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1. SCOTUS to hear ID theft arguments
2. Stimulus package restricts H-1Bs
3. BP embraces green technology
4. Judge dismisses case, sets precedent
5. Interpretation needs vex courts

1.
Supreme Court hears immigrant's ID theft case
By Mark Sherman
The Associated Press, February 22, 2009

Washington, DC (AP) -- Ignacio Carlos Flores-Figueroa, an undocumented worker from Mexico, made a curious and undeniably bad decision. After working under an assumed name for six years, he decided to use his real name and exchanged one set of phony identification numbers for another.

The change made his employer suspicious and the authorities were called in. The old numbers were made up, but the new ones he bought happened to belong to real people. Federal prosecutors said that was enough to label Flores-Figueroa an identity thief.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday on prosecutors' aggressive use of a new law that was intended to strengthen efforts to combat identity theft. In at least hundreds of cases last year, workers accused of immigration violations found themselves facing the more serious identity theft charge as well, without any indication they knew their counterfeit Social Security and other identification numbers belonged to actual people and were not made up.

The government has used the charge, which carries a mandatory two-year minimum prison term, to persuade people to plead guilty to the lesser immigration charges and accept prompt deportation. Many of those undocumented workers had been arrested in immigration raids.

The case hinges on how the justices resolve this question: Does it matter whether someone using a phony ID knows that it belongs to someone else?

The government, backed by victims' rights groups, says no. The "havoc wrecked on the victim's life is the same either way," said Stephen Masterson, a Los Angeles-based lawyer, in his brief for the victims' rights groups.

On the other side, Flores-Figueroa and more than 20 immigrants' rights groups, defense lawyers and privacy experts say that the law Congress passed in 2004 was aimed at the identity thief who gains access to people's private information to drain their accounts and run up bills in their name. Surveys estimate that more than 8 million people in the United States are victims of identity theft each year.

Flores-Figueroa acknowledges he used fraudulent documents to get and keep his job at a steel plant in East Moline, Ill. But he "had no intention of stealing anyone's identity," his lawyers said in their brief to the court. He traveled to Chicago and bought numbers from someone who trades in counterfeit IDs.

Had he been caught while using the fictitious name and numbers that went with it, he could not have been charged with the more serious offense.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g3zFSeOhNx_V2XYSyUDGnZ...

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2.
Stimulus package sets H-1B limits, leaves out E-Verify mandate
Of two IT-related amendments to the economic stimulus bill, only one makes the cut.
By Patrick Thibodeau and Jaikumar Vijayan
Computer World, February 23, 2009

A provision requiring banks receiving federal bailout funds to give hiring priority to U.S. workers over foreigners with H-1B visas made it into the final version of the economic stimulus bill that President Barack Obama signed last week.

But House and Senate negotiators dropped a separate proposal that would have forced all employers benefiting from stimulus money to use the government's Web-based E-Verify system to vet the employment status of their workers.

The new H-1B restrictions require financial services firms that get money under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to comply with rules set for "H-1B-dependent" companies -- those where more than 15% of the workers are on visas.

The rules set a number of requirements for organizations looking to hire H-1B holders, including the need to attest that the employer actively recruited U.S. workers and wouldn't be displacing or replacing U.S. citizens.

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) initially proposed an outright ban on H-1B hiring by TARP-recipient banks, but the scope of their amendment to the stimulus bill was later scaled down.

Even so, Charles Kuck, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington, said it's unlikely that the affected financial services firms will try to hire H-1B holders for IT jobs and other positions because of the added cost and work now required.

That could leave the firms unable to tap the skills of "qualified foreign talent" to help them during a time of economic crisis, Kuck added. "Maybe we've got all the homegrown talent we need to pull us out of this mess, because now we have to hope we do," he said.

But some H-1B critics contend that the hiring restrictions may do little to stop IT functions from being shifted to foreign workers, since the stimulus bill doesn't place any limits on offshoring.

Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, claimed that many TARP recipients have "huge shadow workforces" at outsourcing vendors. And outsourcing by Wall Street firms has risen since the federal bailout program began last fall, according to Hira.

Restricting H-1B hiring "will rectify some of the indefensible practices of quasi-nationalized banks," Hira said. "But unfortunately, it doesn't close the loopholes where most of the abuse occurs."
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http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...

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3.
Border Patrol goes double green: Building to be model for energy efficiency
By Aileen B. Flores
The El Paso Times (TX), February 22, 2009

El Paso, TX -- The first U.S. Border Patrol station to be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified is strategically located in an area of quick and easy access to the border, said Assistant Patrol Agent in Charge Salvador Zamora.

The new "environmentally friendly" station in Northeast El Paso, at the corner of Gateway Boulevard South and Hondo Pass Drive, is about 95 percent complete and will house 350 agents.

According to Zamora, about 200 vehicles will travel daily in and out of the station using Highway 54 as the main route to Interstate 10, Paisano Drive and the Border Highway.

"Our response time will increase tremendously," he said. "This (land) was free, positioned in a growing area of the Northeast as well as to immediate access to the mayor roadways of El Paso."

Agents have to take "surface streets" to access the border driving from the actual Border Patrol station on Montana Avenue, he added.

Currently the Border Patrol operates in a 17,000 square-foot building.

The new 54,000 square-foot building will serve as an administrative and processing center where inmates will usually not stay for more than five hours, Zamora said.

Gerry Hayes, president of Castner Heights Neighborhood Association, said neighbors have reported a rise in crime during the past six months, but she is glad that the presence of the agency will increase the level of law enforcement in the area.

The new station will also boost the area's economy as the agency employees consume products from businesses in the Northeast, Hayes said.

The land was provided to the agency by the U.S. Department of Defense, and the $15.6 million construction contract was awarded in 2006 to Banes General Contractors, a local company.

Fred Seibert, company's vice president, said the building is about two to three months away from completion. He said more than 60 people are working on the building.

According to agency officials, about 80 percent of all materials are certified recyclable and the station will be 50 percent more energy efficient than a building using standard construction methods.

"Border Patrol goes green again with the first LEED-certified Border Patrol building in the country" -- Zamora said -- out of 150 Border Patrol stations in the nation.
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http://www.elpasotimes.com/communities/ci_11762316

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4.
Illegal immigration case stemming from Van Nuys work site raid is dismissed
ICE agents violated regulations in 2008 raid, judge says in ruling that could affect dozens of other cases.
By Anna Gorman
The Los Angeles Times, February 21, 2009

A judge has dismissed the case of an illegal immigrant facing deportation after ruling that federal agents violated his rights during a work site raid in Van Nuys in 2008.

Los Angeles immigration Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor issued a written decision that agents failed to follow their own regulations when they detained Gregorio Perez Cruz without reasonable suspicion that he was an illegal immigrant.

The judge also determined that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents failed to advise Perez Cruz of his rights and interrogated him in an "intimidating and coercive environment," where he was deprived of food and water for 18 hours and forced to sleep on a concrete floor.

Perez Cruz's attorney, Ahilan Arulanantham, said the 19-page decision could affect dozens of other immigration cases of workers arrested at Micro Solutions Enterprises.

"We're very pleased that the rights of the Van Nuys workers were vindicated," said Arulanantham, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "The decision sends a message to ICE that it cannot disregard the rights of the people that it targets."

On Feb. 7, 2008, armed immigration agents entered Micro Solutions Enterprises, blocked the exits and ordered employees to stop working while the authorities executed federal arrest warrants for eight people and a search warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. The eight people were arrested on criminal charges and 130 others were arrested on charges of immigration violation.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the government plans to appeal the decision, which was issued on Feb. 10 but not announced until Friday.

"ICE respectfully disagrees with the immigration judge's ruling," Kice said in a statement. "The ICE enforcement action involving the factory operated by Micro Solutions Enterprises was carried out in accordance with the terms of the related search warrant as well as with ICE policies and procedures."

Government regulations prevent agents from detaining people unless there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally. They also require agents to advise detainees of their rights if they are being arrested without a warrant.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-raid21-2009feb21,0,5903800.story

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5.
American justice in a foreign language
L.A. is known as a mecca for court interpreters, but when a defendant or witness speaks a rare dialect, officials may resort to unusual remedies.
By Victoria Kim
The Los Angeles Times, February 21, 2009

The international phone line connecting a downtown Los Angeles courtroom to a cellphone 1,500 miles away in Texcoco, Mexico, was repeatedly disconnected and difficult to hear at times.

But on that line hung the constitutional rights of Candido Ortiz, accused of drunkenly stabbing a man with a broken beer bottle and charged with attempted murder. Ortiz, 20, spoke only a variant of Mixe, a language used by about 7,000 people in the mountains of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

In a case that is unusual even for Los Angeles, a place that some call the mecca of court interpreters, officials were unable to find anyone in the United States who could translate for Ortiz. A three-month search eventually led officials to Eduardo Diaz, a university student in Mexico.

At Ortiz's preliminary hearing earlier this month, Diaz was teleconferenced in from Mexico to interpret over a speakerphone. A Spanish interpreter in court translated the proceedings from English to Spanish, then Diaz translated the Spanish into Quetzaltepec Mixe, also spelled Mije.

Legal guarantee

California law guarantees a defendant the right to an interpreter in all criminal proceedings. In Los Angeles County, where more than a third of the population is foreign-born and more than half speaks a language other than English at home, that sometimes means court officials are sent scrambling for speakers of Chuukese, Marshallese, Mexican Sign Language or Q'anjob'al, a Mayan variant.

"We're proud of the fact that over 100 languages are represented among our interpreters," said Greg Drapac, who headed the court's interpreter assignment operation from 1997 to 2005. "Which is great, until you realize there are over 6,000 living languages."

As the ears and mouths of non-English speakers, court interpreters hold the key to whether criminal defendants understand the proceedings and their rights in the justice system. Inadequate interpretation can lead to inaccurate testimony, wrongful convictions or plea deals in which defendants sign over their rights without realizing what the consequences are, experts say.

In most cases, only the interpreter's English translation is entered into the court record. Juries are often instructed to rely on the interpreter's version, even if they understand the original language.

The demand has been growing for interpreters of indigenous languages spoken in Latin America because of an influx of migrant laborers from those communities. Court officials, who once automatically assigned Spanish interpreters to everyone who looked Latino, are becoming increasingly sensitive to the diversity and nuances that exist within immigrant communities, Drapac said.

Indigenous migrants from Mexico, who are largely monolingual and often speak only limited street Spanish, are used to being treated poorly in Mexico and often don't complain when they are assigned an interpreter who doesn't speak their language, experts said. Sometimes, they said, a defendant's silence is mistaken as a sign of mental illness.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-interpret21-2009feb21,0,4285160....