longest tenure, said he continues to support defense of the ordinance despite financial costs. He pointed out that residents voted in a 2007 referendum to continue the fight.
"The other issue in going forward is if we are successful in the Court of Appeals, that removes the claim that the other lawyers have for compensation" of $2 million, Robinson said.
Hazleton, a city of about 25,000, is awaiting a decision from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on an ordinance that, like the ones in Farmers Branch, was struck down by a lower court.
Other records that are part of the lawsuit discovery detail the involvement of Kris Kobach, a law school professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and senior counsel with the legal affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. Kobach has assisted states and cities in drafting or defending anti-illegal immigration ordinances and laws, including recent work in Arizona and Fremont, Neb.
At a May forum in Dallas, FAIR's president, Dan Stein, praised Farmers Branch for its role in a "national movement" that challenges federal authority over immigration law and brings balance to its administration.
Other documents show:
• As early as October 2006, Kobach was discussing legal points related to the renters ordinance in Farmers Branch. Later invoices detail the payment to Kobach on such items as the "draft ordinance" by the Strasburger & Price legal firm working for the city of Farmers Branch. And the legal affiliate's general counsel has sat in on two depositions.
• An e-mail from 2006 from Farmers Branch Mayor Tim O'Hare – who was a council member at the time – requesting that "we immediately pass an ordinance prohibiting any country's flag from being displayed other than our own."
Groomer responded, "I don't think that's constitutional."
Bob Phelps, who was mayor at the time, responded only to Groomer: "I don't think it is either. Just another instance of ??????? Bob."
It isn't clear how much of the city's legal fees are related to the state suits over the Open Meetings Act or the federal suits. At a recent town hall meeting in Farmers Branch, O'Hare said that "by far," the state suits have been most costly. City finance director Charles Cox said he bundles all costs related to immigration into a single line item.
Under state law, deliberations among elected officials must be public, with few exceptions. Among them are discussions of purchase or lease of property, personnel matters, economic development, certain homeland security matters and pending or contemplated litigation.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/carrollton/stories/DN-fbopen_06met.ART.State.Edition1.2943e44.html
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Immigration Advocates Rally for Change
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
May 1, 2010
WASHINGTON — In protests fueled by anger over a tough anti-illegal immigrant law in Arizona, tens of thousands of demonstrators joined marches and rallies Saturday in cities across the country, calling on Congress to pass an immigration overhaul.
In Los Angeles, the police said the crowd had peaked at 50,000. Protesters numbered 25,000 in Dallas, more than 10,000 in Chicago and Milwaukee, in the thousands in San Francisco and here in Washington, D.C., according to the police and independent estimates. Organizers said rallies and vigils were held in more than 70 places around the country.
In Washington, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, was arrested after staging a sit-in on the sidewalk in front of the White House with about three dozen other people, in front of a crowd of thousands.
At a rally before he was arrested, Mr. Gutierrez, speaking in English and in Spanish, evoked memories of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
“There are moments in which you say, ‘We will escalate this struggle,’ ” he said. “Today they will put handcuffs on us. But one day we will be free at last in the country we love.”
In all, 35 people were arrested in the sit-in, the United States Park Police said.
At rally after rally across the nation, protesters chanted “shame, shame, Arizona,” and carried signs saying, “Todos Somos Arizona,” or “We are All Arizona.”
The bigger demonstrations were far larger than planners had anticipated in March, when the events were first announced. The protests were originally called by immigrant advocates who had set May 1 as the deadline for Congress to introduce overhaul legislation that would include measures to give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.
But organizers said the Arizona legislation, which was signed into law April 23, had been a watershed event for disparate advocate organizations, transforming them into something akin to a civil rights movement with a national profile.
The Arizona law made it a crime to be present in the state without legal immigration status and authorized the police to question people about their status based on a suspicion that they might be illegal immigrants.
Supporters of the law, including Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, a Republican, said the state had to act because the federal government had failed to enforce the immigration laws. Critics across the country said the law would lead to racial profiling and spread fear in immigrant communities.
In Los Angeles, protesters marched through the streets and held a crowded rally downtown, just down the street from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
Demonstrators waved American flags and signs, including one that said: “We Latinos are the Jews of the 21st century.” Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa told the crowd that a federal immigration overhaul was long overdue.
“Let me be clear about those laws that make suspects out of people based on the color of their skin,” Mr. Villaraigosa said. “They have no place in our great country.”
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles drew cheers when he said, “Everyone in God’s eyes is legal.”
“Every time we have an economic downturn, there is a new attack on immigrants,” Cardinal Mahony said.
One Los Angeles protester, Dorien Grunbaum, 67, a teacher at a community college in the city, said she was there “primarily to support the immigrants in Arizona. I’m disgusted by what’s happening there,” Ms. Grunbaum said.
No overhaul legislation has been introduced in Congress, and President Obama said last week that lawmakers “may not have the appetite” for a volatile debate on immigration this year. A group of Democratic senators on Thursday presented an outline for an overhaul bill, written primarily by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.
In Washington, Mr. Gutierrez sat crossed-legged on the sidewalk in front of the White House at about 3 p.m., holding a small American flag and wearing a white T-shirt with red letters that read, “Arrest me not my friends.” The protesters each held letters that spelled out the message, “Obama, stop deporting our families.”
Mr. Gutierrez was handcuffed behind his back with plastic cuffs by the Park Police, and he walked in silence when an officer led him away along the black wrought-iron fence in front of the White House. Among others arrested with him were Jaime Contreras, director for Washington, D.C., of the Service Employees International Union; Joshua Hoyt, Ali Noorani, Deepak Bhargava, and Gustavo Torres, leaders of immigrant advocate organizations; and Gregory Cendana, president of the United States Student Association.
The protesters were arrested for violations of a regulation requiring people to keep moving when they pass in front of the White House, said Sergeant David Schlosser, a spokesman for the Park Police.
In Chicago, Mr. Obama’s hometown, thousands of people marched through downtown with signs that said, “Being brown is not a crime” and “Hey Obama! Don’t deport my mama.”
Many of the Chicago protesters expressed frustration at what they saw as the president’s lack of action on immigration.
Dulce Blanco, 48, was at the rally with a church group. She said she voted for Mr. Obama after attending a meeting where he said he would pass immigration reform. “If they don’t pass reform, we won’t vote for Obama again,” she said in Spanish.
Guadalupe Concepcion, a 22-year-old student in Chicago, began to cry during one of the speeches. She said she had been an illegal immigrant until she married her husband and that her parents faced discrimination because they are not here legally.
“The Arizona law is just plain racist,” she said. “It happened with African-Americans in the past, and now they want to do the same thing with us.”
Addressing the Chicago crowd, the Rev. Jesse Jackson encouraged a boycott of Arizona, saying the law would encourage racial profiling. “Arizona has become the Selma,” he said. “It is a showdown.”
In downtown Dallas, demonstrators gathered at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, named for the patroness of Mexico, and marched to City Hall. Many carried American flags, or draped them over their shoulders.
Among the widening reverberations from the Arizona law, the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, a historically black organization whose members included Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Justice Thurgood Marshall, announced that it was moving its annual convention in July to Las Vegas from Phoenix. The fraternity said it had been expecting as many as 10,000 people, including members and their families, to come to the meeting.
The fraternity’s board decided that it could not host a meeting in a state with “a law that could put the civil rights and the very dignity of our members at risk during their stay in Phoenix,” said Herman Mason, the general president.
In Phoenix on Saturday, a far smaller and more subdued crowd of about 1,000 people gathered by 3 p.m. on the lawn at the State Capitol.
Most had handmade signs, including one with Governor Brewer wearing a black witch hat and reading “Jan Brewer: Arizona’s wicked witch of the West.”
The rally was primarily peaceful with the mostly Latino crowd marching around the Capitol, but a few arguments broke out with people who supported the law.
One demonstrator, Martina Paz, 42, of Phoenix, held a photograph of her 23-year-old son, Adan Buelna, who she said was in the Army stationed in Texas and was waiting to be deployed to the Middle East.
“My son will be protecting the rights and liberty of people on the other side of the world, but who is going to protect our rights here in Arizona,” Ms. Paz said.
She said that she feared that even though she and her husband have submitted applications to become legal residents, they will be stopped by the police and possibly be deported.
Lilly Fowler contributed reporting from Los Angeles, Ana Facio Contreras from Phoenix, Emma Graves Fitzsimmons from Chicago and James C. McKinley Jr. from Houston.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02immig.html?th&emc=th
The New York Times
May 1, 2010
WASHINGTON — In protests fueled by anger over a tough anti-illegal immigrant law in Arizona, tens of thousands of demonstrators joined marches and rallies Saturday in cities across the country, calling on Congress to pass an immigration overhaul.
In Los Angeles, the police said the crowd had peaked at 50,000. Protesters numbered 25,000 in Dallas, more than 10,000 in Chicago and Milwaukee, in the thousands in San Francisco and here in Washington, D.C., according to the police and independent estimates. Organizers said rallies and vigils were held in more than 70 places around the country.
In Washington, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, was arrested after staging a sit-in on the sidewalk in front of the White House with about three dozen other people, in front of a crowd of thousands.
At a rally before he was arrested, Mr. Gutierrez, speaking in English and in Spanish, evoked memories of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
“There are moments in which you say, ‘We will escalate this struggle,’ ” he said. “Today they will put handcuffs on us. But one day we will be free at last in the country we love.”
In all, 35 people were arrested in the sit-in, the United States Park Police said.
At rally after rally across the nation, protesters chanted “shame, shame, Arizona,” and carried signs saying, “Todos Somos Arizona,” or “We are All Arizona.”
The bigger demonstrations were far larger than planners had anticipated in March, when the events were first announced. The protests were originally called by immigrant advocates who had set May 1 as the deadline for Congress to introduce overhaul legislation that would include measures to give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.
But organizers said the Arizona legislation, which was signed into law April 23, had been a watershed event for disparate advocate organizations, transforming them into something akin to a civil rights movement with a national profile.
The Arizona law made it a crime to be present in the state without legal immigration status and authorized the police to question people about their status based on a suspicion that they might be illegal immigrants.
Supporters of the law, including Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, a Republican, said the state had to act because the federal government had failed to enforce the immigration laws. Critics across the country said the law would lead to racial profiling and spread fear in immigrant communities.
In Los Angeles, protesters marched through the streets and held a crowded rally downtown, just down the street from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
Demonstrators waved American flags and signs, including one that said: “We Latinos are the Jews of the 21st century.” Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa told the crowd that a federal immigration overhaul was long overdue.
“Let me be clear about those laws that make suspects out of people based on the color of their skin,” Mr. Villaraigosa said. “They have no place in our great country.”
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles drew cheers when he said, “Everyone in God’s eyes is legal.”
“Every time we have an economic downturn, there is a new attack on immigrants,” Cardinal Mahony said.
One Los Angeles protester, Dorien Grunbaum, 67, a teacher at a community college in the city, said she was there “primarily to support the immigrants in Arizona. I’m disgusted by what’s happening there,” Ms. Grunbaum said.
No overhaul legislation has been introduced in Congress, and President Obama said last week that lawmakers “may not have the appetite” for a volatile debate on immigration this year. A group of Democratic senators on Thursday presented an outline for an overhaul bill, written primarily by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.
In Washington, Mr. Gutierrez sat crossed-legged on the sidewalk in front of the White House at about 3 p.m., holding a small American flag and wearing a white T-shirt with red letters that read, “Arrest me not my friends.” The protesters each held letters that spelled out the message, “Obama, stop deporting our families.”
Mr. Gutierrez was handcuffed behind his back with plastic cuffs by the Park Police, and he walked in silence when an officer led him away along the black wrought-iron fence in front of the White House. Among others arrested with him were Jaime Contreras, director for Washington, D.C., of the Service Employees International Union; Joshua Hoyt, Ali Noorani, Deepak Bhargava, and Gustavo Torres, leaders of immigrant advocate organizations; and Gregory Cendana, president of the United States Student Association.
The protesters were arrested for violations of a regulation requiring people to keep moving when they pass in front of the White House, said Sergeant David Schlosser, a spokesman for the Park Police.
In Chicago, Mr. Obama’s hometown, thousands of people marched through downtown with signs that said, “Being brown is not a crime” and “Hey Obama! Don’t deport my mama.”
Many of the Chicago protesters expressed frustration at what they saw as the president’s lack of action on immigration.
Dulce Blanco, 48, was at the rally with a church group. She said she voted for Mr. Obama after attending a meeting where he said he would pass immigration reform. “If they don’t pass reform, we won’t vote for Obama again,” she said in Spanish.
Guadalupe Concepcion, a 22-year-old student in Chicago, began to cry during one of the speeches. She said she had been an illegal immigrant until she married her husband and that her parents faced discrimination because they are not here legally.
“The Arizona law is just plain racist,” she said. “It happened with African-Americans in the past, and now they want to do the same thing with us.”
Addressing the Chicago crowd, the Rev. Jesse Jackson encouraged a boycott of Arizona, saying the law would encourage racial profiling. “Arizona has become the Selma,” he said. “It is a showdown.”
In downtown Dallas, demonstrators gathered at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, named for the patroness of Mexico, and marched to City Hall. Many carried American flags, or draped them over their shoulders.
Among the widening reverberations from the Arizona law, the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, a historically black organization whose members included Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Justice Thurgood Marshall, announced that it was moving its annual convention in July to Las Vegas from Phoenix. The fraternity said it had been expecting as many as 10,000 people, including members and their families, to come to the meeting.
The fraternity’s board decided that it could not host a meeting in a state with “a law that could put the civil rights and the very dignity of our members at risk during their stay in Phoenix,” said Herman Mason, the general president.
In Phoenix on Saturday, a far smaller and more subdued crowd of about 1,000 people gathered by 3 p.m. on the lawn at the State Capitol.
Most had handmade signs, including one with Governor Brewer wearing a black witch hat and reading “Jan Brewer: Arizona’s wicked witch of the West.”
The rally was primarily peaceful with the mostly Latino crowd marching around the Capitol, but a few arguments broke out with people who supported the law.
One demonstrator, Martina Paz, 42, of Phoenix, held a photograph of her 23-year-old son, Adan Buelna, who she said was in the Army stationed in Texas and was waiting to be deployed to the Middle East.
“My son will be protecting the rights and liberty of people on the other side of the world, but who is going to protect our rights here in Arizona,” Ms. Paz said.
She said that she feared that even though she and her husband have submitted applications to become legal residents, they will be stopped by the police and possibly be deported.
Lilly Fowler contributed reporting from Los Angeles, Ana Facio Contreras from Phoenix, Emma Graves Fitzsimmons from Chicago and James C. McKinley Jr. from Houston.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02immig.html?th&emc=th
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Obama to revive immigration reform plan
Press TV
06 Mar 2010
US President Barack Obama plans to focus on immigration matters next week by meeting at the White House with two senators crafting a bill on the issue.
According to The White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro, on Monday the US president will meet with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York.
Shapiro said on Friday that the president "looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill."
Obama started focusing on the issue last year; however, this meeting will be the first he has had with Schumer and Graham on the proposal they are developing ever since.
Immigrants and their advocates have been growing frustrated by Obama's failure to deliver on his campaign promise to address the issue in his first year of presidency.
Several community groups planned to vent some of that frustration in a news conference on Monday in Washington and are also trying to gather thousands of people for a March 21 demonstration in Washington
The alien population unlawfully remaining in the US is estimated to be about 11 million people, down from a historic peak of 12.5 million people in 2007.
According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, in 2005, 57% of illegal immigrants were from Mexico, 24% were from other Latin American countries, primarily from Central America, 9% were from Asia, 6% were from Europe, and 4% were from the rest of the world.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120197§ionid=3510203
06 Mar 2010
US President Barack Obama plans to focus on immigration matters next week by meeting at the White House with two senators crafting a bill on the issue.
According to The White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro, on Monday the US president will meet with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York.
Shapiro said on Friday that the president "looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill."
Obama started focusing on the issue last year; however, this meeting will be the first he has had with Schumer and Graham on the proposal they are developing ever since.
Immigrants and their advocates have been growing frustrated by Obama's failure to deliver on his campaign promise to address the issue in his first year of presidency.
Several community groups planned to vent some of that frustration in a news conference on Monday in Washington and are also trying to gather thousands of people for a March 21 demonstration in Washington
The alien population unlawfully remaining in the US is estimated to be about 11 million people, down from a historic peak of 12.5 million people in 2007.
According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, in 2005, 57% of illegal immigrants were from Mexico, 24% were from other Latin American countries, primarily from Central America, 9% were from Asia, 6% were from Europe, and 4% were from the rest of the world.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120197§ionid=3510203
Saturday, February 27, 2010
62 percent of illegal immigrants in U.S. from Mexico
By Daniel Gonzalez
AZ Central Blog
February 25, 2010
Mexicans represented 62 percent of the nation's undocumented immigrant population in 2009, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security.
The report shows that the percentage of undocumented immigrants who are Mexican also grew from 55 percent in 2000 to 62 percent in 2009.
The report, which was released in January, has been getting a lot of attention because it shows that the nation's undocumented immigrant population declined sharply in 2008 during the recession, following years of rapid growth. In January 2008, the report estimates the nation's undocumented population was 11.6 million. A year later, it has fallen to 10.8 million, according to the report.
But the report also includes lots of other interesting data.
Of the 10.8 million undocumented immigrants estimated in the U.S. in January 2009, 6.6 million were from Mexico.
An estimated 8.5 million of the total 10.8 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. in 2009 were from the North American region, including Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America. About 1 million undocumented immigrants were from Asia, followed by about 740,000 from South America.
After Mexicans, the second largest undocumented immigrant group is from El Salvador (530,000) followed by Guatemala (480,000), Honduras (320,000), Philippines (270,000), India (200,000), Korea; (200,000), Ecuador (170,000), Brazil (150,000) and China (120,000).
California has the highest number of illegal immigrants of any state, with 2.6 million. Texas was second, with 1.7 million, followed by Florida (720,000), New York (550,000), Illinois (540,000), Georgia (480,000), Arizona (460,000), North Carolina (370,000), New Jersey (360,000) and Nevada, (260,000).
In 2009, 61 percent of undocumented immigrants were ages 25 and 44 and 58 percent were males.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6327459931741489654
AZ Central Blog
February 25, 2010
Mexicans represented 62 percent of the nation's undocumented immigrant population in 2009, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security.
The report shows that the percentage of undocumented immigrants who are Mexican also grew from 55 percent in 2000 to 62 percent in 2009.
The report, which was released in January, has been getting a lot of attention because it shows that the nation's undocumented immigrant population declined sharply in 2008 during the recession, following years of rapid growth. In January 2008, the report estimates the nation's undocumented population was 11.6 million. A year later, it has fallen to 10.8 million, according to the report.
But the report also includes lots of other interesting data.
Of the 10.8 million undocumented immigrants estimated in the U.S. in January 2009, 6.6 million were from Mexico.
An estimated 8.5 million of the total 10.8 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. in 2009 were from the North American region, including Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America. About 1 million undocumented immigrants were from Asia, followed by about 740,000 from South America.
After Mexicans, the second largest undocumented immigrant group is from El Salvador (530,000) followed by Guatemala (480,000), Honduras (320,000), Philippines (270,000), India (200,000), Korea; (200,000), Ecuador (170,000), Brazil (150,000) and China (120,000).
California has the highest number of illegal immigrants of any state, with 2.6 million. Texas was second, with 1.7 million, followed by Florida (720,000), New York (550,000), Illinois (540,000), Georgia (480,000), Arizona (460,000), North Carolina (370,000), New Jersey (360,000) and Nevada, (260,000).
In 2009, 61 percent of undocumented immigrants were ages 25 and 44 and 58 percent were males.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6327459931741489654
Friday, February 26, 2010
Nation's illegal population drops by 1 million, Florida's by 120,000
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
The Miami Herald
Feb. 25, 2010
When the first indications surfaced almost two years ago that the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States was declining, skeptics suggested it was a statistical glitch.
Now, for the first time, the official Homeland Security report that tracks undocumented immigrants has confirmed that the illegal population fell significantly, by almost 1 million people, between 2008 and 2009. Among the states with the biggest decline: Florida, which lost an estimated 120,000 migrants.
Federal officials attribute the decline to the long-running recession, which has left about one in 10 U.S. workers without a job.
The new figures, released by the Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics, marks the first official federal government confirmation of a significant decline in the number of undocumented immigrants.
Last year's report showed a decline of only about 200,000 immigrants, too small a figure to affirm a trend. Other estimates have come largely from non-governmental agencies.
The latest federal report is considered the most authoritative statistical source on illegal immigration because it is assembled by officials specifically assigned to monitor undocumented immigrant trends and figures.
It found that the number of undocumented immigrants nationwide in 2009 dropped to 10.8 million from an estimated 11.6 million the previous year. In Florida, the number fell from 840,000 in 2008 to 720,000 in 2009.
The report did not break down the Florida numbers by nationality, but said Mexicans make up the bulk of the nation's illegal population.
News of a decline in illegal immigrants comes at a time when immigration advocates are intensifying pressure on the Obama administration to legalize the nation's undocumented immigrants.
Obama administration officials have said immigration reform is the next major legislative overhaul after healthcare reform.
But some immigration reform advocates expressed doubts after Obama recently indicated that the battered economy was now the priority.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/02/25/1500597/nations-illegal-population-drops.html
The Miami Herald
Feb. 25, 2010
When the first indications surfaced almost two years ago that the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States was declining, skeptics suggested it was a statistical glitch.
Now, for the first time, the official Homeland Security report that tracks undocumented immigrants has confirmed that the illegal population fell significantly, by almost 1 million people, between 2008 and 2009. Among the states with the biggest decline: Florida, which lost an estimated 120,000 migrants.
Federal officials attribute the decline to the long-running recession, which has left about one in 10 U.S. workers without a job.
The new figures, released by the Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics, marks the first official federal government confirmation of a significant decline in the number of undocumented immigrants.
Last year's report showed a decline of only about 200,000 immigrants, too small a figure to affirm a trend. Other estimates have come largely from non-governmental agencies.
The latest federal report is considered the most authoritative statistical source on illegal immigration because it is assembled by officials specifically assigned to monitor undocumented immigrant trends and figures.
It found that the number of undocumented immigrants nationwide in 2009 dropped to 10.8 million from an estimated 11.6 million the previous year. In Florida, the number fell from 840,000 in 2008 to 720,000 in 2009.
The report did not break down the Florida numbers by nationality, but said Mexicans make up the bulk of the nation's illegal population.
News of a decline in illegal immigrants comes at a time when immigration advocates are intensifying pressure on the Obama administration to legalize the nation's undocumented immigrants.
Obama administration officials have said immigration reform is the next major legislative overhaul after healthcare reform.
But some immigration reform advocates expressed doubts after Obama recently indicated that the battered economy was now the priority.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/02/25/1500597/nations-illegal-population-drops.html
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