1. Obama advisor promises 'down payments'
2. Obama appoints Hispanic advisers
3. Haitian deportations resume
4. Easier qualification for T-visas
5. Detainees removed from RI facility
6. Midwife, passport issue hard to sort
7. Less legal aid for poor available

1.
Obama can’t avoid immigration issue now
By Gebe Martinez
Politico, December 8, 2008

It is the issue few candidates were willing to discuss publicly before the election. Even in victory, the word “immigration” has barely left the lips of President-elect Barack Obama.

But in the presidential transition offices, immigration is cited as a top-tier issue that Obama will have to tackle early in his administration. It has also been assigned its own study group, one of seven working groups created by the transition team to examine high priorities.

Given that it intersects with the economy, health care, education and other key concerns, immigration is too complex a topic to ignore. As economic and health care initiatives are rushed out of the gate in January, proposed immigration reforms will likely be close behind.

And Obama and congressional Democrats can no longer avoid the issue that raises fears of hate speech and false arrests of citizens and legal immigrants at work sites while angering border control hard-liners. Immigration woes stand as a symbol of a broken government, and the onus is on Democrats to govern.

Backers of a broad bill that would combine border enforcement with expansion of visa programs will not forget Obama’s campaign pledge to produce an immigration bill during his first year in office.

The heat is on.

“We are not forgetting about our promise with regard to the immigrant community,” Melody Barnes, Obama’s top domestic policy adviser, pledged during a forum last week that drew 2,000 community organizers to Washington. It was sponsored by the Center for Community Change and the Gamaliel Foundation, for which Obama was once an organizer.

“We will start making down payments on that agenda,” Barnes added.

Those “down payments” are expected to come in the form of administrative rules changes advocated by a broad coalition of immigrant and civil rights groups, businesses, labor groups, and the faith community. The revisions could be ordered while Congress works on broader legislation.

Immigration activists are pushing for a moratorium on raids that have rounded up thousands of workers this year alone, traumatized and separated families, and violated basic civil rights.

While workers have become easy targets for authorities who want to portray stepped-up enforcement, the abusive employers who take advantage of the broken system and exploit undocumented workers have often been ignored.

The vast and inefficient immigration detention network also has deprived many of their legal rights. There have been reports of legal permanent residents dying while in custody.

In addition, immigration policy experts say the long bureaucratic delays on background checks and processing visas, and the ever-changing policy directives inside the Department of Homeland Security, require immediate attention from the new administration.

Notably, the agency does not have a person at the top to coordinate and streamline the procedures, and Obama has been urged to fix that, as well.

Meanwhile, business and labor groups won a federal court ruling this week that stops the Bush administration from accelerating rules that would prosecute businesses that fail to fire workers whose Social Security numbers do not match the Social Security database. Employers complain that the federal database is unreliable.
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16315.html

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2.
Hispanic advisers to have ear of Barack Obama
By Ramon Bracamontes
El Paso Times, December 7, 2008

EL Paso -- While it is good that President-elect Barack Obama is appointing Hispanics to several high-ranking positions, the true test of what role Hispanics will play in the new administration depends on whom he selects as his advisers, experts said.

National organizations like the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, as well as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, have publicly encouraged Obama to include Hispanics among his 3,000 appointments.

Preliminary indications are that Obama may be listening, said University of Texas at El Paso history Professor Dennis Bixler-Marquez.

Last week, Obama selected New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Hispanic, as his nominee for commerce secretary. But just as importantly, Obama has named several other Hispanics to his transition team or as his advisers.

"His advisers are the ones who really have his ear," Bixler-Marquez said. "The advisers operate in the background and are not subject to political pressure. They are just there do their jobs and work with the president. They are the ones who will help him."

Among them:

# Louis Caldera, an El Paso native, is Obama's White House military officer.

# Celicia Muñoz of the National Council of La Raza was named director of intergovernmental affairs for the White House.

# Tampa, Fla.,-area lawyer Frank Sanchez is on Obama's transition team.

# Juliet V. García, president of the University of Texas at Brownsville, is on Obama's transition team as an adviser on education.

# Espiridion "Al" Borrego, director of public administration at the University of Texas-Pan American, is one of his education advisers, as is Eugene García, the former dean of Arizona State University's College of Education.

# Jennifer Chacón, an immigration law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, is one of Obama's immigration advisers.
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http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_11158724

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3.
Deportations to storm-crippled Haiti resume
By Kelli Kennedy
The Associated Press, December 8, 2008

Miami -- Deportations to Haiti have resumed after being suspended for nearly three months following a wave of deadly storms that racked the country, federal immigration officials said Monday.

Immigration officials temporarily stopped returning residents to Haiti in September after hundreds were killed in four storms.

"The individuals being returned have final orders of removal and the necessary travel documents," ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "We have contacted interested members of Congress to apprise them of the reinstituted removals."

Navas didn't provide further details on the timing of the flights or discuss numbers of deportees.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/08/AR200812...

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4.
Trafficking victims to finally get help to rebuild lives
Immigration officials will issue rules letting the women get green cards
By Lise Olsen
The Houston Chronicle, December 9, 2008

Federal immigration officials agreed Monday to long-awaited proposals that for the first time would provide a path to permanent legal residency to hundreds of human trafficking victims in Houston and across the United States.

The move came two weeks after the Houston Chronicle reported that only about half of the victims of human trafficking identified by federal investigators in the U.S. are getting promised visas to help rebuild their lives — despite their cooperation in prosecuting traffickers.

The federal government has spent seven years and tens of millions of dollars to rescue and assist foreign women exploited as slaves in America under the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act, yet only 1,094 victims have managed to qualify for T visas.

Bureaucratic delays

None have received green cards because of previously unexplained bureaucratic delays in issuing the required regulations.

The proposed regulation would help both victims of human trafficking as well as immigrant victims of other crimes, such as domestic violence, who assist government prosecutions.

"It is wonderful news and long overdue," said Diana Velardo, an immigration lawyer at the University of Houston who said the law will help at least 25 of her own clients here. "This helps our victims move out of uncertainty and finally move on."

'Many difficult ... issues'

Immigration officials said the delay of nearly seven years in issuing the regulation stemmed from "many difficult legal and policy issues (that) required resolution ... We recognize this is a vulnerable population and we want to ensure that our policies and procedures are sound, " according to a press release issued Monday by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6154231.html

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5.
Feds move immigrant detainees out of RI facility
By Hilary Russ
The Associated Press, December 9, 2008

Providence, RI (AP) -- Federal immigration officials on Monday removed all of their detainees from a Rhode Island facility under investigation following the death of a detainee earlier this year.

The removal of the 153 immigrant detainees from the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls took all day to complete, said Paula Grenier, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most of the detainees were moved to other facilities in New England pending a full review of Wyatt, she said.

ICE officials began investigating the facility after the August death of Hiu Liu "Jason" Ng, Grenier said. She declined to say whether any information gleaned from the investigation led to the decision to relocate detainees.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gcDZ83MVb-HIPq-1nLIHJV...

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6.
Murky records cloud crackdown on fake passports
U.S. will require documents at border next June
By Lynn Brezosky
San Antonio Express News, December 8, 2008

Brownsville -- Maria Teresa Payan de Castillo's parish priest blogged about her plight, referring to her as "Mother Teresa" and urging people to write their congressperson to save a U.S. citizen from deportation.

De Castillo, 40, claimed that like many in South Texas, she'd been born with the assistance of a midwife. She had previously held a passport based on a U.S. birth certificate and thought she had a renewal in progress when she was arrested re-entering the country from Matamoros, Mexico.

But now the U.S. government not only was accusing her of lying, but had thrown her in jail for fraud.

"There are some things that pierce the heart," Mike Seifert, known in the community as "Padre Mike," wrote in his blog. "Seeing a desperately sick child in a hospital room; observing the grief of those burying a loved one; watching a proud woman, bound in chains, have to stand before a federal judge."

Plea bargain

Not long after the blog posted, de Castillo entered a plea bargain, saying she had been born in Mexico as Maria Rosario Castellano.

A November Department of Justice press release touted the case, which court records show involved wiretappings, surveillance, and witnesses in Mexico.

"Payan's arrest and prosecution should serve as a warning to those who would lie about themselves in order to obtain a passport," said Marian Cotter, special agent in charge of the Diplomatic Security Service's field office in Houston. "The Diplomatic Security Service is both tireless and patient in pursuing these crimes."

The outcome in the de Castillo case so far appears isolated; at least four others who sued the government have since proven to be U.S. citizens and gotten passports.

The key obstacle is that as of June 2009, a passport or passport card will be needed to cross the border, and Mexican-Americans that make up the bulk of the population in the Rio Grande Valley are accustomed to crossing frequently to visit family, go to the doctor, and often work.

Many, particularly older ones, were born outside hospitals. As such, they are subject to heightened probes by the federal government, which has identified such reported births as ripe for fraud.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6154442.html

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7.
Economic woes threaten legal aid nationwide
By Manuel Valdes
The Associated Press, December 8, 2008

Seattle (AP) -- The day before Maria Nunes fled Florida for Seattle, her abusive husband beat her unconscious. She had already divorced him, which made the Jamaica native vulnerable to deportation because she depended on her marriage for her legal residency in the United States.

At a women's shelter in Seattle, Nunes was told she could still become a permanent resident, but that the law required women in her plight to prove they had been abused.

Attorney Jorge Baron and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project—an organization that provides legal aid to immigrants in Washington state at no or reduced cost—stepped in to help. The project's lawyers guided her through a 7-year legal fight to get her divorce and a residency green card.

"I didn't even know I had rights," Nunes said. "It takes a long time but they didn't quit."

Now, however, the project is one of hundreds of legal aid organizations nationwide that face losing a significant amount of their operating money, which comes in part from interest on funds that lawyers hold in trust for their clients.

All 50 states have some form of a law that earmarks such money for legal services for the poor. Nationally, it added up to about $370 million last year, but advocates say that figure could drop by as much as 50 percent in 2009 because of both the economic meltdown and low interest rates.

"We've never had this type of decline," said Susan Erlichman, president of national association of IOLTA programs—the acronym stands for interest on lawyers trust accounts. "In many cases, it's the double whammy, not only have the interests plummeted, many states are seeing smaller (trust) balances."
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http://www.elpasotimes.com/nationworld/ci_11162272