Immigration / Press

Nice letter

Courtesy of "www.telegraph.co.uk"

Hello, can I have my green card back, please?
By Stephen Gardbaum
(Filed: 08/07/2004)

' You must be a very important person," the British Airways
booking agent pronounced after learning that I would be
flying to New York for a single meeting and returning to
London the same evening. What I hadn't told him was that
my meeting was an unscheduled one with a random
immigration official at JFK airport. For this entire trip was a
coerced charade designed by the US Department of
Homeland Security to express its bureaucratic contempt for
me.

Not that I have been singled out for special treatment.
Rather, the new Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration
Services (BCIS), which, in March 2003, replaced the old
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), has simply
continued the post-September 11 policy of, it seems,
maximum harassment of foreigners. As an academic, I can
report that this policy is, among other things, leading to
the mass abandonment of the United States by overseas
students in favour of Britain, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, much to the consternation of leading American
universities.

The foundations of my own faceful of brick wall were laid in
June last year. As a tenured constitutional law professor at
UCLA in Los Angeles, and a US resident and green card
holder of 12 years' standing, I was soon to begin a
13-month research leave in my native London. INS-shy
from multiple previous bites, I didn't dare take any risks
and so, to confirm there would be no problems, entered
the telephonic maze that leads a few hardy survivors to
contact with an immigration official. I was duly informed, in
no uncertain terms, that if I remained outside the United
States for more than 12 months, as planned, I would lose
my residency status and might not even be allowed back
into the country - unless I applied for a re-entry permit
before leaving.

So this is what I did, posting the relevant form to an office
in Nebraska; giving my expected return date; filling in a
box to collect the permit from the US embassy in London;
and paying the $110 application fee.

A month later, I received an acknowledgment of receipt
containing the startling news that: "It usually takes 350 to
380 days from the date of this receipt for us to process this
type of case." Once my heartbeat had returned to near
normal, I surmised that this must be highly cautious
bureaucratese, a theoretical maximum to insulate official
sloth. Surely, if the point of the procedure is to apply for
permission to leave the country for more than a year, it
can't possibly take more than a year to find out whether
you've been granted it. In any event, I just about had 350
days and so the issue retreated to the back and then out
of my mind.

Well, six weeks ago, just before contacting the embassy to
arrange collection of my permit, I followed the instructions
on the acknowledgment to check the status of my case on
the surprisingly efficient and user-friendly efficient INS
website. I typed in the requested receipt number and
waited momentarily until the unthinkable response
appeared. My application was still pending as "it is taking
between 420 and 450 days for us to process this type of
case."

Frantic calls to both the embassy, at pounds 1.60 per
minute, to speak to a live official and the BCIS customer
service number in Lincoln, Nebraska, after a 25-minute wait
at international rates, elicited unimpressed and routine
responses of identical content. Since my application would
not be processed before my 12 months expired, I had two
options: either return to the States before this date or
remain in Britain until the permit was approved. (A third
option of returning after the 12 months, but before
issuance of the permit, would subject me to the serious risk
of an immigration officer lawfully determining that I had
"abandoned" my residency in America.)

Then, without a hint of farce or travesty, the coup de grace
was administered. If I did take the first option and
returned before the 12 months expired, I was free to leave
the country again, even to catch the next plane back to
London, as a new 12-month clock would automatically start
with the immigration officer's stamp in my passport. Hence,
the by turns bewildered and impressed British Airways clerk.

My miserable and decidedly not-cheap day return crawled
to completion yesterday morning without further gratuitous
vileness. But the INS website has just disclosed a final
indignity. Although the Nebraska Service Center is currently
processing re-entry permit applications filed in March 2003,
three months before they received mine, my local Los
Angeles office is a full year ahead, now handling March
2004 applications. Had I dropped off my form there, in
person, the whole ordeal would have been totally
unnecessary. No doubt, this is why the instructions directed
me to send it to Nebraska.
 
family based / Employment Based : Different results

Courtesy of Houston Chronicle.

Aug. 7, 2004, 12:54AM

InfoPass will ease lines to get help

Immigrants can reserve times for appointments through a
new online program

By NANCY MARTINEZ
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

For the first time, immigrants seeking documents
to live and work in the U.S. won't have to wait
hours in a first-come, first-served line to meet
with immigration officials.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
announced Friday its national rollout of
InfoPass, an Internet-based program that will
allow immigrants to make their appointments
online instead of waiting in line.

"Immigration lines have always been a fixture outside of our offices,"
Eduardo Aguirre Jr., director of USCIS in Washington, D.C., said Friday.
"We're showing our customers that we respect them; we're giving them the
dignity they deserve."

Aguirre said his agency is committed to eliminating all immigration services
lines by Labor Day.

Within a month, USCIS plans to have the program in place in all 33 of its
offices. In Houston, where it's not unusual for immigrants to camp outside
the Houston District Office, the InfoPass program will start Aug. 18.

"Use of InfoPass will allow us to provide better, quality customer service to
those who seek to visit our office requesting information and assistance
with their immigration concerns," said Hipolito M. Acosta, Houston
USCIS District Director.

"People won't have to wait hours upon hours to get service. Right now we
are trying to handle everyone, every day but realistically we can only
handle a certain number of appointments."

Aguirre was appointed last year and charged with improving customer
service, reducing a backlog of paperwork and increasing national security.

He said the new program will address only customer service concerns.

"InfoPass will not help us reduce the backlog," he said. "The two are not
dependent on each other."

Still, immigration officials are reporting progress in reducing the immigration
services backlog. At the end of July, Aguirre said, the national backlog was
reduced from 3.7 million cases to 2 million.

In Houston, officials report that the time it takes to process a permanent
residency application has been cut in half, from up to two years in June to
about a year.

Acosta attributed the improvement to an aggressive effort to process old
cases and increase appointments. Across the country, immigration officials
are working toward meeting a 2006 federal deadline to shorten waiting
times to six months or less.

The Internet program is in place in Dallas, New York, Miami and Los
Angeles, where officials say the lines have been eliminated, Aguirre said.

Immigrants who access the site can choose from 12 languages;
appointments are available in two-week blocks.

Walk-ins will not be turned away, Houston officials say, but immigrants will
be urged to use the Internet to make appointments. Those without Internet
access could seek help from community-based organizations, Acosta said.

Most local organizations say they are eagerly looking forward to the new
way of accessing services.

Wafa A. Abdin, supervising attorney for the Cabrini Center for Immigrant
Legal Assistance of Catholic Charities said the program could allow the
agency to help more immigrants because it will give them the ability to
coordinate appointments ahead of time.

"Whenever we have more control over scheduling appointments it's a
positive thing," Abdin said. "People wait for years, so the more they are
part of the process, the more helpful it is."

nancy.martinez@chron.com
 
Justice?????????????????????

Courtesy of Mercury News.


Former INS worker sentenced to
home confinement


Associated Press



SANTA ANA, Calif. - A former Immigration and
Naturalization Service contract worker who
shredded tens of thousands of documents to
eliminate a backlog of paperwork was sentenced
Monday to six months of home confinement.

Leonel Salazar, 36, of Laguna Niguel, was convicted
in December of two counts of destroying
government documents.

U.S. District Judge Alicemarie Stotler also sentenced Salazar to three years of probation but found he did
not have the resources to pay a fine, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples.

Salazar was acquitted of four other charges by a jury in December.

Salazar and Dawn Randall, 24, were both accused of shredding applications for asylum, citizenship, visas
and work permits in 2002 while working at the INS Service Center in Laguna Niguel.

The data processing center handles paperwork received from people in Arizona, California, Nevada,
Hawaii and Guam.

The indictment said Randall, a file room manager, ordered Salazar, a supervisor, and others to shred
unprocessed documents in February 2002 after the backlog reached about 90,000 documents.

Randall's trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 1, Staples said.
 
Welcome!

Courtesy of "www.iht.com"

for many
Alan Cowell NYT
Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Journalists handcuffed, thrown into cells and deported; legislators
harassed by incompetent officials. Such images usually conjure
thoughts of dark deeds in distant dictatorships. But episodes like
those have come to symbolize the experiences of many friendly
Europeans trying to enter the United States.

In recent weeks, there has been some evidence that, after
complaints from international journalism groups, the rough handling
of foreign reporters chronicled by several European writers has
stopped.

And U.S. authorities have sought to broadcast a message that their
antiterrorism measures are not supposed to be seen as hostile to
outsiders.

"We are an open society," Robert Bonner, the commissioner of
Customs and Border Protection, said in a recent statement in
Washington after a series of news reports in Britain and the United
States suggesting just the opposite. "And we want people to feel
welcome here."

But for some, the damage has been done. According to Reporters
Without Borders, a Paris-based private policy group that monitors
and protests infringements of news-media freedom, about 15 foreign
reporters from Britain, France, Sweden and the Netherlands were
harassed at American airports, particularly Los Angeles, as security
measures were tightened in 2003 and 2004.

And the problem affects more than journalists. Delays associated
with heightened security were cited in June as one factor in a
decision by Spain's national airline, Iberia, to close its hub at Miami
International Airport. The move came after American authorities
began insisting that passengers get visas even if they were simply
passing through Miami from one foreign country to another. The
procedural changes had caused delays of up to four hours.

In general, some Britons argue that, even as the United States
presses demands for new passports with digital identity information,
security at American airports has become a recurrent nightmare.
Not only are the rules tighter, the argument goes, but those who
enforce them are badly prepared.

"It's a sort of general level of arrogant incompetence," said Gwyneth
Dunwoody, a British legislator from the governing Labour Party,
who complained of being harassed by airport security officials in
several cities, including New York, during an official visit to the
United States last January.

Dunwoody's remarks prompted a torrent of letters to The Daily
Telegraph from readers who told of experiences that included being
held and handcuffed before deportation from Kennedy International
Airport and other American airports. In an interview in June,
Dunwoody also criticized what she depicted as increasingly intrusive
American demands for personal information about passengers on
flight lists.

The British Foreign Office said in May that it had complained to the
United States authorities after one British tourist, David Pattison, a
52-year-old accountant, said he was held in leg chains at John F.
Kennedy Airport in New York for 24 hours in April and denied food
and water.

Pattison told The Daily Telegraph that American immigration
officials said his name had appeared on an Interpol list in connection
with $10,000 worth of outstanding debts in the Gulf nation of Qatar,
where he had worked in 1999. He denied the accusation but was
deported to Britain.

In a similar case, Magnus Mulliner, the deputy head of sports and
recreation at a college in Southampton, England, said he had been
refused entry to the United States at Kennedy in 2002 after
immigration officials told him his name was linked to narcotics
offenses, which he denied. He told The Daily Telegraph that United
States authorities had not responded to his protests.

There are signs that the United States is aware of foreigners'
concerns. In June, the House of Representatives voted to postpone
for one year an October deadline for 27 countries, mostly in Europe,
to provide citizens traveling to the United States with so-called
biometric passports, which use face recognition technology. And in
May, Bonner announced a change allowing reporters to enter the
country once without an I-visa.

Bonner said his agency's "priority mission" was keeping terrorists
from entering the country.

But he said the agency realized there was "a difference between
fraud and failure to be informed of the legal requirements for
entering the United States."

The New York Times
 
Security

Security checks draw complaints



By Tanya Weinberg
Staff Writer

August 8, 2004

When an immigration judge granted him permanent residency last summer, Luei Mohammed Yagoub thought he could make a fresh start at last.

But nearly a year later the West Palm Beach father has yet to get the documentation to prove he is here legally.

"I have no papers at all to find any job or move around, or upgrade my life at all, or at least be at the level I used to," said Yagoub, 34.

The Sudanese native may be one of thousands for whom winning residency in court has mired them in a limbo where work, travel and education remain out of reach. The South Florida chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association has filed suit in federal district court in Miami against the Homeland Security and Justice departments on behalf of Yagoub and 34 others in similar straits. Also this month, the Texas Lawyers' Committee filed a national lawsuit in San Francisco for which it seeks class action status. Last year immigration judges granted about 12,000 immigrants lawful permanent residency.

"It's a victory without a win, because they're not issued the green card to prove their status," said attorney Linda Osberg-Braun, who put together the South Florida suit. Officials, she said, "need to implement a procedure to provide these good, qualified people proof of their actual status so they can work, travel and pay their taxes."

Delays that range from several months to more than a year stem from a second background check U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services now requires of those who win residency from immigration judges. The change was part of tightened security measures instituted after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Like many others who won residency in court, Yagoub cannot get a work permit while he awaits his green card. Officials regularly grant a work permit to immigrants who have only applied for residency, but told Yagoub's attorney they could offer no proof of his court-approved residency until the second background check was complete.

"They said `Your guy is from Sudan; this is a dangerous country,'" said attorney Stuart Karden. "Well, meanwhile, he's free to walk around the streets. If this is such a concern to this country, why is this taking a year to check out?"

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials said they would not comment in detail due to the pending litigation, but said they are committed to performing comprehensive and consistent background checks before issuing proof of permanent residency.

"At times, this process is time-consuming and delays can result, especially if adverse information exists on an individual," said Dan Kane, an agency spokesman.

Officials say the vast majority of 35 million annual background checks conducted on applicants for benefits such as residency, citizenship and work authorization are completed in a matter of days. That gets no argument from Crystal Williams of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington, D.C. She said about 90 percent of security checks are completed in a few days, and only about 10 percent get bogged down. But those figures don't apply to recipients of court-ordered residency.

"In this context the proportions are reversed," she said.

Immigrants like Yagoub received residency in court rather than administratively because they were fighting deportation orders. A common scenario is that a judge decides an immigrant who overstayed a visa now has a valid claim to permanent residency, such as marriage to a U.S. citizen, and then grants it on the spot. But the historical deportation order causes a hit in the background check that officials must then investigate, Williams said.

"So they basically have to run around in a circle, but it takes a long time to run around in a circle," she said. "The best is two months, the average is more like eight. ... It can go on for years."

Yagoub thinks he was swept up in post 9-11 investigations of Muslims, and says the FBI pressured him to become an informant before clearing him of suspicion. But he spent five months in jail for possession of a small pistol he says was found among boxes a friend had left in his house.

Then he spent another five months in immigration detention. Before he was arrested, Yagoub had sold his grocery store, but the buyers never paid, resold the business, and disappeared before he got out. When the immigration judge ruled in his favor and gave him permanent residency last August, Yagoub thought the nightmare was over.

But without a work permit, he and his wife are struggling to support their 3-year-old daughter, and tensions have grown at home. Originally admitted to the country to study pre-med at Columbia University, Yagoub dropped out to work and support relatives back home.

Now he wants to do the best for his family here and wishes he could make use of the heavy machinery operation certification he worked for. Instead he's only found work on the graveyard shift at a convenience store for $6 an hour.

"I feel weak, very weak," he said. "I came here with a dream to do something, and I find the country is really hitting on me just because I'm a foreigner." Another plaintiff in the South Florida suit was pregnant but could not get Medicaid medical assistance without a green card.

"Nobody'll take a judge's order, because, quite honestly, they're easily forged, and they're not verifiable," said George DeFabio, the woman's Miami attorney. "You can't get a certified copy from an immigration court."

DeFabio thinks his Haitian client did not receive the same quality of prenatal care she would have had her bills been covered. When the baby had to stay in the hospital about 10 days after the birth, more bills piled up that the mother cannot afford, he said.

"I have another client who can't get a driver's license, and his freedom of movement is seriously restricted," DeFabio said. "You know what it's like to be in Florida without a car. And he and his wife are both elderly and in ill health."

Some who favor restricting immigration criticize immigrant advocates for approaching the matter with a sense of entitlement. Steven Camarota of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies said that as the immigration service adjusts to the demands of the war on terrorism it is reasonable that those who faced deportation orders in the past encounter additional delays in paperwork.

"Whatever significant inconveniences they face, the fact is they're here and they're going to be able to stay," he said.

Coral Springs resident Zbigniew Lazur started trying to get his green card six years ago through his wife, an American citizen. When he finally won permanent residency in court last summer, he was thrilled that he would be able to travel and visit his sick mother in Poland. His wife threw him a big party and friends gave him a flip-top lighter engraved with the word "Freedom."

Almost a year later, he still cannot travel, and now worries he will be unable to renew his driver's license when it expires soon. He has stowed his friends' gift away.

"Listen, this freedom doesn't come," said Lazur, 39. "They just say it, but I never get the freedom."

Tanya Weinberg can be reached at tweinberg@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5029.


Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
 
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/132/11.0.html

Weblog: Fuller Prof Ordered to Leave U.S.

U.S. forces tenured Fuller theologian to leave country
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen is a tenured associate professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and
one of the most prominent evangelical theologians in the world, having published important works on
pneumatology (the work of the Holy Spirit), Christology, and other subjects.

And now he's back in his native Finland, having been forced out of the country by the Department of Homeland
Security.

Howard Loewen, dean of Fuller's School of Theology, told Ecumenical News International and Religion News
Service that the visa rules are to blame. The problem behind one new rule, governing visas for religious
professionals, isn't described in detail. But another new rule is problematic for several schools: A seminary must
now be directly tied to a single denominational body for the U.S. government to consider it legitimate. Since Fuller
is interdenominational, it apparently no longer counts.

"I suspect that Fuller looks to [the government] more like a multidenominational university rather than a training
ground for ministers," the dean told The Christian Century, which broke the story (but doesn't offer it online).

"If a theology professor from Finland can't stay here, there is something wrong with the administrative process,"
Kärkkäinen said. "A free and democratic society should be able to discern those who are a threat and those who
can make a contribution."

There are many unanswered questions. Will the new rules affect other Fuller faculty members? Kärkkäinen is not
the school's only non-American. And what about other seminaries? Many of the country's top evangelical
seminaries, including Dallas, Gordon-Conwell, and Asbury, aren't directly tied to a single denominational body. Will
they also be prohibited from hiring scholars from abroad? With the rise of global Christianity, this would be a major
problem.

We also need more information on the changing definition of "religious professional," which will affect far more
organizations than just seminaries. Will parachurch groups see more problems bringing in foreign professionals
even temporarily? One of Christianity Today's three executive editors, J.I. Packer, is not an American citizen, and
we've had one small roadblock since 9/11 getting him to our offices from Vancouver, where he teaches at Regent
College. How tightly are the gates closing?

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website isn't much help, since it seems to indicate that Kärkkäinen
should stay. Immigrant religious workers "must be a member of a religious denomination that has a non-profit
religious organization in the United States," the site says, but then defines religious denomination to include any
"inter-denominational religious organization which is exempt from taxation pursuant to section 501(c)(3) of the
Internal Revenue Code of 1986." That would include Fuller. And the law includes "religious instructors" in its
definition of "religious occupation," which one would imagine extends to a professor of systematic theology. The
problem may be with the law's requirement that such workers be "a member of the denomination for two years."
How would one be a member of a 501(c)(3) organization for two years? Who knows, but perhaps Kärkkäinen's
1989 Master's degree from Fuller would count for something in that regard. Weblog doesn't know anything about
immigration law—this is just what's on the USCIS site.

But Weblog does think that kicking Kärkkäinen out of the country is a bad sign. As the theologian told the news
outlets, "A free and democratic society should be able to discern those who are a threat and those who can
make a contribution."
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Visa policy

Courtesy of the Washington Times.

Now that President Bush is turning his attention to reforming the national security apparatus, one policy prescription not explicitly endorsed by the panel could prove to be one of the most effective: enforcing existing visa laws. Though it sounds simple enough, the State Department has yet to reform meaningfully this crucial component of the war on terror.
The beauty of using visa policy is that no new laws need to be written; the State Department merely needs to enforce existing ones.
The backbone of visa policy for temporary travelers, a category that included all 19 hijackers, is a law known as 214(b). Enacted in order to limit temporary visas to legitimate travelers, it states that a visa applicant is considered ineligible until proving his own eligibility. To overcome the presumption, an applicant must show sufficient ties to his home country, such as a house, spouse or secure employment, to convince the consular officer he will return home.
How does this work to keep out terrorists? The people most likely to be refused under 214(b) are those most likely to be terrorists: young, single, unattached males. Which is exactly what happened before September 11 — but for the most part only to non-Saudis.
The September 11 commission connected the dots, revealing in their report that properly enforced visa policy dealt a severe blow to al Qaeda's plot: Eight of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed's 27 handpicked operatives were effectively prevented from entering the United States. Six were denied entry because of 214(b), and two Yemenis personally chosen by Osama bin Laden also never reached our shores, because as the commission noted in a previous staff statement, "It soon became clear to KSM that the other two operatives, Khallad bin Attash and Abu Bara al Taizi — both of whom had Yemeni, not Saudi, documentation — would not be able to obtain U.S. visas."
Had visa policy been enforced uniformly for all 27 operatives, however, potentially at least 23 of them would have been denied entry. The visa applications of 15 of the hijackers — those of the other four had been destroyed pursuant to standard procedures — were so deficient that none cleared the hurdle set by 214(b). All contained significant errors and omissions, as the commission found. Even if the applications had been completed properly, notes former consular officer Nikolai Wenzel, "each applicant fit the profile of a classic overstay and should have been refused on the merits."
It was no coincidence that all but one of the 15 were Saudis. The General Accounting Office (GAO) found in an October 2002 report that the red carpet shown them was par for the Saudi course: 99 percent of Saudi nationals applying for visas before September 11 were approved. Egyptian nationals, by comparison, were refused 38 percent of the time.
This open door was provided despite abundant evidence of pre-September 11 al Qaeda activity in Saudi Arabia. With 15 of the hijackers hailing from the Kingdom, such evidence is now sadly tangible. The continual al Qaeda bombings there only provide further proof that the terrorist outfit is alive and well in Saudi Arabia. Yet the State Department's approach to Saudi visas has changed only marginally.
Although the State Department no longer makes public visa issuance and refusal statistics, department sources reveal that nearly 90 percent of Saudi nationals applying for visas are approved. The agency's representatives have defended this figure by arguing that since applications are down by more than half, those who are applying are of a higher quality. The same reasoning, then, should apply elsewhere, yet refusal rates for most other Arab nations are three to five times higher.
State Department officials constantly boast that they have doubled the number of names on the terrorism watch list and stepped up efforts to identify potential extremists who should be denied visas. That's good, but it's not enough — especially when al Qaeda has a penchant for recruiting so-called "lily whites" — operatives with no known terrorist ties.
Enforcing 214(b) in Saudi Arabia as is done elsewhere, though, might be a blow to diplomacy. Therein lies the basic problem: The State Department's core mission is to maintain good relations with foreign leaders, which is inherently in conflict with the vital law enforcement function of visa policy.
A recent GAO report on visas revoked post-September 11 on terrorism concerns found "delays occurred in Consular Affairs' decisions to revoke visas after receiving a recommendation to do so." In three of the six cases GAO was able to review, Consular Affairs dragged its feet, including one instance where "State [department] officials deliberated for more than 6 months before deciding to revoke the individual's visa."
Congress already has recognized this fundamental problem, though it stopped short of proposals to stripping the visa function from the State Department. The compromise, enacted in summer 2002, was to require the Department of Homeland Security to deploy agents to one country: Saudi Arabia. But this has not proven sufficient. Congress needs to prod Homeland Security to make Saudi visa procedures a priority — and perhaps the best way to force the issue is to place at least Saudi visas entirely under Homeland Security's purview.
Though only time would tell how effectively it would handle such responsibilities, DHS can scuttle politeness and act with a singular mission: keeping America safe.

Joel Mowbray occasionally writes for The Washington Times.

Courtesy of "www.immigration-law.com"

08/11/2004: Misguided Anti-Immigrant Campaign to use Section 214(b) of Immigration Statute

The conservative Washington Times carries a disturbing Editorial today suggesting the government to use 214(b), so-called "immigrant intent" section of the immigration statute, to deny the visa applications for certain young, single, and unattached males as a means of preventing terrorist from obtaining the entry visa to the U.S. There is already an indication that the visa posts have pumped up denial of visas based on this provision in certain parts of the world. The danger to such campaign is to single-handedly classify certain age group of certain countries as the target for denial of visas, and potential expansion of such practice even to other parts of the world making this group of foreign travellers to the U.S. difficult. Such misguided concept of visa policy will aggravate the problems of visa delays and backlogs which the scientific and research community is currently standing up in the arms to fight against. This is something which the immigrant community should watch carefully such that the law is not misused against the legislative intent to bring injustice to the world.
 
Talent

Courtesy of 'www.azcentral.com"
August 12, 2004



Tap high-tech talent

Adjust visa cap so U.S.-educated foreigners can stay here and work

Aug. 2, 2004 12:00 AM

Our high-tech industries need the best scientists and engineers if they are to
compete in the global economy.

But our universities are not graduating enough Americans in engineering and
computers to meet the demand.

In fact, the number of American students enrolled in science and engineering
graduate programs has dropped dramatically over the past decade.

Meanwhile, foreign nationals are enrolling in large numbers in American
universities. Last fall, for example, foreign nationals made up more than half of
the graduate students in Arizona State University's School of Engineering.

For years, American companies have turned to foreign professionals with H-1B
visas when they could not find enough skilled workers in the United States.
Many of these foreign professionals have American degrees.

However, the number of H-1B visas has been capped at 65,000 a year, all of
which were issued in less than six months.

Compete America, a coalition of more than 200 business, trade and research
groups, says the 65,000 cap is too low and should be raised. It also wants to
exempt foreign students at American schools from the visa cap so it can fill
openings.

It's clear that the cap for H1-B visas is too low and that we're missing a major
opportunity if we don't make it easier for foreign students with advanced
American degrees to stay and work here. We educated them; why not take
advantage of their skills?

In recent years, the H1-B cap was as high as 195,000. But Congress lowered
the cap, bowing to anti-immigration forces and concerns about security.

Opponents believe the H-1B visa is overused. They also say some companies
use the visa to replace American workers with foreigners at lower salaries, an
abuse that should be stopped.

In the short term, temporary business visas such as the H-1B offer a solution to
the skilled labor shortage, allowing American businesses to bring in highly
qualified foreign specialists to fill crucial positions.

The visas also help keep top-paying jobs here that would otherwise wind up in
other countries as companies follow the talent.

In the long term, improved training and education are the keys to producing more
skilled American workers.

These steps could help:


• Reinstate the $1,000 application fee for H-1B visas. These funds could be
used for training established professionals and creating internships and
scholarship opportunities for American students.


• Encourage employers to make opportunities for continuing
education and on-site training available to employees. By keeping
employees informed on advances in their fields, corporations could retain more
workers and reduce their need for overseas hires.


• Improve elementary- and secondary-school education in math and
science. Without a firm grasp of these subjects early on, students cannot be
expected to either pursue or excel in more advanced study.

If we don't find ways to convince more American students to study math,
science and engineering, we will perpetuate our skilled-labor shortage and find
ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to countries that are graduating
thousands more in these areas.

In the meantime, our nation's economic health depends, in part, on filling jobs
with well-educated foreign workers when companies can't find enough
qualified U.S. citizens.

While retaining safeguards for American workers, Congress should raise the
cap on the H1-B visa so our businesses can tap the world's best talent.
 
President on Immigration

Courtesy of the San Franscisco Chronicle.(sfgate.com)

PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
Dancing around immigration

Louis Freedberg

Monday, August 2, 2004



PRESIDENT BUSH has been more than willing to take on
dangerous characters such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam
Hussein and anyone who even thinks about attacking us
around the world.

''Bring 'em on," he declared.

But apparently his bravado doesn't extend to Tom Tancredo
and his allies.

Tom who?

Tancredo, a Colorado Republican, is the most strident
opponent of any effort to legalize illegal immigrants. He is the
most visible representative of a significant segment of the
Republican Party that wants to restrict immigration -- and is
using its financial clout to oppose even Republicans they see
as selling out to pro-immigrant forces.

Even though Bush has said he supports a temporary visa
program for Mexican migrants, the increasingly potent
opposition to the idea among the restrictionist right has
rendered him virtually catatonic on the issue.

A number of bills legalizing some of the nearly 10 million
illegal immigrants in the United States have gone nowhere
because Bush doesn't support any of them -- despite this
being an election year during which the administration is
supposedly wooing the Latino vote.

The one piece of legislation that should have sailed through
Congress is the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and
Security Act, or AgJOBS. The bill, the culmination of five
years of intense negotiations, has garnered extraordinary
bipartisan support. The California Farm Bureau supports it,
as does the United Farm Workers. An astonishing 63
Senators -- including 26 Republicans -- are supporting the
bill. Its chief sponsor is Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, one of the
Senate's most conservative members. "AgsJOBS is a win-
win approach," Craig declared. "Workers would be better off
than under the status quo, with legal protections, higher
wages, better working conditions and safer travel, and
growers would get a stable legal workforce."

But the White House, along with the Republican leadership,
had made sure the bill never reached the Senate floor for a
vote. Last month, for example, Craig was pressured into not
introducing it as an amendment to a bill restricting
class-action lawsuits.

What's so dangerous about the AgJOBS bill? It would grant
temporary visas to a half million undocumented farmworkers
-- as many as half of whom live and work in California. To
qualify, applicants would have to prove they'd worked for at
least 100 days in agriculture before August 2003.

All applicants would be subject to a criminal-background
check. They'd have to work another 360 days in agriculture
over six years to retain their visa. They'd then qualify for
permanent residence, and eventually citizenship.

The White House apparently doesn't like AgJOBS because it
grants ''amnesty'' to illegal immigrants. Craig says he doesn't
see how a bill that requires you to work for up to six years
in agriculture before qualifying for citizenship amounts to
amnesty.

But these days any proposal that can be tagged with the ''a''
word is about as likely to pass as one granting amnesty to
Saddam Hussein. For now, Bush is trying to have it both
ways: saying he supports a legalization program, but then
working to stall even reasonable legislation such as
AgJOBS.

The president says he'll smoke out terrorists from whatever
cave they're hiding in. But when it comes to millions of
working immigrants, he seems content to leave them
languishing in the shadows of the law. Could it be that he is
intimidated by the likes of one-note Tom Tancredo?

Louis Freedberg is Chronicle editorial writer. You can
e-mail him at lfreedberg@sfchronicle.com.
 
Illegals

Courtesy of the SAn-Diego Union-Tribune.

Meeting on illegal immigration gets heated

U.S. official heckled; 'sweeps' return urged

By Elena Gaona
STAFF WRITER

August 14, 2004

TEMECULA – Angry shouts from the crowd often drowned out comments by Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security for Border and Transportation Security, as he tried to answer questions yesterday about what is being done to stop illegal immigration.

"The thing about the illegal population in the U.S., most of them work hard, they love their family," Hutchinson said to boos and jeers that quickly turned to cheers when he ended with, "but they have no legal status in the U.S."

An often loud and emotional audience of at least 1,000 crowded into a large room at Margarita Middle School to hear and heckle Hutchinson. Many others stood outside with picket signs in light rain because there were no seats left.

They came from San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange County and Temecula to ask for the return of roving Border Patrol agents who check for illegal immigrants. Tensions were high outside as Latino and immigrant supporters clashed with those who want illegal immigrants gone. There were shouting matches, expletives and near blows.

Inside, the audience wanted one question answered:

"Are you going to continue the sweeps, and if so, when?"

In June, a 12-member "mobile patrol group" from the Temecula station, which operated in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, arrested more than 400 undocumented immigrants in less than a month. Immigrants were arrested at bus stops, stores and on the street. Most were deported.

After fielding complaints from concerned members of Congress, officials of the Department of Homeland Security concluded that the patrols had not received the required approval.

"Bring back the sweeps!" audience members shouted yesterday. Some of them said it is too easy for illegal immigrants to enter and stay the U.S., and they are affecting the quality of local jobs, schools and hospitals.

Hutchinson said the roving Border Patrol checks may resume at any time, but he did not provide specifics.

Hutchinson and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, who helped organize the town hall meeting, said the roving Border Patrol checks are not indiscriminate "sweeps."

"You don't want people to be arrested simply because they look Hispanic," Issa said, to mixed booing and mild clapping, "not on my Constitution, not on Asa's Constitution."

Arrests are based on potential threats and intelligence information, Issa and Border Patrol agents said.

Other measures are being used besides roving patrols, Hutchinson said. Employers are being checked. Last year 5,000 businesses were audited, he said, most in Southern California, and the number could double soon.

Local law enforcement also may be asked to help the Border Patrol and the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement do their jobs, Hutchinson said, by using national databases to identify people who have immigration violations.

This week, Hutchinson also announced a plan that gives local Border Patrol agents more power to immediately deport arrestees, especially those from countries other than Mexico and Canada.

People from other countries in the Americas who are in the U.S. illegally for fewer than two weeks will no longer have access to immigration court before being sent home. The move has been criticized by many, Hutchinson said, but "I think it's the right thing to do."

Some Border Patrol agents in the audience who asked Hutchinson to let them do their jobs received standing ovations.

The last speaker, San Diego businessman Troy Saxton-Getty, sounded a familiar refrain. "Resume the sweeps, resume the sweeps," he said to loud applause.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elena Gaona: (760) 476-8239; elena.gaona@uniontrib.com
 
Assimilation

Courtesy of :"www.hudson.org"

Bush’s Immigration Myopia

Winter 2004

by Marc Levin, Winfield Myers

In unveiling his immigration reform plan, President Bush stated that America needs an immigration system that “live up to our highest ideals” and “reflects the American dream.” Yet, while the President deserves credit for broaching the issue of normalizing illegal immigrants and making it a central part of his State of the Union address, both Bush and his critics have overlooked the need for assimilation. Including an assimilation component in immigration reform is essential if our new workers are also to be new Americans.
Absent a workable plan for assimilating the mostly Mexican immigrants at whom the legislation is aimed, our nation’s immigration problem will be redefined rather than resolved. Large numbers of workers with little knowledge of English, a poor grasp of civil society, and no prospect for improved education will remain outside the mainstream of American economic and cultural life. The American dream of owning a home and sending one’s children to college—in short, of joining the middle class—can’t be met by a populace trapped in a subculture of low expectations, low wages, and little hope.
Assimilation is especially urgent today because for decades America’s elite institutions—universities, the media, nongovernmental organizations, churches, and federal bureaucracies—have devalued the concept of citizenship even as they fanned the flames of ethnic separatism under the rubric of so-called multiculturalism. This danger is multiplied in our post-September 11 world, in which America’s enemies would like nothing better than to this nation become Balkanized along ethnic lines.
Multiculturalism emphasizes racial, ethnic, and cultural differences instead of shared values. This dogma is particularly pervasive on college campuses, where there are often separate organizations, dormitories, and even commencements for different groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.
The most extreme example of ethnic separatism afflicting the Hispanic community is a group called MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), which not coincidentally was founded in 1969 at the height of negative attitudes toward America at home. This organization, which boasts hundreds of chapters at high schools and colleges throughout the nation, has as its motto “for our race everything, for those outside our race nothing” and advocates ceding southwestern U.S. states to Mexico.
Radical multiculturalism arose in the 1960s, the same time that Watergate and the Vietnam War fostered a deep cynicism about America that engulfed a large segment of the country, especially the education system. One symptom of this malaise is an overemphasis on America’s faults, while the histories and current policies of other nations are sanitized.
Unfortunately, radical multiculturalism and cynicism about America’s history and institutions have engendered an ethnic separatism that views America as a land of oppression and racism. Assimilation, once a progressive cause built on faith in the common man’s educability and the sanctity of the individual, has been falsely stigmatized as a reactionary attempt to squash ancestral heritage and enforce a bland, repressive, common culture.
The costs of America’s failure to assimilate immigrants have been empirically confirmed. In 2001, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government published the results of the largest survey of Americans’ civic engagement ever conducted. The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey concluded that the gap in civic engagement among citizens is more than twice as large in ethnically diverse, high-immigrant cities like Houston and Los Angeles than in less diverse locales such as Montana and New Hampshire.
Researchers found that people in more diverse communities were less likely to trust others, less likely to vote or otherwise participate in public affairs, more likely to feel isolated, and more likely to associate only with members of their own class. Significantly, the study also revealed that the level of civic engagement in a community and the equality of the distribution of its assets were strongly correlated with residents’ evaluation of their happiness and quality of life.
The evidence from abroad is also compelling. Germany’s utter failure to integrate guest workers from Turkey and other less-developed nations has resulted in vast ghettoes that spawn social dysfunction and crime. This, in turn, has stimulated the rise of radical white supremacist political movements. Similarly, France’s Arab population is largely relegated to slums that are chiefly responsible for the country’s skyrocketing violent crime rate.
Fortunately, Americans’ willingness to accept Mexicans as fellow-citizens far exceeds what most Germans or Frenchmen are willing to offer the Turks and Arabs who have lived among them for decades. No doubt part of this acceptance stems from the fact that most Mexicans, like most Americans, are Christian. Yet it also underscores the aforementioned faith that Americans have in their own country’s ability to absorb and assimilate immigrants from around the world.
The faith is well placed, as America became the envy of the world by successfully assimilating generations of immigrants up until the last several decades when radical multiculturalism and a reluctance to proudly transmit our civic traditions intervened. While it may not be feasible to fully assimilate seasonal migrant workers, there are risks in treating broader groups of immigrants as disposable labor, including the improbability that they will return home voluntarily or be expelled after as many as eight years in America. Instead, the President should incorporate policy changes that will restart America’s engine of assimilation.
First, nothing is more central to assimilation than learning English. It is essential if recent immigrants and new citizens are to fully participate in American democracy, serve in the military, and move up the economic ladder. Bilingual education should be reformed to become a temporary immersion program rather than a permanent part of a student’s education. President Clinton’s executive order requiring government forms to be printed in myriad languages created a disincentive to learn English and should be repealed. All applicants for permanent legal status and citizenship should be required to take free English classes.
Additionally, we should implement mandatory free civics classes for new immigrants and an enhanced civics curriculum in our schools. Mexico, like most other countries in central and South America, has a long-standing culture of political corruption and a socialist tradition in which many people look to government instead of the private sector to secure their livelihood from cradle to grave. New immigrants must learn about America’s founding documents and civic traditions, and their role in sustaining a free society.
We should also enact school vouchers. A study by Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute has shown that vouchers promote racial and ethnic integration by allowing students from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend mostly white private schools.
By adding an assimilation component to his immigration proposal, President Bush can address the legitimate concerns some conservatives have about the cultural effects of unassimilated immigration while also making clear that the America’s recent difficulty in assimilating immigrants is due largely to our own societal and policy failings, not the ethnicity of today’s immigrants.
Some benefits will come of Bush’s proposal even without assimilation measures. For example, conferring some legal status on the 10 million illegal immigrants now in the United States will aid law enforcement and counter-terrorism operations of accounting for as many Americans as possible through valid identification. However, our long-term economic and national security challenge posed by an aging and declining domestic population will be countered to the greatest extent if immigrants are assimilated so they can earn more, pay more in taxes because of a larger income, own a home in which to raise children, and serve in the military.
The President’s plan for resolving America’s immigration problem should be ambitious enough to insist on assimilation as a fundamental obligation—and opportunity—for new arrivals. By providing the resources necessary for bringing immigrants into America’s economic and cultural life, the administration would allow the paradox of the American experience—progress within a political and cultural tradition—to shape the lives of millions of people we already rely upon in our daily lives. The War on Terrorism called for bold leadership, and this president responded. Surely the dangers of a large, alienated, and unassimilated population within our borders demand leadership of a similar caliber.

Marc Levin is president of the American Freedom Center (www.americanfreedom.org), associate editor of the Austin Review (www.austinreview.com), and vice president of the Texas Review Society. He can be reached at mrmarclv@aol.com

To respond to this article, please send an email to amoutlook@hudson.org
 
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Kennedy

The New York Times reports [Senator Kennedy's] aides and government officials saying "Between March 1 and April 6, airline agents tried to block Mr. Kennedy from boarding airplanes on five occasions because his name resembled an alias used by a suspected terrorist who had been barred from flying on airlines in the US."



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America Closes Its Doors: Washington says it is fixing the post-9/11 visa mess, yet c

http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/?p=49828

Newsweek International

Monday, September 27, 2004

America Closes Its Doors: Washington says it is fixing the post-9/11 visa mess, yet complaints from businesses and universities mount

By Rana Foroohar, Newsweek International

Sept. 27 issue - It's a tale that's all too familiar in business circles. Back in June, Liu Yongxing, the CEO of the East Hope Group, an animal-feed company that is China's largest private enterprise, was invited to come to the United States by Novus International, a potential supplier, with the expectation that the two companies would sign a million-dollar deal. But Liu, turned off by new, post-9/11 barriers to entering the United States, decided to send two subordinates. As they were navigating the in-person interviews and other visa requirements, a French competitor, Adisseo, heard about the incident and quickly whisked Liu off to France. "We ended up signing the $1 million contract with Adisseo," says Liu. "Maybe this business is insignificant in the big picture, but I'm sure ours is not the only story of its kind."

He's right. Since 9/11—when the United States began scrutinizing certain types of visa applications more carefully under the Patriot Act—there has been a raft of such complaints. Just last week the American Chamber of Commerce in China issued a report saying that many Chinese no longer even bother trying to arrange business travel to America. A June survey of 734 U.S. companies estimated their worldwide losses because of visa delays and denials at $30 billion, just in the period between July 2002 and March 2004. But the problems of temporary-visa holders are just that—temporary. The larger worry is that tightened security will scare off people who want to live, work or study in the United States, thereby undermining one of America's most important competitive advantages in the world economy: its status as the land of opportunity for talented immigrants.

There is some evidence that Washington may be effectively lowering the barriers to short-term visitors. Both visa applications and acceptances were up (albeit far below pre-9/11 levels) in the first half of 2004, after having plunged dramatically since 2001. Though some experts say the 10.4 percent increase in applications was due to the global economic rebound, the acceptance rate grew even faster, by 14.6 percent. That suggests that U.S. officials are indeed working hard to reopen the door.

The long-term picture looks more cloudy. Last week the United States issued data showing that the post-9/11 rate of people granted permanent-resident status in the United States continued to fall through 2003, dropping 34 percent from 2002. The Department of Homeland Security, which puts out the data, admitted that this was "due primarily to security checks that affected application processing." It also noted that at the end of 2003 there was a backlog of 1.2 million "adjustment of status cases," or legal visitors who have applied for permanent residency.

That's bad news, not only because it reflects continuing red tape within the U.S. immigration system, but also because "adjustment" cases include the sort of highly skilled temporary workers and scholars that America needs most. Jeffrey Passel, a migration expert at the Urban Institute, a liberal Washington, D.C., think tank, notes that adjustment cases represented only 350,000 new legal immigrants in 2003, down from 680,000 in 2002. "The move from temporary to permanent migration in the U.S. has definitely been disrupted," he says. While it's unclear yet whether this shift is having a measurable effect on the talent pool in America, Passel believes "it's something we should be concerned about."

Despite a small recent rise in student visa numbers, some of the best and brightest appear to be going elsewhere. This is particularly true for Asians, who have the highest education and income levels among foreign-born residents of the United States. Last November the Institute of International Education, which tracks foreign students in the United States, noted that enrollment was flat after years of steady growth, with significant declines in 13 of the top 20 sending countries, including Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. Graduate programs suffered disproportionately—a report this year by the Council of Graduate Schools found that nine in 10 have seen a significant drop in international applications, particularly in areas like engineering and science.

America's loss has become other nations' gain. The European Union overtook the United States as the most popular destination for the growing numbers of middle-class Chinese students seeking a Western high school or university education in 2002, and the trend continued to gain momentum through this fall semester. Britain, which took 42,000 Chinese last year (just a third less than the United States), as well as other countries like Australia and Canada, have taken the opportunity since 9/11 to aggressively boost their foreign-student populations. (Britain is also going after highly skilled immigrants.) Last April Harvard president Lawrence Summers wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, saying applications from the Chinese were down as much as 40 percent in certain Harvard departments. "We risk losing some of our most talented scientists and compromising our country's position at the forefront of technological innovation," he wrote. "If the next generation of foreign leaders are educated elsewhere, we also will have lost the incalculable benefits derived from their extended exposure to our country."

The extent of U.S. visa reform is hotly debated. Janice Jacobs, assistant secretary of State for visa services, admits that "12 to 18 months ago, the government was having trouble turning things around in a timely way." But since then, she says, improved communication, increased staffing and the smoothing of technological glitches in border controls have speeded up the visa process significantly.

Others aren't so sure. Edward (Skip) Gnehm, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who left his post in July, says he saw "modest" improvements but "no concerted, interagency-wide effort to tackle the problem." Gnehm says that in July, after eight months' trying, he finally got visa approval for the son of a Jordanian senator whose name resembled one on a U.S. blacklist. He also intervened on behalf of the nephew of a former Jordanian prime minister who was unable to return to the United States to finish his degree after attending his mother's funeral. The student ended up missing a year of school, by which time most of the VIPs in Jordan had heard of his plight. "Imagine the kind of PR effect that has," says Gnehm.

Clearly, the common perception abroad is that America is less and less open. Eastern European officials grouse about being left off a list of 26 U.S. allies for which the visa requirements are waived, even as they support America's agenda in Iraq. Wealthy Arabs are going to Germany rather than America for medical treatment. Russian high-tech firms, frustrated by random security checks, are seeking more business in Britain, France and Germany. Countries like China are beginning to impose timely and expensive countersecurity checks on American travelers. "America is still the big dream for many people, because we see all the images in films and on television," says Barbara Chechova, editor in chief of the Czech student magazine StudentIN. "But at the end of the day, it's becoming much simpler for us to work or study in Britain or Ireland or Sweden."

Meanwhile Washington seems to take two steps back for every step forward. U.S. officials recently imposed a new $100 fee for student visas, which must be paid with a credit card or U.S. bank account, which most foreign students don't have. Realizing its blunder, the government is now testing programs in India and China that would allow for local payment. Last week U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was in Prague announcing a review of the Czech visa-application process, with the aim of simplifying it.

Some of the visa-waiver nations, which include Britain, Australia, Germany, France and Japan, had protested a U.S. demand that they include biometric data (such as fingerprints and face scans) on passports by Oct. 26. In response the U.S. Congress recently extended that deadline by a year, but nations like Britain say they need more time, as the first British biometric passports won't be available till at least the end of 2005.

Meanwhile people wait on line for opportunity in America. The foreign born represent one in eight American workers, and constituted half the growth in the work force between 1996 and 2000. They make up 38 percent of science and engineering Ph.D.s. Whether or not they can continue to make it in America will have major ramifications—not only for the United States, but for its rivals in the global economy.

With Paul Mooney in Beijing, Katka Krosnar in Prague, Anna Kuchment in Moscow, Stefan Theil in Berlin and Emily Flynn in London

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6038977/site/newsweek/

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
 
Washington Post Story,Widow faces immediate deportation.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Carla Arabella Freeman's descent into the looking-glass world of U.S. immigration law began two years ago when a Pepsi truck crushed her husband to death.

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The truck jumped a median strip, pulverized her husband's car and, as she found out early this year, made her a widow who must leave the United States.

Freeman, 27, a South African who came to the United States as an au pair, was married for nearly a year to Robert Freeman, an American who worked for Costco. As his wife, she had applied for permanent resident status and was waiting for what usually would have been routine approval.


• More U.S. news

But the truck that killed Robert Freeman also set in motion an inexorable legal procedure that in May put his widow in shackles in a holding cell in Portland. An immigration officer here ordered that she be deported. Under the law, a foreigner married to an American for less than two years loses his or her right to permanent residence if the spouse dies.

‘Everything has just crumbled’
On Thursday afternoon at Kennedy Airport in New York, Freeman will fly back to South Africa to see her father, who has been sick, giving up what scant hope she had of any successful appeal. Once her plane leaves the ground, she cannot return to the United States for at least 10 years.

"Everything has just crumbled," she said in Portland this week, after a long day of packing and scrambling to get travel documents for her dog, cat and parakeet. "I guess it is hard for Americans to trust anyone coming to this country anymore — even people like me, who want to live here legally."

Legal experts say that what has happened to Freeman is happening across the country. At least 25 other foreign-born surviving spouses and perhaps many more — most of them widows — are on the brink of deportation, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington.

Many of these widows have infants — U.S. citizens — who will be de facto deportees when their mothers exhaust their appeals and are ordered out of the country.

"Deporting widows and children says bad things about our country," said Judith E. Golub, senior director of advocacy for the immigration lawyers group. "This is just another example of the inflexibility and injustice in our immigration laws that call out for thorough and systematic reform.

"Carla Freeman had to deal with the death of her husband, and now she has to deal with this. Inflexible laws breed intolerable situations."

A two-year rule
The two-year rule was added to immigration law in 1990, when there was widespread concern about foreigners using sham marriages to get "green cards" for permanent residence. Since then, Congress has passed exemptions for widows of the 2001 terrorist attacks and for surviving spouses of active-duty service personnel killed in combat.

There are no exemptions, however, for spouses of Pepsi-truck victims, and immigration lawyers said successful appeals of the two-year rule are extremely rare.

"This is a crack in the law, and Carla fell into it," said Brent W. Renison, Freeman's attorney and an immigration specialist.

Renison said that in many other areas of immigration law where time limits are imposed on foreigners seeking permanent residence that there are waivers when spouses, parents or children die.

"But in this particular circumstance, Congress just forgot to do it," Renison said.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), ranking minority member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, introduced a bill this summer to amend the law. It would have nullified the two-year rule in cases in which a surviving spouse could prove a good-faith marriage.

The bill remains in committee, but Republicans in the House say there is a possibility they might act on it.

"Nobody has made a policy decision on its merits," said Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for the Judiciary Committee. "It very well may be meritorious, and if so, it would likely be considered next year."

Carla Freeman said she is luckier than other women caught in the web of the two-year rule. She has no children. She won a $3 million wrongful-death settlement after her husband's accident. She can afford a first-rate immigration lawyer, who has appealed her case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

"There are women in my situation who have it worse," Freeman said. "They have babies and in-laws who are devoted to the grandkids."

In Orlando, Maria Raquel Pascoal, 26, is one of those women. The Brazilian had been married one year and eight months when her husband died in bed of sleep apnea. He was 30. The couple had a 3-month-old son.

"Now I am waiting for this law to force me to leave," Pascoal said in a phone interview. "We are shocked by this. It is very difficult to go back to Brazil and start a new life with my son. He is very attached to my parents-in-law. We live with them."

Pascoal, who is studying nursing at Valencia Community College in Orlando, said she prays that the law will change or "someone with a good heart will decide that I can stay."

That seems unlikely.

In Carla Freeman's case, three U.S. senators from Oregon and Washington and a congressman from Portland wrote a letter to the head of customs enforcement in Portland, asking for mercy.

"We encourage you to explore whatever means possible to exercise prosecutorial discretion in this case and take no action to remove Ms. Freeman from the U.S. at this time," the letter said.

Three days later, the answer came. At a hearing, Freeman was handed an order from an immigration officer that said: "You are not entitled to status as an immediate relative."

Her jewelry was taken from her, her ankles were shackled, and she was kept in a holding cell for seven hours until her attorney obtained her release on the condition that she not travel outside the state without permission. She got permission last weekend to visit her husband's grave site for what may be the last time.

'So now I leave'
Freeman, a rail-thin woman who is just over 5 feet tall, met her late husband in a karaoke bar in Chicago. That was in March 2000, and her job as an au pair was coming to an end.

She returned to South Africa, but Robert came after her eight months later. After receiving her father's blessing, they were married in February 2001 and moved to Merrillville, Ind., where Robert was a manager at a Costco store.

They had been married 11 months when Robert, on his morning drive to work, was killed by the truck. In mourning, Freeman moved to her late husband's home town of Clarkston in eastern Washington state, where she lived with her sister-in-law's family for a year. She later moved to the Seattle area and then Portland, where she looked for work in the hotel trade.

"My dad has been in the catering business for years, and I grew up in the business," she said. "If they hadn't taken away my right to work, I probably would have had a really good job by now in a really good hotel."

Freeman did not have to leave Thursday. She could have stayed until her appeal was exhausted, probably for a year or so.

But she said she is worried that, if something were to happen to her father, it could take weeks to sort out the paperwork that would allow her to travel outside the United States.

"After the death of my husband," she said, "I wasn't prepared to take that risk. So now I leave."
 
A flat tyre lands woman in US in deep trouble

Courtesy : IANS

CHICAGO: An businesswoman who sought police help after she got a flat tyre on the highway is now in jail here awaiting deportation to India.

Thirty-one-year-old Terwinder Singh, who had entered the United States without proper documents 12 years ago for an arranged marriage, is reportedly being treated like a fugitive by the US authorities.

When Terwinder, a mother of two from Wisconsin, appealed for help after she got a flat tyre, police started checking her records as part of routine. They discovered that immigration officials had wanted her detained more than five years ago.

Her appeal against the order has been hanging fire since 1998. She had been served an order to depart voluntarily, at her own expense, by March 2002.

Why Terwinder ignored the order isn't clear, but that made matters worse. Her husband, Ram Singh, claims they were unaware that her appeal had been denied or that a final order had been served to report with bags packed for deportation. Terwinder Singh's attorney, Penny Jo Kundert, said any day a call can come from the immigration authorities telling her to deliver a suitcase for the flight to India.

Some immigration activists said it is difficult to understand how a woman could work for several years, as Terwinder Singh did for Kohl's Department Stores, own a home, pay taxes, buy a business, get a driver's licence and have children, and then one day be told to just leave when, as Kundert put it, "she committed no crime but to have a flat tyre".

Harold Block, an attorney specialising in immigration cases who's seen a lot of cases like Singh's, sees little recourse.

Changes in immigration laws in 1996 made it difficult for illegal immigrants to obtain permanent status, he said. Adding children to the equation might have made a difference had Terwinder Singh not been ordered deported.

"I guess this is an illustration of the harshness of the current immigration laws," Block said. Congress seemed interested in changes and "it might have happened if we hadn't run into 9/11."

Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said cases such as Terwinder Singh's "deal with a difficult issue. You're dealing with children who have every right to be in the United States. But that doesn't convey rights to the parent who decided to come here illegally."

Terwinder has two children - daughter Manpreet, 12, and son Gagan, 8. They are American citizens.

Ram Singh, 46, seems like a lost soul these days as he struggles to manage family, home and the liquor store business. Unlike his wife and children, he does not have a good command over spoken English and cannot read or write the language despite 20 years in the United States.

Ram Singh says without his wife, who managed everything, "I will lose everything". Either they must live in the US without their mother or return with her to "a country that is not their own", he said.

On their last visit to India, Ram Singh says, his eldest daughter spent much of the stay in a hospital because she became ill due to the food and water. The children do not read or write their parents' Punjabi language, and they speak it poorly.
 
Chinese government gets involved in Memphis deportation case

Courtesy : WMC-TV, Memphis
A Chinese couple in Memphis faces deportation without their daughter.
Shaoqiang He says he and his wife Qin Luo thought they could get their child back any time they wanted after putting her in foster care.
They did it because they were broke. Shaoqiang He was facing a sexual assault charge when his daughter was born in 1999.
All of the money went to defend him.
He ignored his attorney's advice to plea bargain, demanded a jury trial and was acquitted of the charge.
The couple's student visas are long-expired and an immigration judge ordered them deported at a hearing in December.
The Hes say they're willing to leave, but want to take Anna Mae with them.
The Chinese embassy in Washington has written to the Memphis court and the state attorney general asking for a quick resolution of the custody case and fair treatment for the Hes.
 
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