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1. E-verify use grows rapidly
2. Asian, Hispanic growth slows
3. Census: Hispanics push NYC pop.
4. Los Angeles jails to check status
5. Program trains future BP agents

1.
More U.S. employers enrolling in E-Verify
By Anna Gorman
The Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2009

The federal government's E-Verify program, which seeks to reduce the hiring of illegal immigrants, is becoming increasingly popular, with 1,000 new businesses signing up each week despite concerns about its reliability.

More than 124,000 businesses, including nearly 10,000 in California, are signed up for the Web-based identification program that enables employers to check whether an employee is authorized to work, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Among the employers enrolled in the state are restaurants, hospitals and temporary employment agencies.

Last week the Obama administration announced that it wanted Congress to allocate $12 million more to the program in the next fiscal year, bringing its budget to $112 million. And Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a congressional hearing that the program was "a cornerstone of workplace enforcement across the country."

"E-Verify is an essential tool for employers to maintain a legal workforce," she said in written testimony. "Nevertheless, room for improvement always remains."

Napolitano said the government planned to improve the accuracy of the databases and strengthen the training of employers to protect workers against discrimination.

E-Verify, run by the Department of Homeland Security, uses government databases to check the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of new hires to determine whether those individuals are eligible to work in the U.S. The program is voluntary, though a few states have passed laws requiring all businesses to participate and several others mandate its use by public employers.

At the end of June, all federal contractors and subcontractors will be required to begin using it. Last fiscal year, more than 6.6 million names were checked under the program, according to the citizenship agency.

E-Verify is an effective way to attack the jobs magnet for illegal immigrants, said Roy Beck, executive director of Numbers USA, which favors stricter controls on immigration. Beck said he hoped the increase in funding would result in more employers signing up.
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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-everify14-2009may14,0,7963143.story

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2.
Asian and Hispanic Minorities Growing, but More Slowly
By Sam Roberts
The New York Times, May 14, 2009

The population growth rate among Asian- and Hispanic-Americans has decreased since the beginning of the decade, according to new census estimates, and the recession appears to have slowed their dispersal from traditional magnet metropolitan areas to other parts of the country.

Still, births outnumber deaths among Hispanic people by 10 to 1, and the nation's racial and ethnic minorities are poised to become a majority among children under 5. They inched up from 46.7 percent of those children on July 1, 2007, to 47.3 percent last July 1.

The latest census estimates found that the minority population -- other than non-Hispanic whites -- grew by 2.3 percent from July 1, 2007, to July 1, 2008, compared with 2.4 percent the year before.

Ethnic and racial minorities (mostly blacks, Hispanic and Asian people) now account for 34 percent of the nation's population.

The Hispanic population grew by 3.2 percent and Asians by 2.7 percent, a slight decrease from the year before. But those figures were down sharply from the beginning of the decade, when the Hispanic population grew by 4 percent and Asians by 3.7 percent, according to an analysis by the Population Reference Bureau, a private research group.

The number of blacks grew by 1.3 percent, and non-Hispanic whites by 0.2 percent.

The biggest growth was among the 5.2 million people who identified themselves as belonging to two or more races -- an increase of 3.4 percent from the year before.

With the pace of immigration more sluggish, higher birth rates among recent newcomers were driving their growing share of the population.

''Most of that growth is attributable to natural increase,'' said Gregory Harper, a Census Bureau demographer.

Kenneth M. Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire, said: ''It is striking that the Hispanic population could grow at such a rapid rate, despite a 13.7 percent decline in immigration. During the first years of this decade, natural increase accounted for approximately 50 percent of Hispanic growth, but in the last year it accounted for more than two-thirds.''
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14census.html?

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3.
Hispanic Population's Growth Propelled City to a Census Record
By Sam Roberts
The New York Times, May 14, 2009

A spurt in the number of Hispanic New Yorkers helped push the city's population to nearly 8.4 million last year, while a slow but steady rise among non-Hispanic whites brought that group to the brink of regaining its majority in Manhattan for the first time in a generation, according to Census Bureau estimates to be released on Thursday.

Of the more than 50,000 people added in the city between July 2007 and July 2008, 27,000 were Hispanic (nearly 10,000 of them in the Bronx) and 20,000 were Asian (fully half of them in Queens).

The number of blacks declined slightly, as it has every year since 2000.

The Census Bureau announced in March that the city's population had reached a new record, 8,363,710; in Thursday's estimates, it revealed the demographic details behind the increase. But the snapshot was taken before the depths of the recession, which may have tamped down immigration and slowed growth.

In the metropolitan area, the number of Hispanics and Asians rose in every county. Non-Hispanic whites increased in only four areas: in Middlesex and Ocean Counties in New Jersey, and in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Nationally, the rate of growth among Hispanics and Asians has slowed, largely because of declines in immigration. The influx of foreigners to New York has not slowed as much. In fact, the city's Hispanic population grew at a faster rate in 2007-8 than during any other year this decade.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/nyregion/14nycensus.html

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4.
Jails will check immigration status as inmates are booked
By Anna Gorman
The Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2009

Los Angeles, Ventura and San Diego will become the first counties in California to begin checking the immigration status of all inmates booked into jail as part of a national effort to identify and deport more illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Law enforcement officials in the three counties will begin running inmates' fingerprints through federal databases this month to see if they have had any contact with the immigration system. Immigration officials will place holds on those believed to be in the country illegally. Once the inmates have finished serving their sentences, they will be transferred to immigration custody for possible deportation.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier launched the program, dubbed Secure Communities, in 48 counties in seven states and plans to expand it to all jails and prisons by the end of 2012. Congress has allocated $350 million for the program in fiscal years 2008 and 2009. President Obama asked Congress last week for a 30% increase in federal funds for next year.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently told Congress that the program "gives our state and local partners a powerful tool to identify criminal aliens in their custody."

David Venturella, executive director of Secure Communities for ICE, said the program is much more accurate than the previous system because all inmates -- not just those who say they are foreign-born -- are screened for immigration status. Convicted felons who have multiple aliases or have lied about being born in the U.S. are being identified under the new program, he said.

"We are finding those individuals, and they are not getting out," he said.

Law enforcement officers already had access to the immigration databases, but the computer screening will now automatically take place as part of the booking process.

Not everybody identified, convicted and transferred to federal custody will be deported right away, however. Venturella said the federal government will prioritize illegal immigrants who pose a threat to public safety, including those convicted of murder, rape, robbery or kidnapping.

And despite the improvements, Venturella said the system could still miss illegal immigrants who have never had contact with the immigration system. He said that's where the actual screeners come in. "Human resources can be focused on the ones who we don't have any records on," he said.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immigjail14-2009may14,0,7781561....

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5.
For Explorer Scouts, Good Deeds Have Whole New Meaning
By Jennifer Steinhauer
The New York Times, May 14, 2009

Imperial, CA -- Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers -- eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 -- face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots -- BAM! BAM! -- fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

''United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!'' screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence -- an intense ratcheting up of one of the group's longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

''This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,'' said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff's deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. ''It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.''

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out ''active shooters,'' like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

''Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,'' a Border Patrol agent explained. ''I guarantee that he'll shut up.''

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked ''the discipline of the program,'' which was something he said his life was lacking. ''I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed,'' he said.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns -- known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets -- in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

''I like shooting them,'' Cathy said. ''I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.''

If there are critics of the content or purpose of the law enforcement training, they have not made themselves known to the Explorers' national organization in Irving, Tex., or to the volunteers here on the ground, national officials and local leaders said. That said, the Explorers have faced problems over the years. There have been numerous cases over the last three decades in which police officers supervising Explorers have been charged, in civil and criminal cases, with sexually abusing them.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14explorers.html