1. Poll: AZ for enforcement
2. Pew confirms CIS numbers
3. Report claims assimilation
4. AZ hawks reap benefits
5. ICE mulls San Fran request

1.
Poll: Ariz. voters favor immigration enforcement
The Associated Press, September 1, 2010

Phoenix (AP) -- A poll released Wednesday found that an overwhelming majority of Arizona voters support the types of provisions that are at the heart of a national debate involving the state's immigration law.

The survey conducted on behalf of Arizona State University's Morrison Institute for Public Policy found 81 percent of registered voters approved of requiring people to produce documents that show they're in the country legally.

It found that 74 percent believe police should be allowed to detain anyone who's unable to verify their legal immigration status, and 68 percent say police should be allowed to question anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.

The survey of 614 registered voters was conducted July 16-Aug. 6 and has a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

DOWN FROM PEAK

The Pew report put the total number of ``unauthorized immigrants'' in the country at 11.1 million, down from a peak of 12 million in March 2007. In 2008, a Pew report confirmed the decline in undocumented immigrants, a trend first detected by researchers at another Washington think tank -- the Center for Immigration Studies.

A January report by the Department of Homeland Security's office of immigration statistics also said the number of undocumented immigrants was dropping, and put the total figure at 10.8 million -- slightly less than Pew.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g09-Rl4pB-3WzZ9G47uQ0Y...

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2.
Illegal immigration to U.S. in sharp decline
By Alfonso Chardy
The Miami Herald, September 2, 2010

At a time when immigration is a political flash point across the country, the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is in sharp decline.

Fewer migrants without papers are sneaking into the United States and more may be leaving, according to a study released Wednesday by the respected Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

The report partly attributes continued decline to a weaker economy and tougher border enforcement.

Florida had one of the greatest declines in irregular migrants in the country, according to the report. Pew says there may now be 675,000 undocumented immigrants in Florida, compared to slightly more than one million in 2008. A January Homeland Security report showed that Florida has the third largest number of undocumented immigrants in the country after California and Texas.

Teresa Guevara, an undocumented immigrant who lives in South Miami-Dade, said she was thinking about returning to Mexico because she has had trouble finding work since she was laid off recently from the plant nursery where she worked.

``Jobs are scarce, and the jobs we can find are more difficult to get because bosses want to see your immigration documents,'' Guevara said.

Nationally, the most dramatic evidence of the decline is a comparison of undocumented migrant arrivals in two different periods. From 2000 to 2005, when the economy was booming, an average of 850,000 migrants per a year sneaked into the United States or overstayed their visas, according to the Pew report. But as the economy worsened between 2007 and 2009, the flow of arrivals dipped to an average of 300,000 per year.

``The flow is down over two thirds during this decade,'' said Jeffrey S. Passel, one of the authors and a Pew Hispanic Center senior demographer. ``As a result of the greatly diminished inflows, we've seen a reversal in what had been a long-term growth in the unauthorized immigrant population.''

At the same time, the report said, more undocumented migrants may be leaving. But the researchers said they did not have a ``precise estimation'' on how many migrants have left, died or became legal residents.

Nevertheless, the report said, the overall number of undocumented migrants continues to decline.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/01/1803885/illegal-immigration-in-sha...

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3.
Immigrants, especially Hispanics, assimilating quickly, report says
The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), September 2, 2010

Washington, DC -- Immigrants, particularly Latinos, are assimilating at a fast pace, with increasing citizenship and homeownership rates, according to a report Wednesday by the Center for American Progress.

The assimilation report was released the same day that the Pew Hispanic Center said illegal immigration has slowed considerably and that the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. has dropped by 8 percent from 2007 to 2009. (See story, Page A1)

The two studies come as the Obama administration is ramping up efforts to curb illegal immigration and, at the same time, pushing for immigration reform legislation to expand legal immigration into the United States.

"The longer that immigrants are in the United States, the more integrated they become," said Angela Kelley with the center, a liberal organization that supports increasing immigration levels.

The study, conducted by Dowell Myers of the University of Southern California's Population Dynamics Research Group, was based on U.S. Census Bureau data. Myers measured assimilation by benchmarks that included citizenship, homeownership, English language proficiency, job status and earning a better income.

The CAP findings differed in emphasis from research conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates limited immigration, which found that 31 percent of adult immigrants have not completed high school, compared with 8 percent of nonimmigrants.

CIS research also found that 78 percent of immigrant families had one worker using a welfare program.

Mark Krikorian with CIS did not dismiss the new CAP report outright, but said that "citing census statistics, though not irrelevant, only gives us part of the picture."
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http://azstarnet.com/news/national/article_6303be19-d3a3-5b82-b230-9bff9...

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4.
Arizona's Anti-Immigration Firebrands: Fueled by Out-of-Staters
By Adam Klawonn
Time Magazine, September 2, 2010

Phoenix -- Robert Acheson has never been to Phoenix. His house, nestled amid the bucolic, forested hills of tiny Dixfield, Maine, is more than 2,800 miles away from the nation's illegal immigration front lines. Still, the retired paper mill worker says he decided to give $35 to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's 2012 re-election campaign this summer because Arpaio is "supporting America." "I'm very much against illegal immigration, and he seems to be against it too," Acheson, 65, says in a telephone interview. "And he seems to be the only guy who has the testosterone — the balls — to stand up to the federal government on this issue."

Donations from people such as Acheson have fed the political frenzy surrounding illegal immigration and framed key Arizona debates, such as the one Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and her Democratic opponent, former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, engaged in Wednesday in Phoenix. Having people outside of Arizona's borders help shape its border policy may be one of the state's great political ironies.

Senate Bill 1070, which Brewer signed into law on April 23, called for, among other things, allowing law enforcement officers to ask about someone's immigration status during a traffic stop detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists that they are in the country illegally. In response to criticism that the new law would promote racial profiling, Brewer created a legal defense fund to give the cops some cover. Now the fund is more than $2 million, a Brewer spokeswoman says, and much of that is coming from people outside Arizona. In-state contributors accounted for $320,544, according to data on AZcentral.com. Contributions from California, Texas, Florida, New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia accounted for $703,171 — outspending Arizonans by more than 2 to 1. And that excludes money from the rest of the country, because people from all 50 states have donated.

Although more Arizonans donated to the legal fund than residents of any other U.S. state, they were eclipsed in per-capita giving. In-state contributors gave an average of $50.76 per person, while donors from Alaska, Wyoming and Hawaii gave $57.97, $55.83 and $52.05 per person, respectively. (On July 28, a federal judge temporarily blocked the most controversial parts of SB 1070 from taking effect.)
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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2015377,00.html

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5.
Immigration agency ponders S.F. opt-out request
By Rachel Gordon
The San Francico Chronicle, September 2, 2010

U.S. immigration officials said Wednesday they will consider San Francisco's request to opt out of the controversial Secure Communities program that makes it easier for federal authorities to track down and deport undocumented immigrants.

Until now, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, has rebuffed San Francisco's contention that participation in the program is voluntary. San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey, a vocal opponent of the program, has said repeatedly that as head of the city's jail system he does not want to participate.

He fired off his latest letter to the head of the Secure Communities program Wednesday - a repeat of the same request he made Tuesday.

Federal authorities agreed Wednesday to review Hennessey's request and convene a meeting with involved agencies, including the California Department of Justice that under Attorney General Jerry Brown has been supportive of Secure Communities and opposed to Hennessey's requested exemption.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/02/BAHU1F7722.D...