1. Native born competing with illegals
2. Firm ordered to pay $21 million
3. CT area sees Hispanic population grow
4. Activists take fight to local level
5. Businessmen organize in TX city

1.
U.S. Workers Crowding Out Immigrant Laborers
By Miriam Jordan
The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2008

Los Angeles -- A year ago, a day-laborer center adjacent to a Home Depot here teemed with Latin American immigrants who showed up and found a sure day's work painting, gardening or hauling.

These days, more than immigrants are packing the Hollywood Community Job Center: Unemployed Americans are joining them. There's little work for anybody.

"Everybody is coming to look for work," says Rene Jemio, outreach coordinator for the hiring hall. "It's not just your average immigrant anymore; it's African-Americans and whites, too."

For the first time in a decade, unskilled immigrants are competing with Americans for work. And evidence is emerging that tens of thousands of Hispanic immigrants are withdrawing from the labor market as U.S. workers crowd them out of potential jobs. At least some of the foreigners are returning home.

"We see competition from more nonimmigrant workers," says Abel Valenzuela, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who studies day laborers. "Employers are also paying less than in previous years," he says.

In the third quarter of 2008, 71.3% of Latino immigrant workers were either employed or actively seeking work, compared with 72.4% in the same quarter a year earlier, according to a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization. The 1.1-percentage-point drop "marks a substantial decrease in the labor-market participation of Latino immigrants," says Rakesh Kochhar, the Pew economist who prepared the report.

Since 2003, the labor force participation rate -- the employed or job-seeking share of the population -- among foreign-born Hispanics had been consistently on the rise. The decline in the third quarter of 2008 "is a testament to the character and depth of the current recession triggered by the housing slump," says the Pew report.

"The recession has truly put Hispanic immigrants in a state of flux," says Mr. Kochhar, who based his analysis on data from the Current Population Survey produced jointly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.

At the Hollywood center, even a year ago, contractors and homeowners employed 30 to 40 workers each day. Now, it isn't unusual for only three or four to get hired, organizers say.

In Houston, where post-hurricane cleanup work is drying up, "the situation is getting more difficult by the day," says Salvador Perez, a 45-year-old Mexican day laborer who has been in the U.S. since 2003. "I like this country for the work opportunity, but now I can barely scrape together a few dollars to send home to my family after paying for rent and food."

Latin American workers bore the brunt of the collapse of the construction sector, which employs 20% to 30% of all foreign-born Hispanics in this country. As the housing market tumbled last year, they lost jobs in ever-greater numbers.

Competition has become fierce even in agriculture, where farmers had struggled in recent years to hire enough immigrants to harvest crops, sometimes letting fruit wither on the vine.

Growers across the country are reporting that farmhands are plentiful; in fact, they are turning down potential field workers. "For the first time since 9/11, we have applicants in excess of our requirements," says Bob Gray, chief executive of Duda Farm Fresh Foods Inc., a grower, packer and shipper based in Salinas, Calif.

In particular, Mr. Gray has observed an influx of U.S.-born Latinos and other workers who previously shunned field work. "These are domestic workers who appear to be displacing immigrants," says Mr. Gray.
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http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122973612592523337-lMyQjAxMDI4MjI5...

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2.
Houston firm to pay $21 million in immigration case
By Susan Carroll
The Houston Chronicle, December 19, 2008

A record-setting, nearly $21 million settlement that allowed a Houston-based pallet company to avoid criminal prosecution for hiring illegal workers should send a clear message to employers tempted to break immigration laws, federal officials said.

Prosecutors who handled the case against IFCO Systems North America said it "severely punishes" the nation's largest pallet manufacturing company, which was caught with more than 1,100 illegal immigrants on its payroll in spring 2006.

The settlement agreement announced Friday should send a "powerful message that ICE will investigate and bring to justice companies which hire illegal workers," said John P. Torres, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.

The agreement between ICE and IFCO easily eclipsed the next-largest settlement on record for a company accused of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. In 2005, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., paid $11 million to avoid prosecution for employing undocumented workers.

ICE has grown increasingly aggressive in pursuing proceeds from businesses that benefit from illegal labor, collecting more than $60 million in workplace-related criminal fines and forfeitures in the last two years, including IFCO's settlement. In 2003, the agency collected $37,500 in workplace fines and seizures, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

ICE's strategy of hitting employers in the pocketbook appears to be working, said Don Kerwin, vice president for programs for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Businesses pay attention to the bottom line, he said.

Can't write it off

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington D.C., called the size of the IFCO settlement significant.

"It's clearly not something they can just write off as the cost of business," said Krikorian, whose organization promotes stricter immigration controls. "It's likely to prompt them to re-engineer their labor practices so they're less likely to hire illegal (immigrants). And that's the goal."
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6173693.html

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3.
Area Hispanic population grows
By Magdalene Perez
The Stamford Advocate (CT), December 22, 2008

In the past decade, the number of Hispanic residents has increased to nearly a quarter of the populations of Stamford and Norwalk.

Newly released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show that, from 2000 to 2007, the number of Hispanic residents grew from 17 percent to 22 percent in Stamford, and from 16 percent to 23 percent in Norwalk.

During the same period, the number of non-Hispanic whites declined, from 61 percent to 57 percent in Stamford, and 64 percent to 59 percent in Norwalk.

The new data puts a spotlight on integration, education and the question of immigrants' legal status.

While the census estimates do not distinguish between the number of Stamford and Norwalk Hispanics who are immigrants and the number born in the United States, there has been an influx of immigrants from Latin America in the past 10 years, immigration lawyer Philip Berns said.

Over the past decade, both cities have pursued policies to include immigrants by offering bilingual services, English-language instruction in schools and programs to help legal immigrants become naturalized citizens, city officials said.

"I think Norwalk is very tolerant," Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia said. Immigrants "feel Norwalk is a very warm and embracing city."

Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy said the numbers show nothing new.

"It's consistent with what the trend has been for a long period of time," Malloy said. "Stamford has always been a diverse community and continues to be a diverse community."

In both cities, the number of non-Hispanic black residents declined slightly, from 15 percent to 13 percent. Non-Hispanic Asian residents increased slightly in Stamford, from 5 percent to 6 percent. In Norwalk the number of Asian residents remained about the same, 3 percent.
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http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/localnews/ci_11286632

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4.
Immigration Activists Battle Harsh Laws Across U.S.
By Marcelo Ballvé
The New America Media, December 22, 2008

Jackson, MS -- Editor's Note: Realizing that the immigration wars have trickled down into state legislatures and even county boards, those who advocate for immigrants have begun weaving together coalitions to have their voices heard. These groups may include business, civil rights, labor or faith-based organizations. New America Media contributing editor Marcelo Ballvé is based in New York.

Ever since the harshest immigration law in the country went into effect in this state July 1st, activists on the ground have mobilized a diverse coalition-- including civil rights, church and labor leaders-- to build opposition to it.

The "Mississippi Employment Protection Act," which passed the legislature with overwhelming support, requires that businesses use the federal E-Verify program to check workers' immigration status and most notably-- makes it a felony for an undocumented worker to accept work in the state, authorizing penalties of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. U.S. residents may also sue businesses if they are fired and replaced by an unauthorized worker.

Mississippi's state capitol isn't alone in legislating a crackdown. Even as Washington D.C.'s immigrant advocates organize to push for comprehensive immigration reform in president-elect Barack Obama's term, the bitterest immigration battles are being waged on the state level. This is happening not only in states like California that are familiar with contentious immigration debates, but also in states once on the sidelines.

Although other state capitols stopped short of creating felony charges for undocumented workers, laws similar to Mississippi's legislation gained approval this year in South Carolina, Oklahoma, Missouri, Utah and West Virginia.

The state laws can be seen as stopgap measures. Only the federal government has the power to address the immigration system and change the way it works. But after the last effort at immigration reform-- the McCain-Kennedy bill-- failed in the U.S. Senate in 2007, many states decided to take what matters they could into their own hands.

"They have done the one thing in their power: crack down harder, with more aggressive enforcement, new restrictions, new more punitive penalties," reads a June 2008 report by ImmigrationWorks USA, a national organization of state-level business coalitions supporting immigration reform.

Sometimes the new zero-tolerance approach to illegal immigration is not embodied in legislation, but in agreements of varying formality that bind local and state agencies to cooperate with Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

The most well-known of these is a program called "287(g)" , which delegates immigration enforcement authority to state troopers, county sheriffs or local police. Though 287(g) programs have been running since 2003 ICE documents show that half the 63 partnership agreements currently active were signed in the last 16 months-- after immigration reform's failure in mid-2007.

ICE's roster of 287g agreements reads like a map to hotspots in the immigration wars, places where activists say relations between immigrants and the larger community are particularly strained.

According to ICE, Virginia has nine law enforcement agencies participating in 287g, North Carolina eight and Arizona seven, including Maricopa County, known for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's media-grandstanding against illegal immigrants.

ICE also chose North Carolina for four of its seven "Secure Communities" pilot programs, high-tech linkages of local detention facilities to federal fingerprint databases, so that all arrestees' immigration histories can be checked. Immigration-related laws can also be enacted on the county level, as they were in Suffolk County on Long Island, New York. That county's chief executive, Democrat Steve Levy, has also recently come under fire for his outspokenness on illegal immigration after the November hate killing of an Ecuadorean.

This cascade of immigration-related laws and programs, and the political battles being waged over them, will not disappear if an Obama administration fulfills its promise of pushing through comprehensive reform, says A. Elena Lacayo, who tracks legislation for the National Council of La Raza. "It won't necessarily solve all the issues that have been coming about on the state and local level."
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http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=1e2b1d...

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5.
Hispanic professionals inspired to organize in Farmers Branch
Low-income Hispanics lie low during the city’s effort to fight illegal immigration
By Patrick McGeed
The Fort Worth Star Telegram (TX), December 22, 2008

Farmers Branch, TX -- A little more than two years after this city of 27,750 put itself in the national spotlight by trying to ban illegal immigrants from renting apartments, life for Hispanics has changed in Farmers Branch.

Among working-class Hispanics, there are rumors that the city "doesn’t want us." They are jittery around police, and some know families that have moved out since the city started trying to prohibit illegal immigrants from renting in 2006.

The controversy has also inspired Hispanic professionals to organize, with the goal of gaining representation in a city where Latinos — who make up nearly half the population — have had virtually none.

For now, the city’s effort to battle illegal immigration on a local level is stuck in federal court. U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle has ruled that Farmers Branch hold off on implementing the rental ban at least until there’s a trial, sometime next year.

Mayor Tim O’Hare, champion of the rental ban, often points out that elections have shown voters strongly behind him, with two-thirds voting for the rental ban in a 2007 referendum and two-thirds voting to elevate him from councilman to mayor in May.

"There is a very small faction in the city who can’t seem to get over the fact that they’re in the minority on this issue. They continually bring it up, continually harp on it," he said. "Their arguments are falling on deaf ears."

'They’re afraid’

Nancy Lopez, 30, a 10-year resident of Farmers Branch, said she knows three Hispanic families who moved out and others who won’t move in.

"They don’t want to live here because there are a lot of police here, and they’re afraid they will arrest them and put them in jail and deport them, send them to Mexico," she said.

Rafael Diaz, 32, said he knows two families from El Salvador that moved out of Farmers Branch for fear of the city’s tough stance making life difficult.
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http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1107095.html