1. Obama to address NCLR
2. GOP considers skilled
3. Farmers use of H-2A
4. Parts of AL law okay
5. L.A. day labor theater

1.
Obama to Address Immigration at NCLR Conference
Fox News Latino, July 25, 2011

Immigration and the economy are expected to be the top issues in discussion as President Barack Obama addresses a major Hispanic civil rights organization on Monday.

The Latino civil rights group, the National Council of La Raza, is holding its annual conference in Washington.

The group's leader, Janet Murgia, says Hispanics want to hear from Obama on a range of issues on which he has yet to take action. Obama promised in his 2008 campaign to tackle immigration reform, and some in the Latino community have criticized him for failing to do so.
. . .
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/07/25/obama-immigration-n...

********
********

2.
House Republicans consider high-skills immigration bill
By Patrick Thinodeau
Computerworld, July 25, 2011

The negotiations to strike a deal on the debt ceiling may be getting all the attention in Congress, but there are also new efforts by lawmakers to address high-skill immigration issues.

First, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have circulated a discussion draft of a bill that would eliminate the per-country caps on green cards, according to a copy of the document seen by Computerworld. This proposal may well amount to the GOP alternative to a Democratic plan offered in June by Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), whose district includes Silicon Valley.

The federal government sets a cap of 140,000 employment-based green cards a year, but it now limits the number of green cards per country to no more than 7% of the available visas to people from any one country. This limit has meant that for people from countries where green card demand is high, namely India and China, the wait for a green card can exceed six years.

In a second development, the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security, will hold a hearing Tuesday on "The Economic Imperative for Enacting Immigration Reform." Judging from the initial announcement of those scheduled to testify, it appears that the hearing will feature proponents of high-skill immigration.

Among those due to testify are Robert Greifeld, CEO of Nasdaq OMX Group; David Skorton, president of Cornell University; Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel; and Puneet Arora, vice president of Immigration Voice, an advocacy group for increased skills-based immigration.

In regard to the Republican effort, the tech industry has pitched elimination of the per-country green card caps before, but this approach is not without controversy.

While eliminating the cap could reduce wait times for Indian and Chinese workers, many of whom may be on H-1B visas and are seeking green cards, it could also increase the wait times for applicants from other countries with lower green-card demand.

In its current iteration, the Republican discussion draft's focus on per-county green card caps is far more limited than Lofgren's bill, which seeks to make green cards available to students who earn advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (the so-called STEM fields) from approved U.S. schools, as well to foreign entrepreneurs who create new businesses.
. . .
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218607/House_Republicans_conside...

********
********

3.
Dilemma for farmers
By Jaclyn Cosgrove
Oklahoma Watch, July 22, 2011

It’s cheaper to hire an American.

Pecan farmers Chuck Selman and his son Chad want to make it clear that rather than paying thousands of dollars to legally bring a foreign laborer to work on their farm, they would prefer to just hire John or Jane Doe from down the street.

But finding legal U.S. residents interested in harvesting pecans in the Tulsa area never has been an easy task.

“Basically, we couldn’t find any labor in the area,” said Chad Selman, operator of S&S Pecans. “I was spending more time running back and forth to town to try and find guys to come work, and getting newspaper and radio ads, than I was actually harvesting the crop.”

So, in 2007, the Selmans started using a temporary agricultural visa program to hire workers from other countries — legally. The H-2A Temporary Agricultural Labor Certification Program exists in the event there is a shortage of U.S. citizens to perform agricultural labor.

The Foreign Labor Certification Data Center reported during the 2010 fiscal year, about 49 agricultural companies in Oklahoma were certified to hire 337 foreign laborers through the H-2A program. Nationally, about 56,000 H-2A visas were granted in 2010.

However, farmers, program advocates, lawyers and human rights activists have concerns and complaints about the program, along with its counterpart, the H-2B visa program for non-agricultural jobs. Critics say not only are both programs burdensome and expensive to use, but they also are abused in ways that point to larger issues within the U.S. immigration debate.

The Selmans are looking for eight workers but aren’t optimistic they will find a U.S. citizen to employ.

“Some of these guys who would show up — I knew nobody in their right mind would hire these people,” Chad Selman said. “You can tell they’re not going to be good workers, and it’s a terrible interview, but you’re required by law to hire them, unless you have something by law that says you don’t have to.”

An H-2A employer must continue to hire U.S. citizens who apply for the job until the H-2A workers have finished half of their work contract.

The Labor Department, the H-2A certifying entity, does not track how many U.S. legal residents take the jobs advertised, said Joshua Lamont, U.S. Department of Labor spokesman.

When the Selmans first used the program in 2007, one U.S. citizen came to their farm and interviewed for the job. Then the ice storm of 2007 came and interrupted harvesting for two years. In 2009, no one responded to newspaper ads seeking workers. Last year, they got four applications.

“And, of course, every single one of them, we said to them, ‘Come back at this day at this time,’ and not a single one of them showed up,” Chad Selman said. “They’re kind of here more just for the interview, from my perspective, so they are able to still get their unemployment check from the government.”

Anyone drawing unemployment from the state of Oklahoma must apply for two jobs per week. If a person receiving benefits is offered a job that he or she could be reasonably expected to do, he or she must take that job, said John Carpenter, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission public information officer.

Carpenter said the commission’s staff audits some claims, and if they discover someone with a fraudulent claim, they can charge that person for the time they were making fake unemployment claims.

The staff does not check claims every week because of the large volume of payments. In 2010, the number ranged from 53,000 to 78,000 unemployment payments granted per week.

In 2010, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission found 4,731 unemployment benefit overpayments totaling $3,345,640. So far, the commission has collected $1,832,959 in reimbursements from claimants.

David North, a Center for Immigration Studies fellow, remembers a temporary work program that came long before the H-2A program.

North, who blogs for the conservative group that favors tighter restrictions on immigration, worked for the Labor Department in the 1960s during one of the first guest worker programs, the Bracero Program. Started in the 1940s during World War II, the Bracero Program brought Mexican laborers to the U.S. to perform farm work. It ended in the 1960s.

The idea farmers cannot find U.S. citizens to perform agricultural labor is not a new complaint.

“We’ve been hearing this for 50 years,” said North, assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Labor under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. “It’s amazing what Americans will do if they have half a chance.”

The H-2A program exploits foreign workers and potentially displaces American workers, he said.

“Particularly because of the recession, we really don’t need to bring people from overseas or over the Rio Grande because we have plenty of Americans looking for jobs, some of them on unemployment,” North said. “... If you poke around, you’ll find legal residents to do this job.”

North said if American farmers paid more, U.S. citizens might be more willing to do the work.

Workers in the H-2A programs are paid whatever the highest wage is — either the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, which is the minimum wage the Department of Labor determines for agricultural workers, the prevailing wage for the position they’re filling or the federal or state minimum wage.

Of the jobs reported through the Foreign Labor Certification Data Center, about half of the H-2A positions in Oklahoma last year paid between $9 and $10 an hour. All of the positions paid at least $7.25 an hour but no more than $12 an hour, according to the center’s data.

“One of the reasons why all of these nonimmigrant programs prosper and exceed politically is because the lawyers and the doctors and the journalists are not competing with these folks,” North said. “This is something happening to the lower one-third of the American labor market, and those folks, given the decline and fall of unions, have no voice, and the people of the upper-half of the economic order are absolutely not threatened by these folks.”

Chuck Selman started his pecan farm 30 years ago. To harvest the 500,000 pounds of pecans they expect to produce this year, the Selmans likely will bring eight foreign laborers from Mexico to their farm in Skiatook. Through the H-2A program, the Selmans will pay for transportation, food and housing.

They also will pay a third party, an H-2A agent, a few thousand dollars to process their paperwork and ensure they checked all the right boxes. And while they will pay to advertise for the openings, they’re skeptical they will fill with American workers.
. . .
http://enidnews.com/localnews/x967742140/Dilemma-for-farmers

********
********

4.
Parts of Alabama immigration law likely to stand up in court
By Eric Velasco
The Birmingham News, July 24, 2011

Federal judges have temporarily blocked most criminal provisions in states that recently passed laws like Alabama's targeting illegal immigrants, but have allowed state regulations on employing undocumented workers, an analysis of the litigation shows.

The coalition of advocacy and legal groups, unions and individuals that filed suit this month against Alabama's comprehensive immigration law will seek a temporary injunction from U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn on Aug. 24.

Six states -- Arizona, Utah, Georgia, Indiana, Alabama and South Carolina -- passed or amended laws since 2010 aimed at people in the country illegally. Alabama's law is considered the nation's toughest.

Lawsuits are pending in five of those states. Temporary injunctions have been granted on all or part of the new laws in Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia.

A suit is planned in South Carolina, national advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have said.

Federal judges have issued temporary injunctions against laws in Arizona and Utah that -- like Alabama's new statute -- require immigrants to carry registration papers.

Judges also have temporarily blocked laws in Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia that -- like Alabama's -- allow police to detain suspected illegal aliens to check their immigration status.

But the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a state law similar to Alabama's requiring employers to use the federal E-Verify system to confirm the legal status of new hires or risk losing their business license.

While injunction rulings in other states address some laws similar to Alabama's, several elements of the new Alabama law have not been tested in court, said William G. Ross, a professor at the Cumberland School of Law.
. . .
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/07/parts_of_alabama_immigration_l.html

********
********

5.
LA day laborers double as actors to teach, empower
By Amy Taxin
The Associated Press, July 24, 2011

Most days, they are construction workers and painters and maids.

But twice a year, this group of day laborers morphs into actors in a traveling street theater troupe that performs at the very job centers where they and others gather to seek work across Southern California.

Blending at-times bawdy humor with a serious message about employer abuses, the Los Angeles-based Day Laborer Theater Without Borders has helped teach illegal immigrants with little education or knowledge of the law about their rights in this country.

Some who push for tougher border enforcement questioned whether the effort encourages illegal immigration. But advocates say the group and others like it elsewhere in the U.S. have done more to educate and empower workers than lectures or handouts ever could.

"When they take it to the streets, to the corners, they use the language that day laborers use because they know it," said Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, which helps fund the theater troupe. "The minute they start doing that, people gather around just like that."

The troupe had its start three years ago when day laborers found themselves at the heart of a heated national debate over illegal immigration. Now, the group is helping other troupes get going in San Francisco and Maryland, while a similar group already exists in New Orleans.

On a recent weekday morning, three dozen day laborers waiting for construction gigs at a hiring site in Los Angeles filed inside and grabbed seats on folding chairs to watch the troupe's first performance of a two-week summer tour.

The first skit was called "Modern Slavery." Two actors wearing blue uniforms hurried to the front of the hiring center, where space had been set aside for a makeshift stage. Cracking jokes rife with sexual innuendo and slang, the pair complained about the conditions at their office-cleaning job where an abusive boss tried to get his female subordinate to do more than just wash floors.

Played by another laborer, the English-barking suit-wearing boss admired the woman from behind while she scrubbed the floor — drawing laughter from the nearly all-male audience. But when he propositioned her and threatened to call immigration if she dared report him to police, the workers watching the show grew more serious.

Actors said the story line, crafted jointly during rehearsals, drew from their own experiences — which is why workers could relate to it.

"Most of us who come here, not many have schooling," said 62-year-old Prospero Leon, a painter from Guatemala whose face lit up during the comedic parts of the performance. "They're interested in knowing their rights."

The idea for the theater group dates back to a 2007 production about the experiences of day laborers entitled "Los Illegals" by the Cornerstone Theater Company, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps build community theater. Several workers acted in the play written by Cornerstone's artistic director Michael John Garces, and one of them later adapted the script for an ad-hoc performance at a conference of day laborers near Washington D.C.

That set the stage for the formation of a theater troupe by and for day laborers under the tutelage of Salvadoran immigrant worker-turned-artistic director, Juan Jose Magandi. In the 1990s, day laborers had mounted a similar traveling theater group but struggled with logistical problems and the cast disbanded.

"In our countries, the theater is from very elitist movements," Magandi said. "We try to do theater from below — that's why we use their vocabulary, their style and we share their experiences."

Garces, who advises the current group and has helped bring acting and voice experts to train laborers as volunteer actors, said the tradition of street theater in Latin America and the fiery speeches and border-watching groups active in the immigration debate made theater a perfect fit for the subject.

Alvarado, of the national day laborer organization, said the feedback from audiences has been anecdotal but positive. The troupe has been funded by the organization and grants from groups such as the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations to the tune of roughly $80,000 a year.

One person is paid to help run the troupe and actors are given $75 a month for bus passes to get to rehearsals and a $50 stipend for days when they perform, said Lorena Moran, the group's associate artistic director.

Roughly half a dozen actors will perform two different plays at 10 different job centers through July 29. The group rehearses twice a week for three or four months leading up to each tour.

Some advocates for tougher immigration enforcement questioned whether the effort might be going too far, arguing such performances shouldn't encourage workers to flout the law.

"It's always good for people to know their rights, but we also have to be careful we're not going anything to encourage illegal immigration," said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.

In Los Angeles, organizers said the plays can be therapeutic for workers who are often reluctant to share their experiences of employer abuse, discrimination and loneliness. The skits have also lifted the spirits of those who have joined the troupe's rotating cast, which currently has about a dozen members, though they don't all perform on every tour.
. . .
http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/la-day-laborers-double-1038462.html