1. Tough road for DREAM Act
2. MI state senator targets benefits
3. CT proposal gives tuition breaks
4. NYC police short on interpreters
5. TX tuition bill fails

1.
Rocky Road Ahead for DREAM Act
By Marcus Stern
ProPublica, November 18, 2010

After failing to win comprehensive immigration reform during a period when Democrats controlled both the White House and Congress, immigration proponents are now hoping to use the lame-duck session to snag an 11th-hour consolation prize: the DREAM Act.

On Tuesday, President Obama pledged to personally lobby resistant members of Congress to support the bill. But even though the DREAM Act has drawn Republican support in the past, it's unclear whether the White House can win over enough Senate Republicans to make up for the handful of Democrats who are expected to vote against the bill.

The DREAM Act has been discussed for almost a decade. The current version would provide "conditional" green cards to as many as 2.1 million people who were brought to the United States illegally by their parents when they were under the age of 16. It would allow them to work, attend college and serve in the military. It also would put them on a path to citizenship.

The House is likely to pass the DREAM Act if Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., brings it to the floor for a vote. "No decision has been made," Pelosi spokesman Carlos Sanchez said Wednesday. But other sources close to the leadership said the only decision left to be made is what day the vote will occur.

The situation in the Senate, however, remains an uphill battle because 60 votes will be needed to block an expected Republican filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who owes his narrow re-election victory earlier this month in part to Hispanic voters, has pledged to bring up the bill. Proponents don't have the votes now, but they may secure enough to produce a cliffhanger.

"I do think there's majority support in the Senate for the DREAM Act," said Lynn Tramonte, deputy director of America's Voice, which is pushing the legislation. "I think we could get over 60 votes if Republicans were part of the equation."

Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA, a restrictionist group that opposes the bill, said, "As far as we can tell they don't have the votes in the Senate to pass it right now. The thing that bothers me is that it would be very difficult to beat in the House, and if Pelosi were to bring it up first and pass it, I don't know what kind of effect that momentum would have in the Senate."

To get 60 votes in the Senate, proponents would need to win more than half of the 20 or so Democratic and Republican lawmakers whose votes are uncertain at this time. (Check below for a list of those whose votes are considered uncertain at this point.) Proponents believe they have 53 Democratic votes and therefore will need at least seven Republicans. Several Senate Republicans who have voted for the DREAM Act in the past are expected to oppose it this time around, including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Orrin Hatch of Utah. Hatch had been the initial sponsor of the bill back in 2001.
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http://www.propublica.org/article/rocky-road-ahead-for-dream-act

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2.
Hune: Cut benefits to illegals
By Christopher Behnan
Livingston Daily (MI), November 19, 2010

Halting social benefits to undocumented immigrants should be the first step toward eliminating Michigan's $1.6 billion structural deficit, state Sen.-elect Joe Hune said.

Hune, a Republican from the Fowlerville area, raised the issue on the campaign trial, and later said his first bill would cut off the benefits to undocumented immigrants.

He's honored that promise, recently submitting the proposal as one of 10 that newly elected lawmakers can make to the state Legislative Service Bureau.

State fiscal analysts said there aren't reliable figures on the number of illegal immigrants who actually receive social benefits, or how much that has cost the state, however.

"Really, there isn't any reliable data to my knowledge at least that documents that," said Bob Schneider, associate director of the state House Fiscal Agency.

Hune said there are more than 100,000 illegal aliens in Michigan, and that all are potentially collecting taxpayer-funded benefits, including health-care services and welfare.

The incoming senator said he didn't know how many of the 100,000-plus people are collecting the benefits, or how much the state could save by cutting off the benefits, however.

"If you cut off that benefit to that population, we can ultimately save a tremendous amount of money, possibly. It can certainly help shore up the state's budget when you're looking at a $1.6 billion shortfall come Jan. 1," Hune said.

"This would essentially put a lock-box on that to make sure folks are here legally. So this is just an additional safeguard," he added.

Hune said he submitted other proposals, including calling for the repeal of the Michigan Business Tax and personal property tax for businesses, but that he plans to first introduce his immigration bill.

He said his immigration bill would be "a big component" of reigning in state spending, however, citing the Michigan League for Human Services and Center for Immigration Studies as sources for his information.

The Center for Immigration Studies only tracks federal taxes spent on illegal immigrants, and doesn't track trends regarding state taxes, however.

Most social benefits, including food assistance, health-care payments and welfare, are mostly — if not entirely — funded and dictated by federal spending guidelines, state analysts said.

In other words, state legislation, in almost all cases, wouldn't supersede federal spending rules for the programs.

While some illegal immigrants likely fall through the cracks, they aren't eligible for almost all of the above social benefits, Schneider said. The exceptions are emergency medical treatment and state-supported homeless shelters and soup kitchens, which illegal immigrants can take advantage of without documentation.
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http://www.livingstondaily.com/article/20101119/NEWS01/11190317/Hune-Cut...

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3.
Tuition break for undocumented students
By Mark Davis
WTNH (CT), November 18, 2010

City leaders in New Haven were joined by members of the state legislature to announce their proposal for a law that would make it more affordable for undocumented students to attend college in the state.

By one estimate, of the 5,000 high school students in the city of New Haven there are hundreds of high achieving kids who are the children of illegal immigrants. If these high achievers want to go a state university like Southern, they would have to pay over $18,000 in tuition. Compare that to about $8,000 for a legal Connecticut resident.

Mayor John DeStefano (D-New Haven) and some lawmakers want to give that in-state tuition break to undocumented kids who do well in school.

"What it will provide is in-state tuition for undocumented immigrant children," said Sen. Martin Looney (D-Majority Leader).

The theory is that high achievers, no matter what their immigration status, if they go to college, will make productive members of society some day, so it's a good investment.

Lorrela Praeli is undocumented. She came here from Peru with her parents for medical treatment and her parents decided to stay. She says others like her are coming out of the shadows.

"And we encourage allies to join us, we encourage legislators to join us and to fight for what is right, because I am an American," Praeli said.

Not everyone supports the idea.

"Funds are what they are, the state's got a budget deficit and they can't afford to be picking up the tab for people that they shouldn't be picking up the tab for, otherwise where does it end?" said Vinny Messina of Wolcott.

That may be the reaction from many who aren't necessarily opposed to the concept, just concerned about state finances.
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http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/politics/new-haven-tuition-break-undocument...

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4.
Audit Says Police Fall Short in Providing Interpreters
By Ray Rivera and Karen Zraick
The New York Times, November 18, 2010

When Esther Jimenez called the police to her Staten Island home last year, she showed them the scratches on her arm. She told them that her husband had attacked her in front of their children. He had pushed her into a wall, she said, and knocked their youngest child from her arms.

Esther Jimenez said police officers did not get her an interpreter after they responded to a 911 call to her Staten Island apartment.

A federal review has found the Police Department to be inconsistent in dealings with non-English speakers, like Esther Jimenez.

But the officers could not understand: She spoke only Spanish. They spoke English.

According to New York Police Department protocol, the officers should have gotten an interpreter for her, but Ms. Jimenez said they did not. Lawyers at Staten Island Legal Services, who represented Ms. Jimenez, 27, said the police never filed a report after the visit.

A new federal review into how police interact with the city’s vast immigrant population suggests that Ms. Jimenez’s experience was not unusual. The review, by the Justice Department’s Office for Civil Rights, found the department often fails to ensure that New Yorkers who do not speak English have critical access to certified interpreters when seeking police assistance.

The 10-month review concluded that the department is not fully complying with federal civil rights laws and must do more to provide non-English speakers with “meaningful access to its services.”

“It is clear the department needs to take further action to ensure that it adequately provides language assistance services to people with limited English proficiency,” Michael L. Alston, director of the civil rights office, wrote in the conclusion of the 43-page report. The report was sent to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly on Nov. 8 along with instructions to develop timelines and goals for remedying the multiple deficiencies found in the review.

Police officials said that while some points in the report “may bear some merit,” they strongly disputed the findings that the department was out of compliance. In a 17-page response to the civil rights office in October, the department said the reviewers relied on anecdotal information “to make broad conclusions regarding our language-access practices and the ability to provide meaningful access that are based on little, if any, factual data to support such conclusions.”

“We do this better than anyone else, in far greater numbers than anyone else,” Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said in a statement on Thursday. “That’s the forest the Justice Department missed for the trees. They don’t get New York.”

The Police Department has made strides in its efforts to increase the number of foreign-language speakers in its ranks, stressing that those skills are integral to counterterrorism efforts and in responding to day-to-day street crime in a city where more than a fifth of its inhabitants speak limited or no English. It also boasts of interpretation services that are intended to leave no foreign speakers isolated from getting help from officers on the street, over the phone or in any of the department’s precincts across the five boroughs.

Yet the Justice Department’s review found an array of shortcomings in the department’s linguistic services. Among these deficiencies is a significant lack of certified interpreters for some of the city’s most commonly spoken foreign languages like Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Italian.

Even when trained interpreters are available, officers and supervisors in the field often failed to call on them. Instead, officers “frequently rely on bystanders to interpret for them,” the report noted. One commanding officer explained to federal reviewers that he used his fiancée to interpret for him with a non-English speaking prisoner because “it was quicker and easier to rely on her than to ask Operations to send a certified interpreter.”

The review found that in domestic violence cases, officers sometimes relied on family members and even children to help interpret, despite department guidelines stating that “all steps should be taken to avoid using a child as an interpreter.”

Compliance is necessary under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to receive federal grants.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/nyregion/19translate.html?partner=rss&...

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5.
Texas A&M senate bill against in-state tuition for illegals fails
By Alicia M. Cohn
Student Free Press Association, November 18, 2010

The student government of Texas A&M University failed to overturn a veto Wednesday night on a student senate bill that would have expressed student disapproval of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.

The bill would have allowed the student government at Texas A&M to lobby state officials on the issue of in-state tuition, and “to clarify what demographics receive in-state tuition and oppose measures to give in-state tuition to persons residing in the United States illegally.”

Earlier this month, the student senate passed the same bill with 61 percent of the vote following debate that drew an unusually large crowd. A&M Student Body President Jacob Robinson vetoed the bill, stating that the bill did not address the root of the immigration issue and overstepped the jurisdiction of the student senate.

“We have a whole branch of our student government association dedicated to state issues, so it’s certainly a legitimate purpose of our organization,” said Justin Pulliam, co-author of the bill and member of the External Affairs committee, which handles relations between the students of A&M and state, federal, and local governments.

“We don’t think it’s right to give automatic in-state tuition to illegal aliens,” he said. “We just don’t think it should be given across the board to illegal aliens while most other American citizens would have to pay a much higher tuition rate.”

According to Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, this type of student action is unusual.

“Most student action has been in favor of in-state tuition by illegal aliens, and that hasn’t had that much effect on state legislatures,” he said. “[But] they’re Americans and their parents are voters, so [the A&M bill could have had] effect than the pro-in-state tuition agitation by illegal immigrants.”

The debate over immigration is already heating up at the state level in Texas. Many state representatives support abolishing in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students on economic grounds. Pulliam pointed to state Rep. Leo Berman (R.-Tyler), who will likely file legislation similar to the A&M bill this spring.

“The $42 million we’re spending on these illegal aliens should be benefits going to Texas students in the form of loans or grants which they aren’t getting,” he said.

In other states, such as Kansas and California, out-of-state students have brought legal action before the courts based on Federal laws regarding in-state tuition. U.S. code section 1623 states that “an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political subdivision) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit.”

In Martinez v. Regents of the University of California, for instance, the student plaintiffs claim that California’s statute granting illegal aliens the right to attend California universities at in-state rates violates the civil rights of U.S. citizens who live outside the state and must pay out-of-state tuition. The California Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiffs on Monday, Nov. 15, upholding California law which grants in-state tuition benefits to students, regardless of citizenship, who attend and graduate from high school in California.

California is one of ten states that currently have laws permitting undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at state-funded colleges and universities. In-state tuition is becoming a more significant benefit to students and parents facing a national recession. While the in-state tuition benefit is rarely used by undocumented students in some states, because California and Texas both claim a high population of illegal immigrants, the numbers receiving the benefit each year are higher in both states.
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http://www.studentfreepress.net/archives/4837