1. BP continues recruitment drive
2. Candidates differ little on issue
3. Economy crowds out immigration
4. Latino votes could be key
5. U.S. House candidates spar
6. CO lawmaker calls for audit
7. Samoan ensnared in passport debate
8. TN candidates tackle immigration
9. NC forum to address Hispanic concerns
10. Advocates seek TPS for Haitians
11. Family adjusts following deportation
12. OK company, owner charged

1.
Border Patrol Looks Locally for New Aganets
Recruitment Could Reach Historic Levels
By Mike Barber
The Seattle Post Inteligencer, October 13, 2008

Leonard and Jacqueline Fite, with their two children in tow, drove north from Kent to Seattle, but with their eyes on heading south toward the U.S. border with Mexico.

Fite, 37, was one of at least 80 applicants who showed up by midafternoon Saturday for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency's one-day recruiting appearance in Seattle, with a satellite effort at Fort Lewis, in a recruiting blitz to complete the largest expansion in the history of the Border Patrol.

Candidates, if they make the cut, as new recruits first would serve along the border with Mexico.

"I've thought about law enforcement, and now with the economy the way it is, I'm looking for stability in my work," Fite, who spent seven years in the Army, said of his reasons for wanting to join.

That, he said, holding on to a squiggling 18- month-old while his wife also looked over information about the job on a computer screen, "and just being able to help keep control over our borders a little more."

Customs and Border Protection recruiters were also in Alaska in Fairbanks and Anchorage on Saturday on the latest leg in a series of similar recruiting appearances held elsewhere in the nation to meet President Bush's 2006 commitment to double the Border Patrol to 18,000 agents by the end of this year, said Agent Randy Williams.

There are now 17,300 Border Patrol agents with, counting attrition, nearly 10,000 of them added in the last two years.

The Customs and Border Patrol is a unified agency under the Department of Homeland Security that is specifically responsible for patrolling almost 7,000 miles of Mexican and Canadian international land borders. The Coast Guard patrols the nation's waters, enforcing a variety of laws ranging from smuggling to search and rescue and environmental protection.
. . .
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/382945_border12.html

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2.
Ads don't admit it, but rivals mostly agree on immigration;
McCain and Obama both favor a pathway to citizenship, and both need support from Hispanic voters in swing states
By Dave Montgomery
The News & Observer (Raleigh), October 14, 2008

Washington, DC -- For all their differences, Barack Obama and John McCain have often shared common ground on one volatile issue: immigration.

McCain was the architect of legislation to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants, a concept Obama has also embraced.

However, the two presidential candidates have made immigration the centerpiece of hard-hitting Spanish-language radio and TV ads, with each candidate presenting himself to Hispanics as the true champion of comprehensive immigration reform.

The ad slugfest is under way in four battleground states -- Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada -- and underscores the importance of Hispanic voters as well as the political punch that immigration carries in the Latino community.

Frank Sharry, the executive director of America's Voice, which advocates comprehensive immigration legislation, said the ad blitz is targeted at hundreds of thousands of newly registered Hispanic voters "who arguably are going to be the swing vote in the swing states that could decide who the next president is."
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http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1254189.html

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3.
Economy, financial crisis crowd out other issues
By Beth Fouhy
The Associated Press, October 14, 2008

Washington, DC (AP) -- It wasn't long ago that illegal immigration was supposed to be a top issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. Terrorism and the Iraq war, which drove the 2004 contest between President Bush and Democrat John Kerry, were expected to be important again this time.

Social issues like gay marriage and abortion also were going to claim a role in the dialogue, particularly with ballot initiatives barring gay unions predicted to drive up conservative voter turnout in several states.

No more.

With the historic collapse of U.S. financial markets overwhelming the presidential contest, a host of otherwise top-tier issues have been pushed aside. That's forced frustrated advocacy groups to seek new ways to press their agendas, even as they acknowledge the unprecedented scope of the financial crisis has relegated nearly everything else to the sidelines.

"The economic crisis is so worrisome, voters are pretty panicked and have a singular focus on what our system is supposed to do about it," said Jeffrey Bosworth, a political science professor at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania. "It comes down to which one of these guys do we think will do a better job navigating economic policy. And it puts absolutely everything else on the back burner."

The meltdown has unmistakably hurt Republican John McCain. Polls show voters now overwhelmingly trust Democrats to be better stewards of the economy. Barack Obama has opened up a clear lead in many national and battleground state polls since the financial shock began to take hold in mid-September.

What's more, the crisis has pushed aside national security matters and battles over hot-button social and cultural issues that have typically benefited GOP candidates in recent elections.

Wednesday night's final presidential debate is slated to cover domestic issues; if the prior two debates are any indication, the financial crisis may well take up much of the oxygen.

Illegal immigration, a major issue during the primary season, is getting little visibility now.

In the GOP primary contest, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney dueled over which candidate took a tougher line on illegal immigration. Meanwhile, McCain, an Arizona senator, was vilified by many conservatives for steering comprehensive immigration reform legislation that included a controversial guest worker program many decried as amnesty.

McCain later distanced himself from the legislation, saying U.S. borders needed to be strengthened first.

On the Democratic side, longtime front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton saw her fortunes begin to collapse when at a primary debate she appeared to waver on whether she supported granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Obama favors the idea, which is law in several states but wildly unpopular among most voters, according to several polls.

McCain's advisers once hoped his leadership on immigration in defiance of Republican orthodoxy would bolster his standing among Hispanics and attract some independent voters. At the same time, they hoped to paint Obama as out of the mainstream on the matter because of his support for the driver's license issue.

Bob Dane, a spokesman for the anti-illegal immigration group FAIR, acknowledged the issue is no longer the pressing concern it once was on the campaign trail. So his organization has tried to link immigration to the financial crisis, arguing that cheap illegal labor will only make a poor job market worse.

"As our economy continues to deteriorate, immigration should emerge as a tool in the toolbox to cure our economy," Dane said. "The candidates have been silent on the issue but there remains an undercurrent of frustration."

Social issues like abortion rights and gay marriage also have merited scant discussion on the campaign trail, but not for lack of trying by interest groups on both sides.
. . .
http://www.cbs8.com/election_center/story.php?id=143211

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4.

Latino votes could be key in close states
By Stephen Wall
The San Bernardino County Sun (CA), October 13, 2008

With California seemingly in the bag, Javier Galvez decided to travel across the state line to make a difference in the presidential race.

The 61-year-old Upland resident organized a team of about 20 volunteers who traveled to Las Vegas this summer to campaign for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

With the election less than a month away, Latino voters in states like Nevada are becoming an increasingly sought- after constituency for both Obama and Republican nominee John McCain.

"California has already been won by Obama," said Galvez, who is now working on a nonpartisan Latino voter-registration effort in San Bernardino County. "The battle is outside California, not within California."

A significant number of Latino voters in key states haven't made up their minds on a presidential choice, according to a survey released last week by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

Four states that are winnable for either candidate - Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Florida - have a sizable number of Latino voters who could swing the outcome of the election. The four states have a combined 46 electoral votes, 12 more than President Bush's margin of victory for his re-election in 2004.

The survey of 1,600 Latino registered voters in the four states shows Obama garnering a majority of Latino support in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico. The candidates are in a statistical tie among Latino voters in Florida, according to the poll. Florida has 27 electoral votes - by far the most of the four states.

But those numbers might not tell the full story.

One in five Latino voters in Colorado and New Mexico, one in four in Florida and nearly one in three in Nevada are undecided or don't have a strong preference for a presidential candidate, the survey found.

"In key battleground states, Latino voters are ready to vote in huge numbers, and a significant percentage is still persuadable," said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the NALEO Educational Fund.

An aggressive voter-registration drive is expected to propel the number of Latino voters nationwide from 7.6 million in 2004 to 9.2 million this year, the nonprofit organization projects.
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http://www.sbsun.com/sanbernardino/ci_10708656

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5.
Immigration-reform topic heats up debate
By Daniel Chacon
The Rocky Mountain News (Denver), October 14, 2008

Comprehensive immigration reform, a point of agreement between Republican incumbent Marilyn Musgrave and Democratic challenger Betsy Markey, became the ignition source of a fiery exchange during their second debate Monday.

Both said they support a guest worker program so that farmers in the heavily agricultural 4th Congressional District can benefit from seasonal labor.

They also agreed on the need for increased border security and an employee verification system, and both said they oppose amnesty.

But Markey accused Musgrave of doing little in the way of introducing legislation to address immigration reform since she was elected to Congress in 2002.

"My opponent is a member of the Immigration Reform Caucus, yet in the six years she's been in Congress, she has not accomplished anything" on immigration, Markey told the audience of about 300 in the Fort Morgan High School auditorium.

"She's sponsored four bills in the time that she's been in Congress. One was to outlaw gay marriage. The other one was to name a post office. I don't know what the other two are," Markey said.
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http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/13/immigration-reform-amo...

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6.
State Rep. King wants immigration law audited
By David Montero
The Rocky Mountain News (Denver), October 14, 2008

State Rep. Steve King wants a legislative audit to determine whether Colorado governments are complying with a 2006 bill prohibiting so-called sanctuary policies toward illegal immigrants.

King, a Grand Junction Republican, said he suspects it's not being enforced, and that he began thinking about making the audit request when a man plowed into an Aurora Baskin-Robbins and killed two women and a toddler in early September.

Francis Hernandez is being held in the Arapahoe County jail, and is looking at three possible counts of vehicular homicide - though he hasn't been formally charged. Hernandez entered the United States illegally in 1991 at the age of 5 from Guatemala.

King made the official audit request Monday.
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http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/14/state-rep-king-wants-i...

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7.
'Derivative citizenship' claim in Branson turns into international incident
By Scott Lauck
The St. Louis Daily Record (MO), October 13, 2008

Proving a Samoan government official has the right to possess a U.S. passport is apparently one part legal maneuvering, one part genealogy.

The Kansas City-area immigration firm of Sharma-Crawford Attorneys at Law has taken the case of a Samoan man, Hans Joachim Keil, detained last month in Branson. Keil, an associate minister of Commerce, Industry & Labour and a member of the Pacific island nation's parliament, was charged in federal court with falsely representing himself to be a U.S. citizen.

Keil was released on bond after a hearing last month in U.S. District Court in Springfield and remains in Branson, where his daughter lives. His attorney, Rekha Sharma-Crawford, said she can prove Keil is indeed a U.S. citizen.

"It's actually a legal question more than anything else," she said. "It seems like the agency just got their analysis completely wrong.

"We assume that the question of U.S. citizenship is very simple, but that's a really dangerous assumption," she added.

According to an affidavit filed by the arresting Diplomatic Security Service agent Jack L. Barnhart, Keil entered the United States on Sept. 6 through Los Angeles International Airport. About seven months previous, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service field office in Kansas City had determined that Keil was not a U.S. citizen.

On Sept. 9, the state department agent interviewed Keil at the Dutton Family Theatre in Branson. Keil presented his U.S. passport and a Samoan diplomatic passport. Keil was charged with falsely and willfully representing himself as a U.S. citizen and with doing so to a federal officer.

According to the affidavit, Keil had sought American citizenship in 1967 but never completed the process. He also failed to qualify for citizenship by birth: His father was born in Western Samoa (the former name of the now-independent nation of Samoa, where Keil lives). Keil's mother was an American citizen - she was born in the separate U.S. territory of American Samoa, and her father was an American sailor. However, she hadn't lived in the United States or a territory for the required length of time before his birth in Western Samoa, so she couldn't pass on her citizenship to him,

However, Sharma-Crawford argues that the government's analysis of Keil's lineage was incomplete. She said her genealogical investigation showed that Keil's grandfather on his father's side was a German immigrant to Illinois who attained citizenship in 1896. That "derivative citizenship" would have been passed on to Keil's Samoan father and then to Keil himself, Sharma-Crawford said.
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http://www.thedailyrecord.com/stlhome.cfm

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8.
Vaughn, Shipley debate in 2nd District race
The Associated Press, October 14, 2008

Kingsport, TN (AP) -- Illegal immigration, state spending and the minimum wage were among the issues Democratic incumbent state Rep. Nathan Vaughn and Republican challenger Tony Shipley debated in northeastern Tennessee.

The 2nd District candidates appeared in a forum Monday night at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport.

Shipley told the audience of about 200 people he favored making English the official language of Tennessee and denying a driver's license to people who can't pass the written portion of a driver's test in English.
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TN_HOUSE_2ND_DEBATE_TNOL-?SITE=TN...

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9.
Forum to address issues facing Hispanics: Mexican population's impact on schools, economy among topics
By Keren Rivas
The Times News (Burlington, NC), October 13, 2008
http://www.thetimesnews.com/articles/says_6522___article.html/people_pow...

Organizers of a symposium about Latinos in Alamance County expect at least 100 people to attend the event slated for Friday at Elon University.

The symposium is the fifth that the Burlington-Alamance Sister Cities program has organized since its inception in 2004.

During the half-day event people will hear about the cultural and educational exchanges between the county and Soledad de Graciano Sanchez, a Mexican city of about 184,000 that was picked as Burlington's sister city because of its demographic and industrial similarities.

They will also hear information about the number of Latino students in the local schools and the economic impact of the Mexican population in the state.

Beth Powell, businesswoman and founder of the local Sister Cities program, said the event goes hand in hand with the Sister Cities mission to promote understanding with international populations.
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TN_HOUSE_2ND_DEBATE_TNOL-?SITE=TN...

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10.
Outcry for Haitians;
Advocates Urge U.S. to Halt Deportations in Wake of Storms
By Georgia East and Luis F. Perez
The South Florida Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), October 13, 2008
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/topic/social-issues/demographics/illegal-imm...

Since he was detained by immigration officials in August, four storms have torn through Jean Delva's homeland. They wiped out roads and bridges, flooded fields and obliterated a meager food supply. More than 850,000 people are displaced; 50,000 homes are damaged or destroyed. Hundreds died, and United Nations officials say many more might if they don't get help.

Sending him back would be cruel, immigrant advocates say. They, and 31 congressmen, are urging the United States to grant undocumented Haitian immigrants like Delva what's known as Temporary Protected Status, allowing them to stay and work here legally but temporarily. On Oct. 3, pushed by local activists, Haitian President René Préval made his first public request for TPS since the storms.

The move, they hope, will spur the United States to grant the status. It's not unheard of.

Two weeks ago, the Bush administration announced it would extend Temporary Protected Status to an estimated 300,000 Honduran, Nicaraguan and Salvadoran nationals who have been allowed to stay for years after natural disasters struck their countries. It was granted to Hondurans and Nicaraguans after Hurricane Mitch hit in 1998 and to Salvadorans after a series of earthquakes in 2001.

While immigrant advocates argue it's unfair to deny Haiti the same benefit afforded those countries, opponents say the fact that the immigrants from those other places are still here is proof the system doesn't work.

"If Bush had ended the TPS for the Central American countries, then we would be in favor of TPS for Haitians," said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, which advocates reduced immigration. "The reason we don't is that there's no 'T' in TPS."

David Abraham, a University of Miami law professor and immigration expert, said the country's mood toward immigration was much different 10 years ago. He doesn't think Préval's public statement will have an effect.
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TN_HOUSE_2ND_DEBATE_TNOL-?SITE=TN...

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11.
Deported, now divided;
Adam Savitt ran a thriving business in the Chicago area when he was deported in July to his Central American nation. Now a cell phone is his only tie to his family and job in Highland Park.
By Antonio Olivo and Oscar Avila
The Chicago Tribune, October 14, 2008

The phone rings on the 847 area code line used by AMS Earth Movers in Highland Park. After a few chimes, Adam Savitt picks up the call amid the lush banana fields of Guatemala.

The connection is fine, but the ties to his life in Lake County are fading since he became one of thousands deported in an ongoing U.S. government crackdown against illegal immigrants.

Yes, Savitt, 44, tells a confused truck driver on the line, there are still piles of construction debris waiting to be picked up in Winnetka. No, he assures a nervous contractor, there's nothing to worry about now that he's out of the country.

The phone rings again and it's his wife, Julie, 42, calling from another Highland Park line. Eyes tired during another 17-hour day as the new company owner, she briefs him on the latest work headaches and stares absently toward a pair of neglected Jewish shabbat candles that once brightened their home.

"I wish you were here," she says.

"I wish I were there, too, baby," he replies.

Since federal agents approached him on their porch and sent him back to Guatemala in July, the constantly ringing phone line is now what binds the Savitts' once-thriving construction waste hauling business. It also keeps tied an unlikely marriage that shows how such arrests can touch any corner of America.

She was the Orthodox Jewish granddaughter of a once-connected Chicago developer; he fought for the government in the Guatemalan civil war, escaped, then converted to Judaism after they met in 1998.

Together with her three kids from a previous marriage, they carved out a quiet life in leafy Highland Park -- until a 13-year-old denial for U.S. political asylum finally caught up to Savitt.

It came at 5 a.m. on a Saturday. As he laced his work boots, a man approached, asking to see his driver's license. He complied. The man asked: Have you ever been called anything else?

He gave the name he used before legally changing his identity as part of his Jewish conversion: Francisco Adan Estrada.

Moments later, his wife stared in stunned silence as her handcuffed husband disappeared in an unmarked government car down a street of sprawling homes, basketball hoops and American flags.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-guatemalaoct14,0,4588752.story

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12.
Firm accused of falsifying data
The Associated Press, October 14, 2008

Oklahoma City (AP) -- A federal tax investigation against a Norman company has resulted in conspiracy charges against the owner and charges of hiring illegal immigrants against the company.
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http://newsok.com/feds-turn-up-heat-on-owner-of-norman-company/article/3...