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1. Admin establishing priorities
2. Sotomayor hearings touch issue
3. Caucus seeks health care
4. Harvard grad an illegal alien
5. Arrest in BP agent's murder

1.
Obama setting the priorities on immigration
While Congress moves slowly on reform, the administration is making policy changes primarily aimed at illegal immigrants with criminal records and employers who hire undocumented workers.
By Anna Gorman
The Los Angeles Times, July 26, 2009

As Congress moves slowly on immigration reform, President Obama is making numerous policy changes in enforcement and other areas that are designed to shift priorities and boost confidence in the administration as it lays the groundwork for possible legislation.

Most of the changes are being driven by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and are primarily aimed at illegal immigrants with criminal records and employers who hire undocumented workers. Napolitano is working with lawmakers to develop a strategy for comprehensive legislative reforms.

In the meantime, she is "taking steps to ensure enforcement is conducted wisely and well," said White House spokesman Nick Shapiro.

The recent administrative changes include:

* New guidelines directing immigration agents to target employers who hire illegal immigrants rather than simply arresting undocumented employees.

* A requirement that all local police agencies deputized to check immigration status and turn criminals over for possible deportation sign new agreements pledging to focus on those who pose a risk to public safety.

* The implementation of a rule that requires federal contractors to use E-Verify, an online employment-verification program.

* The expansion of a program that uses government databases during the booking process to find illegal immigrants in the nation's jails.

Napolitano is expected to address immigration detention next. Administration officials said top experts are looking at all detention facilities, private and public, to see whether they are efficiently, safely and effectively operated. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees the detention centers, has been heavily criticized for providing inadequate medical care and for violating detainees' due process.

"It's safe to say that we are going to look pretty seriously at the results and no doubt make some changes," said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about the changes.

Immigrant-rights advocates praised Obama for fixing what he can now while he begins working on reform legislation. Obama has said repeatedly that he will push for a bill that would include a path to legalization for the nation's undocumented immigrants.

"It makes sense to do now what the administration can do," said Ana Avendano of the AFL-CIO. "It doesn't have to go through Congress. It doesn't have to go through the toxic political process."

Obama's announcements are a deliberate effort to distinguish his approach from that of the Bush administration, said Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-immigration26...

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2.
Immigration Advocates Call ‘Wise Latina’ Attack Dog Whistle Politics
Most Vocal Opponents at Sotomayor Senate Hearings, Also Express Grave Concerns Over Immigration
By Daphne Eviatar
The Washington Independent (Center for Independent Media), July 24, 2009

During her four-day confirmation hearing, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was grilled for having said she would naturally be influenced by her ethnicity and gender, just as other judges would be influenced by theirs. Because she is Latina, however, the debate over whether personal background ought to influence one’s judgment took on a particular cast, with the assumption made, largely by white male senators, that Sotomayor would be particularly sympathetic to minorities, women and immigrants.

As Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said earlier this month on CBS’s “Face the Nation:” “She has advocated a view that suggests that your personal experiences, even prejudices — she uses that word — it’s expected that they would influence a decision you make, which is a blow, I think, at the very ideal of American justice.”

The subject of immigration was barely raised during the confirmation the hearing, but some immigrants’ rights advocates say it wasn’t completely absent. These advocates claim it’s no coincidence that the same senators who attacked her past remarks that a “wise Latina judge” would reach better decisions in some cases than a white male judge were also senators — such as Sessions and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) — who’ve expressed grave concerns about the immigration of foreigners into the United States. They have voted against the last immigration reform bill and, in some cases, have won praise from anti-immigration extremist groups.

“They’re trying to leverage the fact that there’s a level of unease and frustration over the broken immigration system and seeing if they can use that to try to block her confirmation even though the two are not related,” said Clarissa Martinez, director of Immigration and National Campaigns for the National Council of La Raza.

Technically, Sotomayor is not an immigrant – she was born in Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory. But she has referred to herself as a child of immigrants and portrayed her story as one that reflects the dreams of many new immigrants to the United States.
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Meanwhile, the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies recently purported to undertake an analysis of Sotomayor’s immigration opinions, and wrote that she “has repudiated over a century of Supreme Court jurisprudence aimed at limiting judicial involvement in immigration matters.”

“A simple analysis of Sotomayor’s post-2000 immigration-related holdings shows that she has ruled against the government – and for the alien – over 60 percent of the time,” writes Jon Feere, a senior research fellow for CIS.

In a telephone conversation earlier this week, Feere acknowledged that he examined only the 38 cases he found where Sotomayor wrote the opinion and ignored the cases where she joined an opinion written by another judge. He also acknowledged that in the cases before 2001, she ruled in favor of the immigrant less than ten percent of the time – in only one out of 11 opinions she authored.
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http://washingtonindependent.com/52580/immigration-advocates-call-wise-l...

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3.
CHC Presses Pelosi to Include Illegal Immigrants in Health Bill
By Jennifer Bendery
Roll Call (Washington, DC), July 24, 2009

Leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus planned to use a meeting Friday with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to reiterate that illegal immigrants should be covered under health care reform legislation.

A CHC member, who requested not to be identified, said the group is urging Pelosi to ensure that everyone — including illegal immigrants — will be able to receive services as part of comprehensive reform.

“We’re pushing to include everyone in the health care bill. Everyone,” said one CHC member.

Asked if CHC leaders will ask Pelosi to specifically spell something out in the bill to address illegal immigrants, the Member said no. Rather, the Member said the CHC simply wants to make sure the bill — as drafted — doesn’t prohibit illegal immigrants from accessing care.

“Sometimes if you don’t say something, something happens,” said the Hispanic lawmaker.

Additionally, CHC leaders will reiterate their opposition to any provision that imposes a waiting period for immigrants to receive services, said the Member. Such restrictions have emerged in welfare reform and children’s health insurance debates; both had provisions to bar immigrants from receiving services until they had been permanent residents for five years.

“We had that battle over [the State Children’s Health Insurance Program]. We fixed it,” said the CHC member.

Proponents of comprehensive immigration reform — an issue possibly on tap later this year — are largely mum on the role of illegal immigrants in health care reform, generally pointing out that the bill does not explicitly allow services to illegal immigrants. But critics say the bill needs a specific exemption to bar immigrants from receiving health care through emergency rooms and community health centers.

Some critics say budget estimates for the health bill already factor in illegal immigrants receiving taxpayer-funded insurance.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), ranking member on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, said it takes “third grade math” to see that the Congressional Budget Office is estimating 5.6 million illegal immigrants will receive health insurance in the next decade.
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http://www.rollcall.com/news/37180-1.html [Subscription]

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4.
Illegal status gives Harvard grad few options
By Maria Sacchetti
The Boston Globe, July 27, 2009

Back in the concrete suburb of Los Angeles where he grew up, they call him “Harvard.’’ He is the pride of a neighborhood of children who grew up just as he did, bouncing from one crowded apartment to the next, sleeping on sofa cushions on the floor, wired to the constant threat of violence.

Alan was not just a street-smart kid in a baseball cap but a gifted student who breezed through math problems and quoted Milton and Dante. He was a voracious reader, the high school salutatorian, and last month, he graduated from Harvard with a degree in the humanities.

But now Alan has hit a dead end, because one night 19 years ago his mother led him across the Mexican border into California, making him an illegal immigrant. His only legal employment option as a college graduate now is to return to Mexico, where he has few contacts and fewer prospects.

Alan is among a growing number of students who have climbed to the country’s highest academic echelons only to find themselves mired in the rancorous national debate over illegal immigration.

“One of the biggest ironies was that I’m going to graduate from Harvard and not be able to do anything,’’ he said, sitting in one of Harvard’s leafy courtyards, fallen quiet for the summer, wearing an engraved class ring on his right hand. “Every class is like, you’re the leaders of tomorrow. They build you up . . . and you’re like, yeah, yeah, oh wait, they’re not talking about me.’’ He spoke to the Globe on the condition that his last name not be used.

Elite private universities such as Harvard have long been a haven for illegal immigrant children, granting them generous scholarships because they are ineligible for federal financial aid and struggle to pay nonresident tuition at public schools. Now the schools are increasingly pushing for legal residency for such students, under pressure from student groups and others working on their behalf.

In May, Harvard president Drew G. Faust endorsed federal legislation known as the Dream Act, which would allow an estimated 2.5 million illegal immigrant students to apply for residency, if they meet certain conditions. Stanford president John L. Hennessy came out in support of the measure last month, and Brown president Ruth Simmons in July.

This month, the American Council on Education, on behalf of 30 groups, including the Association of American Universities, said it “strongly’’ supported the act, which has been pending since 2001.

Illegal immigrant children are entitled to a free K-12 education under a 1982 Supreme Court decision, but that protection does not extend to college. In most states, illegal immigrants can enroll in college, but they are generally required to pay the pricier nonresident tuition at public colleges and are ineligible for federal financial aid.

Some of the strongest voices in support of the Dream Act are from college students themselves, who are saying it is unfair to educate illegal immigrants and then quietly abandon them after graduation.

“These are some of the best and brightest kids in the entire country,’’ said Scott Elfenbein, who formed a Harvard student group last year to aid undocumented students after his best friend in Miami, now a student at Georgetown, was nearly deported to Colombia. “Most are people you would want running some organization.’’

But others say the private schools are wrong to admit such students.

“I think we really need to step back and say why are private institutions, or any institutions allowed to enroll illegal aliens in the first place?’’ said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. “Essentially they’re being trained for jobs that it’s illegal for them to take.’’
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http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/07/27/after_ha...

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5.
FBI says case still open in agent's killing
By Mark Arner
The San Diego Union Tribune, July 27, 2009

A spokesman for the FBI yesterday downplayed the arrest by Mexican authorities of a 36-year-old man who officials there said had been identified as the gunman in Thursday's fatal shooting of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas.

On Friday, Tecate municipal police arrested Ernesto Parra Valenzuela about five hours after the slaying. They said Parra Valenzuela had a 9 mm pistol tucked in his clothing when he was found near the site of the shooting.

“With all of the reporting going on from multiple sources, I do not want the public to get the impression that this case is solved,” said Special Agent Darrell Foxworth, a FBI spokesman.

Foxworth stressed that investigators are following many leads and no one has been charged with a crime on the U.S. side of the border.

“There are no pending U.S. charges at this time against any individuals reportedly in Mexican custody,” Foxworth said. “I cannot confirm the specific charges that (Mexican federal law enforcement) has charged.”
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http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jul/27/1m27patrol233056-fbi-...