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1. Congress prepared to extend benefits
2. Bush admin. pressed for prosecutions
3. New rules require e-registration
4. Feds probing rash of NY crimes
5. Obama meets Calderon in DC

1.
Children's Health Bill Aids Legal Immigrants
By Laura Meckler
The Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2009

Washington, DC -- Democrats are using an early vote on a children's health-care bill to advance a longstanding effort in the more controversial area of immigration.

A bill renewing the Children's Health Insurance Program is expected to pass Congress easily and is being teed up to give President-elect Barack Obama an early victory.

The bill, similar to a version that President George W. Bush vetoed, would renew and provide more funding for a program that subsidizes insurance to children in lower-income families. Unlike the earlier version, the bill is expected to lift a provision in place for more than a decade that bars legal immigrant children and pregnant women from federal health programs during their first five years in the U.S.

Mr. Obama, who sponsored legislation lifting the ban when he was in the Senate, supports doing so now.

About 400,000 children would be newly eligible for federal health programs under the change, according to estimates by Leighton Ku, a health-policy professor at George Washington University.

The move signals the willingness of the new Congress and incoming White House to take on immigration issues, building on strong support for Democrats in recent elections from the Latino community. While further immigration proposals have stirred strong grass-roots opposition, congressional leaders are betting that it's an easy political sell to provide health care for children who are in the country legally.

Immigrant advocates are hoping the Obama administration and new Congress will go on to tackle bigger measures. Mr. Obama has pledged to try again for a comprehensive immigration bill that had been supported by Mr. Bush but failed in the last Congress. It's unclear, however, how high a priority that is for Mr. Obama, who has placed greater urgency on issues such as economic stimulus, health care and climate change.

The ban on immigrant benefits dates to 1996. It originally was written into legislation overhauling the nation's welfare programs. Legal immigrants were restricted or banned from aid programs including cash welfare, disability, food stamps and Medicaid.

Supporters argued that immigrants' sponsors agree when they are admitted to the U.S. to support them if need be so they shouldn't have to rely on government programs. When the Children's Health Insurance Program was created in 1997, the rules for Medicaid were applied to the new program.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123181207184876121.html

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2.
Immigration prosecutions surge under Bush's watch
By Dianne Solis
The Dallas Morning News, January 13, 2009

Immigration prosecutions in the federal courts more than quadrupled during the eight years of the Bush administration and Texas' two border districts led the nation in the surge, according to a new report by a Syracuse University research center.

Even the Dallas-based Northern Judicial District of Texas was part of the increase, though the number of prosecutions – 357 in the 2008 fiscal year – was a fraction of the 25,061 prosecutions in the Southern district of Texas.

The report by the Syracuse group known as the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, also showed a decline in certain types of prosecutions such as white-collar crime and narcotics filings.

The Justice Department defended its record on Monday and questioned the Syracuse group's analysis of federal data.

"The [Justice] Department has answered the call of Congress and the states along the southwest border to pursue immigration enforcement aggressively," said Peter A. Carr, a Justice Department spokesman in a prepared statement.

Carr couldn't immediately verify the Syracuse group's analysis and statistics, which are obtained monthly via the Freedom of Information Act from the Justice Department's Executive Office for United States Attorneys. The TRAC report also reflects federal filings with magistrate courts, which generally handle misdemeanor cases.

New prosecutors

The Justice Department spokesman did note that last year Congress provided funding for 60 new prosecutors along the southwest border to handle the prosecutorial push.

The TRAC report also reflected the results from a zero-tolerance approach to illegal border-crossers known as Operation Streamline. For example, in the Southern district of Texas, prosecutors acted upon 98 percent of referrals in the last fiscal year.

In North Texas, however, former U.S. Attorney Richard Roper, who stepped down last month to join a private practice, said he didn't prosecute every immigration case referred to his office. TRAC reports show the Dallas office prosecuted about 63 percent of the referrals.

Roper said he scrutinized cases for those involving illegal re-entry of individuals who already had a significant criminal record, or drug trafficking or firearms convictions.

"There is no question that after 9/11 there was a significant change in priorities on cases," said Roper, now a partner with Thompson & Knight. "And there was an increased emphasis placed on immigration because of the connection to terrorism activity and in response to Congress' concern that we weren't protecting the border."

But the shift meant one labor-intensive area suffered.

"The practical effect is it hurt our ability to prosecute white-collar fraud," Roper said. "If we don't do them in the U.S. attorney's office they won't get done because they are so labor-intensive. It is difficult for the local district attorney's office to handle that."

Narcotics and firearms prosecutions did not suffer, though, said Roper, who met with Mexican officials last year to discuss the illegal trafficking in firearms from Texas. About 90 percent of the high-powered weapons used by Mexican drug gangs come from the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Mexican government estimates that 2,000 guns cross the border each day.

Operation Streamline began about three years ago in the Del Rio sector, a 205-stretch of border between Texas and Mexico.
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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/...

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3.
New travel rules require online registration for non-visa travel to US
By Gregory Katz
The Associated Press, January 12, 2009

London (AP) -- New rules went into effect Monday requiring people traveling to the U.S. under the visa waiver program to register online in advance, instead of filling out paper forms in flight or at the airport.

The new program, designed to improve U.S. security, has been voluntary since August, but became mandatory Monday. Travelers are being asked to fill out the forms at least 72 hours in advance of travel.

There were no signs of confusion Monday as the new system was implemented at London Heathrow's sprawling Terminal 5 — departure point for many U.S.-bound flights.

"I knew about it because my travel agent told me, so I had already taken care of it online," said Jo English as she checked in for a business trip to Miami.

The rules cover the citizens of 35 countries — from nations in Europe and Asia, to Australia and New Zealand — who don't require a visa to enter the U.S.

Derwood Staeben, U.S. consul general in London, said nearly all applications would be approved in less than 10 seconds. He said travelers would not be required to give any more information than is already requested on the paper immigration forms, which are being replaced.

"The important change is that we're automating the existing process and requiring it to be done in advance," he said. "The response time is generally about four seconds."
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-eu-britain-travel-rules,0,...

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4.
Assaults on Latinos Spur Inquiry
By Anne Barnard
The New York Times, January 13, 2009

Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation into reports of a string of assaults against Latinos on Long Island, and are weighing whether to begin an inquiry into the Suffolk County Police Department’s handling of such crimes, a spokesman for the Justice Department said on Monday.

The spokesman, Scot Montrey, said the department was seeking to file criminal civil-rights charges against people accused of attacking Latinos. He declined to say which or how many incidents were under investigation.

In a separate action, he said, the department’s special litigation division is reviewing whether an investigation of police practices is warranted.

The announcement came just over two months after Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, was killed in Patchogue, in Suffolk County, during an assault that prosecutors said was a hate crime by teenagers who regularly beat up Latinos. Seven male teenagers have been charged.

After Mr. Lucero’s death, Latino residents and their advocates charged that mostly white gangs of youths had been carrying out similar attacks against Latinos for several years, and that the local authorities had failed to see the pattern or to adequately investigate the crimes.

On Friday, The New York Times and the public radio station WSHU separately reported on numerous other assaults that appeared to involve far more teenagers than those already charged. Each news organization interviewed 11 men, only some of them overlapping, who gave detailed accounts of assaults by groups of teenagers in Patchogue.

The Suffolk County police commissioner, Richard Dormer, has acknowledged that the police appeared to have missed a pattern, and ordered an audit of all reports in the Fifth Precinct, which includes Patchogue. But he has denied that the department discriminated against Latino victims in its investigation of crimes.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/nyregion/13patchogue.html

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5.
President-elect Barack Obama meets Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Washington
By Frank James and Ken Ellingwood
The Chicago Tribune, January 12, 2009

Washington, DC -- With vexing issues as a backdrop, President-elect Barack Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Washington Monday to begin work on one of the most vital yet challenging of U.S. relationships.

As a symbol of the ties between the two nations, incoming U.S. presidents traditionally meet with Mexico's leader before other heads of state. Monday's meeting between Obama, the U.S. Democrat, and Calderon, who heads Mexico's conservative National Action Party, was their first opportunity to address the global economic slowdown, drug violence along the border, Immigration and trade.

The meeting was especially important since it gave Obama a chance to address concerns in Mexico and Latin America about policies he's likely to pursue, especially on trade.

During the U.S. presidential campaign, Obama expressed skepticism about the North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, saying at one point that he favors reopening negotiations.

Mexico and Latin America as a region have felt ignored by the Bush administration, which has appeared preoccupied with Iraq, Afghanistan and global terrorism. Monday's meeting, at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, gave Obama to chance to address the relationship.

"I believe it can be even stronger and that's going to be the commitment of my administration," he said after the meeting.

For his part, Calderon said cooperation was necessary in the fight against drug cartels and mutual security.

"It will be the beginning of an extraordinary age in the relationship between the United States and Mexico," he said.

Obama may have had an easier job winning Calerdon's confidence if New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had not withdrawn recently as Obama's nominee to be commerce secretary following reports that his office was the subject of a federal corruption investigation.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-obama-mexico-web-only...