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1. Obama to meet on amnesty
2. ICE targets employers
3. ESL programs access reviewed
4. NY Gov. pardons immigrant
5. FL leaders mull crackdown

1.
President to meet with key senators on immigration
By Suzanne Gamboa
The Associated Press, March 5, 2010

Washington, DC (AP) -- President Barack Obama plans to focus attention on immigration next week by meeting at the White House with two senators crafting a bill on the issue.

White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said Obama will meet with Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Monday.

The president is "looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill," Shapiro said Friday.

The meeting will be the first Obama has had with Schumer and Graham on the proposal they are developing since they began focusing on it last year.
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/03/05/preside...

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2.
Crackdown on business owners reflects change in immigration enforcement
By Peter Krouse
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), March 8, 2010

Cleveland, OH -- The owner of eight Casa Fiesta Mexican restaurants across northern Ohio pleaded guilty last month to harboring illegal immigrants and filing false tax returns.

Ramon Ornelas of Norwalk probably faces at least one year in prison when sentenced later this year. It's a stiff penalty for a crime that in the past typically resulted in just a fine.

The conviction of Ornelas, 42, is symptomatic of a broader crackdown by federal officials on businesses that hire undocumented workers.

Getting tougher with employers -- the ones providing the means and incentive for illegal immigrants to come to the United States -- is a more effective way of combating the problem than just rounding up and deporting workers, said Khaalid Walls, spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach agrees. Employers create the market for human trafficking, whether it's Mexicans who wind up in Ohio or Asians in California, he said.

"This is a major money-making criminal enterprise," he said of people who smuggle in illegal immigrants.

More than a decade ago, Ornelas helped manage a chain of Mexican restaurants in the Columbus area that employed undocumented workers, said Matt Hamulak, the immigration agent who worked Ornelas's case.
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http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/03/crackdown_on_business_owners_r.html

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3.
On ‘Bloody Sunday’ anniversary, US vows to step up civil rights enforcement
The Associated Press, March 8, 2010

New York (AP) -- The federal Department of Education plans to intensify its civil rights enforcement efforts in schools around the country, including a deeper look at issues ranging from programs for immigrant students learning English to equal access to college preparatory courses.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan will outline the department’s efforts in a speech today in Alabama to commemorate the 45th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,’’ in which several hundred civil rights protesters were beaten by state troopers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge during a voting rights march.
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/03/08/us_to_step_up_civi...

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4.
Paterson Rewards Redemption With a Pardon
By Nina Bernstein
The New York Times, March 6, 2010

Gov. David A. Paterson announced on Saturday that he had pardoned a man whose rise from poverty and street crime in Chinatown to success as an information technology executive was about to end in deportation.

The case of the man, Qing Hong Wu, who immigrated to the United States legally as a child, had drawn support from many, including the judge who sentenced him to a reformatory in 1996 and promised to stand by him if he redeemed himself.

“Qing Hong Wu’s case proves that an individual can, with hard work and dedication, rise above past mistakes and turn his life around,” Mr. Paterson said in a statement on the pardon, which will stop deportation proceedings against Mr. Wu and could open the door to American citizenship.

The governor agreed with supporters who saw the case as “the opportunity to make a forceful statement about the harsh inequity and rigidity of the immigration laws,” the statement said.

Supporters and relatives were jubilant on Saturday night.

“First of all, we want to thank the governor for saving Qing Wu’s life,” said Elizabeth OuYang, the president OCA-NY, an Asian-American civil rights organization that led the campaign to free Mr. Wu from an immigration jail in New Jersey and keep him in the country.

“It has been an amazing rainbow of people who have come together to stop his removal in the midst of a very broken immigration system,” she added.

While Mr. Wu’s family and friends rejoiced, he remained in the Monmouth County Correctional Institute in Freehold, N.J., apparently unaware that his life had turned around once more.

He was taken there from immigration headquarters in Manhattan on Nov. 10. It was his application for citizenship that brought Mr. Wu, now 29, to the attention of immigration authorities almost 15 years after he committed a series of muggings with other teenagers in Lower Manhattan. In a parallel system of immigration law enforcement that makes no allowances for rehabilitation, the court hearing his case had no discretion to consider the exemplary life he had led after emerging from the reformatory.

As a “criminal alien,” he was subject to mandatory detention and deportation to China, which he had left at 5 and where he knew no one.

Ms. OuYang said a full and unconditional pardon should not only prevent the federal government from deporting Mr. Wu, but should be grounds for granting him citizenship “so he can come full circle, where he started when this whole mess began.”

The pardon was announced at the conclusion of a tumultuous week for Mr. Paterson in which top aides resigned and he faced calls for his resignation over accusations that he had abused the powers of his office.

Morgan Hook, a spokesman for the governor, said that “the federal government will be notified that he had been pardoned, and they will determine the next steps as far as ending the removal proceedings and releasing him.”

The link between Mr. Wu and the judge who sentenced him, Michael A. Corriero, was described in an article in The New York Times last month. Mr. Wu wrote to the now-retired judge from detention reminding him of the promises that they had exchanged at his sentencing.

Judge Corriero, who had grown in the same neighborhood 40 years earlier, checked the old court transcripts and found that he had told Mr. Wu, then 16, “This is really the beginning of a new period for you.”

“You will want to get a job and become a meaningful, constructive member of society to help your family.” The judge then added, “I will be there to make sure you can.”

The judge wrote a letter to the governor in support of a pardon, adding his testimonial to dozens of others, including Mr. Wu’s employer, Centerline Capital Group, a real estate financial and management company where he was a vice president of information technology.

After the article appeared, hundreds of readers signed an online petition urging Mr. Paterson to grant a pardon.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., called the governor express his approval of that course.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/nyregion/07pardon.html

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5.
Crackdown urged on undocumented aliens' mental healthcare
With a waiting list for Florida mental health facilities, a state debate is emerging on whether illegal immigrants should have the same rights to public healthcare as legal residents.
By Cristina Silva
The Miami Herald, March 7, 2010

Tallahassee -- Mentally ill patients are being placed on waiting lists for treatment because Florida's mental health institutions are crowded with illegal immigrants.

The crisis puts Florida at the forefront of a national debate over whether illegal immigrants should enjoy the same public healthcare rights as legal residents.

Florida's mental health facilities have spent $19.6 million to care for at least 86 undocumented immigrants counted during an informal November survey and more unidentified illegal immigrants could be in custody, state officials said. The growing population has put a strain on the state's mental health resources, contributing to a waiting list of 60 beds.

State officials want to turn the illegal immigrants over to federal immigration officers. However, Florida lawmakers would first have to exempt illegal immigrants from patient confidentiality laws.

The Republican-led Legislature could be sympathetic to the idea.

``If the state of Florida is spending money on illegal immigrants. . . it would be more appropriate for them to go back to their countries and get treatment there,'' said Rep. Paige Kreegel, R-Punta Gorda, who chairs the Health Care Services Policy committee.

In the meantime, the state has plans to create an identification policy that would encourage all of its mental health centers to verify a patient's immigration status.

The Department of Children and Families, which oversees the state's mental health hospitals, will also work more closely with undocumented immigrants who want to return to their native countries.

``We don't think it is appropriate for people to stay in the hospital if they don't need to be there,'' said Sally Cunningham, the state's chief of mental health treatment facilities. ``It is not just a cost issue, it is a service issue.''

State mental health institutions serve some of Florida's most dangerous residents, including sexually violent predators, alleged criminals deemed incompetent to stand trial, defendants not guilty by insanity, those reported to be a threat to public safety and the mentally ill. These patients can't be turned away, Cunningham said.

Individual mental health institutions began informally reporting the number of undocumented immigrants to the state in 2008.

Reported numbers have since hovered near roughly 85 illegal immigrants, mostly from Caribbean nations.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/07/1518100/crackdown-urged-on-undocum...