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1. Activists irked by policies
2. Support grows for E-Verify
3. IL Dems press for amnesty
4. Illegal population declining
5. Smugglers attacked in CT

1.
Staying Tough in Crackdown on Immigrants
By Julia Preston
The New York Times, August 4, 2009

After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor.

A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who have opened a national campaign against them, including small street protests in New York and Los Angeles last week.

The administration recently undertook audits of employee paperwork at hundreds of businesses, expanded a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized as flawed, bolstered a program of cooperation between federal and local law enforcement agencies, and rejected proposals for legally binding rules governing conditions in immigration detention centers.

“We are expanding enforcement, but I think in the right way,” Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said in an interview.

Ms. Napolitano and other administration officials argue that no-nonsense immigration enforcement is necessary to persuade American voters to accept legislation that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, a measure they say Mr. Obama still hopes to advance late this year or early next.

That approach brings Mr. Obama around to the position that his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, espoused during last year’s presidential campaign, a stance Mr. Obama rejected then as too hard on Latino and immigrant communities. (Mr. McCain did not respond to requests for comment.) Now the enforcement strategy has opened a political rift with some immigrant advocacy and Hispanic groups whose voters were crucial to the Obama victory.

“Our feelings are mixed at best,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, immigration director of the National Council of La Raza, which has joined in the criticism, aimed primarily at Ms. Napolitano. “We understand the need for sensible enforcement, but that does not mean expanding programs that often led to civil rights violations.”

Under Ms. Napolitano, immigration authorities have backed away from the Bush administration’s frequent mass factory roundups of illegal immigrant workers. But federal criminal prosecutions for immigration violations have actually increased this year, according to a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan group that analyzes government data. In April, there were 9,037 immigration cases in the federal courts, an increase of 32 percent over April 2008, the group found.

Ms. Napolitano said in the interview that she would not call off immigration raids entirely as some Hispanic lawmakers have suggested. “We will continue to enforce the law and to look for effective ways to do it,” she said. “That’s my job.”

Ms. Napolitano, who as governor of Arizona sparred with Republican legislators seeking tougher steps against illegal immigration, said she was looking for ways to make enforcement programs inherited from President George W. Bush less heavy-handed. She also wants to put the enforcement focus on illegal-immigrant gang members and convicts and on employers who routinely hire illegal immigrants so as to exploit them.

Immigration authorities have started audits of employees’ hiring documents at more than 600 businesses nationwide. If an employer shows a pattern of hiring immigrants whose documents cannot be verified, a criminal investigation could follow, Ms. Napolitano said.

She has also expanded a federal program, known as E-Verify, that allows employers to verify electronically the identity information of new hires. Immigrant and business groups have sued to try to stop the program, saying the databases it relies on are riddled with inaccuracies that could lead to American citizens’ being denied jobs.

But officials of the Homeland Security Department say technological improvements have enhanced the speed and accuracy of E-Verify. With 137,000 employers now enrolled, only 0.3 percent of 6.4 million queries they have made so far in the 2009 fiscal year have resulted in denials that later proved incorrect, the officials say. That, opponents note, still means false denials for more than 19,000 people.

In addition, Ms. Napolitano has expanded a program that runs immigration checks on every person booked into local jails in some cities. And she recently announced the expansion of another program, known as 287(g) for the provision of the statute authorizing it, that allows for cooperation between federal immigration agents and state and local police agencies.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/us/politics/04immig.html

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2.
Momentum builds in Congress for mandatory worker verification
By Kent Hoover
The Triangle Business Journal (NC), August 3, 2009

Momentum appears to be growing for legislation that would require all employers, not just federal contractors, to use the E-Verify system to confirm that their employees are eligible to work in the United States.

E-Verify is a Web-based system that allows employers to check the Social Security and visa numbers submitted by workers against government databases. More than 137,000 employers now use the system, which approves 97 percent of workers in a few seconds.

Beginning Sept. 8, federal contractors will be required to use E-Verify to confirm that new hires and current employees working on federal contracts are authorized to work in the U.S. The requirement also will apply to most subcontractors.

Many members of Congress want to expand E-Verify to all employers, as a way to end the "jobs magnet" for illegal immigration. This "could open up thousands of American jobs to workers with legal status," said Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C.

Shuler is the lead House sponsor of the Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act, a bill that would expand E-Verify to all employers over four years. The legislation also would increase the number of Border Patrol agents, interior enforcement officials and immigration judges.

Lead Senate sponsor Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said the bill could serve as "the baseline" for any immigration reform legislation that the Senate may consider.

The Senate already has shown its appetite for increased immigration enforcement. It recently amended the Department of Homeland Security's appropriations bill to require federal contractors to check the work eligibility status of all of their employees.

Another amendment would prohibit DHS from rescinding a never-implemented Bush administration regulation that would force employers to fire employees if their Social Security numbers don't match government records and the discrepancy can't be resolved.

Chamber open to 'workable' system

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have filed lawsuits challenging the mandatory use of E-Verify by federal contractors and the legality of the proposed Social Security number "no-match" rule.

It also petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court July 24 to review the constitutionality of an Arizona law that requires businesses in that state to use E-Verify.

"Employers are being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of conflicting state and local immigration laws," said Robin Conrad, executive vice president of the National Chamber Litigation Center. "The Supreme Court needs to step in and make it clear that it's up to the federal government to set national immigration policy."

Making E-Verify mandatory could be part of that national policy, if the requirement is rolled out in stages and small businesses are exempted, said Angelo Amador, the chamber's executive director of immigration policy.
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http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2009/08/03/daily8.html

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3.
Reviving Immigration Bill This Year a Long Shot
By Chip Mitchell
The Chicago Public Radio News, August 4, 2009

A letter signed by seven Illinois Democrats in Congress asks President Barack Obama to help develop a sweeping immigration bill this year. Whether the letter will make a big difference is not clear.

The letter urges Obama to push for legislation that would both beef up border security and lay a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. One of the congressmen who has signed it, Luis Gutiérrez of Chicago, calls Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid an ally.

GUTIERREZ: Senator Reid has indicated that he will provide floor time for a comprehensive immigration bill during the latter part of October or the beginning of November.

Immigrant advocates have struggled to gain traction as the Obama administration focuses on the economy and health care. Rep. Danny Davis of Chicago signed the letter but isn’t confident it’ll push immigration to center stage.
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http://www.wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=35936

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4.
Study Indicates Illegal Immigration Falling
By Bradley Vasoli
The Philadelphia Bulletin, August 3, 2009

Illegal immigration puzzles many policymakers as to how they can lessen it, but a study released this week may suggest a solution to those who consider the inflow of illegals a problem.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the population of illegal aliens in the United States has likely gone down by roughly 1.7 million from a high point of 12.5 million in the summer of 2007 to the first quarter of 2009. That decline of about 13.7 percent would leave the current illegal population at an estimated 10.8 million.

Many people wouldn’t be surprised that this population has fallen. The U.S. is enduring a nasty recession. Economic opportunity has become a weaker enticement into this country for some people living elsewhere.

But the CIS study, titled “A Shifting Tide: Recent Trends in the Illegal Immigrant Population,” additionally points to intensified immigration enforcement as a significant factor driving down the number of illegal aliens living in America. Its authors, CIS Director of Research Steven Camarota and demographer Karen Jensenius, write that because the illegal population seems to have begun falling from its peak before the recession began in December 2007, enforcement is probably playing a key role.

According to the analysis, discussion of amnesty for the vast majority of illegal immigrants in the summer of 2007 coincided with an apparent increase in the population of unlawful entrants. After the much-discussed bill failed to reach President George W. Bush’s desk, the same data indicated this population began shrinking.

Mr. Bush and other lawmakers also commenced an energetic effort to more strongly enforce immigration laws before the president failed to persuade Congress to send him the legalization bill. They oversaw a doubling of Border Patrol agents, an expansion of workplace verification, increased deportations and increased enforcement by local police. Stronger enforcement has continued mostly unabated since it began.

“One can debate the effectiveness of increased enforcement in the last few years,” Mr. Camarota and Ms. Jensenius write, “but there is no doubt that enforcement has increased substantially.”

How, then, do they calculate that the number of illegals living in America has visibly fallen over the past two years? Using Census data, they identify a population decline among Hispanic immigrants between the ages of 18 to 40 years with, at maximum, a high-school education.

Estimates on the characteristics of illegal aliens suggest two-thirds of them fit these demographics and that three-fourths of residents with these demographic traits are illegals.

These calculations allowed CIS to use certain identifiable populations as proxies for the legal and illegal populations. While likely illegal immigrants have become less numerous over two years, probable legal immigrants have become more so.

But those hoping illegal immigration will continue to subside might find that hope dashed in the near future, the report states. Partly that owes to the welcome prospect of an economic recovery.

But an impending increase in the illegal population could also result somewhat from relaxed enforcement. The Obama administration has already weakened the federal government’s cooperation with local law-enforcement agencies to verify criminals’ immigration statuses.

Mr. Camarota said the Border Patrol, particularly in Arizona, is furthermore evidently facing obstruction in gaining access to certain areas along the border with Mexico. And while Barack Obama is taking some federal policies in a more pro-enforcement direction – such as requiring all federal contractors to use the government’s verification system for employees – he has stopped short of more comprehensive measures such as requiring all employers to use the verification system.

“You might characterize it charitably as ‘one step forward, two steps back,’” Mr. Camarota said.

He added that political pressure could also impact Mr. Obama’s willingness to vigorously pursue enforcement of immigration laws. While his Democratic Party controls both houses of Congress, many of the Democrats therein seem reluctant to send the president a bill that would legalize nearly the entire illegal population. Many of his most vocal and influential supporters are clamoring for such legislation.
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http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/08/03/news/nation/doc4a7701f253fc772...

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5.
Alleged Kidnappers Attacked With Baseball Bats By Victims' Relatives In Greenwich
By David Owens
The Hartford Courant, August 4, 2009

Greenwich, CT -- Baseball bat-wielding relatives of three people reportedly kidnapped in Texas attacked two alleged human traffickers at a Greenwich shopping center Sunday.

Police took 19 people into custody after the melee, including one of the alleged traffickers, and federal immigration officials ordered four people held.

Greenwich police said they were alerted Sunday morning by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that they were investigating a possible human smuggling case. The suspects were reportedly in a blue van and were transporting people kidnapped in Texas to Willimantic for ransom, police said.

About 11:30 a.m., Greenwich police got a 911 call reporting a fight at a strip mall in the Riverside section of Greenwich.

Police said they determined that those involved in the fight were the same people that Immigration was investigating.

Relatives of the kidnap victims, rather than pay ransom, decided to rescue the three captives, police said.

Family members agreed to meet the kidnappers at the shopping center.
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http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-greenwich-melee-0804.artaug04...