Please visit our YouTube and Facebook pages.

1. E-verify sustained through September
2. Congress passes religious, refugee visa bills
3. Experts debate immigration policies
4. Feds probing death at RI detention center
5. Mexico extradites BP agents

1.
E-Verify Clings to Life Despite No New Funding
By Dave Eberhart
Newsmax, March 12, 2009

A controversial program that has won bipartisan support for stemming the flood of illegal workers is clinging to life despite the Senate’s refusal to extend the program.

Although Congress failed to re-authorize the E-Verify program during deliberations of the omnibus spending bill, E-Verify has the funding it needs to operate through September.

The FY 2009 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security has some fine print that may keep E-Verify alive until September 30, 2009, reports the Heritage Foundation. E-Verify gives employers an online database they can use to verify that a prospective employee is legally qualified to work in the United States.

It was the lack of a requirement that E-Verify be used for stimulus funds that is expected to result in the employment of up to 300,000 illegals on construction jobs funded by the $787 billion stimulus bill passed by Congress.

The conflicting language in the bill about the true end date of E-Verify has spawned a Department of Homeland Security memo speculating that the program can continue to fill its role as a major bulwark to cull illegal immigrant workers from employment in the U.S.

“This agency continues to go on the premise that we are authorized to continue the program because it has been funded through September 2009,” Bill Wright, spokesman for the DHS division that operates the program, tells Newsmax.
. . .
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/e_verify_program_funds/2009/03/12/19129...

********
********

2.
Two U.S. immigration amendments extended
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 12, 2009

Washington, DC -- Congress has extended two immigration-related laws that impact the Jewish community.

On Wednesday evening, the Senate passed an extension through Sept. 30 of the Religious Worker Visa Program, portions of which had expired on March 6. The program makes as many as 5,000 permanent immigrant visas available each year for religious workers employed by various denominations, and is particularly helpful to small Jewish communities in remote areas who have difficulty hiring rabbis, cantors and Hebrew school teachers.

The House has already passed an identical bill and the extension will go into effect once it is signed by the president.

"This is an important step in ensuring that the Jewish community can keep the dedicated and experienced teachers and other foreign religious workers that we rely on,” said Gideon Aronoff, President and CEO of HIAS, in a statement.
. . .
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/12/1003677/two-immigration-amendment...

********
********

3.
Panelist debate immigration policy at UNT
By Patrick McGee
The Star Telegram (Fort Worth), March 13, 2009

Denton, TX -- It wasn’t an evenly weighted debate Thursday night. Three of the four members of the panel discussing U.S. immigration policy believed that immigrants mostly benefit the nation.

But the lone advocate for tighter immigration controls, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, held his own.

Krikorian said the America of 2009 is a highly advanced society that does not need immigrants as badly as did the America of 100 years ago.

"Immigration policy has to be based on what’s good for your grandchildren, not what was good for your grandparents," Krikorian said.

It is wrongheaded "social engineering" for the government to try to funnel people into the country instead of just keeping most of them out, he said.

To which Lee Hamilton, president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, replied: "Well Mark, it’s social engineering to exclude them."

"We need talented people coming into this country to help us grow and develop," said Hamilton, a former Democratic U.S. representative and co-chairman of the 9-11 Commission.

He noted that on his Saturday morning errands, he sees only foreigners running the businesses he visits.
. . .
http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1255875.html

********
********

4.
U.S. probes controversial death at Wyatt detention facility
By W. Zachary Malinowski
The Providence Journal, March 13, 2009

Providence -- A federal criminal investigation is under way into the death of Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng, an immigrant detainee, who died at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls last summer after corrections officers and nursing staff allegedly ignored his pleas for help.

In papers filed yesterday in U.S. District Court, a lawyer for the estate of Ng’s wife, Lin Li Qu, said prosecutors from the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Hampshire told him “that they were conducting a criminal investigation concerning the detention and death of Mr. Ng.”

Notice of the criminal investigation was gleaned from a letter that was filed in federal court. The letter, from lawyer John J. McConnell to Judge William E. Smith, says that the federal prosecutors consider Ng’s former cellmate “a material witness,” and they don’t want him deported to El Salvador.

“That’s fabulous news for us,” said McConnell. “The Ng family has been contacted and they are very pleased that there is a criminal investigation.”

The witness, Roger Gracias Lozano, is in an unusual position: he’s a witness for the government in a criminal investigation, while at the same time he’s a witness against the government in a wrongful-death lawsuit.

The new development is a dramatic turnaround from the government’s position last month at an emergency hearing to block his deportation.

On Feb. 26, Helene Kazanjian, a federal prosecutor from Maine representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Smith that he did not have the authority to block the deportation of Gracias Lozano. He was arrested after entering the country illegally in Vermont last summer after traveling to Canada to seek asylum.

Fidelma Fitzpatrick, a lawyer who works with McConnell and the American Civil Liberties Union, countered that shipping their key witness out of the country would give ICE, Wyatt and other defendants an unfair advantage in the civil lawsuit. She said they would not have enough time to depose him or have him available as a trial witness.
. . .
http://www.projo.com/news/content/WYATT_DEPORTATION_03-13-09_H8DLLQV_v15...

********
********

5.
Mexico extradites ex-Border Patrol agents to US
The Associated Press, March 12, 2009

Mexico City (AP) -- Mexico has extradited two former U.S. Border Patrol agents accused of taking bribes from migrant smugglers.
. . .
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gzmTMp9A3fvW8pBKIhozTM...