1. Poll: Americans on legal immigration
2. SC leg. passes enforcement bill
3. GA puts probationers to work
4. Visa lottery "winners" sue
5. Border agent fatally shoots man

1.
Poll: Steady support for immigration
By Justin Ho
Politico (DC), June 22, 2011

In the face of measures across the country cracking down on illegal immigrants, the number of Americans who view legal immigration positively is holding steady - and the percent who favor even more is edging upward, according to a new poll Wednesday.

The Gallup survey found that 59 percent of Americans think legal immigration is a good thing for the country, while 37 percent oppose it.

The number of Americans who favor more immigration has climbed to 18 percent, a figure that has slowly increased over time. The numbers were 14 percent in 2009 and 10 percent in 1999.

American opinion on legal immigration has held relatively steady throughout the past decade, with the percentage favoring immigration reaching a high of 67 percent in 2006 and a low of 52 percent in 2002 - largely as a response to the September 11th attacks, according to Gallup. Americans opposed to immigration reached a decade high in 2002 of 42 percent, and a low of 28 percent in 2006, the polling outfit said.

The number of Americans favoring of reduced immigration have decreased by seven percent since 2009, while those backing increased immigration have increased by 4 percent in the same period, Gallup found.

But despite increasing numbers favoring increased legal immigration, a 43 percent plurality still think immigration levels should be slashed.
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57526.html

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2.
South Carolina joins other states in immigration crackdown
By Harriet McLeod
Reuters, June 21, 2011

South Carolina lawmakers on Tuesday sent Governor Nikki Haley a bill that requires police to check suspects' immigration status and penalizes businesses that hire workers in the country illegally.

The action follows similar moves by Georgia and Alabama, and a milder measure in North Carolina, as a number of states crack down on illegal immigration.

The governor is expected to sign the bill that will allow the state to revoke the business license of any employer who knowingly employs "unauthorized aliens."

"Today, South Carolina joined a growing number of states who are taking proactive steps to address the problems created by immigrants who not only come into our country illegally, but also violate our laws while here," said House Speaker Bobby Harrell, a Republican.

By a 69-43 vote, the state House of Representatives agreed to Senate amendments that require employers to use the federal E-Verify database to check their employees' residency status.

The measure creates a grace period of one year for employers, during which penalties will be probationary. After that, employers can face temporary suspension of their business license for hiring illegal immigrants and reinstatement fees after those workers have been fired. On third offense, an employer's business license can be revoked.

Democrats argued that it will be impossible for every employer in South Carolina to use E-Verify because not everyone has access to the Internet. They also argued that immigration law falls to the federal government, not the states.

"What happened to business-friendly South Carolina?" said Representative Harry L. Ott Jr., the House minority leader. "Do I have to E-Verify every person who comes and applies for a job? (This is) profiling people on what I perceive that they look like."

The bill also requires police to check the immigration status of any individual they suspect is in the country illegally after they have stopped that person for another reason.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/21/us-immigration-southcarolina-i...

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3.
Georgia puts probationers to work in fields after farmers complain about immigration crackdown
The Associated Press, June 22, 2011

It’s 3:25 p.m. in a dusty cucumber field in south Georgia. A knot of criminal offenders who spent seven hours in the sun harvesting buckets of vegetables by hand have decided they’re calling it quits — exactly as crew leader Benito Mendez predicted in the morning.

Unless the cucumbers come off the vine soon, they will become engorged with seeds, making them unsellable. Mendez’s crew of Mexican and Guatemalan workers will keep harvesting until 6 p.m., maybe longer. Not so for the men participating in a new state-run program aimed at replacing the Latino migrants Georgia farmers say they’ve lost to a new immigration crackdown with unemployed probationers.

“Tired. The heat,” said 33-year-old Tavares Jones, who left early and was walking down a dirt road toward a ride home. He promised Mendez he’d return the next morning. “It’s hard work out here.”

Mendez urged another man to stay. “I need you today,” he said. “These cucumbers not going to wait until tomorrow.”

Republican Gov. Nathan Deal started the experiment after farmers publicly complained they couldn’t find enough workers to harvest labor-intensive crops such as cucumbers and berries because Latino workers — including many illegal immigrants — refused to show up, even when offered one-time or weekly bonuses. One crew who previously worked for Mendez told him they wouldn’t come to Georgia for fear of risking deportation.

Farmers told state authorities in an unscientific survey that they had more than 11,000 unfilled agriculture jobs, although it’s not clear how that compares to prior years or whether the shortage can be blamed on the new law.

For more than a week, the state’s probation officers have encouraged their unemployed offenders to consider taking field jobs. While most offenders are required to work while on probation, statistics show they have a hard time finding jobs. Georgia’s unemployment rate is nearly 10 percent, but correction officials say among the state’s 103,000 probationers, it’s about 15 percent. Still, offenders can turn down jobs they consider unsuitable, and harvesting is physically demanding.

The first batch of probationers started work last week at a farm owned by Dick Minor, president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. In the coming days, more farmers could join the program.

So far, the experiment at Minor’s farm is yielding mixed results. On the first two days, all the probationers quit by mid-afternoon, said Mendez, one of two crew leaders at Minor’s farm.

“Those guys out here weren’t out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, ‘Bonk this, I ain’t with this, I can’t do this,’” said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer. “They just left, took off across the field walking.”

Mendez put the probationers to the test last Wednesday, assigning them to fill one truck and a Latino crew to a second truck. The Latinos picked six truckloads of cucumbers compared to one truckload and four bins for the probationers.

“It’s not going to work,” Mendez said. “No way. If I’m going to depend on the probation people, I’m never going to get the crops up.”

Conditions in the field are bruising, and the probationers didn’t seem to know what to expect. Cucumber plants hug the ground, forcing the workers to bend over, push aside the large leaves and pull them from the vine. Unlike the Mexican and Guatemalan workers, the probationers didn’t wear gloves to protect their hands from the small but prickly thorns on the vines and sandpaper-rough leaves.

The harvesters carried filled buckets on their shoulders to a nearby flatbed truck and hoisted them up to a dumper, who tossed the vegetables into a bin.

Temperatures hovered in the low 90s with heavy humidity Thursday, but taking off a shirt to relieve the heat invited a blistering sunburn. Tiny gnats flew into workers’ eyes and ears. One experienced Latino worker carried a machete that he used to dispatch a rattlesnake found in the fields.

By law, each worker must earn minimum wage, or $7.25 an hour. But there’s an incentive system. Harvesters get a green ticket worth 50 cents every time they dump a bucket of cucumbers. If they collect more than 15 tickets an hour, they can beat minimum wage.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/georgia-puts-probation...

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4.
Dozens mistakenly told they won visa lottery suing
By Laura Wides-Munoz
The Associated Press, June 21, 2011

Dozens of people who were mistakenly told they had won a spot to apply for a U.S. visa through the annual visa lottery system are suing the federal government.

French native Armande Gil is a psychologist in Miami who is among those seeking class action status in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Washington. Gil said she spent time and money preparing for her new life and was devastated to learn it was just a bureaucratic snafu. She and others want to be reinstated as lottery winners.

"The decision of the Department of State has created a lot of stress for me financially, psychologically and practically," she said Tuesday. "I thought I was finally in the process to get work permit and residency, and everything tumbles down."

Roughly 22,000 individuals were told in early May they'd been selected through the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, whereby foreign nationals from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States can apply for up to 55,000 available visas. But two weeks later immigration officials announced the selection was skewed due to a computer glitch and the initial round was invalid. Instead of selecting the candidates randomly, nearly all were chosen from those who filed on the first two days of the application process.

A new lottery is set for July 15, and those from the first round will be eligible. They must still go through security and other background checks, but those who qualify are generally accepted.

Gil's attorney, Kenneth White, maintains the U.S. government broke a public and written commitment to the applicants.

"There are thousands of specific events that can only begin to explain the pain this has caused - individuals leaving jobs, turning down job offers, selling possessions including cars, cancelling long-term residential lease arrangements, getting married, collectively spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in courier and postal costs to file applications, undertaking medical examinations, undergoing vaccinations, returning to home countries - all on the strength of the in-writing notification made by the U.S. Government," he wrote in the lawsuit.

White added that the incident would damage the U.S government's credibility abroad.

Heide Bronke Fulton, a State Department spokeswoman, said Tuesday the department was aware of the "potential" for a lawsuit but could not confirm if the case had actually been filed and would not comment on potential or pending litigation. She said the department had no choice but to invalidate the initial results and hold a redrawing because the first lottery had not been random as required by law.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jXhr1HH_77YnSxItlUQ4L1...

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5.
US border agent fatally shoots man near San Diego
The Associated Press, June 22, 2011

A Border Patrol agent on Tuesday shot and killed a man at the US-Mexico border who threatened to strike another agent with a concrete slab, a spokesman said.

Two men, presumably Mexican, assaulted two Border Patrol agents after crossing the border illegally about one mile west of San Diego's San Ysidro port of entry, Border Patrol spokesman Steven Pitts said.

One of the men climbed the border fence around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and was about to throw the large slab when an agent fired an unknown number of shots, Pitts said. He was pronounced dead in Mexico.

Tijuana, Mexico, police identified the victim as Jose Alfredo Yanez, 40, and said he was shot at least twice in his body and once in the head.

The other migrant returned safely to Mexico.

One of the Border Patrol agents was kicked in the face and taken to a hospital for injuries that were not life threatening, Pitts said.

Kevin Keenan, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego and Imperial counties said the death raises troubling questions, partly because the suspects were fleeing.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gd1_RYIU2DqCNuOgUEthgq...