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1. Obama, Congress mull legislation
2. CA pols seek to press DREAM Act
3. CIS honors reporter with award
4. Rapid deportations to save millions
5. Pro-English measures resurface

1.
Obama, Congress flirt with tackling immigration reform
By Frank Davies
The San Jose Mercury News (CA), June 14, 2009

Washington, DC -- Immigration reform, an intractable issue that has frustrated presidents and Congress for years, is making a comeback as a hot topic here. Whether it makes it into legislation is another matter.

The Obama administration and Congress already have an ambitious to-do list for the next few months, including health care reform, climate change legislation and a Supreme Court confirmation.

But Obama plans to take time from those priorities this month to meet with groups advocating for changes in the immigration system, including a path to legal status for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. He will be joined by key members of Congress who will handle the issue.

The meeting was supposed to occur Wednesday, but has been postponed because White House officials are scrambling to get a war spending bill through Congress. Immigration advocates Friday were disappointed at the delay, but said they still expect Obama to commit to a major push on the thorny immigration issue.

"So far there's been a serious flirtation but not a marriage proposal," said Angela Kelley, vice president at the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely aligned with Democrats.

Obama won overwhelming Latino support in the 2008 election, in part because he promised to push for an immigration overhaul that would include a legalization plan. Now it's time to deliver, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the San Jose Democrat who chairs the immigration subcommittee in the House.

"He has to do more than say, 'I'm for it.' It's essential for him to put some personal effort into this," said Lofgren, who will attend the White House meeting.

If nothing gets done on immigration reform this year, "Latino voters will blame him, because the president created the expectation we will see results," she added.

Advocates for various reforms say they are optimistic because of several factors, including Obama's victory and the disarray among Republicans, who worry that they will lose Latino voters for years if they resist changes.

"We sure blew it the last time on immigration reform," Ed Gillespie, former Republican National Committee chairman, told a tech group last week. If Congress takes up the issue in a serious way this year, "that would be an opportunity to make up some lost ground."

Because of the lack of jobs and tighter enforcement, the flow of illegal immigrants has slowed dramatically, U.S. and Mexican officials say. The undocumented immigrant population has not grown since 2006, according to the Pew Hispanic Survey and Doris Meissner, a former top immigration official with the Migration Policy Institute.

That may have taken some heat out of the issue. In a January survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 63 percent of the public — 5 percent higher than in 2007 — favored "providing a way for illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to gain legal citizenship."

A broad coalition of business, labor, church and immigrant groups is pushing hard to get the attention of Congress, as is the Center for American Progress, headed by Obama adviser John Podesta.

Advocates are making an economic pitch that bringing undocumented workers "out of the shadows" and requiring them to learn English and pay fees and fines to gain legal status will add to the rolls of taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that legalization would increase net revenue by $65 billion over 10 years.

Opponents of immigration dispute those arguments, maintaining that the economy can't sustain large numbers of illegal immigrants.

"With the state of the economy it's just ridiculous to hear some employers say they still need foreign labor," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to limit immigration.

He predicts more "attrition through enforcement," with a growing number of undocumented workers returning to Latin American because of a lack of U.S. jobs and tougher enforcement.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_12580174

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2.
San Gabriel pols push immigration reform for students
By Rebecca Kimitch
The Whittier Daily News (CA), June 14, 2009

El Monte, CA -- A group of local politicians is trying to breathe life into an 8-year- old proposal that would allow illegal immigrants who grew up in the United States to work toward citizenship.

The legislation, known as the DREAM Act, would create a path to citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants who came here before they were 16, have graduated high school in the United States or will attend college or join the military here.

"It's just not right to have somebody with that kind of promise, that kind of talent, and not give them the opportunity to be productive," Board of Equalization member Judy Chu said at a press conference in El Monte Friday while promoting the legislation.

Chu, the Democratic nominee for the 32nd Congressional district, her husband Assemblyman Mike Eng, D-El Monte, and others are pushing for Congress and President Barack Obama to put the DREAM Act on the front burner.

Chu and Eng reminded a crowd of mostly Asian journalists the legislation would benefit Asian Americans as well as Latinos.

If the DREAM Act became law, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students would be allowed to stay in the United States legally. In California, 25,000 such students annually graduate from high schools, according to estimates from supporters of the legislation. The law would allow them to get a Social Security number and live in the United States as they work toward citizenship, Eng said. And having a

Social Security number would allow them to apply for financial aid for university studies.

Those same people currently cannot receive financial aid for college. And if they do graduate, they cannot work here legally unless they get a work visa.

Opponents of the legislation say it rewards undocumented families that came here illegally, takes university space and funding away from legal residents and will lead to more immigration to the United States.

They also say it is the first step for those who want to allow far more immigration, according to William Gheen, president for the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC.

"I understand that the other side really wants to go for an an emotional appeal, that these students are here through no fault of their own," Gheen said. "But they are using those emotional appeals ... using children as political pawns to pass broader comprehensive immigration reform, which is opposed by a majority of American citizens."

Hundreds of them graduate annually from schools in the San Gabriel Valley, particularly Temple City, Arcadia, Pasadena and John Muir, according to Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
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http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_12591305

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3.
Chronicle reporter honored for immigrant story
The San Francisco Chronicle, June 14, 2009

Chronicle staff writer Jaxon Van Derbeken has won the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration for his reporting on San Francisco's now-discontinued policy of shielding illegal immigrant juvenile offenders from deportation.

The award is presented annually by the Center for Immigration Studies, an independent research group that studies the effects of immigration. The award recognizes journalists who "go beyond the cliches so prevalent in reporting on immigration," according to the organization.

Van Derbeken's reporting last year found that instead of notifying federal authorities of the arrests of juveniles caught dealing drugs or committing other felonies, which would make them vulnerable to deportation, city officials sent the young immigrants to group homes or paid for flights home.

The beneficiaries of the policy included a man later arrested as an adult for allegedly murdering a father and his two sons. Police said the three family members had been caught in the middle of a gang war.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/14/BA9A186FKG.DTL

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4.
Deportations may save Oklahoma $4M
State law will shift cost of housing illegal immigrant inmates to federal government
By Julie Bisbee
The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), June 14, 2009

Oklahoma will begin deporting illegal immigrants who are serving sentences for nonviolent crimes when a new law takes effect July 1.

The Oklahoma Criminal Illegal Alien Rapid Repatriation Act is expected to save Oklahoma taxpayers at least $4 million in the first year, said Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, the author of the measure.

The bill passed the House unanimously and received just one no vote in the Senate.

Terrill, who has authored several bills concerning illegal immigration, said the legislation is an attempt to get the federal government to pick up the tab for housing people who are in the country illegally.

"The federal government has fallen down on protecting the nation’s borders,” Terrill said.

"The federal government has improperly shifted the cost to the states. This is a way to shift it back to them,” he said.

The law will allow an offender who is in the country illegally to be considered for deportation if they have been convicted of a nonviolent crime and have served a third of their sentence.

Federal officials must issue an order for deportation, and an offender cannot be deported if they have pending federal charges, said Carl Rusnok, director of communications for the central region of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

If an undocumented immigrant returns to the state, they can be sent back to prison to serve the remaining sentence and additional time if prosecuted for entering the United States illegally after being deported, Rusnok said.
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http://newsok.com/deportations-may-save-oklahoma-4m/article/3377642

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5.
Pro-English Measures Being Revived Across US
Congress, states consider new proposals to declare an ‘official language’
By Alex Johnson
Commondreams.org, June 15, 2009

In perfect, if Southern-inflected, Japanese, Eric Crafton urged his colleagues on the Nashville, Tenn., City Council to let voters decide whether English should be the city's official language.

Crafton, who learned Japanese during his service in the Navy, offered this translation: "This situation must change."

The council's decision to put the measure on the city ballot set off a bitter and expensive campaign, with Crafton and supporters from the nation's "official English" movement pitted against the mayor, the governor of Tennessee and the leaders of numerous religious and community groups.

Nashville voters rejected the measure in January, but it won the support of 43 percent of them. Had they prevailed, Nashville would have become the largest city in the country to require that its official government business be conducted solely in English.

"English is under attack," Crafton said in campaigning for the measure. "The fact that making English our government's official language is even controversial should give us all pause."

But City Council member Jerry Maynard called the proposal "mean-spirited," adding, "It smells of racism."

Numerous campaigns across country

The movement to make English the official language of U.S. government seems to run in cycles, and for now it's back. Since the beginning of the year, four bills to that effect have been introduced in Congress, with versions of the idea included as part of at least three other bills. Meanwhile, similar measures have been introduced in at least 10 of the 22 states that don't already have such provisions.

"A nation of immigrants needs one national language," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said last month in introducing legislation that would make English the "national language" and declare that "there is no entitlement to receive federal documents and services in languages other than English."

At the same time, however, programs across the country that help immigrants learn English are facing budget cuts because of the recession, which could pose a conundrum if some of the measures succeed.

"We hear so often: ‘They need to learn English. They need to learn English.' Well, somebody has to teach them, you know," said Mauricio Calvo, director of Latino Memphis, which serves an estimated 100,000 Hispanic residents in Memphis, Tenn., where the school board voted late last year to cut staff for its English as a second language program to reduce costs.

Backers reject charges of racism

Like Crafton, Inhofe has been called a bigot for his advocacy of pro-English legislation, most notably by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., now the majority leader. In a floor speech three years ago, Reid branded Inhofe's effort to attach a nearly identical measure as an amendment to an immigration bill as "racist."

It's a charge often leveled by opponents, many of whom say the movement is motivated by anti-immigrant sentiment.

When the Georgia Legislature considered a measure that would offer driver's license tests only in English in April, Mariela Orellana, who runs a company that helps Hispanics navigate social services programs in Savannah, called the idea not just "simple racism" but also self-defeating.

"The ones that are going to be affected are international businesses, international partnerships, the same kind of businesses that Governor (Sonny) Perdue and everybody in Atlanta has been trying to woo and to convince to come to Georgia and establish businesses," Orellana said.

Both houses of the Legislature passed similar versions of the measure, but the initiative died when the Senate, in a 22-22 vote, failed to accept the House-passed final version. The measure is considered likely to resurface in the 2010 session.

The Nashville Chamber of Commerce opposed Crafton's measure on similar grounds, saying it would send the message that the city "is not inclusive," Vice President Debby Dale Mason said.

Ties to anti-immigration groups?

Proponents say their critics have it backward. They say they want to help legal immigrants fit in and make their full contribution to U.S. society.

For example, ProEnglish, one of the major groups leading the charge to enshrine English as the nation's official language, argues that requiring all immigrants to learn English would make it easier for them to "assimilate, earn higher wages and pursue the American dream like generations of immigrants before them."
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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/15