1. Dems drop child health care debate
2. Report: court measures ineffective
3. Crimes committed after re-entry
4. Dems seek to re-frame debate
5. Illegals less likely to commit crime
6. MA fund provides bond money

1.
Facing Veto, Democrats Drop Plan for Vote on Child Bill
By Robert Pear
The New York Times, September 8, 2008

Washington, DC -- Congressional Democrats have scrapped plans for another vote on expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, thus sparing Republicans from a politically difficult vote just weeks before elections this fall.

Before the summer recess, Democrats had vowed repeatedly to force another vote on the popular program. But Democrats say they have shifted course, after concluding that President Bush would not sign their legislation and that they could not override his likely veto.

Mr. Bush vetoed two earlier versions of the legislation, which he denounced as a dangerous step toward “government-run health care for every American,” and the House sustained those vetoes.
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Hispanic, black and Asian-American members of Congress have complained that the bill does not provide coverage for legal immigrants who are now generally barred from benefits under Medicaid and the children’s health program during their first five years in the United States.

Many Democrats would like to lift those restrictions. But if they tried to do so, they could draw Congress into a bitter debate over immigration policy.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/washington/08insure.html

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2.
Effort on Immigration Courts Faulted
Review Finds Inadequate Progress on Most Initiatives
By Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson
The Washington Post, September 8, 2008; A06

A two-year-old Bush administration effort to improve the nation's backlogged immigration courts has not adequately increased oversight of immigration judges, tightened the appeals process or consistently sought funding for new judges, according to a report.

The review, funded by the Carnegie Foundation and released yesterday, reported that out of a 22-point plan unveiled by then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in August 2006, the Justice Department and the Executive Office for Immigration Review have failed to complete six initiatives. They include conducting performance evaluations for judges and appellate judges, completing a code of judicial conduct, and finalizing a rule to decrease cases in which a single appellate judge affirms a case without an opinion.

The report said eight measures have been partially completed, raising doubts about their effectiveness. For example, the EOIR has assigned an assistant chief immigration judge to handle complaints about judges but has not published information about how the process works or how many complaints have been processed.

"Political promises were made. They put out the 22 points. . . . But, in the meantime, they haven't done much," said David Burnham, co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an independent research organization at Syracuse University that tracks the Justice Department and conducted the study.

The report said department officials have largely completed eight upgrades, including publishing standardized procedures, assigning supervisory judges to all courts, adding appeals judges and training lawyers.

Carrie Nelson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, disagreed with TRAC's characterization, saying, "The Department of Justice has made significant progress in implementing the 22 measures, as nearly all of them are completed or near completion."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/07/AR200809...

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3.
Illegal immigrants who return after deportation commit more crimes, study finds
In L.A. County, 75% of inmates who reenter the U.S. engage in more criminal activity within a year. The rate is less for illegal immigrants who have never been ordered to leave.
By Anna Gorman
Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2008

Illegal immigrants who have been deported at least once from the United States are far more likely than other immigrants to repeatedly commit crimes, according to a study by the nonprofit Rand Corp.

The data indicated that illegal immigrants, overall, were not a greater crime risk, according to the study, which looked at all inmates released from Los Angeles County Jail for a month in 2002.

But among those who previously had been deported, reentered the U.S. and were arrested and released from jail, nearly 75% went on to commit another crime within a year. And 28% were arrested three or more times during the one-year period.

The recidivism rate was much lower for illegal immigrants who had not been previously deported, with 32% of those inmates being rearrested within a year and 7% arrested three or more times during that year.

Since the data were collected in 2002, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has overhauled screening for illegal immigrants and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has poured resources into border security. But researchers said the analysis still could have public policy implications for L.A. County and other counties around the nation.

"If you are trying to target people who are repeatedly cycled through the criminal justice system, this looks like a good risk marker," said author Laura Hickman, a researcher at Portland State University. "It doesn't make sense to just sweep up all deportable aliens, but to focus resources on the group who are at the most risk for committing new crimes in the community."

The authors acknowledged that the study was limited because they couldn't determine the immigration status of many of the inmates and others may have falsely claimed U.S. birth. As a result, the study limited its analysis to 517 male illegal immigrants released from Los Angeles County jails between Aug. 4 and Sept. 2, 2002.

Law enforcement authorities said the report, published online this summer in the journal Crime & Delinquency, underscores their ongoing efforts to target illegal immigrants who have been ordered deported or removed from the United States. But L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca said the report also shows that the federal government needs to do more to stop criminals from sneaking back across the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Criminals who are illegal immigrants know no limits and no boundaries," he said. "The harder we make it for them to get across, the better."

The Los Angeles County Jail began working with federal immigration agents in 2006 to screen foreign-born inmates for possible deportation and have screened more than 20,000 inmates since then. This summer, the Sheriff's Department received $500,000 in county funds to expand the number of staff members conducting the interviews.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jail8-2008sep08,0,1103613.story

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4.
Democrats to Immigrants: "Get Right with the Law"
By Tom Barry
The Americas Program, September 5, 2008

The Democrats are uniting behind new messaging on immigration reform.

Having acknowledged that the immigration restrictionists are dominating the immigration debate, the Democratic Party and its allies are desperately seeking to reframe the immigration crisis. Their new language about immigration policy—"nation of laws," "rule of law," and "required legal status"—is popping up everywhere, from the pronouncements of immigrant-rights groups to the Democratic Party platform.

With new language, they hope to win popular, bipartisan support for immigration reform in their own terms. It's a message that is shaped by in-house polls and political calculation.

What Democrats Now Say

The party doesn't back away from comprehensive immigration reform that includes legalization for illegal immigrants. As if by rote, it includes the standard language about America being "a nation of immigrants." But the party also strikes a harsher stance than in the past. Trying to please all tendencies, the Democrats say that immigration reform should be "tough, practical, and humane."

Instead of offering an "earned path to citizenship," as it has in the past, the party is now proclaiming that illegal immigrants will be required to obey the law—with the emphasis on the verb "require."

"For the millions living here illegally but otherwise playing by the rules, we must require them to come out of the shadows and get right with the law," states the party's platform. "We support a system that requires undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens."

The "get right with the law" framing is also evident in the recent shift of Democratic Party leaders and pro-immigration toward a dual vision of immigration reform. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other leading Democrats now echo the party line that America can be "both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws."

Several of the planks will surely please the pro-immigration forces, including:

"We must work together to pass immigration reform in a way that unites this country, not in a way that divides us by playing on our worst instincts and fears."

"We need to crack down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants, especially those who pay their workers less than the minimum wage."

"We also need to do more to promote economic development in migrant-sending nations, to reduce incentives to come to the United States illegally."

But there is also new enforcement language not seen in previous platforms. The platform states, "We need to secure our borders, and support additional personnel, infrastructure, and technology on the border and at our ports of entry."

Similarly, "We need additional Customs and Border Protection agents equipped with better technology and real-time intelligence."

And in a sign that universal employee verification is only a matter of time, the platform committee acknowledges that if employers are to be sanctioned for their hiring practices, then "employers need a method to verify whether their employees are legally eligible to work in the United States, and will ensure that our system is accurate, fair to legal workers, safeguards people's privacy, and cannot be used to discriminate against workers."

The Democratic Party is determined to gain the full support of the Latino community. It is sponsoring or supporting massive voter registration and voter education campaigns among Latinos and especially the immigrant community. It is, therefore, unwilling to touch the politically sensitive issue of further limiting family reunification visas.

As the platform committee states: "We should fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy that hampers family reunification, the cornerstone of our immigration policy for years. Given the importance of both keeping families together and supporting American businesses, we will increase the number of immigration visas for family members of people living here ..."

It's a platform that is strikingly different than the 2000 and 2004 immigration platforms in its new "rule of law" posture, although it retains some of the immigrant-centered positions.
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http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5512

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5.
Crimes Less Likely From Immigrants
By Elaine Silvestrini
The Tampa Tribune (FL), September 7, 2008

Tampa, FL -- When three Mexican nationals were arrested for a series of rapes in the Tampa Bay area, public officials battled over how law enforcement handles illegal aliens and some residents complained that the immigrant crime problem had gotten out of hand.

But illegal immigrants actually are less likely than others to commit violent crimes, said researchers who study the issue. In part, they say, that's because the immigrants don't want to draw attention to themselves.

Available data "put the lie to this hyperbole, this immigrant scapegoating, the sensationalizing, and especially the conflation that legal or illegal immigration is associated not only with crime, but with terrorism," said Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociology professor at the University of California at Irvine.

Studies and data going back more than a century in the United States consistently show that immigrants - legal and illegal - are far less likely to commit violent crimes than people born in the United States, say Rumbaut and Robert J. Sampson, a professor of social sciences at Harvard.

Rumbaut said the national rate of incarceration, for example, is five times greater for the native-born than for the foreign-born.

'Complete Distortion Of Reality'

Investigators say Rigoberto Morón Martinez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, is responsible for two July attacks in Hillsborough County, a sexual attack Aug. 3 at a St. Petersburg restaurant and an attack Aug. 15 at The Docks restaurant in Apollo Beach. Two other illegal immigrants from Mexico are charged in some of the attacks.

That Martinez was arrested before the Aug. 15 attack and then released set off a round of fingerpointing between U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite and Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee. Brown-Waite has called for a federal investigation into communications between sheriff's deputies and federal immigration authorities in connection with the earlier arrest.

Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, said illegal immigrants who commit crimes should be removed from the United States.

The local controversy has provoked anger toward immigrants.

One Brandon resident, Bruce Martin, who frequently posts comments on TBO.com and other Web sites, said he thinks crime by illegal immigrants is "a very bad problem and getting worse."

Martin is not alone. According to a 2007 Gallup poll, 58 percent of Americans think immigrants make the crime situation worse.

When told of some of the researchers' findings, Martin said, "Maybe it is a misperception. But that is what you read. It's very easy to get that opinion from reading the papers."

"One sensational incident arises, and then people with agendas and an ax to grind focus on it, magnify it, amplify it completely out of proportion to convey the idea that all illegal immigrants are doing this, and before you know it, you have a complete distortion of reality," Rumbaut said. "The public perception that immigrants and crime are associated goes back to the beginning of the nation."

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said some of Rumbaut's data is flawed. Even so, he said, it's possible that the researchers are right.

"Trying to get at this question is like shoveling smoke," said Steven Camarota, a researcher for Krikorian's center, a think tank that supports tougher immigration controls. Camarota said the census data used by Rumbaut are deeply flawed.

Though highly critical of the studies, Camarota said, "I am not one who thinks that there's good evidence that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than natives."

"This is the kind of issue where public anger can, in fact, be misdirected," Krikorian said. "But in defense of ordinary people ticked off by this sort of thing, you wouldn't have that visceral response as much if the public were confident the government was doing its job already on immigration.

"In other words, if there was a sense the feds ran a tight ship on immigration, then the occasional immigrant criminal wouldn't be as incendiary an issue."

Rumbaut said his studies take into account every available source of information. His sources, he said, range from national and regional surveys measuring violent and other crime; arrest and incarceration records; studies done in cities with major immigrant concentrations; and major national commissions' findings, dating to 1901, on the relationship between immigration, crime and imprisonment.

For the most part, Rumbaut's conclusions seem to be borne out by state prison statistics. Those numbers show that 5.6 percent of those behind bars are not U.S. citizens.
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http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/sep/07/me-crimes-less-likely-from-immig...

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6.
Bond Help Heartens Immigrants
Workplace Raids' Frequency Propels Fundraising Effort
By N.C. Aizenman
The Washington Post, September 7, 2008; A03

Boston financier Robert Hildreth has been contributing to immigrant service groups around his home state for nearly two decades. So when federal immigration agents raided a garment factory in New Bedford, Mass., last year and began transferring the workers to Texas detention centers thousands of miles from the community organizations trying to help them, Hildreth quickly stepped in with what he thought was a modest offer:

"I just told [their lawyers], 'You know, if you ever need bond money for someone, let me know,' " the 57-year-old multimillionaire recalled during an interview. "I was just following my nose on this. . . . I had no idea of the scale of what I was getting into."

Within a matter of weeks, Hildreth had posted bond for 40 detainees, contributing $116,800 of his own money and launching the pilot version of a national bond assistance program immigrant advocates hope will prove the linchpin of an emerging strategy to counter the recent increase in government workplace raids, including the arrest of nearly 600 workers at a manufacturing plant in Laurel, Miss., on Aug. 25.

Already, the National Immigrant Bond Fund has attracted more than $300,000 in contributions and helped bail out nearly 90 immigrants detained in six worksite raids, including 10 of the 46 workers detained during a raid on a painting company in Annapolis in June.

Days before the Mississippi raid, at the first sign that immigration agents appeared to be massing there, representatives of the fund were on the phone to immigrant advocates in the state. The fund stands ready with at least $150,000 for bond hearings and is trying to raise more.

"This is exactly what we hoped the fund would do," said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and a member of the bond fund's steering committee. "I don't see this as bringing about the end of these raids, but I'm optimistic that the fund is going to make a difference for a lot of people."

Although workplace arrests bring in only a fraction of the nation's estimated 8 million illegal immigrant workers, they have risen sharply in recent months, growing from 510 in 2002 to nearly 5,000 a year.

Unlike defendants in the criminal justice system, foreigners facing deportation in immigration court do not have a right to a government-provided attorney if they cannot pay for their own. And when they are moved to remote holding facilities far from their families, it is more difficult for them to find attorneys, advocates contend. Without access to legal advice, immigrants often have a tough time determining if they have a viable defense against deportation, let alone collecting the evidence needed to present their case. So many simply agree to deportation.

The bond fund aims to change that pattern by offering to pay up to half of an immigrant's bond, increasing the number who can afford bail while insuring the immigrant has a financial incentive to show up in court. Those awaiting a deportation hearing are generally eligible for release on bond if they have no criminal convictions, were not previously ordered deported and can convince a homeland security official or an immigration judge that they pose no danger to national security or the community and are not a flight risk, which they often demonstrate by providing evidence of long-standing community ties through their children, spouses and other relatives.
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It remains to be seen whether the bond fund will ultimately help such immigrants gain anything beyond a few extra months to get their affairs in order before they are ordered deported. Several of the Guatemalans picked up in New Bedford have requested asylum based on dangers they faced as members of persecuted indigenous groups back home. Others are seeking relief from deportation on the grounds that it would cause extreme hardship to their U.S.-born children. Attorneys also pointed to a number of other potential lines of defense, including negotiating a temporary stay of deportation in exchange for testimony against a former employer or, in the case of immigrants who initially entered legally and have a U.S. citizen relative eligible to sponsor them, persuading a judge to let them apply for residency.

Still, the number of people likely to qualify for each type of relief is probably low, said Mark Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors limits on immigration. And he said this suggests that the true goal of the bond fund is to "lawyer up illegal immigrants" and "obstruct enforcement of immigration law until Congress passes an amnesty."

"If the anti-enforcement folks are successful in tying up enough of these hearings, then it will become impossible to do enforcement," he said.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/06/AR200809...