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1. DHS targets border violence
2. Decline in naturalization applicants
3. Republican coalition presses Obama
4. WA employers using E-verify
5. Activists fret language limitations

1.
Napolitano Targets Border Violence
Homeland Security Chief Seeks to Stem Flow of Cash, Guns to Mexican Gangs
By Cam Simpson
The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2009

Washington, DC -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the Obama administration would soon unveil a plan for dealing with rising violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, including more resources to stem the flow of dollars and guns to warring drug gangs.

The Obama administration is increasingly concerned about the risks that rising violence in northern Mexico could spill over into U.S.

"I think there will be some announcements with some specifics that either I or the president will be making in the coming weeks," Ms. Napolitano said Friday during an interview.

Ms. Napolitano said the plan would include more resources aimed at stopping U.S.-acquired firearms and cash earned from illicit drug sales flowing back across the border. Money and guns are fueling the escalating violence in Mexico that is spilling into U.S. communities, including in Arizona. Ms. Napolitano was the state's governor before joining the Obama cabinet.

Ms. Napolitano revealed few specifics of the new effort, but said special task forces run by DHS -- uniting federal, state and local law enforcement -- would get greater attention. Those task forces are aimed specifically at the Mexican cartels' guns and cash, but currently have no designated funding.

Ms. Napolitano indicated there would be more so-called outbound enforcement: checking people and vehicles leaving the U.S. to see if they are carrying contraband. She said those efforts wouldn't hamper the job of stopping illegal immigration into the U.S.

"We can do significant things," she said. "And you know we're not -- let me be very, very clear -- we are not removing border-protection agents who are between the ports of entry guarding our border. We are not doing that. We need those people....We need those boots on the ground on illegal immigration."

Mexican drug gangs are warring over lucrative trade routes into the U.S. At the same time, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has mobilized his military in a two-year crackdown on drug trafficking. An estimated 7,000 people have died in drug-related homicides since 2008.

Ms. Napolitano on Friday cited stepped-up planning by the Obama administration on the issue, as more public attention is directed toward Mexico's violence and its potential to spill over the border.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123698458828525081.html

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2.
Fewer people applying for U.S. citizenship
By Dianne Solis
The Dallas Morning News, March 16, 2009

Demand is off at the federal agency that handles everything from citizenship applications to work visas. The slump follows fiscal year 2008, when there was a tight contraction in citizenship requests at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Reduced demand extends into the North Texas offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, says the top manager of that agency, Michael Aytes.

"We are seeing the effect of the economy," Aytes, the interim deputy director of the agency, said in a recent Dallas visit. "[But] we are particularly concerned about naturalizations. ... It is part of the process where people assimilate and become vested into the United States."

In fiscal year 2007, a record 1.4 million legal permanent residents applied to become naturalized U.S. citizens just as the agency raised fees for a variety of services. About a million people received U.S. citizenship the following year.

By fiscal year 2008, the number of citizenship applications in the pipeline dropped to about 518,000 – far below the 730,000 filed in 2006.

Legal immigration matters in such cities as Dallas, where a quarter of the population is foreign-born, and Irving, where a third of the population is foreign-born. In Texas, about a sixth of the populace is foreign-born. About 60 percent of the 29 million foreign-born people in the U.S. are here legally, either with green cards or refugee or political asylum or work visas, according to a recent Department of Homeland Security report that uses 2008 data.
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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-ci...

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3.
A fine border line between cartels, immigration debate
By Bridget Johnson
The Hill (Washington, DC), March 16, 2009

Fear of the gruesome Mexican drug-cartel violence spilling over America's southern border is reigniting debate over immigration reform and controversial border-security measures.

Three dozen Republican representatives penned a letter last week to President Obama asking him to complete the border fence in light of the cartel violence that has seen Camp Pendleton Marines banned from visiting the party town of Tijuana, the Ciudad Juarez mayor relocating his family to Texas for safety, and a State Department travel alert issued last month urging renewed caution in the tourist destination.

"While more than 600 miles of pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers have been constructed so far, it is out understanding that nearly 70 miles of infrastructure, designated for specific areas that are susceptible to significant cross-border traffic, remains uncompleted," the members — 13 representing border states — say in the letter.

"In areas where construction has been unnecessarily delayed, the REAL ID Act (P.L. 109-13) provides the Secretary of Homeland Security with the authority to waive any legal requirements that impede the construction of border security barriers," the letter continues. "Given this authority, in addition to the requirement for at least 700 miles of border infrastructure, we request that you take immediate action to finish the 70 miles of uncompleted fence construction projects.

"We urge you to also consider expanding this infrastructure to other areas of the border that continue to experience the effects of increased border violence."

Joe Kasper, spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), one of the letter's signatories, told The Hill that the infrastructure "is not the silver bullet, but part of a multifaceted approach" to battling both drug and human smuggling.

Hunter's district sits in a major smuggling corridor between the border and Los Angeles. "People in any border community feel the effects of illegal immigration and smuggling more than they do elsewhere in the United States," Kasper said. "They continue to call for an enhanced security presence along the border. Their position on the issue hasn't changed."

But the leader of the Border Patrol union says the border fencing has just increased attacks on officers, while the director of a pro-immigration organization blasted the call for more fencing as "self-serving."

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told The Hill that officers continue to be subject to a "dramatic increase" in assaults, with 1,097 documented incidents in the fiscal year between Oct. 1, 2007, and Sept. 30, 2008. "Obviously, we're extremely concerned about the continued escalation of violence, which has been increasing every year for at least the past six years," he said.

While the completed border infrastructure has had a "negligible effect on border violence," Bonner said, "there appears to be a correlation between the fortification of the border and assaults on our agents."

"The fence affords cartels a degree of protection to launch assaults on our agents without being detected," Bonner said.

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), said that border restrictions continue to give drug cartels a revenue stream as immigrants pay cartel-controlled human trafficking groups to get across.

"By sealing off the border in this way, what you end up doing is giving [the cartels] more power," Salas said. "Their money-making is actually increased."

David Hernandez, a community activist and founder of Los Angeles Conservative Hispanic Americans, told The Hill that the border violence presents the opportunity to open a dialogue about security issues.

"When it was not politically correct to talk about the crimes that the illegal-alien criminal element was participating in, if you were to even mention that you were thrown in with 'you're a racist, you're a bigot,' " said Hernandez, who has run twice as the Republican nominee against Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and plans to challenge the congressman again in 2010. "It's become so publicized that for even the most timid person on illegal immigration, it's a real concern."

While the Department of Homeland Security is anticipated soon to announce assistance to help Mexico crack down on the cartels in terms of weapons and money laundering, the border violence may have an effect not just on the immigration debate but on immigration levels as well.

"Any steps that you take to curtail Mexican drug violence will help illegal immigration," said Bryan Griffith, spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, noting that though stepped-up enforcement may help, the violence itself may spur more northward journeys. "Generally, people come to the U.S. to find jobs," Griffith said. "If you have violence, there's more of a motivation."

Bonner said that at the moment the poor economy seems to be resulting in fewer immigrants ponying up smuggling fees to cross into the U.S. and fewer jobs waiting for migrants on this side. "It's very rare for someone to cross the border without employment lined up," he said.

He does say, though, that the possibility remains for a flood of Mexicans being driven north by the bloody streets at home.

"If Mexican violence continues at this pace, then you're going to have refugees fleeing the violence," Bonner said, adding that cartels have shown they will just follow those who have escaped their wrath into American cities to exact kidnappings, home invasions and killings — "sending the message that you can't run far enough to get away from us."

The solutions being offered to the Obama administration to keep drug violence from spilling into America's streets are, again, inextricably linked to the immigration debate.
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http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/a-fine-border-line-between-cartels-i...

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4.
More Puget Sound-area employers checking if workers are legal
By Lornet Turnbull
The Seattle Times, March 15, 2009

At Wren Construction in Everett, Annemarie Montera runs the names of all new hires through a federal verification system in an effort to weed out illegal immigrants.

She's among a growing number of employers here and across the country embracing E-Verify, a once-obscure and controversial Internet-based hiring tool run by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration that's been getting increasing attention.

In the last year, employer use of the program — now free and voluntary — has more than doubled nationwide and in Washington state, where users include Seattle law firms, the Salvation Army and even a Kirkland homeowner who signed up for the service when he was hiring a caregiver for his wife.

That growth came even before the Obama administration signaled its intention to focus more on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants — a shift in enforcement that could lead to the program's expansion.

Montera said she began using E-Verify after seeing it on CNN.

"Being in the construction industry, we know there's a greater likelihood to encounter workers who are not here legally," she said. "I'm a bleeding-heart Democrat, but when it comes to this, we want to make sure we're doing the right thing."

But along with momentum have come some setbacks.

In the recently approved $780 billion economic-stimulus package, Democratic leadership in Congress stripped a measure requiring employers who receive stimulus money to use E-Verify to ensure they hire only legal U.S. workers.

The program could go a long way toward ensuring illegal immigrants are not hired for stimulus jobs, according to recent studies by two conservative groups — the Center for Immigration Studies and the Heritage Foundation. They estimate that without such controls, illegal immigrants could take up to 300,000 of the estimated 2 million construction jobs the stimulus money is predicted to create.
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008861469_everify15m.html

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5.
Language, laws a challenge for indigenous migrants
By Manuel Valdes
The Associated Press, March 15, 2009

When immigration agents arrested 16 farmworkers in a mass arrest of illegal immigrants early this year, legal advocates raced to find interpreters for some of the men, who spoke only a language called Mixtec.

But by the time an interpreter was found, most of the men were on their way out of the country after signing away their rights to contest deportation — a procedure they might not have understood.

The deportations alarmed immigrant advocates in this agricultural city 60 miles north of Seattle. It also raised questions about the deportation proceedings for people who speak little Spanish or English.

"There is no way they knew what they were signing. No way," said Rev. Jo Beecher of the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Mount Vernon, one of the advocates who tried to help the men.

Although federal courts have ruled that immigration proceedings must be translated into the language of the detainee, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no interpreters in the area who speak Mixtec — a tonal language with several dialects — Beecher said.

The case of the Mount Vernon men also highlights some of the clashes that are becoming more common as the growing community of indigenous peoples from Latin America meets the American legal system.

Indigenous peoples are the direct descendants of the inhabitants who lived in the region before colonial times. They have a distinct culture, languages and history than those of their Latino counterparts.

Some observers believe the migration of indigenous Latin Americans to the U.S. is increasing even as the flow of Spanish-speaking immigrants eases.

There are about 500,000 indigenous people in the U.S., according to the Bi-national Center for the Development of the Oaxacan Indigenous Communities, based in Fresno, Calif. That's only counting people from Mexico, not other countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras.

Between 10 and 30 percent of the farm workers in California are now estimated to be indigenous, a recent study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found. Similar growth has occurred in Washington, Oregon and Florida.

"It's been until recently that the immigration has grown to a point that the government has become aware of the language diversity," said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, a project director at the Center for Labor Research and Education of the University of California Los Angeles. "As more and more immigrants arrive ... authorities are not very well prepared."

Hundreds of indigenous languages and dialects are spoken in Mexico and Central America, and some of those dialects are drastically different from each other, said Rufino Dominguez-Santos of the Bi-national Center for the Development of the Oaxacan Indigenous Communities.

In Oaxaca alone — the Mexican state where the bulk of indigenous workers in Mount Vernon have come from — twelve different languages are spoken, Dominguez-Santos said. Fourteen percent of Oaxacans who speak an indigenous language don't speak Spanish, according to Mexican census figures. Mexico's government recognizes 162 living languages, plus some 300 dialects.

"There's a lack of knowledge by immigration agents, police and social workers that there are a lot of languages spoken in Mexico," Dominguez-Santos.

In the Mount Vernon case, agents quickly recognized that the group didn't speak Spanish, said Lorie Dankers, ICE's spokeswoman in Seattle.

But the son of one of the arrested men arrested volunteered to translate, and did so for the two Mixtec speakers who joined 12 Spanish-speaking men in chosing "voluntary return," an option that lets illegal immigrants leave the U.S. quickly, avoiding detention and other sanctions, such as a 10-year entrance ban to the U.S.

"The supervisor observed the interview, based on the body language, he believes they fully understood," Dankers said.

ICE also has the option of contacting an interpretation service run by Philadelphia-based Language Services Associates, which says it has the ability to furnish interpreters for Mixtec and six other indigenous languages.

Using someone in the community is a common practice among law enforcement and other government agencies, but it can lead to trouble and misunderstandings. In many instances, concepts of American law don't translate easily into indigenous law and should be conveyed by a trained interpreter, Dominguez-Santos said.

"If you have a document where you purport to be giving up certain rights, then you have to have that document translated in a language you can understand in order for the process to comply with due process," said Jorge Baron, an attorney and executive director at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a Seattle-based legal aid group. Baron's group helped in finding an interpreter for the men.

But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, cautions that access to interpreters for immigrants facing deportation is not a right.

"To think it's a right, our responsibility, to help you avoid being deported, it's kind of silly," Krikorian said. "If we don't have a translator in your obscure language, well, that's too bad."

His organization lobbies for stricter immigration enforcement. He said that bringing up the language barriers is a tactic by immigration attorneys to delay deportation.
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http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D96UI5L80.html