1. Reid vows lame duck action
2. Many GOP Latinos to running
3. SB1070 appeals case begins
4. I-9 audits result in warnings
5. ICE working with CA town

1.
Reid vows immigration vote in lame-duck Congress
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times, October 31, 2010

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this weekend promised to force the Senate to vote on an immigration bill, the Dream Act, in a lame-duck session of Congress next month.

Mr. Reid, a Nevada Democrat who is in a desperate battle to keep his Senate seat, told Univision's "Al Punto," a Sunday political talk show, that he has the right as majority leader to decide what legislation reaches the floor, and said he is "a believer in needing to do something" on immigration.

In doing so, he elevated immigration to join jobs, spending and tax cuts — the issues most lawmakers expect to dominate Congress when they reconvene in November.

"I just need a handful of Republicans. I would settle for two or three Republicans to join with me on the Dream Act and comprehensive immigration reform, but they have not been willing to step forward," Mr. Reid said. "They want to keep talking about this issue, and I say [it] is demagoguery in its worst fashion and is unfair to the Hispanic community."

The Dream Act would grant legal status and a path to citizenship to illegal immigrant schoolchildren and to illegal immigrants who agree to serve in the U.S. military.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/31/reid-vows-immigration-vo...

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2.
Tuesday could produce new Latino stars - in GOP
By Carrie Budoff Brown
Politico (Washington, D.C.), November 1, 2010

In an election year when Democrats are accusing the GOP of being anti-immigrant, Hispanic candidates are poised to make historic gains Tuesday – on the Republican ticket.

It’s an unusual twist on one of the dominant narratives of the election: The party that reignited the immigration debate by writing the Arizona enforcement law, pushed for repeal of the 14th Amendment, and produced hard-hitting ads against illegal immigrants is likely to wake up Wednesday with a bench of Hispanic Republicans who will be instant celebrities in the political world.

No one will come out of Tuesday night with a more elevated profile than Marco Rubio, the former Florida House Speaker who is projected to head to the U.S. Senate. There’s already buzz about him landing on the 2012 presidential ticket as vice president, with some Republicans speculating about a Rubio-for-President bid in the not-so-distant future.

New Mexico attorney Susana Martinez is favored to emerge as the country’s first Latina governor. Former federal judge Brian Sandoval is likely to become Nevada’s first Latino governor.

And in a little-noticed development, Hispanic Republicans could win three or more seats in the House – up from three now – including in some districts that are far from majority Hispanic.

By contrast, the ranks of Hispanic Democrats in Congress and governor’s mansions are expected to remain largely static, a consequence of the party nominating the fewest number of Latinos for the House since at least 2002, none for the Senate and only one for governor. Democrats may even lose one Hispanic House member, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who is struggling against Republican Ruth McClung.

“People have always tried to say Latinos are solidly Democratic, they’re always Democratic,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials Education Fund, which produced the statistics in its “Races to Watch” analysis of the 2010 federal and state elections. “They’re not. It is a community whose vote is up for grabs.”

The election of several high-ranking Hispanics won’t solve the disconnect between the Republican Party and most Hispanics on immigration reform, and on its own, won’t help realize the goal set forth by former President George W. Bush and his circle of top advisers to make the party more appealing to Latinos.

Any bid to turn around the party’s image with Hispanics could no doubt be complicated by the election of hard-line immigration foes such as Nevada’s Sharron Angle to the Senate and potentially even Tom Tancredo, a former Republican House member, as Colorado governor.

Even among the Hispanic Republicans, their views on immigration – border security first, legalization later, if at all – don’t receive majority support among Hispanics, according to polls.

But the projected gains, punctuating one of the harshest campaign environments for Hispanics in years, couldn’t come at a more opportune time for the party. Republicans took a sharp turn towards an enforcement-first message and some candidates ran ads depicting Hispanics as menacing lawbreakers, prompting Democrats such as Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey to accuse the GOP of racism.

As the dust settles after Tuesday, Republicans could be the party that emerges with a fresh lineup of Latino stars, a group that can help repair the breach with this fastest-growing segment of the electorate over immigration, with the ability to speak directly to Hispanic voters on Spanish-language TV.

“This is an opportunity to recuperate the losses,” said former Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who worked with Bush as the Republican National Committee chairman to reach out to Hispanics. “These folks can provide tremendous avenues for our party to begin to reach Hispanic voters again.”

For the most part, the candidates are running neither on their ethnicity nor their position on immigration reform, which isn’t uniform across the group. They say their campaigns emphasize the issues that Latinos – and most everyone else in this election – care about above all else: jobs and the economy.

“It’s not a top three issue here in New Mexico,” said Republican Jon Barela, a New Mexico businessman who is trying to unseat Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.). “It is all about jobs. And I just don’t want people to pigeonhole Hispanic Republicans as somehow exclusively, that somehow our race is dominated by immigration.”

In the case of Rubio, Martinez and Sandoval, who have lined up to varying degrees against the Democratic version of immigration reform, they would emerge as top-tier targets of the Republican presidential hopefuls, who will no doubt want their imprimatur in the key swings states they represent.

Hispanics will be crucial in the presidential campaign, particularly in New Mexico, Nevada and Florida – states that Obama won in two years ago, and both parties will battle over in 2012. Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty and others have dipped into some or all of these states to deliver endorsements and cash.
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44489.html#ixzz1431xgo

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3.
Appeals court in San Francisco to hear arguments on Arizona immigration law
Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2010

A federal appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments Monday on the constitutionality of an Arizona law that would require police to investigate the legal status of anyone they lawfully stop and suspect may be in the country illegally.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is to meet at 9 a.m. in San Francisco for a hearing on whether key portions of the law, known as SB 1070, should continue to be blocked.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed the legislation into law in April, provoking nationwide protests and boycotts.

The Obama administration and civil rights groups challenged the law in court, and a federal judge in Phoenix ruled in April that its most controversial requirements infringed on the federal government's sole authority to regulate immigration.

The 9th Circuit judges chosen randomly to hear Arizona's appeal are John Noonan, an appointee of Ronald Reagan and a moderate; Richard Paez, a Bill Clinton appointee and the son of Mexican immigrants; and Carlos Bea, an appointee of George W. Bush who was born in Spain and once was ordered deported from the United States. Bea appealed and won.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/appeals-court-in-san-franc...

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4.
Workplace checks of employees' immigration status yield mostly warnings
By Manuel Valdes
The Associated Press, November 1, 2010

They cost clothing chain Abercrombie & Fitch $1 million in fines, tripped up Meg Whitman's campaign for California governor, prompted mass layoffs across the country and have been at the center of countless other workplace immigration disputes.

An obscure federal document called the I-9 form has emerged as a contentious element in the national immigration debate since the Obama administration vowed to go after employers who hire undocumented workers. Employers must fill out and sign the form, which requires them to acknowledge, under penalty of perjury, that they examined documents that allow an employee to work.

The Obama administration a year ago announced plans to ramp up I-9 audits — a shift from the notorious work site raids common under the Bush administration.

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But most employers with questionable record-keeping aren't being punished for failing to prove their employees have legal status, an analysis of documents obtained by The Associated Press show.

Most receive only warnings if the I-9s turn out to be based on fraudulent documents. Some are fined. Few face arrest. And the AP analysis also shows that many of the employers the government has targeted had no violations.

"The I-9 system is deeply flawed," said Daniel Costas, an immigration policy analyst at Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. It "relies on employer eyesight for the verification of government identification and documents ... If this is how the system is going to work, then it's a big waste of time and money."

The system is meant to thwart illegal immigrants from working in the U.S., where about 7.8 million illegal immigrants have jobs, according to a 2009 report by the Pew Hispanic Center.

But at its foundation is a law that requires a promise that employers check their workers' eligibility to work. Those forms are never submitted to the government. Employers must simply keep them on hand in case the government decides to audit the business and do a check of its workers' immigration status. All employers are required to keep the forms — no matter the size of the business.

Whitman, the Republican hoping to become California governor Tuesday, has struggled to overcome a scandal over her forced revelation that she had an illegal immigrant housekeeper for nine years. The maid was required to fill out an I-9 form when she was hired, and Whitman says she fired her last year when she learned the woman had lied on the form.

During an audit, ICE agents go through the I-9 forms and check Social Security Numbers to make sure they're real, matching them against copies of other forms of ID.

Early this year, the AP asked for each of the audits conducted since the changes to the system were made. The U.S Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded just recently with limited details of a sampling of audits covering a seven-month period.

The AP reviewed summaries of 430 audits conducted between July 1, 2009, and January 31, 2010.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-immigratio...

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5.
Escondido back in illegal immigration spotlight
By Morgan Lee
San Diego Union Tribune, October 31, 2010

A special arrangement between federal agents and Escondido law enforcement has thrust the increasingly Latino city back into the illegal-immigration spotlight.

Police Chief Jim Maher calls the full-time placement of three Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at police headquarters an important crime-fighting tool. He said the goal is to make Escondido as unfriendly as possible to illegal border crossers who have criminal records, including previous deportations.

Maher’s critics said the chief’s hard line has sent a chilling message to the entire Latino community, which is dominated by Mexicans and is now the largest ethnic group in Escondido. Many contend that the city’s sobriety checkpoints are a guise for intimidating the undocumented, who are barred from getting a driver’s license in California. They also worry that Escondido’s close cooperation with ICE, a pilot project that’s the first of its kind in the state and perhaps the country, could become permanent and expand.

Implicit in these complaints is the belief that illegal immigrants should be able to live peacefully, find employment and eventually gain permanent residency in the United States.

The Escondido controversy reflects some of the thorniest issues in the national debate about immigration reform. Certain organizations push for tougher measures against illegal immigrants, while others want Congress to grant them a path to citizenship. In various speeches and its immigration lawsuit against Arizona, the Obama administration has aimed for a balancing act — upholding laws against the undocumented while trying to be humane and to not antagonize key nations such as Mexico.

Escondido attracted national attention in 2006 with its failed attempt to punish landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. The city has a policy against giving sanctuary to illegal immigrants or leaving immigration matters to federal authorities alone.

The street demonstrations that greeted the rental ordinance are back, this time near the police sobriety checkpoints. On Oct. 23, for example, about 30 people gathered a few blocks ahead of one checkpoint to warn motorists, who detoured onto alternate streets or parked their vehicles to wait out the screening.

Maher condemned such protests as irresponsible. He said they undermine his department’s moderate and pragmatic campaign to keep the city safe.

“There are folks in this community that feel that if we know someone is in the country illegally, just in the country illegally, we should take action,” said Maher, who rose through the Escondido police ranks over three decades. “That certainly would make law enforcement in this community more difficult, if our illegal immigrant community felt that every time they called the police department ... we would simply turn them over to the Border Patrol.”

At nearly every turn, from community forums to private meetings with the Mexican consul in San Diego, Maher stresses that Escondido isn’t interested in the immigration status of lawful residents.

“There are known criminals who would be allowed to stay in most communities. (They) will not be able to stay in Escondido,” he said. “And if they do choose to come back to the country, they won’t choose to come back to Escondido.”

Skeptics point out that immigrants with orders to leave the country aren’t necessarily criminals.

“The chief of the Escondido police likes to paint a picture like these deportation orders are a warrant, and they’re not,” said Bill Flores, a former assistant sheriff for San Diego County who is active with the Latino-rights organization El Grupo. “Most local law-enforcement agencies don’t do that because they don’t want to be viewed as immigration officers alienating the Latino community.”

Civil-liberties activists said the collaboration between Escondido and ICE has no written standards, raising the potential for racial profiling and other abuses.

“Any officer with a bone to pick can slip someone’s name in the ICE officers’ mailbox for scrutiny,” said Kevin Keenan, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego.

Escondido police and ICE officials stress that they don’t go after illegal immigrants unless they have a criminal record or previous deportation order. Verification is difficult because the agencies said they don’t keep applicable records.

For several years, a federal immigration officer has worked out of the Escondido Police Department on an anti-gang task force.

In May, two more ICE officers were assigned to the department for a pilot program dubbed “Operation Joint Effort.” The initiative is tailored to a recent federal push to remove illegal immigrants who pose a danger to public safety or national security and those who re-enter the U.S. after being deported, said Robin Baker, director of the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations office in San Diego.

One hallmark of his agency’s national campaign is Secure Communities, a system for screening suspects against Homeland Security immigration records as they’re booked into local jails, including those in San Diego County.

ICE has gone a step further in Escondido. Its officers respond almost as soon as the city’s officers spot an illegal immigrant they suspect was already convicted or deported.

“It institutionalizes cooperation between locals and federal agents where they’re located together and they’re able to build rapport,” said Jessica Vaughan with the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocate for greater immigration enforcement and controls.

Operation Joint Effort has led to 176 arrests since May. Most of the detainees had criminal records, including illegal immigrants with prior convictions for auto theft, weapons violations and child-sex crimes. Thirty-three of those arrested didn’t have criminal histories but had been ordered out of the country by an immigration judge.
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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/oct/31/escondido-back-illegal-im...