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1. Senate discusses border in AZ
2. Some not eligible for temporary visa
3. Day laborers hit by slow economy
4. NE town to vote on enforcement
5. Groups protest resident's arrest

1.
Senate comes to AZ to talk immigration
The KTAR News (Phoenix, AZ), April 20, 2009

The U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee came to Phoenix Monday to discuss border issues, including the growing drug cartel wars in Mexico.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a member of the committee said the drug wars don't just affect Mexico.

"The lawlessness and the murder and the mayhem that is accompanying it is clearly a problem for the United States."

McCain added, "For the first time in the last couple of years, the Mexican government and the U.S. are working cooperatively together. We just have to do a lot, lot more."

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, Attorney General Terry Goddard and other officials from Arizona were to testify at the hearing at Phoenix City Hall. The list included Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, Tohono O'odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris Jr. and Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever.

Notably absent was Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has been at the center of a controversy over enforcement of federal immigration laws. The sheriff said he would appear, instead, on Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central Show in New York to discuss his stance on illegal immigration laws and calls for his resignation by the Rev. Al Sharpton and others.
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2.
Visa rules widen the rift between Vietnam and U.S. families
By My-Thuan Tran
Los Angeles Times, April 21, 2009

Luong Vu asks his daughter the same question each time she visits his Westminster hospital room: "When are my sons coming?"

Kimberly Vu sighs, as usual. "We are still waiting," she says to the 85-year-old family patriarch, who is fast losing his battle with prostate cancer.

But his sons aren't coming. Cuong and Vuong Vu live an ocean away in a suburb of Ho Chi Minh City, and their requests for visas to the United States for a final reunion have been denied over and over again.

The U.S. Consulate says the brothers have failed to prove they will return to Vietnam after the visit. The brothers' argument that they have family, businesses and homes in Vietnam has not swayed immigration officials.

The plight is not a new one for families split between two countries, but increasingly it is becoming an issue among Vietnamese as the refugees who fled to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War grow old.

Many of those who left their homeland in the 1970s and '80s have been separated for decades from siblings, parents and children still in Vietnam. In recent years, as Vietnam's economy boomed, relatives suddenly had the financial means to travel to the U.S for reunions or final gatherings. But many families, like the Vus, find themselves entangled in a long and agonizing visa process.

Luong Vu's eight children are scattered from Orange County to Bien Hoa, Vietnam. The family was pulled apart in 1982 when Kimberly and two younger brothers fled the Communist government by boat. Nine years later, their parents followed under a government program.

But Cuong and Vuong had families in Vietnam and did not want to move to the U.S. It was a decade before the parents became U.S. citizens and were able to travel to their homeland to visit their children and grandchildren there. Luong Vu's wife died in 2005.

Now in Bien Hoa, a suburb with new factories and warehouses, Cuong, 45, and Vuong, 52, live on the same street and run their furniture businesses in front of their houses. Each is married; each has three children. "They aren't rich, but they have comfortable lives in Vietnam," Kimberly said.

When his father's health began to fail, Cuong made plans to get a non-immigrant visa. He interviewed three times with U.S. Consulate officials, his sister said, and each time he was asked only a few questions. Some seemed off point: "Do you have a car?" His visa requests were denied each time.

Vuong, the older brother, had applied to immigrate to the U.S. in 2000, a request that has further complicated his effort to get a visa, Kimberly said. Family members say that Vuong wanted to move to the U.S. so his daughter could get a good education but that he has since changed his mind.

Obtaining a temporary visa can be tough, with much depending on individual circumstances and the country where would-be visitors live. Foreigners must show they have strong ties to their homelands -- family relationships, employment and possessions -- to prove they will return when their visas expire, according to the U.S. State Department.

Laura Tischler, a department spokesperson, said many visa applicants mistakenly believe that having a heart-wrenching story is enough to get a visa. Looming deaths or momentous occasions, including weddings and graduations, are irrelevant, she said.

The government has legitimate concerns, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors tighter controls on immigration. More than a quarter of the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in this country are those who come on temporary or work visas, but do not return home, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-visa-dying-wish21-2009apr21,0,70...

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3.
Day-to-day struggle
The housing bust and a tight economy have taken a heavy toll on day laborers
By Russell Working
The Chicago Tribune, April 19, 2009

Alfonso Aguilar waits in a crowd of about 40 men strung out across an access road from the parking lot of the Cicero Home Depot.

They are dressed for construction work, in paint-spattered jeans and old jackets. A van pulls up, and the men swarm around, gesturing at themselves. Pick me! Pick me!

But the driver needs only two workers, and Aguilar doesn't make the cut.

It's been like this since the economy crashed last year. Where they once landed work almost every day, men like Aguilar now go a week or two with nothing to show but $30 to $40 for a half-day's work.

Hard times have hit the once-thriving day-labor market at 2803 S. Cicero Ave., three other major Chicago-area sites and a handful of smaller ones where men trade their work for cash, no questions asked.

Like Aguilar, 48, many survive in homeless shelters and on food donated by churches. Yet the men still line up along the curb every day, hoping someone buying a pickup-load of sheet rock or 2-by-4s at Home Depot will cross the parking lot and beckon for workers.

The men—most of them illegal immigrants—cling to an uncertain life at the convergence of powerful currents in contemporary American experience. They are buffeted by recession, unemployment, homelessness, collapsed housing starts and the ever-present threat of Immigration enforcement.

A neat man who shaves daily and carries a change of clothing in his bag, Aguilar used to wire his family in Mexico $120 a week, enough for them to get by. Lately he has sent nothing because he spends what little he earns.

For the past two months, he hasn't been able to talk to his wife because she couldn't pay the phone bill. Yet he has no intention of giving up and heading to his home near Mexico City.

"I stay because Mexico is harder than this," he said.

The situation in Cicero has deteriorated since last summer, said David Lozano, a Chicago-born worker. When there is work, employers often seek out Lozano because of his native English skills, and they tell him to pick his own crew. Recently, he says, a desperate worker who wasn't chosen slugged him in the jaw.

"The individuals, you can see the fear in their eyes, because they don't know where they're going to live," Lozano said. "A lot of guys out at the Home Depot, they're risking deportation. There's 10 guys sleeping in a one-bedroom apartment, and they're all out here at Home Depot.

"I have guys come up to me and say, 'When you go out to work, please choose me, because I'm eating out of a Dumpster right now.'"

About 1,000 workers hire themselves out daily at four major day-labor sites across the Chicago area, with another 1,000 seeking jobs at smaller sites that have sprung up recently, said Eric Rodriguez, executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago. Their numbers are predominantly Latino, but there are also Eastern Europeans, Koreans and some Mongolians.

"A good week used to be three days' work," Rodriguez said. "Now with the economic crisis, they're lucky to get hired once a month."

The union, which seeks to organize day laborers, has seen an increase in American citizens on the day-labor sites, he said. The organization has gotten workers to set a minimum wage of $10 an hour to keep employers from taking advantage of them.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-day-labor-19-bdapr19,0,1499...

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4.
Town allowed to vote on immigration restrictions
The Houston Chronicle, April 20, 2009

Omaha, NE -- Residents of Fremont will get the chance to vote on a contentious proposal seeking to curb illegal immigration.

A Dodge County district judge on Monday dismissed the city's claim that it can't legally enact a proposed ordinance that seeks to bar anyone in Fremont from hiring or renting to illegal immigrants.

The City Council voted down a similar ordinance last summer.

Petitioners turned in more than 3,100 valid signatures to force a special election on the proposal.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6383395.html

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5.
Local ACLU decries Megahed's immigration arrest
By Elaine Silvestrini
The Tampa Tribune, April 20, 2009

Tampa -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida today joined the chorus of activists protesting the immigration arrest of Youssef Megahed three days after a federal jury acquitted him of explosives charges.

The arrest April 6 in a Wal-Mart parking lot "appears vindictive," said Becky Steele, director of the West Central Florida chapter of the ACLU, who convened a news conference in her office.

She and the Florida executive director, Howard Simon, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calling for Megahed's release. They say the arrest has "the appearance of ignoring the jury's verdict and giving the government an unfair opportunity to pursue repeated efforts to deprive an individual of his liberty."

Steele said the government is technically able to pursue the immigration charges because there are different standards of proof in immigration court and criminal court. But although the arrest is legal, that "doesn't make it right."

"Our concern is immigration officials swooped in and arrested Youssef Megahed," Steele said. She said her organization is concerned about "the implications for civil liberties" and the appearance of unfair legal treatment for Muslims.

Megahed, 23, who is from Egypt, is a legal, permanent resident who came to the United States when he was 11. He applied for citizenship less than three weeks before his Aug. 4, 2007, arrest in South Carolina.

Megahed's criminal trial centered on items found in the trunk of the car in which he was riding with his friend Ahmed Mohamed. The prosecution said the "low explosives" could easily be modified to be something dangerous; the defense maintained they were merely toy rocket motors homemade by Mohamed.

Megahed and Mohamed were University of South Florida students at the time of their arrest.

Mohamed is serving 15 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to helping terrorists by posting on YouTube a video in which he shows how to detonate a bomb with a remote-controlled toy.
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http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/apr/20/201804/aclu-florida-decries-mega...