"They cannot stop us from dreaming that."

[Migrant Health Promotion]

MHP Immigration News Service

August 30, 2011

Immigration News Service is a project of Migrant Health Promotion. Its purpose is to educate members of the farmworker health community about trends in immigration policy and empower them to become involved in the immigration policy debate.  This bi-weekly news service features articles from mainstream, national, local, and alternative news sources and presents links and excerpts, without editorializing.

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Table of Contents

1. U.S. Visa Rule Will Burden Families, Lawyers Say. The New York Times. Brian Knowlton. August 14, 2011.
2. Suit seeks to limit shackling of immigration detainees in court. Los Angeles Times, San Francisco. August 17, 2011.
3. Tides of immigration: Ebb and flow suggests good news about Mexico. Houston Chronicle, Opinion. August 19, 2011.
4. Obama's promising move on immigration. Los Angeles Times, Opinion. August 22, 2011.
5. Immigration attorneys: U.S. deportation policy shift starting. CNN. Catherine E. Shoichet. August 26, 2011.
6. Hundreds rally against immigration law. The Montomery Advertiser. Allison Griffin. August 29, 2011.

    
1. U.S. Visa Rule Will Burden Families, Lawyers Say. The New York Times. Brian Knowlton. August 14, 2011.

Excerpt: WASHINGTON — A new U.S. visa rule, taking effect Monday, appears likely to substantially lengthen the amount of time that Americans living overseas must wait before bringing along their noncitizen spouses or children if they have to move home quickly for personal or professional reasons, immigration lawyers say.

The U.S. immigration authorities say the new approach, which involves the processing of a visa document known as the I-130, allowing the entry of a citizen’s alien relative, will be more “efficient and consistent and centralized”; most applicants abroad will now mail their applications to a central office in Chicago, as Americans in the United States with foreign-national relatives now do. The authorities predict a five-month maximum for processing there; applicants then have to apply to the U.S. State Department for the actual visa.

But the current system for those abroad, which relies on in-person visits to U.S. consular or immigration offices, can take just one to three months, often without a lawyer’s services, and with less risk of important documents going astray or of minor problems dragging on, the immigration lawyers say.

“We don’t have a current intention to go back,” said Wayne Weightman, an immigration consultant who works in Southeast Asia and has a Cambodian wife and adopted children, “but what it’s basically done is taken away the ability to return timely if you do need to go back.”..

The change comes after the State Department billed immigration agency for its I-130 work last year for the first time — a total of $3 million, Ms. Ruano said. In an Aug. 8 memorandum, the agency said it had determined that “it is more cost-effective for U.S.C.I.S. to adjudicate all I-130s, with certain limited exceptions.”

The agency will still authorize the State Department to process applications in rare situations — such as medical emergencies, threats to personal safety or some adoptions. But Adam S. Klein of the Office of Policy and Strategy, an arm of the agency, emphasized in the conference call that “very, very few” exceptions would be granted.

The number of Americans involved appears relatively small; slightly more than 24,000 applications were filed abroad in the 2010 fiscal year, and one-third of them were handled by immigration agency field offices, according to the Federal Register. The immigration agency estimates that 10,000 applicants will be affected, Ms. Ruano said.


2. Suit seeks to limit shackling of immigration detainees in court. Los Angeles Times, San Francisco. August 17, 2011.

Excerpt: Civil rights attorneys in San Francisco have sued federal authorities, demanding an end to the alleged practice of shackling all adult detainees -- even the elderly and disabled -- during immigration court proceedings.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, contends that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security are violating the constitutional rights of detainees by failing to make case-by-case determinations of the need for shackling.

“Physical restraints are meant for those who pose significant risk to themselves or others,” ACLU attorney Julia Harumi Mass said in a statement. “There’s a big difference between Hannibal Lecter and your neighbor’s nanny.”


3. Tides of immigration: Ebb and flow suggests good news about Mexico. Houston Chronicle, Opinion. August 19, 2011.

Excerpt: The recent anti-illegal- immigrant law enacted by Alabama makes it a crime to "transport, conceal, harbor or shield an illegal immigrant." Along with the Obama administration, an ecumenical group of Alabama's Christian leaders opposes the bill, charging that the law makes it illegal to act as a "good Samaritan" toward an illegal immigrant.

Ironically, this bill (and others like it) comes when illegal immigration from Mexico has "sputtered to a trickle," according to Douglas S. Massey, co-director of Princeton University's Mexican Migration Project. Massey, quoted in a New York Times article by Damien Cave, goes on to speculate, "The net traffic [in Mexican illegal immigration] has gone to zero, and is probably a little bit negative."

In other words, it's possible that, in part because of baby boomers retiring south of the border, there may soon be more U.S. immigration to Mexico than Mexican immigration to the U.S..

Fifty years ago, workers crossing the border in search of manual labor could expect to earn 10 times more than they would in Mexico, according to Cave's article. But as the Mexican economy has quietly (to U.S. ears, at least) boomed, that gap has narrowed significantly. By 2003, according to a study by the University of California, San Diego, Mexican migrants in the U.S. were earning just 3.7 times more than they would back home. That gap has apparently narrowed even more in recent years.

In a not-unconnected development, educational opportunities are also on the rise in Mexico. The recent Mexican census shows that, between 2000 and 2010, the number of senior high or preparatory schools for students aged 15 to 18 grew far faster than did the population. In the state of Jalisco alone, the number of people with bachelor's degrees more than doubled during that same decade.


4. Obama's promising move on immigration. Los Angeles Times, Opinion. August 22, 2011.

Excerpt: When the Obama administration last week announced its intention to review the cases of 300,000 immigrants ensnared in the nation's deportation process, as well as to institute new guidelines going forward — with the goal of distinguishing between those who pose threats to public safety from those who are merely in the country illegally — reaction reverberated along well-worn lines. Enforcement hawks denounced the move as amnesty; immigration doves responded warily, worried that it would substitute for more comprehensive efforts to fix the nation's broken immigration system.

Both sides have reason for concern. Nevertheless, failing to please the extremes in this debate is hardly proof of failure. In fact, this is a sensible plan that offers at least temporary relief for deserving students, veterans, the elderly, crime victims and those with family — including same-sex partners — in the United States. It should not substitute for broader reform, but it will relieve some needless suffering until such a measure passes, as it must.

Among those who will receive the benefits of the administration's action are so-called DREAM Act students, young men and women in the country because their parents brought them here as children and who now are enrolled in American colleges and universities. To deport these students after investing in their education is neither smart nor compassionate; Obama's policy will effectively allow them to stay, at least for a time, by acknowledging the obvious fact that they are more desirable than immigrants who have committed crimes while in the United States. Illegal immigrants who have served in the U.S. military would receive the same protection.


5. Immigration attorneys: U.S. deportation policy shift starting. CNN. Catherine E. Shoichet. August 26, 2011.

Excerpt: (CNN) -- Judy Flanagan's phone rang Tuesday with a call the Arizona immigration attorney wasn't expecting.

A federal prosecutor suggested one of her clients -- a 22-year-old university student with no criminal record -- should ask to have her deportation case dismissed.

"That's never happened before," Flanagan said.

Immigration lawyers around the country hope those types of calls from federal officials will become more common under new deportation guidelines the Obama administration detailed a week ago.

The Department of Homeland Security said the government would review about 300,000 deportation cases pending in federal immigration courts. Lower-priority cases -- those not involving individuals considered violent or otherwise dangerous -- would be suspended under the new criteria.

Federal authorities are still hashing out the details of how the cases will be reviewed, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said Thursday.

"Because the working group is in the midst of designing the process for reviewing cases, no individual cases have been administratively closed or otherwise affected by the policy announced last week," said the official, who asked to remain anonymous per departmental policy..

"We are seeing different things in different places," said Eleanor Pelta, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Some attorneys say they're seeing more cases administratively closed, Pelta said, but others say local immigration officers have told them they need more guidance from the federal government before they can change course.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's letter announcing the case-by-case review last week followed a June memo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton, which also urged prioritizing cases through "prosecutorial discretion."

"The spirit of the announcement (last week) was, 'We're really serious about this,'" Pelta said.

Administration officials call it a matter allocating scarce resources more efficiently. Critics call it backdoor amnesty, a way to push through policy changes that conservatives in Congress would never agree to.


6. Hundreds rally against immigration law. The Montomery Advertiser. Allison Griffin. August 29, 2011.

Excerpt: Just days before Alabama's strict immigration law is to go into effect, hundreds rallied in front of the state Capitol to pro­test the law, which makes it a state crime to be an undocu­mented alien in Alabama and for undocumented aliens to work in the state, among other provisions.

The organizer of the event, Edward Menefee, invoked the name of the Rev. Martin Lu­ther King Jr. and his famous "I have a dream" speech, which he delivered 48 years ago Sun­day.

"(King) preached about the beloved community, where all people would be welcomed and all people would be treated with respect," Menefee said to the crowd.

"We're here today as a stand of solidarity, that we are all in this community together, that we all have the same dreams of justice and opportunity."

Two state senators, Hank Sanders, D-Selma, and Quinton Ross, D-Montgomery, both said that they were there to stand with the crowd and that they were "ashamed" of the law.

"Although we are in the mi­nority, we will continue to fight on behalf of all Alabamians, which includes you and me," Ross said to applause..

Perhaps the most rousing testimony came from Pastor Gualberto Villegas, translated by Alex Rios. Villegas said it's unfair that all Hispanics are depicted as "terrorists or delin­quents."

"We are people, (and) what we want is just to make our lives better, because there are dreams in us too," Villegas said. To the many children in the crowd, Villegas said, "There are young people right here that are going to be the future doctors, the future sena­tors, the future lawyers.

"They cannot stop us from dreaming that."