1. Sen. Grassley blocks bill
2. Gingrich's immigration boards
3. GOP candidates debate
4. AL trains 16,000 cops
5. Dayton welcomes illegals
1.
Key senator blocks Lee-Chaffetz immigration bill
By Matt Canham
The Salt Lake Tribune, December 1, 2011
A bipartisan immigration bill is unusual, but one led by Utah Republicans received overwhelming support in the House earlier this week and was just about to fly through the Senate, too.
And then Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, stepped in the way.
The Iowa senator’s objections delay any action on the measure, which was sponsored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz and passed the House on Tuesday in a 389-15 vote.
Sen. Mike Lee is taking the lead on the issue in the Senate and has offered an identical bill.
Their proposal would eliminate the per-country caps on visas issued to highly skilled workers, essentially allowing more well-educated people from India and China to work in the United States.
Currently each country can claim only 7 percent of the 140,000 work visas issued annually. The bill also would boost the cap from 7 percent to 15 percent on family visas, allowing more people from places such as Mexico to reunite with their families.
The legislation sidesteps the hot topic of illegal immigration. It also doesn’t increase the total number of visas provided in a year.
While a wide swath of Democrats and Republicans supports the measure, Grassley has reservations.
. . .
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/53030697-90/immigration-bill-lee-v...
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2.
Newt Gingrich as president could turn the White House into an ideas factory
By David A. Fahrenthold
The Washington Post, December 1, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/newt-gingrich-offers-big-ideas-fo...
This is America under President Gingrich:
There are two Social Security systems — one old, one new, running side by side. There are two tax systems and two versions of Medicare. Immigration decisions are handled by citizen councils spread across the country.
. . .
“It’s the kind of thing that sounds right, maybe, when you sit on your couch and hear it,” said Steven Camarota, the research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tougher immigration enforcement.
He was talking about Gingrich’s idea to create local citizen boards, modeled on the boards that evaluated World War II draftees, to decide whether illegal immigrants should stay or go.
“But boy,” Camarota said, “when you take it all apart and think about how all this works in practice, it’s like, ‘ugh.’ ”
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3.
Why GOP candidates keep debating illegal immigration, despite pitfalls
For a core of conservative Republican primary voters, illegal immigration constitutes a key test for defining who a presidential candidate is.
By Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science Monitor, December 1, 2011
Immigration has burst onto the Republican presidential campaign stage, with some candidates employing the scarlet “A” word – amnesty – to label the policy prescription of rivals. Others are using the issue to sound tough on national security.
But don’t expect to hear any comprehensive or politically realistic discussion of what for some crucial segments of the voting population remains an emotional topic, many immigration experts say.
Instead, they add, candidates will use such a hot-button issue as a vehicle for saying something else – about themselves or others. And some voters for whom the illegal-immigration issue resonates will in turn use what they hear to give a candidate a Roman thumbs up or thumbs down.
“Immigration is a tool for Republican and independent voters especially that helps them think in shorthand about these candidates,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.
“It’s an issue that’s going to be around for the rest of the campaign, so get used to it popping up,” he adds. “It’s just not going to be a clarifying part of it.”
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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2011/1201/Why-GOP-candi...
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4.
APNewsBreak: Ala. Trains 16K Cops on Immigrant Law
By Jay Reeves
The Associated Press, December 1, 2011
After confusion and misgivings from some police about how to enforce Alabama's new immigration crackdown, the state is now requiring special training in the law for more than 16,000 law officers — every sworn officer in the state.
Officials hope the unusual move will alleviate uncertainty about the law on the front lines of law enforcement.
Police chiefs, prosecutors and judges have said that the lengthy law's complicated provisions were hard to understand, and federal court rulings that blocked some sections while letting others take effect only made life tougher for officers on the street. Some departments have relied on little more than news reports for information about the law, officials say.
Alan Benefield, head of the Alabama Police Officers' Standards and Training Commission, said Thursday the panel decided last month to take the unusual step of requiring four hours of training for every sworn officer in the state because of the law's complexity and the lingering confusion. He said new laws or court rulings are sometimes added to the state's normal training curriculum, but full-blown courses for specific laws aren't held very often.
More than 1,000 officers already have finished the courses, he said, and thousands more officers from local, county and state agencies will go through training in coming weeks. Benefield said refresher sessions and curriculum updates will likely be required as courts issue new rulings on challenges by the Obama administration, immigrant rights groups and other opponents of the law.
The law has caused confusion in some areas.
On Nov. 16, in a case that made international news, a German manager with Mercedes-Benz was arrested under the law for not having a driver's license with him while driving a rental car. The Tuscaloosa city attorney said the charge was later dismissed after the man provided the documents in municipal court. State officials said the case was handled properly under the law.
But in an incident just this week, Honda Manufacturing of Alabama said a Japanese worker temporarily working in the country was cited under the immigration law. A person with knowledge of the case said the man was ticketed by a city officer at a routine roadblock even though he had a valid Japanese passport and an international driver's license.
Statehouse Republicans said descriptions of the incident didn't appear to match up with the law itself, which doesn't include a provision for ticketing someone. Also, the law states that police should accept a passport with valid stamps as proof that someone is in the country legally.
The president of the Alabama Circuit Judges Association says he's heard reports of police setting up roadblocks near mobile home communities where Hispanic people live and a municipal judge saying that anyone without a driver's license would be arrested under the law.
Signed by Republican Gov. Robert Bentley in June, the law is considered the nation's toughest state crackdown on illegal immigration both by supporters and opponents.
In lawsuits filed by the Justice Department and others, courts have blocked sections of the law, including a one-of-its-kind provision requiring public schools to check the citizenship status of students. But other sections began taking effect in late September, including one that requires police to detain people if they're discovered not to have valid documents during a routine encounter like a traffic stop.
Benefield, executive secretary of the commission, said the training focuses on sections of the law that police are most likely to be faced with enforcing, particularly the part that involves detaining people who lack proper identification.
"We tried to boil it down to the simple facts of what the officer on the street would be dealing with," said Benefield.
Training materials from the course, provided to The Associated Press by Benefield, emphasize that only the federal government has the power to determine whether someone is in the country legally, but that police agencies and administrators can be sued under the state law for failing to enforce either it or federal immigration statutes.
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http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/apnewsbreak-ala-trains-16k-cops-immig...
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5.
Rustbelt city wants immigrants, skilled or not
Dayton, Ohio, welcomes foreign-born newcomers, even those who lack papers
By Chip Mitchell
WBEZ (OH), December 1, 2011
Lifelong Dayton resident Monica Schultz, 36, brings me to the East End block where she grew up. “This whole street was full of families,” she says. “Kids were running around playing, all within my age range.”
Now no kids are in sight.
Schultz points to a half dozen abandoned houses, including one right next door to her family’s place. She says the city has boarded it up a few times but stray cats keep finding their way in.
“We had a flea infestation problem,” she tells me. “People walking by could see the fleas or feel the fleas or get the fleas. All of the yards in the neighborhood here were becoming infested with fleas.”
Schultz says the city can’t keep up with houses like this. “It’s one of many that need to be bulldozed,” she says. “But it’s on a list.”
Dayton’s population has been shrinking since the 1960s. Most of the area’s factory jobs are long gone. To save the city, Schultz has embraced a new idea: Help immigrants and refugees lay roots in Dayton.
Schultz, who owns a small marketing firm, helped lead community meetings that generated a 72-point plan called “Welcome Dayton.” City commissioners approved the plan this fall. The points range from better immigrant access to social services, to more translations of court materials, to grants for immigrants to open shops in a dilapidated commercial corridor, to a soccer event that supporters envision as a local World Cup tournament.
Schultz says the plan could revive a Dayton entrepreneurial spirit that sparked inventions ranging from the cash register to the airplane. “You would have small businesses,” she says. “You would have coffee shops and you would have bakeries and you would have specialty grocery stores.”
Dayton is among several rustbelt cities suffering from population loss and brain drain. To create businesses and jobs, some communities are trying to attract immigrants, especially highly educated ones. Dayton stands out for the attention its plan pays to immigrants without wealth or skills.
The plan even addresses people without permission to be in the country. One provision calls for police officers to quit asking suspects about their immigration status unless the crime was “serious.” Another point could lead to a city identification card that would help residents do everything from open a bank account to buy a cell phone.
City Manager Tim Riordan, Dayton’s chief executive, says welcoming all types of immigrants will make the area more cosmopolitan. “I think there would be a vibrancy,” he says. “We’d start to have some international investment of companies deciding they ought to locate here.”
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Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that pushes for strict immigration controls, acknowledges that attracting immigrants would increase the size of Dayton’s economy. “But that’s different than arguing that there’s a benefit,” he says. “Growing an area’s gross domestic product, but not the per capita GDP, doesn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t be very helpful. In fact, there might be problems with that.”
Camarota says the low-skilled immigrants would put downward pressure on wages for workers on Dayton’s bottom rungs.
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http://www.wbez.org/story/rustbelt-city-wants-immigrants-skilled-or-not-...
