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U.S. Immigration News
1. TX senator opposes path to citizenship
2. House GOP may place immigration on back burner
3. Sprawling TX border district is ground zero in immigration debate
4. Parties wrangle over 'special' path to citizenship
5. ICE union head calls for probe of immigration policies
6. Congress may target fraudulent immigration consultants
7. Union parts ways with AFL-CIO over health care law, immigration reform
8. CA high court weighs law license for illegal alien
9. IL senator pushes amnesty plan at college gathering
10. NC House overrides governor's veto on E-Verify exemption
11. PA city mayor to take immigration fight to SCOTUS
12. Pro-enforcement activists press WI GOP Rep. on amnesty support
13. OH Catholic group plans prayer walk for amnesty
14. AZ business, labor interests find common ground on immigration
15. Los Angeles mayor addresses pro-amnesty rally
16. CA activists complete long trek in support of amnesty
17. Some illegal aliens complain about scope of amnesty bill
18. Young illegal takes gamble in returning to Mexico
19. Amnesty supporters march in IA city
20. MO court to hear arguments in Guatemalan child adoption case
21. Immigrants rebounding from economic downturn (link)
22. Activists rally for amnesty in TX city
23. ID church leaders to fast, pray for amnesty
24. UCLA student gov't resolution bans 'illegal immigrant'
25. IL Black, gay groups seek common ground on immigration
Overseas Immigration News
26. Canada: Immigration policy now stresses cultural 'adaptability'
27. U.K: Fake passport nets illegal worker eight month prison term
28. U.K: Woman from Slovakia claims to be human trafficking victim
29. U.K: Immigration surge causing crowded schools
30. U.K: Shortage of Asian workers at curry houses impacting quality of fare
31. Ireland: Economic downturn hits eastern European workers hard
32. Norway: Criminal refugees linked to drug trade
33. Sweden: Gov't offering residency to all Syrian refugees
34. Russia: Latest police roundup nets 229 suspected illegal aliens
35. Tanzania: Almost 11,000 illegal aliens return home
36. Thailand: Immigration officers keep close tabs on Cambodian Muslims
37. Philippines: Embassy in Malaysia warns filipinos to secure docs, carry ID
38. Malaysia: Thousands deported in gov't cracks down on illegal immigration
39. Australia: Immigration Minister voices regret on asylum seeker policy
40. Australia: Nauru asylum seeker tent city could cost $2 billion
41. Australia: P.N.G. 'exile' fails to deter many asylum seekers
42. N.Z: Immigration, police conduct stings to put squeeze on illegal workers
-- Mark Krikorian
U.S. Immigration News
1.
Cruz: Immigration reform shouldn’t include path to citizenship
By Dave Hendricks
The Monitor (McAllen, TX), September 3, 2013
http://www.themonitor.com/
MISSION — America’s broken immigration system needs tweaks, including more visas for high-skilled workers and higher quotas for legal migrants, but shouldn’t include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaking Tuesday during his first official visit to the Rio Grande Valley.
Cruz blamed President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats — who have advocated for creating a path to citizenship for people who entered the United States illegally or overstayed their visas — for stalling bipartisan border security and immigration reform proposals.
“I do not support a path to citizenship for those who are here illegally because, first of all, I think it’s profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who followed the rules, who waited in line and came here using our legal immigration system,” Cruz said, speaking at the Anzalduas International Bridge. “But secondly, a path to citizenship does not have the votes to pass the House of Representatives. I believe the Obama White House knows that, and unfortunately their focus has been on trying to gain partisan advantage in 2014 — or 2016 — in the elections, rather than on solving the problems.”
Tuesday marked Cruz’s first official Valley visit since taking office eight months ago.
The Rio Grande Valley Partnership hosted Cruz at the Cimarron Country Club, where he advocated rolling back burdensome regulations, repealing the Affordable Care Act and abolishing the Internal Revenue Service.
“Our tax code is far too complicated. Far too burdensome. You know there are more words in the IRS code than there are in the Bible? And not one of them is as good,” Cruz said, drawing chuckles from the audience. “Does anyone know the shortest scripture in the Bible? Jesus wept. The IRS is producing a whole lot of weeping.”
About 280 people attended the sold-out luncheon. Eight-person tables cost $500 each and the Rio Grande Valley Partnership sold all 35 within a week-and-a-half, said Rachel Reyes, the organization’s marketing and events director.
The crowd included Mission Mayor Norberto “Beto” Salinas, IBC Bank-McAllen President R. David Guerra, two Harlingen boy scouts and Rio Grande City Mayor Ruben Villarreal, among others. The room buzzed about Cruz’s speech and possible presidential aspirations.
“His vision sounded very presidential,” Villarreal said. “The presentation wasn’t coming from just a senator; he has a vision for the entire country and I think that came across very strongly.”
Brooks County rancher Mike Vickers purchased a table and invited several people, including a Border Patrol agent and fellow ranchers from Jim Hogg County, to Mission for Cruz’s speech.
“He checks with us on a weekly basis to get caught up on the problems that ranchers like us are dealing with, with the human and drug smugglers crossing through our property,” Vickers said, adding that he wants Cruz to run for president. “And all of us hope that in 2016 we get another Ronald Regan in there — and it’s him.”
Afterward, Cruz took a whirlwind tour of Border Patrol’s McAllen Station, visited the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge and stopped by the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District 3 pump station. Cruz also met with Customs and Border Protection Commander Robert Harris, who oversees South Texas, and Chief Patrol Agent Rosendo Hinojosa, who heads the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector.
A last-minute briefing on Syria forced Cruz to cancel a planned Tuesday river tour with the Texas Department of Public Safety, which patrols the Rio Grande with heavily armed boats, and a visit to Laredo that was slated for Wednesday.
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2.
House GOP Puts Immigration on Back Burner
Crowded Agenda Dampens the Already Tepic Interest Among Republican Leaders for Legislation
By Laura Meckler
The Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2013
http://online.wsj.com/article/
Prospects for an immigration overhaul have dimmed over the summer congressional recess, as a newly crowded agenda damps what already was tepid interest among House leaders in taking up the issue.
House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said in July he hoped the House would consider immigration bills before turning to negotiations on raising the nation's debt ceiling this fall. But as the House prepares to reconvene next week, GOP leaders have no plans to bring immigration bills to the floor, aides say.
President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has placed a major, new issue on the agenda by asking Congress to authorize military strikes in Syria. A debate over federal spending levels for the next fiscal year is likely to dominate much of September and the weeks beyond.
In a sign of diminished expectations, the House Judiciary Committee chairman said there is nothing wrong with having a debate that doesn't end with an immigration bill being signed into law.
"We pass bills all the time that don't get passed all the way through and signed into law, because we want to spell out to the American people what we think the right solutions to our problems are," the chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.), said in an interview. "I don't believe immigration reform should be any different than that."
At the same time, Mr. Boehner faces considerable pressure from business groups, evangelicals, law enforcement and some GOP donors for action on immigration legislation.
House leaders will check in with lawmakers returning to Washington next week to see if there is a groundswell for action. But absent an unexpected reversal, advocates of an overhaul are predicting action may have to wait until 2014.
House leaders have said they won't consider the broad, bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Senate in June. That bill included enhanced border security, provisions for tougher enforcement of immigration law, a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for many of the 11 million people in the U.S. illegally. Mr. Boehner has said these issues would be addressed in pieces. But Mr. Goodlatte said it is "too soon" to say what legislation the House will consider, or what the strategy for passing it may be. He rejected any "artificial deadline" for action.
His committee has passed four immigration bills without Democratic support. But those measures likely would need Democratic votes to clear the full House, given the reluctance among some Republicans to advance any bill for fear that it would lead to compromises with the Senate. A border-security bill that cleared the Homeland Security Committee unanimously may have chance at passage, but leadership aides say there are no plans yet to take up that bill.
Republicans are also talking about legislation to give legal status to people brought to the U.S. as children, but they have yet to lay out details.
Meanwhile, Democrats working on a bipartisan House bill say it is completed and that they are waiting for Republicans to agree to release it. But a Republican in the group, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, disagreed, saying his conversations with fellow Republicans have convinced him that further changes are needed.
Among their worries, he said, are that a pathway to citizenship will open for illegal immigrants that isn't available to those who used existing legal channels. He also wants to ensure that Mr. Obama would enforce the bill's provisions, which many Republicans doubt he would. "We need to tweak the bill to address these points," he said.
"I was hopeful we would be in a better place today," Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.), another member of the group, told reporters last week.
During the August congressional recess, advocates for a broad overhaul of immigration laws that would legalize many illegal immigrants held rallies and meetings with GOP lawmakers in hopes of persuading them that political support for an overhaul was strong in their districts.
About two dozen House Republicans have said publicly they are open to a path to citizenship for those now here illegally, with other Republicans favoring legal status for this group. There also were few high-profile events opposing an overhaul of the sort that killed a similar immigration push in 2006 and 2007.
"The pressure is working," argued Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a pro-immigration advocacy group. "Our question is, when are we going to have a week of votes on immigration?"
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3.
Along border, preparing to live with the real-world consequences of immigration debate
By Ed O’Keefe
The Washington Post, September 2, 2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
IN SOCORRO, Tex. — There are 36 congressional districts in Texas, but the 23rd is a geographic monster that swallows up almost a quarter of the state, stretching from little towns such as this one east of El Paso to the western suburbs of San Antonio. One former congressman who represented the people here used to say that he had to cross three climates and two time zones to get from one end to the other.
The district has about 800 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border, the longest stretch in any House district, making it the place where immigration reform would be most deeply felt. People here know that immigration has consumed considerable political capital in Washington and they are watching apprehensively, preparing to live with the real-world consequences of whatever decision Congress makes. They are not encouraged by what they’re hearing, particularly about securing the border.
“The problem is, you’ve got this huge Congress and most of them don’t live on the border and they’re the ones who are going to decide what we do,” said El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles.
Frustration here stems from realities on the ground. There are one, two, sometimes three layers of fencing along the border, or the terrain is too treacherous to cross, so people don’t want Congress to put up more fencing. Members of the U.S. Border Patrol stand post every few thousand feet along some stretches of the divide, so locals don’t want Congress to send more agents.
They say that lawmakers should instead consider the economic benefits of legal immigration. About 20 percent of the $500 billion traded annually between the United States and Mexico passes through ports of entry along this part of the border, and locals say the numbers would climb dramatically if trucks carrying goods could cross faster. More than 100,000 jobs in the region rely on the lawful movement of people, goods and services between the two countries, and officials predict that even more business and jobs would be created if Congress made it easier for guest workers to cross, or if illegal immigrants could come out of the shadows.
“It would seem to me that the key to immigration reform is providing some type of work visas to shuffle out those who are just here to work and many times want to go home,” Wiles said. “They want to come, work, support their families and eventually go home.”
Cindy Ramos-Davidson, chief executive of the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said that Congress “gets so wrapped up in the process of people moving that they forget about the actual element of how that affects people. They throw all this money at drones and helicopters and such when they could instead spend it on legally moving people back and forth across the border.
“Anybody who lives outside of a border community needs to come here and see how commerce and trade flows across the bridges,” she said. “All of these rules and regulations that apply to the border are made back East and many of the people have never seen what those policies do to bottleneck the borders.”
As Republicans have tightened their hold on the Texas congressional delegation, the 23rd remains a uniquely volatile political territory, switching parties five times in the past 20 years. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won the district last year by three percentage points; Sen. Ted Cruz (R) won it by six. It is represented by Pete Gallego (D), who won the seat by five points last year and has been trying to assure constituents that Congress will do something about immigration soon.
“If immigration reform doesn’t happen, that doesn’t say good things about our democracy, that everybody wants it but Congress couldn’t pass it,” Gallego said during a recent dinner meeting with constituents.
Heads around the table nodded, but folks didn’t seem as confident as the congressman; they worry that whatever Congress does may be the wrong thing.
Wiles commands a jurisdiction of about 1,000 square miles and his 260 deputies are often called upon to assist the U.S. Border Patrol with immigration-related crimes, forcing them to abandon neighborhood patrols. Federal budget cuts cost Wiles more than $1 million in funding for an anti-narcotics unit and a school anti-violence program, so the push and pull from Washington is frustrating.
“There have been many congressmen who want to come down and take a picture with you at the border crossings. I don’t do that anymore, because we never see any results,” Wiles said.
He said that other places along the border might need more agents and a fence, “but when they put one up here, they just put it up next to two other fences. That’s a waste of money.”
About 200 miles southeast, “waste of money” is the same phrase Val Beard used to describe the possibility of new fencing and agents. She’s the judge in Brewster County, home to about 10,000 residents who rely on tourist money spent at the Big Bend National Park, a treacherous stretch of the border where few people would ever cross.
“If you’ve been out here, you know that a wall is completely preposterous. It’s not workable,” she said.
Farther east in Del Rio, Val Verde County Judge Laura Allen, a Republican, said that there’s no need for more fencing or border agents in her small town but that if Congress wants to send more people, she hopes the Border Patrol might expand their local training facility. Mostly Allen fears that the partisan bickering in Washington is adversely influencing state and local leaders, making it more difficult for government at any level to solve problems.
“When you’re sitting in Washington and you’re looking at these numbers and trying to sort all this out, it’s not the same when you’re standing down here,” she said.
As a freshman member of the minority party in the House, Gallego knows he has minimal influence on the immigration debate in the GOP-controlled chamber. So he’s blaming Washington, telling constituents in English and Spanish that he’s at the mercy of a log-jammed Congress that is sharply divided between Democrats and a Republican Party splintered into mainstream lawmakers and those aligned with the tea party movement.
“There’s this fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and until that fight gets settled — because they’re the majority — there’s a lot of things that are pretty much on hold,” he said.
During a stop in the farming town of San Elizario, Gallego visited a dark, one-story community center two blocks north of the border. Locals wanted to tell him about dangerous levels of arsenic in the drinking water. And several in the crowd wanted to learn more about what Congress might do along the border.
“One hundred percent of us here don’t want to see the militarization of the border,” one woman told him in Spanish. Gallego responded that he agreed.
He told the crowd that his office is working with local officials to ensure the safety of the water. But Gabriela Castañeda interrupted him to make a broader point.
She stood and told the room that “if we get immigration reform that guides us to citizenship, then we won’t just be another number. We’ll have the same opportunities as a citizen. We won’t have these problems. We’ll have access to better water, to health care.”
Gallego beamed as the crowd erupted in applause. As he turned to leave the room, a man shouted at the congressman to promise that Congress will pass immigration reform.
“I can’t promise you that we’re going to do it,” he said. “Eso es una prometa grande,” he added in Spanish, meaning, “That’s a big promise.”
“But I can tell you that I’m going to do everything I can to do the best job to fix the problem.”
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