Definitively Determined

[Migrant Health Promotion]

MHP Immigration News Service

March 31, 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. Report criticizes immigrant detention system. Reporting by Tim Gaynor. Reuters. March 17, 2011.
2. Utah bucks conservative trend on illegal immigration. Nicholas Riccardi. Los Angeles Times. March 19, 2011.
3. U.S. to Let Workers Check Their Immigration Status Online. Jeff Bliss. Bloomberg. March 21, 2011.
4. 'Hispanics don’t want to be educated, they want to be gangsters': Letter to U.S. Senate ignites immigration storm. Daily Mail Reporter. March 23, 2011.
5. US Immigration Judge Suspends Deportation of Gay Spouse. Michael Bowman. Voice of America. March 27, 2011.
6. NY girl in middle of immigration row returns to US. Associated Press. March 30, 2011.
   

1. Report criticizes immigrant detention system. Reporting by Tim Gaynor. Reuters. March 17, 2011.

Excerpt: Immigrants detained in the United States lack adequate access to legal representation and medical care, while the system itself is over reliant on detention, a human rights report released on Thursday found.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights study -- "Immigration in the United States: Detention and Due Process" -- examined the U.S. federal government's immigration enforcement and detention system.

It drew on research including visits to six immigration detention facilities in Arizona and Texas in July 2009, since when the U.S. federal government has announced its own comprehensive review of the immigration enforcement system.

"The IACHR is troubled by the lack of a genuinely civil detention system, where the general conditions are commensurate with human dignity and humane treatment," the report said..

The IACHR, a body within the Washington-based Organization of American States, said it was "disturbed" that detention management and care was frequently outsourced to private contractors, while "insufficient information is available concerning the mechanisms in place to supervise" them.

2. Utah bucks conservative trend on illegal immigration. Nicholas Riccardi. Los Angeles Times. March 19, 2011.

Excerpt: Reporting from Salt Lake City — President Obama's aides were flabbergasted. Here was Mark Shurtleff, the conservative Republican attorney general of deeply red Utah, explaining how he and other GOP officials had approved a statewide version of the immigration measures that the president and his progressive allies have long sought.

"You sued us on healthcare," Shurtleff recalls the aides saying during his meeting in Washington this month. "How is it you did something differently on immigration?"

The answer lies in how Utah expresses its conservative values — particularly the importance placed on family and business — and the influence of the Mormon Church.

Gov. Gary Herbert last week signed a bill that would give illegal immigrants who do not commit serious crimes and are working in Utah documents that, in the state's eyes at least, make them legal residents. For the law to work, however, the Obama administration would have to permit Utah to make it legal to employ people who entered the United States illegally — a federal crime..

Opponents of the measure are hoping to turn Utah into another sort of symbol. They're organizing primary challenges against Herbert and state lawmakers who backed the bill. Activists are pushing county Republican Party committees to censure legislators who voted for it.

"A large percentage of elected officials will lose their seats," vowed Arturo Morales Llan, an activist against illegal immigration. Legislators in other states will say, 'Wow, if this happened in Utah and we do it here, we may face the same consequences.' "

Utah has long had softer laws on illegal immigration than even states such as California. It allows illegal-immigrant students to pay in-state tuition at public universities and gives "driving privilege cards" to undocumented migrants to allow them to obtain insurance.

The dynamic is partly explained by the number of people in Utah who have performed missions in other countries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and are sympathetic to the plight of outsiders.

3. U.S. to Let Workers Check Their Immigration Status Online. Jeff Bliss. Bloomberg. March 21, 2011.

Excerpt: Prospective workers can begin checking online today for potentially inaccurate records about their U.S. immigration status, through a new program aimed at limiting bureaucratic mix-ups, the Department of Homeland Security said.

The program is an extension of E-Verify, an electronic system that almost 250,000 companies rely on to ensure that new employees aren’t in the U.S. illegally and thus ineligible to work, the department said.

E-Verify Self Check, initially available for people in a limited number of states, uses the personal information workers provide online to identify typographical errors and outdated information, such as name changes, in federal records that incorrectly flag a worker as illegal, the department said. Immigrant advocates and the New York-based American Civil Liberties Union have criticized E-Verify for using federal databases they say are full of inaccuracies..

Immigration officials said they expect 850,000 to 1 million queries in the first year of the Internet service, growing to 8 million annually. The online service is at www.uscis.gov/everify.

Software services provided by San Diego-based Anakam Inc., a unit of Equifax Inc. (EFX), validate the identity of Self Check users by examining demographic and financial data.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reduced the portion of those whose immigration status couldn’t be validated through E-Verify to 2.6 percent in 2009 from 8 percent between 2004 and 2007, according to the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s auditing agency.

4. 'Hispanics don’t want to be educated, they want to be gangsters': Letter to U.S. Senate ignites immigration storm. Daily Mail Reporter. March 23, 2011.

Excerpt: A letter claiming Hispanic students don't value education and 'just want to be gangsters' has been read in the U.S. Senate.

It also alleges that the pupils think white Americans are racist.

Republicans say the letter has been sent by a substitute teacher from Arizona worried by the students' attitude to immigration.

But some have questioned whether it is genuine.

Either way, the comments are sure reopen the state's immigration debate.

The letter, from 'Tony Hill' who claimed to have taught at an unnamed school in the Glendale area, said that the eighth-grade Hispanic students claim: 'We are Mexicans and Americans stole our land.'

It adds: 'I have found that [in] substitute teaching in these areas most of the Hispanic students do not want to be educated but rather [want to] be gang members and gangsters.'

But Democratic politicians have expressed doubts over the veracity of the letter, which was addressed to Senate President Russell Pearce and was circulated among Republican senators.

It was read aloud as the state Senate considered one of five bills on illegal immigration last week.

Democrats called the writing offensive and questioned whether Hill was actually a substitute teacher..

'Until he is able to come out and tell us exactly where he taught, I am assuming it is false,' said Democratic Senator Steve Gallardo of Phoenix, who is named in the letter.

Hill wrote that the students' regular teacher left instructions for them to finish writing to Gallardo in order to thank him for his position on immigrant rights.

The letter also said most of the students mentioned in their letters to Gallardo that they were illegal immigrants and that white Americans were racists.

5. US Immigration Judge Suspends Deportation of Gay Spouse. Michael Bowman. Voice of America. March 27, 2011.

Excerpt: For the first time, a U.S. judge has suspended the deportation of the foreign-born same-sex spouse of an American citizen.  Last week’s action by an immigration judge in New York comes amid ongoing challenges to the constitutionality of a law banning the federal government from recognizing marriages between homosexuals.

Last year, Cristina Ojeda of Queens, New York, married her partner of three years, Argentine-born Monica Alcota, in nearby Connecticut, one of only a handful of states that allow civil marriage for gay people.  But Alcota has been living under the threat of deportation for years, having overstayed a tourist visa that expired 10 years ago.

Last week (3/22/11), Alcota stood before an immigration judge fearing deportation to Argentina.  But the judge halted deportation proceedings to give her and Ojeda time to petition for federal recognition of their marriage.

Ojeda spoke with VOA a day later, saying, "We were happy.  It gives us more hope."

Among the more common ways for non-citizens to gain legal residency in the United States is by marrying a U.S. citizen.  But that avenue is blocked for tens of thousands of bi-national gay couples.  Most states refuse to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and federal law bans recognition of same-sex marriage..

Enacted in 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act stipulates that only opposite-sex marriages are valid under federal law.   During the past year, federal courts have ruled core elements of the Act unconstitutional.  Those cases are being appealed and could ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court..

Law Professor Waldman says Judge Bain’s decision sets no binding precedent for other immigration cases involving bi-national married gay couples.  But he expects other judges will take note of the Alcota-Ojeda case and concur that similar deportations should be suspended until the Defense of Marriage Act’s constitutionality is definitively determined, or until the law is repealed, as President Barack Obama has advocated.

6. NY girl in middle of immigration row returns to US. Associated Press. March 30, 2011.

Excerpt: Emily Ruiz, a 4-year-old American citizen at the center of an immigration dispute, returned to the United States from Guatemala on Wednesday, according to her family's attorney, who accompanied her.

Emily's parents, who live on New York's Long Island, say the girl had spent several months in Guatemala. Her grandfather tried to bring her back to the U.S. this month but was refused entry because of a prior immigration violation, and they were both sent back to Guatemala.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials say the girl's parents, who are illegal immigrants, opted to have their daughter returned to Guatemala rather than pick her up, possibly because they were concerned they would confront questions about their own residency status.

The parents, through their attorney, contend that's not so.

"The CBP spokesman's statement is wrong," said attorney David Sperling. "The parents were not given the option to be reunited."

Emily arrived just after midnight Tuesday in New York, where she had a tearful reunion with her brother and parents, who hadn't seen her in more than five months, Sperling said..

"The parents were offered the chance to pick up the child but elected to have her return to Guatemala with her grandfather," U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling said in a statement. The agency, he said, "strives to reunite U.S. citizen children with their parents."

Sperling, the family attorney, argues that Emily's parents were told the two options were to return the girl to Guatemala or to have her placed in the custody of officials in Virginia. The girl's father, Leonel Ruiz, opted to have Emily go to Central America with her grandfather.