1. Federal raids target employers
2. Critics blast E-verify system
3. African immigrants supporting Obama
4. Cons prepare to battle McCain
5. Latino vote may swing on other issues
6. Debate continues on sanctuaries

1.
Immigration raids not in sync with policies
By Matt O'Brien
The Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA), July 6, 2008

Hayward -- From about 1 to 5 a.m. on March 23 of last year, undercover federal agents parked outside Glenio Silva's pizzeria and took notes.

They watched as delivery crews and cooks entered and exited The Pizza House, a tiny fast-food restaurant in Hayward's historic downtown. The agents returned in April and May, staying long enough each trip to watch the business close at 3 a.m., and to confirm that some of the workers never left because they lived in the building.

Tipped off by an informant, an illegal immigrant who quit the restaurant in 2006 after a feud, the agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement explained in a request for a search warrant that they were building a case against a business they had reason to believe was criminally violating the nation's immigration laws.

On June 15, 2007, the agents came back in full force, raiding the Hayward establishment and a sister shop in San Francisco on a busy Friday night, arresting six unauthorized workers from Brazil and charging Silva, the business owner, with concealing and harboring illegal immigrants — a federal felony.

ICE officials said the case fits into the agency's strategy of increasingly relying on criminal prosecutions against employers to enforce immigration law. Yet a review of Bay Area immigration prosecutions indicates that such prosecutions remain a rarity, and they are hardly routine. In the first six months of the current fiscal year, only three people were convicted of concealing and harboring illegal immigrants in federal court in California's Northern District, which covers the Bay Area and all of coastal California from Monterey to the Oregon border, according to data culled from the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

"I don't think the laws are really in sync with reality," said Silva, who is now contesting his criminal charges in a San Francisco court. "All the restaurants I know — everybody with a busy restaurant — has illegal people. I don't think this is fair."

His lawyer, Steven Gruel, a former federal prosecutor, calls Silva's situation a case of "unconstitutionally arbitrary enforcement" — and is using ICE's haphazard enforcement record as one reason the case should be dismissed.

"ICE's enforcement of worksite violations is bewildering," Gruel wrote in a motion to dismiss the case, filed last week. "Major violators receive a slap on the wrist or no action whatsoever, undocumented aliens are openly harbored as they seek refuge in sanctuary cities, and yet a lone pizzeria owner with six undocumented workers is caught up in the whirlpool of this federal criminal prosecution."

The charge Silva faces is one of the key tools ICE can use to criminally charge unscrupulous employers, and comes with a penalty of as many as five years of prison and deportation, even though Silva is a lawful permanent resident. In a written statement last month, the agency said that its strategy "differs dramatically from the approach of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which focused on imposing civil fines on employers who hired illegal aliens."
. . .
Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter enforcement, said he has little sympathy for such arguments, and said that a combination of increased enforcement activity and the poor economy has already caused many illegal immigrants to leave.

"Raids are important," Krikorian said. "The importance of enforcement is not to arrest every illegal immigrant. But the point is to send a message, to both workers and employers, that the party is over."
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http://origin.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_9799197

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2.
With E-Verify, too many errors to expand its use?
Database aims to make it easy for employers to check worker immigration status. Critics say the accuracy rate is too low.
By Alexandra Marks
The Christian Science Monitor, July 7, 2008

New York -- Two hours after Fernando Tinoco started his new job at a meatpacking plant in Chicago, he was escorted by security guards to the office and fired.

The reason: Company officials had entered his Social Security number into the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify system. It's a mostly voluntary program designed to give employers a fast, easy way to check a person's immigration status. Mr. Tinoco's information came back as a "tentative non-confirmation," meaning that he may not be a citizen. He was shown the door.

But Tinoco is a citizen and has been since 1989. Immediately after his firing a few months ago, he went to a Social Security office and got a letter confirming his legal status. It was too late.

"I went back and the security guard chased me away, told me not to come back to the company because I was fired," he says in a phone interview.

President Bush's recent executive order mandating that all federal contractors use E-Verify and legislation pending in Congress that would make the program mandatory for all employers nationwide have heightened concerns among critics that thousands of legal Americans will be unfairly denied jobs. That's because E-Verify relies mainly on the Social Security database, which the Government Accountability Office has found to be fraught with errors. Studies have also shown that almost half of employers who are already using E-Verify are not abiding by rules designed to protect citizens like Tinoco.

Advocates acknowledge that E-Verify's 94 percent accuracy rate could be improved, but they insist that its benefits outweigh any imperfections. They contend that it's an easy, straightforward way for employers to comply with immigration law. Better education of employers can ensure it's used properly, they say.

In the middle are many immigration experts and economists. Worksite enforcement, they say, is crucial to controlling illegal immigration. But they also note that America's current immigration system is broken and not meeting the needs of the economy. That's why there's a steady flow of illegal, low-wage workers entering the US. These experts are concerned that imposing E-Verify nationwide now without broad immigration reform would severely damage the economy.

"We have significant sectors of the economy that need large numbers of low-­skill workers, yet we don't have legal channels for these immigrants to come in," says Judy Gans, manager of immigration policy at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "The question is: What are we doing to the economy by imposing worksite enforcement before the legal channels are there to meet the economy's needs?"

E-Verify used to be called the Basic Pilot/Employment Eligibility Verification program. It was created by Congress in 1997 as a voluntary pilot program to give employers an electronic way to verify employees' Social Security numbers. It's now operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in partnership with the Social Security Administration and is used by almost 70,000 employers nationwide. It's currently voluntary, except in a handful of states like Arizona.
. . .
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0707/p02s01-usgn.html

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3.
African Immigrants Among Obama's Enthusiastic Backers
By Darryl Fears
The Washington Post, July 6, 2008

A catered fundraiser for Sen. Barack Obama was held recently at Duke's City, an upscale restaurant and bar nestled amid the hip new condominiums in the District's U Street corridor, where up-and-coming white professionals are slowly taking over an area that was once mostly black.

But the owner of Duke's City, Donato Sinaci, is not one of Obama's many young, white supporters. And the host of the event, Michael Endale, is not a native-born black American. They are members of Ethiopians for Obama, one of several campaign groups made up of African immigrants who are rallying around the first black American to win a major party's presidential primary, and the son of a Kenyan immigrant.

From coast to coast, Somali, Ethiopian, Nigerian and Kenyan Americans are knocking on the doors of their fellow African immigrants, registering new citizens to vote, raising money and preaching Obama's mantra of hope and change. They hope that his prominence will change their status as one of the nation's least-recognized immigrant groups, and that he will one day provide aid to help ease the turmoil and poverty in countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.

At a Caribou Coffee shop on East West Highway in Silver Spring, where Somalis and Ethiopians often gather, Ahmed Eyow, a Somali, said supporting Obama is a no-brainer.

"Obama is one generation away from Africa," said Eyow, who immigrated to the United States nearly 30 years ago. "I have nothing against my brothers and sisters, black people who were born here, but his father is like me. His father was an immigrant. I can relate to him the way I can relate to my own children. He's almost like my son."

Eyow and five friends who joined him said Somalis who were unconcerned with past presidential elections are now deeply engaged, following every development on cable news channels.

At the Ghana Cafe in Adams Morgan, owner Anthony Opare said enthusiastic customers are urging that a brewer in Kenya change the name of its popular beer from Tusker to Obama.

"The fact that he's been able to come this far has opened doors for Africans and African descents," Opare said. "To the African, it tells us that . . . one can work hard and get whatever you want. This is the land of opportunity."
. . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/05/AR200807...

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4.
Conservatives Ready To Battle McCain on Convention Platform
By Michael D. Shear
The Washington Post, July 7, 2008 Pg. A01

Conservative activists are preparing to do battle with allies of Sen. John McCain in advance of September's Republican National Convention, hoping to prevent his views on global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance from becoming enshrined in the party's official declaration of principles.

McCain has not yet signaled the changes he plans to make in the GOP platform, but many conservatives say they fear wholesale revisions could emerge as candidate McCain seeks to put his stamp on a document that currently reflects the policies and principles of President Bush.

"There is just no way that you can avoid anticipating what is going to come. Everyone is aware that McCain is different on these issues," said Jessica Echard, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum. "We're all kind of waiting with anticipation because we just don't know how he's going to thread this needle."

McCain has spent the past year and a half trying to straddle the philosophical schism in the modern Republican Party. In primaries, he stressed his conservative credentials, but since clinching the nomination he has often reminded voters of his more moderate stances while professing his fealty to conservative positions.

A platform fight at the convention could disrupt that carefully choreographed effort by highlighting the stark differences in vision for the party separating McCain from some of the GOP's most dedicated activists.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/07/ST20080707...

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5.
Immigration Not the Only Issue That’s Key to Latino Vote
By Jonathan Allen and Andrew Satter
The Congressional Quarterly, July 6, 2008

Immigration is a hot topic on the talk-show circuit as prognosticators try to predict how the presumptive presidential nominees, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain , will fare among Latinos. But experts say that despite the importance Hispanic voters place on immigration, they remain more likely to be swayed by the candidates’ positions on a series of issues that have little to do with border fences and pathways to citizenship.

In part, that is because McCain and Obama both have supported a three-pronged approach to overhauling the nation’s immigration laws that would enhance border security, rewrite temporary-worker programs and create a route to citizenship for the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the country.

McCain, an Arizona senator, wrote immigration bills with Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, in 2006 and 2007, and Obama, of Illinois, was part of the larger group of senators who worked on the agreement.

McCain has been criticized by Democrats for saying during the GOP primary that he would have voted against the 2007 bill in its final form and for shifting his emphasis to the border-control elements of the legislation. Obama has come under fire for backing a “poison pill” amendment, adopted by one vote, that helped scuttle the bill.

But even if their positions on immigration were not similar, experts say there is reason to believe most Hispanic votes will hinge on how the candidates present themselves on the economy, education, health care, crime, taxes and national security.

Latino voters will be closely watched in a cluster of southwestern states -- Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico -- that President George W. Bush narrowly won in 2004, as well as in Florida and in a handful of swing states where less attention has been paid to growing Hispanic communities. The candidates’ dexterity in navigating the political nuances of courting Latino voters -- who have origins in a diverse set of nations and whose roots in this country range from one generation to many generations -- could determine how well they do in those states.
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http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002911213

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1.
Immigrant sanctuary laws seen as practical
By Tyche Hendricks
The San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 2008

San Francisco's 1989 sanctuary law grew out of the religious-based sanctuary movement through which churches across the country offered a safe haven to Central Americans who fled civil war and political persecution but were unable to gain asylum in the United States.

For local governments, however, the motivation behind sanctuary policies today has more to do with effective policing than humanitarian impulses.

"Some police departments say ... 'We don't want our police officers enforcing immigration law because if they do, victims and witnesses of crimes won't cooperate with us,' " said Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis law school and an expert on immigration and civil rights law.

Last week, San Francisco's sanctuary ordinance came under fire after The Chronicle revealed the Juvenile Probation Department's practice of flying illegal immigrant teenagers convicted of drug offenses back to their home countries or housing them in unlocked group homes. Mayor Gavin Newsom denounced the practice, and city officials are now working with federal immigration authorities to develop a new approach for handling juvenile illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

Legal analysts, city officials and immigrant advocates say San Francisco's practice was not required - and not intended - by sanctuary laws.

Former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, who is now a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, was aghast at the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department's approach: "It's just incredible to think they were spending all that money to help criminals evade being deported," he said.

But he directed his officers not to cooperate with federal immigration raids when he was chief from 1976 to 1991 and said the policy played an important part in rebuilding community trust in the department.

"There's a real debate going on nationally in police circles, but in almost every large city I know of, police departments have the same attitude: We have to work with these communities; we can't have them viewing the police as the enemy because then you get this 'Don't snitch' policy," McNamara said.

Richmond police spokesman Lt. Mark Gagan has said his department's policy is not to investigate immigration status on its own but to work with the federal office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in dealing with violent criminals.

San Francisco is among scores of cities in California and around the country with sanctuary laws, according to the National Immigration Law Center. Several states also have such policies. The laws vary, but most bar the use of local resources to enforce federal immigration rules or prohibit police and other local officials from questioning residents about their immigration status. They do generally allow cooperation with federal immigration officials in dealing with criminals.
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Sanctuary laws

More than 80 U.S. cities or states have sanctuary laws. They range widely from philosophical resolutions to more specific guidelines for police conduct.

California sanctuaries

Berkeley

East Palo Alto

Fresno

Garden Grove (Orange County)

Los Angeles

Oakland

Richmond

San Diego

San Francisco

San Jose

San Rafael

Santa Cruz

Watsonville

Sonoma County

U.S. sanctuary cities

(A partial list)

Anchorage, Alaska

Hartford, Conn.

Chicago

Portland, Maine

Baltimore

Boston

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Detroit

Minneapolis

St. Paul, Minn.

St. Louis

Newark, N.J.

New York

Philadelphia

Austin, Texas

Houston

Seattle

Madison, Wis.

Sanctuary states

Alaska

District of Columbia

Montana

New Mexico

Oregon
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/05/MN7U11JLM7.DTL