Immigration News Headlines

Welcome to our Immigration News and Opinions detail page from myGreencard.com.

Immigration Attorney Arrested At SoCal Indian Casino For Allegedly Taking Immigrants' Bribes

StarTribune.com, June 28. An attorney for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and his wife were arrested on suspicion of accepting thousands of dollars from both legal and illegal immigrants in exchange for immigration benefits, authorities said. ICE Assistant Chief Counsel Constantine Peter Kallas, 38, and wife Maria Kallas, 39, both of Alta Loma, were arrested Thursday at the San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino, where authorities believed they were accepting such a bribe, U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek said in a statement.
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Agency Praised For Curbing Delay For New Citizens

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 27. U.S. Immigration chief Jonathan 'Jock' Scharfen visited Atlanta for the first time on Thursday as acting director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. He was here to encourage and congratulate employees of the Atlanta office in Tucker. Scharfen, 52, also held an hour-and-a-half question-and-answer session with about 50 representatives of agencies that work with immigrants. Scharfen became head of the agency April 21. His term ends next Jan. 20, when the new president takes office.
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Labor Audit Frustrates Companies

Wall Street Journal, June 27. Some of the nation's biggest companies are expected to face delays in securing green cards for some foreign workers due to a Labor Department audit that has sparked anger in legal and business circles. The Labor Department announced this month that it was auditing labor applications filed by immigration law firm Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP of New York, which the department alleged had improperly advised some clients seeking permanent resident status, or green cards, for foreign workers. People familiar with the firm said it has about 3,000 green-card applications pending on behalf of companies, including International Business Machines Corp., General Electric Co. and Bank of America Corp.
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Outsourced State Department Visa Work Criticized By House Panel

CongressDaily June 26. The State Department came under fire in Congress Wednesday for outsourcing visa processing work in Mexico to a contractor without an open competition. It created a program under which Computer Sciences Corp. has been given responsibility to collect visa information and fingerprints of Mexicans applying for new border crossing cards, which serve as an official document for Mexicans to enter the United States. 'I must admit that I have some concerns,' House Oversight and Government Reform Government Management Subcommittee Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., said during a hearing. 'I think we should take a hard look at whether this type of outsourcing will maintain security and government control of visa issuance,' he added.
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U.S. Economic Downturn May Reverse Migration Homeward

Economist, June 26. A sharp-eyed coyote, dollars sprouting from his ears, glowers at the roadside. Beside him a muscle-bound American border agent, clad in green and with pistol drawn, looms over a cowering migrant. Nearby a man-sized dollar sign flits away on silver wings. That graffito on a concrete border wall in Nogales, on the Mexican side of the frontier with the United States, tells a simple story: the business of migration in this part of the world is both lucrative and increasingly dangerous.
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Judge Rejects Bid to Let Police Check Immigration Status

New York Times, June 26. Superior Court judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit seeking to end a longstanding police policy that prohibits officers from initiating contact with people for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status. The policy has come under scrutiny in recent months after the killing of a high school football star, Jamiel Shaw Jr., who the police say was murdered by an illegal immigrant who is a member of a gang. The victim’s parents are seeking to have the policy overturned, and a city councilman has been seeking a similar change to the directive, known as Special Order 40.
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Legislation Aims to Reduce Immigration Backlog

New America Media. June 26. A new bill could encapture the unused immigration visa quotas from 1992 to 2007 to reduce the current backlog, reports the World Journal. H.R. 5882, sponsored by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., would neither increases the immigration quota, nor legalizes illegal immigrants. How well the bill does in Congress will demonstrate whether some legislators oppose illegal immigration, as they have said, or whether they oppose all immigration. If passed, the bill is expected to reduce the wait for immigrants seeking visas. Some 1.5 million of the four million immigration applications in the backlog are from Asian applicants, according to Karen Narasaki, president and executive director of Asian American Justice Center. Narasaki spoke on Access Washington, an immigration-related teleconference for ethnic media sponsored by New America Media.
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Major Immigration Law Firm Under Federal Scrutiny

USA Today, June 25. The nation's largest immigration law firm is under federal scrutiny over whether it helped major U.S. corporations disqualify American job applicants and give thousands of high-paying positions to immigrants. The unprecedented Labor Department inquiry centers on Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy — a New York firm at the forefront of a political effort to ease hiring of skilled foreign workers.The Labor Department is auditing all pending applications for legal immigrant workers the firm has filed on behalf of its corporate clients.Fragomen's prestigious client roster includes General Electric Co., IBM Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp. and Bank of America Corp., according to company publications and trade journals. The firm also represents The Associated Press on immigration issues.The inquiry focuses on what advice the law firm gave its corporate clients. There was no indication the companies themselves are under scrutiny.
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Feds Sued Over Alleged Mining Of Immigrants' Data

Associated Press, June 25. The U.S. government secretly gathered personal data on more than 130,000 immigrants in the run-up to the war in Iraq, according to a purported FBI document attached to a lawsuit filed Tuesday demanding more detail about how the information was gathered and used. The New York Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against the Justice Department alleges that federal authorities may have violated the privacy of the immigrants under a previously undisclosed FBI program the document refers to as 'Operation Darkening Clouds.' The NYCLU sued after the FBI rejected a Freedom of Information Act request last year to disclose more details about the program. The civil rights group says the FBI replied that 'it neither confirms nor denies the existence of the activity or records concerning this subject.'
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Report Finds Immigrants Contribute To State's Economy

New Mexico Business Weekly, June 24. A new report by New Mexico Voices for Children indicates that immigrants living in New Mexico are contributing to the state's economy rather than acting as a drain upon it. The nonprofit released a report using data from the U.S. Census Bureau that it said shows immigrants are represented in the state's labor force in higher percentages than native-born New Mexicans, but that they receive 'transfer payments' (things like Medicare, Social Security, unemployment benefits) at roughly half the rate as native-born Americans. Legal immigrants must live in the U.S. for five years before they are eligible for most federal safety-net programs. The only federally mandated programs they can access are K-12 education and emergency medical care, according to the report.
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Tancredo Rebukes McCain For Hispanic Dialogue

ABC News, June 24. ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf Reports from Capitol Hill: Sen. John McCain took some grief from the Left for keeping a tight handle on who he invited to his secret meeting with Hispanics in Chicago last week. And he took some grief from the Right for apparently promising at that meeting to pursue a pathway to citizenship for some illegal immigrants. The grief from the Right continued today. Anti-amnesty crusader Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., wrote McCain a letter calling him out on the meeting, questioning McCain's commitment to pledges made earlier in the campaign, and snarkily invoking McCain's 'Straight Talk' mantra.
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Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama

New York Times, June 24. As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country's first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help. Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama's message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama's behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation's oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison's Washington office to explain.
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Obama, Immigrants Targeted By Hate Group Surge

Washington Post, June 22. Sen. Barack Obama's historic victory in the Democratic primaries, celebrated in America and across much of the world as a symbol of racial progress and cultural unity, has also sparked an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet, according to leaders of hate groups and the organizations that track them. Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from Illinois secured the Democratic nomination June 3. His success has aroused a community of racists, experts said, concerned by the possibility of the country's first black president.
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McCain's Uphill Battle On Illegal Immigration

CNN News, June 21. In recent days, Sen. Barack Obama has backed off his harshest criticisms of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and he's changed his stance on campaign financing, electing to decline the federal funds for the general election -- prompting charges of flip-flopping. Obama's campaign says Sen. John McCain has contradictions of his own, namely on illegal immigration. On Wednesday night, McCain held a private meeting with more than 150 Chicago, Illinois-area Hispanic leaders. According to The Associated Press, several people who were at the meeting said McCain assured them that he would push for comprehensive immigration reform if he's elected president.
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More Visas For Fashion Models

Austin American Statesman, June 19. Tall, thin and beautiful foreigners could get their own visa category under legislation moving on Capitol Hill. The measure, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, would allow up to 1,000 fashion models each year to work in the United States temporarily. Weiner contends that the models are vital to the fashion industry, particularly in his home state of New York and that the current system forces models to compete for visas with high tech workers and others.
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Mexicans In The U.S. Sending Fewer Dollars Home

Christian Science Monitor, June 19. When the finishing touches were put on this coral-pink Roman Catholic church last year, residents beamed. Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first church built here - and it was only made possible by the toil of sons, husbands, and brothers in the US. But today, many suspect this will be the last new edifice of any kind in some time. The flow of cash sent from the US, which over the years has helped pave the main road, build a basketball court, and construct or renovate almost every home in this 500-person village in Michoacan, has suddenly become a trickle.
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Fijians Top Oceania Green Card Winners

FijiLive.com, June 9. Australians and Fijians have topped the number of people from the Oceania Region who have been accepted in the United States under the Green Card lottery. The United States Department of State website stated that those who have registered under the Diversity Visa Lottery 2008 have been notified. Fiji is second behind Australia with 630 people selected for a Green Card.
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Janitors With Social Security Number Woes Get Jobs Back

San Francisco Chronicle, June 17. A federal appeals court ordered reinstatement Monday for 33 janitors in Los Angeles who were fired because their Social Security numbers did not match the government's database, a ruling that could strengthen unions' case against a Bush administration proposal to pressure employers to get rid of suspected illegal immigrants.
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Justices To Rule On Detainee Lawsuit

John Ashcroft on Monday by agreeing to hear his claim that he and other high-level Bush administration officials are shielded from being sued by immigrants who say they were rounded up, abused and beaten after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The court's move stops for now a lawsuit by a Pakistani man who was held for nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York. The justices voted to decide whether the president's top appointees are immune from lawsuits growing out of their response to 'an unprecedented national security crisis.'
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Proposals Seek To Reform Green Card Process

Herald News, June 16. Sachin Nataraj, 31, came to the United States from Bangalore, India, with plans to earn a graduate degree in engineering and eventually become a permanent resident. Eleven years later, he's a research and development engineer at a Mahwah company that manufactures heavy-duty automotive parts. The firm would like to promote Nataraj but is prohibited - his green card application is tied to his job title. Instead of getting his green card within three or four years, as Nataraj expected, he is still in limbo, holding a temporary employment-based visa. It's unlikely he'll receive a green card for another three or four years, he said. And after that, it's another five-year wait to apply for U.S. citizenship. 'By the time you become a citizen,' he said, 'you've probably been in the country 15 to 20 years.' For Nataraj, who lives in Wayne with his wife and 2-year-old son, the overburdened U.S. visa system has led to a life of uncertainty. The U.S. provides employment-based green cards to 140,000 people a year, with each country limited to 7,000 visas
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E-Verify IDs 200K Entrants Nationally

Arizona Daily Star, June 13. An improved E-Verify system is working well to identify who is allowed to work in the United States — and to identify illegal immigrants, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Thursday. Jonathan 'Jock' Scharfen, who has been the acting director of the agency for about two months, was in Tucson to talk about continued efforts to make the Web-based verification system for employment eligibility more accurate.
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USCIS To Issue Two-Year Employment Authorization Documents (EADS)

USCIS, June 12. Certain aliens who are temporarily in the United States may file a Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, to request an Employment Authorization Document (EAD), which authorizes them to work legally in the U.S. during the time the EAD is valid.
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USCIS Offers Premium Processing Service for Certain Form I-140 Petitions Starting June 16.

USCIS, June 12. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will make available Premium Processing Service for designated Form I-140 petitions1 (Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker) filed for alien workers in H-1B nonimmigrant status who are reaching the end of their sixth year in H-1B nonimmigrant status. Starting on June 16, 2008, USCIS will begin accepting Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service, for Forms I-140 filed for alien beneficiaries who, as of the date of filing the Form I-907.
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DREAM Act Forecast For Immigration Reform

Daily News, June 11. OPINION. What's the chance for immigration reform with a Barack Obama or John McCain presidency? My quick answer: The post-election Congress will pass the DREAM Act for undocumented students and the AgJobs agricultural worker bill. I see those bills passing no matter who wins the presidency, though immigrants will likely do better under Obama. Broader reform with a path to citizenship for our 12 million undocumented workers is years away.
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NY Dem. Seeks To Separate Models From H1-B Program

The Politico, June 11. Comprehensive immigration reform may have eluded the 110th Congress, but House Democrats are still hoping to help two groups of workers — fashion models and computer geeks — who are usually linked only in implausible online fantasies. Under current immigration policy, models coming to the United States for a photo shoot or an event — regardless of how short the stay — compete with high-tech workers for precious H-1B visas. But under a bill that cleared the Judiciary Committee last week, the models would be moved into a separate immigration category, freeing up more H-1B slots for the much-needed nerds.
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Bush Orders Contractors To Check Employees' Legal Status

Congress Daily (Washington, DC), June 10. President Bush issued a sweeping executive order Monday that will require federal contractors to verify the legal status of all employees hired to work on new contracts, but the formal announcement left industry associations and immigration reform groups with many questions. Making the announcement were Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose department will administer the employment verification program, and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. A proposed rule detailing the mandate on federal contractors was expected to be issued Monday, followed by a 60-day period for public comment.
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Feinstein: High School Valedictorian Shouldn't Be Deported

Associated Press, June 10. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is introducing a private bill to try to keep the valedictorian at Fresno's Bullard High School from being deported. Seventeen-year-old Arthur Mkoyan's 4.0 grade-point average qualified him to enter one of the state's top universities. But he and his mother were ordered back to Armenia after their last appeal for asylum failed.
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Auditor Blames FBI's Systems For Immigration Delay

Yahoo News, June 9. The FBI uses old technology and workers without enough training to do security checks on people applying for citizenship and other immigration benefits, a government audit found. The FBI uses old technology and workers without enough training to do security checks on people applying for citizenship and other immigration benefits, a government audit found
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Varying Data Leave Incomplete Picture Of Immigrants' Progress

Dallas Morning News, June 9. Researchers have a good idea how many school-age children were born outside the U.S. As for how these young immigrants fare in classrooms – how quickly they learn English; how often they repeat a grade; how many graduate on time – details are murky. That's because, across the country, school districts vary widely in the information they collect, making it very hard to draw useful comparisons or study the progress of students.
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McCain, Obama Overlap On Environment, Immigration, Guantanamo

Bloomberg News, June 9. The next president plans to issue new policies to address global warming, overhaul immigration laws, advocate more government transparency and close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay. It may sound like a risky prediction five months before the election. Presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama and his Republican rival, John McCain, are diametrically opposed on the biggest issues facing Americans, including extending President George W. Bush's tax cuts, ending the Iraq War, overhauling health care and appointments to the Supreme Court.
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Businesses Frequently Abusing H1-B Requirements

Pittsburgh Tribune Review, June 9. A local high-tech company has put a Pittsburgh face on a national debate about hiring foreign workers. Computer consulting firm iGate Corp. of Findlay paid the Justice Department $45,000 in April to settle charges it discriminated against U.S. workers by posting online job ads seeking foreigners with special visas. The fine for favoring holders of H-1B visas, which go primarily to computer and engineering specialists, is the highest yet, said Justice Department spokeswoman Jamie Hais. Critics say cases such as iGate's are not the only problem with the visas, which are widely used by high-tech firms.
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Obama Leads McCain In Share Of Latino Voters

Los Angeles Times, June 6. It was called 'un mensaje personal a Puerto Rico,' a television spot in which Barack Obama spoke to the camera in stilted but effective Spanish. 'I was born on an island,' he said, 'and I understand that food, gas, and everything costs more.' Obama got trounced in the Puerto Rico primary this week. But the advertisement, with the candidate's personalized appeal and willingness to try the language, is a sign of the unusual tactics that Obama's campaign is preparing to deploy on the mainland as it tries to win over a Latino electorate that voted overwhelmingly for his party rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Democratic primaries.
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DHS To Start Reporting On Detainee Deaths In Detention Centers

Washington Post, June 5. The top U.S. immigration enforcement official told a congressional subcommittee yesterday that the Bush administration will disclose more information about foreigners who die in the sprawling network of federal detention centers around the country. Julie Myers, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, said her agency will report such deaths to a branch of the Justice Department that collects similar information about inmates in state prisons and local jails.
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Google Loses Big In H-1B Lottery As Congress Gets New Visa Push

Computerworld News, June 5. The effort in Congress to make it easier for tech companies to hire foreign nationals gained support today from two U.S. senators who are pushing a bill to give foreign nationals who earn advanced degrees in the U.S. permanent residency. The latest measure comes as one large tech employer, Google Inc., complained publicly that 90 of its 300 H-1B applications were rejected in the government lottery for visas. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) held a lottery after receiving 163,000 applications for 85,000 visas (download PDF). That figure includes 20,000 visas set aside for advanced degree holders.
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Immigration Debate Grows From Web Roots

Chicago Tribune, June 4. Minutes after word broke about a Nickelodeon TV special on children affected by Immigration raids, messages like 'What part of illegal don't you understand!?!' and 'Deport them all!' bombarded Web sites and blogs. Then, in an increasingly common reaction, bloggers from 'pro-migrant' sites such as Citizen Orange and The Unapologetic Mexican countered by ridiculing the show's critics. By the end of the day, a Google search for the documentary was more likely to highlight the pro-legalization side of the debate than the anti-immigrant side. Victory, for the moment, was theirs.
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Online Registration To Be Required For Visa-Free Travel To U.S.

CNN.com, June 3. Travelers from England, France, Germany, Japan and about two dozen other "Visa Waiver" countries will be required to register electronically before boarding a plane or boat to the United States, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday. DHS will begin accepting applications via a secure Internet site on August 1, and will require visitors to use the Internet system beginning January 12, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. The move will help U.S. authorities vet foreign visitors, he said.
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Winning The Visa Lottery

PressDemocrat.com, June 6. When people ask Stephany Raez how she came to the United States, she replies without hesitation, "The lottery." "They always think I won money," said Raez, 22. Instead, her father, Luis, lucked into a prize that can be as hard to come by, the "diversity lottery" for green cards, considered by millions around the world as the ticket to a better life.
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Green Card Lottery Provides Path to Their College Diplomas

redOrbit, June 1. It was a long walk to the stage in Ashland for Emma Ndegwa and Trang Le. But both can now count themselves as Randolph-Macon College alumnae. Ndegwa, of Kenya, and Le, of Vietnam, were two of 243 to walk the brick pathway around the Frank E. Brown Fountain Plaza in the heart of campus yesterday to pick up their diplomas. Looking for a better life, Ndegwa, 42, came to Ashland 10 years ago from Nairobi with little more than her family and the clothes on their backs. They had received green cards through the U.S. Diversity Visa program.
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Lottery Winner Sees Dream Come True

TimesDaily.com, May 31. For Araj Assadian-Arabi, the opportunity to live the American dream came in the most unlikely fashion - through a lottery. He was chosen as one of 50,000 immigrants to obtain permanent legal residency through the country's green card lottery. He doesn't know the mathematical odds of it happening, just that it did. His permanent legal residency came about as the result of Araj winning the American Green Card Lottery.
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900 Criminal Aliens, Immigration Fugitives and Violators Nabbed in San Diego

Accuracy In Media, May 29. More than 900 criminal aliens, immigration fugitives, and immigration violators have been removed from the United States or are facing deportation following a three-week enforcement surge by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Fugitive Operations Teams in California. During the special operation, which concluded late Tuesday, ICE officers located and arrested a total of 905 immigration violators throughout the state, including 137 in the San Diego area. Of those arrested locally, 73 were immigration fugitives, aliens who have ignored final orders of deportation or who returned to the United States illegally after being removed.
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Texas Town's Immigrant-Renting Rule Is Struck Down

Associated Press, May 29. A Dallas suburb's ban on apartment rentals to illegal immigrants, an ordinance passed by city leaders and later endorsed in a vote by its residents, is unconstitutional, a federal judge found Wednesday. Only the federal government can regulate immigration, U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay concluded in his decision. The city didn't defer to the federal government on the matter, violating the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which allows for the federal government to pre-empt local laws, Lindsay said. Bill Brewer, who represented apartment complex operators who opposed the rule, declared victory.
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Iranians At Stanford Face Hurdles: Students Confront Visa Delays, Visits From FBI

Payvand’s Iran News, May 29. Mahdiyar Noorbala's acceptance letter to Stanford's highly competitive physics doctoral program was only the first step in an arduous journey from Iran to California. After a multitude of embassy visits, visa interviews and background checks, the Iranian citizen arrived at Stanford in 2006 — almost a year after he was originally set to begin his graduate studies.
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The Menendez Method

Wall Street Journal, May 29. Republicans in Congress are usually to blame for blocking immigration reform. So it's worth noting that last week's effort to fix a broken guest-worker program for migrant farm workers died at the hands of a Democrat. Earlier this month, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the Emergency Agricultural Relief Act with a bipartisan vote of 17 to 12. Introduced by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the measure would have modified the broken H-2A visa program for migrant farmhands by, among other things, streamlining the application process to encourage participation. The amendment also would have given temporary legal status to the illegal farm workers already here if they passed a background check and met other requirements.
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New Federal Laws Could Sweep Away Janitors And Other Low-Wage Workers

Metro Active, May 28. Hundreds of janitors walked off the job last week at Cisco Systems, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard, Apple and other high-tech and biotech corporations. Among them were Silicon Valley's lowest-wage workers—most of them undocumented—who service the valley's biggest businesses for wages that they say don't provide the most basic needs for their families. Zoe Lofgren, the San Jose congresswoman who chairs the House Immigration Subcommittee, says it's no surprise that so many low-wage workers are undocumented. 'Do you know how many visas we allocate a year for unskilled workers under our visa system? Five thousand a year,' she says. 'Obviously, we aren't going to meet our agricultural needs to feed ourselves, plus kitchen help, construction, hotels, etc., on 5,000 visas a year. So really the law is to blame. We've set up this situation where the only way to meet the employment needs is illegally.'
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Support Growing for Proof of Citizenship to Register to Vote

Fox News, May 28. New legislation being offered in several states aims to make sure people who walk into the nation’s voting booths are, in fact, American citizens. In Missouri, state Rep. Stanley Cox wants a constitutional amendment that would allow the state to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote. 'That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable requirement because we certainly don’t want people who are not legal in this country deciding our future,' Cox told FOX News. EDITORS NOTE: myUSAi.org does not sanction the accuracy of content originating from FOX News.
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Study Shows Concerns About Immigration Affect Public Spending

Press Enterprise, May 28. Californians concerned about immigration are less likely to support increases in public spending, early results from a study by a UC Riverside professor emeritus has found. Another study found that cities that have seen the biggest jump in immigrant population are most likely to adopt what are described as 'restrictionist' immigration policies, even though only a fraction of a percent of U.S. municipalities have approved laws aimed at punishing undocumented immigrants. Results from those studies and several others -- some of the findings were preliminary and unpublished -- were presented Wednesday at a forum on immigration-related issues at UC Riverside.
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Girl's Rare Illness Fuels Immigration Fight

Grand Rapids Press, May 28. Three years ago, their daughter's life on the line, Giselle and Jaime Mejia gambled everything on the U.S. medical system. Now, they fear U.S. immigration law will doom the chance medicine gave 9-year-old Lil. "I don't have words to say how much my daughter means to me," Giselle Mejia said. "We gave up everything for her." Lil Mejia was born in 1998 in the Dominican Republic after a difficult pregnancy. Shortly after birth, she stopped breathing. Seizures and pneumonia followed. Six years and many complications later, Giselle, 33, and her husband, Jaime, 36, obtained temporary visas and brought Lil to West Michigan to receive a life-saving hormone. The treatment stabilized her condition: a rare combination of severe asthma, allergies, chronic lung disease and hormone deficiencies. Now, their visas have expired, and deportation proceedings could force the Mejia family to leave the country.
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Any Immigration Legislation Faces An Uphill Battle

Baxter Bulletin, May 28. In the ever-deepening quagmire that is illegal immigration, it's not an easy road for any legislation dealing with the issue. Currently, the legislation is HR 5515, the New Employee Verification Act (NEVA). Under it, employers would confirm workers' employment eligibility by entering employee identification information through their state's new-hire reporting program. This would be done through the Electronic Employment Verification System (EEVS), already in use for child support enforcement. An employee's eligibility would be verified through the Social Security Administration. At its most basic, the bill essentially would require employers to verify a new worker's Social Security information (no legitimate Social Security number, no job). Non citizens' employment eligibility would be verified through the Department of Homeland Security. It would replace the E-Verify system currently in use, which has been criticized for being flawed, unwieldy and ineffective. NEVA would be strictly electronic and paperless, unlike E-Verify
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McCain, Conservatives Clash On Immigration Once Again

Philadelphia Bulletin, May 27. After adjusting his immigration stance when his comprehensive immigration bill died last summer, John McCain, now with the Republican nomination in hand, has once again ruffled conservative feathers on the immigration issue by returning to the position that almost stopped his campaign dead in its tracks. Mr. McCain joined California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week in supporting a 'comprehensive' immigration plan that would address the problem 'in a humane and compassionate fashion.'
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McCain Aims at Net Rise in Latino Votes

Daily News, May 27. Hoping to appeal to Hispanic voters, John McCain launched a new Internet ad yesterday saluting the sacrifices of Latinos in the military. 'When you go to Iraq or Afghanistan today, you're going to see a whole lot of people who are of Hispanic background,' McCain says in the ad, noting how thousands of enlistees are green card holders hoping to accelerate their path to citizenship. 'So let's, from time to time, remember that these are God's children,' McCain says. 'They must come into the country legally, but they have enriched our culture and our nation as every generation of immigrants before them.'
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Study Finds New Generations Making Progress In Joining Mainstream

Oklahoman, May 27. The Chavez brothers prefer hip-hop to ranchero music, pizza to chile rellenos and basketball to soccer. For them, Mexico is an assortment of black-and-white photographs sitting on the mantel, some stories told to them by their parents and a few, brief visits during their childhood.
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New U.S. Visa Limits Hurt Seasonal Employers, WSJ Reports

Bloomberg, May 27. U.S. employers which hire seasonal immigrant workers are having trouble finding employees because an exemption from visa restrictions for returning workers wasn't renewed this year, the Wall Street Journal said. The U.S. issues 66,000 H-2B visas for nonagricultural seasonal workers each year, the newspaper said. The last few years, it has exempted from the limits overseas employees who were returning to the U.S., the Journal said.
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McCain Resumes Talk of Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Washington Post, May 22. Surrounded by high-tech entrepreneurs, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said this morning he would expand visas for immigrants at the same time he would propose legislation cracking down on illegal immigration. The declaration -- which came as several Silicon Valley CEOs complained about the need for highly skilled employees -- marked a slight shift from what McCain had said while campaigning to secure his party's nomination. During the GOP primary McCain -- whose support for bipartisan immigration reform proved to be a liability within his own party -- said he would clamp down on illegal aliens before doing any other immigration reform.
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New Temporary Worker Visa Procedures To Cut Bureaucracy

Los Angeles Times, May 22. With restaurants and resorts facing summer staff shortages, the Bush administration will announce federal regulations today to streamline the way foreign workers enter the country for seasonal jobs. The Department of Labor is rewriting rules to help employers find and hire workers for temporary jobs as landscapers, waitresses and crab pickers more quickly and efficiently than current guidelines allow. In one major change affecting industries such as construction and shipyards, the definition of "temporary" will be drastically expanded -- from the current 10 months to three years.
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Beyond H-1B: An Immigration Glossary

Business Week, May 14. For foreign MBAs, the process of entering the U.S. and staying stateside to study and then work -- can be a complicated one. The first challenge is finding a good immigration lawyer or a sponsoring company with a good immigration lawyer. The second challenge is understanding what your lawyer is telling you. The most commonly heard immigration term on business-school campuses these days is H-1B, as in H1-B visa, for MBA graduates who want to continue to work in the U.S. after finishing business school. It refers to the visa that applies to a non-U.S. citizen who will be temporarily employed in a specialty occupation, according to the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS). There is a shortage of these visas, which is why international MBA students often start asking about these visas midway through their programs.
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Immigration Roundup In Florida Targets Sham Marriages

Los Angeles Time, May 10. The four-tiered cake the newlyweds were about to cut was plastic. The glasses and plates on the reception table were empty. And the bride wore casual shoes under her wedding gown. Those were among the clues that first caught the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials after they searched the offices of Winter Garden-based All Kind Services U.S.A. In a back room were the cake, the fake reception hall and a rack with several wedding dresses. "The cake is the first clue. . . . And the running shoes are a nice touch, too," said Mark Garrand, assistant special agent in charge of ICE in Orlando. Investigators soon realized that the photos and props were identical in many of the 25 marriage cases they were probing with All Kind Services involving Central and South American visitors accused of paying for spouses so they could stay and work in the United States.
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Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in U.S. Custody

New York Times, May 5. Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive. But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why. Mr. Bah’s name is one of 66 on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007, when nearly a million people passed through.
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McCain: Focus On Illegal Immigration Hurt GOP's Image

Associated Press, May 5. Republican presidential hopeful John McCain says the focus on illegal immigration during the Republican primary season harmed his party's image among Hispanics. Speaking to reporters in Phoenix on Cinco de Mayo, McCain said that Hispanic citizens want America's borders secured and illegal immigrants to be treated humanely. He says low-income Hispanic citizens are vulnerable to losing their jobs to the lower wages accepted by illegal immigrants. On the subject of broader immigration policies, McCain says local governments would not have to take on immigration problems had the federal government overhauled the country's immigration policies.
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Consulting Firm Settles H-1B Discrimination Case

EETimes, May 2. The U.S. government fined a consulting firm $45,000 for placing online job ads for computer programmers that said only H-1B visa holders should apply. The case is just the tip of an iceberg of H-1B abuses, according to a lobbying group that filed the original complaint. The Department of Justice said iGate Mastech Inc. (Pittsburgh) placed 30 online job ads in May and June 2006 asking for only H-1B visa holders. The case is one of 215 the DoJ has handled involving preference for H-1B workers over U.S. citizens since the year 2000.
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Thousands Rally For Immigration Reform

Associated Press, May 2. Thousands of chanting, flag-waving immigrants and activists rallied in cities across the country Thursday, attempting to reinvigorate calls for immigration reform in a presidential election year in which the economy has taken center stage.From Washington to Miami to Los Angeles, immigrant rights activists demanded citizenship opportunities for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and an end to raids and deportations. ‘‘We come here to fight for legalization. We're people. We have rights,'' said Eric Molina, an undocumented factory worker who immigrated to Zion, Ill., from Mexico.
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Aguilar: U.S. Undergoing Largest Wave Of Immigration In History

Morning News, May 2. The United States is going through the largest wave of immigration in its history. So said Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services' Office of Citizenship, in his keynote speech at Hispanic Woman's Organization of Arkansas' annual conference Friday. He estimates 14 percent of the residents of the United States will be foreign-born in 2025 and 19 percent by 2050. "The immigrants aren't settling in the usual spots - New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami," Aguilar said. "They are spreading across the country. Arkansas is one of the top of the new gateway states."
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USCIS’ Role In The Visa Process.

Media Newswire, (PRESS RELEASE) Chairwoman Lofgren, Ranking Member King, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the role of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ( USCIS ) in the visa process, particularly USCIS and Department of State ( DOS ) efforts to maximize visa issuance in accordance with the law. I am accompanied today by Don Neufeld, Acting Associate Director for Domestic Operations. In recent years, over 1 million people became Lawful Permanent Residents of the United States ( LPRs ). Under the law there are a variety of different categories and means through which a person may become eligible for permanent residence. A substantial number of these categories have numerical limitations – annual caps on how many people can immigrate. There are other aspects to these caps as well, such as limitations per country.
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Latinos Outraged Over CBS Report

The Politico, April 29 (OPINION). As if Katie Couric didn’t already have enough problems. Weighed down by record-low ratings at the anchor desk of “CBS Evening News,” and by reports suggesting she will leave that post two years before her multimillion-dollar contract expires, Couric now has civil rights groups — mostly Hispanic — on her back. And for good reason. The CBS newscast that carries her name recently aired a one-sided and inaccurate report about illegal immigrant women who give birth to their children in the United States.
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Protesters Across America Call For Immigration Reform

CNN.com, May 1. Thousands of demonstrators gathered in U.S. cities Thursday to protest federal immigration raids and deportations and to call for comprehensive immigration reform. In Chicago, Illinois, 3,000 to 4,500 people marched in the city's downtown, police said. Several people carried a large American flag; others held banners or signs. The early estimate of participants paled greatly in comparison to protests in Chicago in past years: In 2007, numbers reached about 150,000, and the year before, estimates ranged from 400,000 to 700,000. In New York, hundreds of sign-carrying protesters gathered in Union Square, preparing for a march toward Foley Square in downtown Manhattan.
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SAVE Act Bill Drive Stalls Due To Costs

Reuters, May 1. An election-year push in the U.S. Congress to clamp down on illegal immigration has stalled as concerns grow about the cost of verifying the status of millions of workers, a leading congressional Democrat said on Thursday. Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a member of the Democratic leadership team in the House of Representatives, said Republicans were unlikely to win enough signatures on a petition drive to force a vote on a bill requiring employers to verify the legal status of all their workers. Republicans, hoping to force Democrats to vote on a politically sensitive issue before the November congressional and presidential elections, began the petition drive in early March on the legislation sponsored by North Carolina Democrat Heath Shuler.
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Clinton: I Will Not Target Sanctuary Cities

FOXNews.com, May 1. Hillary Clinton, in the second half of her first-ever interview with FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly, said that if elected president she would not crack down on so-called illegal immigrant “sanctuary cities.” Clinton outlined several points of her foreign policy platform in the final segment of the interview, which aired Thursday. She declared there’s nothing left to achieve in Iraq and issued a stern warning about the threats Iran poses to that region once U.S. troops withdraw. EDITORS NOTE: myUSAi.org does not sanction the accuracy of any content originating from FOX News.
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Fewer Latino Migrants Send Money Home, Poll Says

Wall Street Journal, May 1 (PAY SITE). The economic downturn and efforts to crack down on illegal immigrants in many U.S. communities are prompting fewer Latin American immigrants to send money back home, a survey found. The survey, released Wednesday by the Inter-American Development Bank, found that the percentage of immigrants who report sending remittances to their country of origin has dropped to half in early 2008 compared with 73% two years ago, even though migrants continue to flock to the U.S. Also Wednesday, the Central Bank of Mexico reported that remittances from the U.S. dropped 2.9% for the first three months of the year compared with the first quarter of 2007.
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Immigration Bills Debated

Arizona News, April 28. State lawmakers are debating bills that try to take on different aspects of illegal immigration. KJZZ's Dennis Lambert and Mark Brodie talk about some of them, and what they'd do.
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Federal Officials Target Foreign Students

Boston.com, April 26. Federal immigration officials are pushing to increase oversight of foreign exchange students, speeding entry for legitimate applicants but also cracking down on those who overstay their visas and on "sham schools" that exist only to provide legal cover for foreigners seeking to enter the country, officials said yesterday. The effort, aimed at bolstering national security, would fund an improved database of student visa holders and double the number of investigators assigned to track students and schools to 151 nationwide. In addition, 60 new workers will be assigned to help colleges and schools comply with the rules.
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Alabama Immigration Law Causing Marriage Discord

NPR, April 25. In Alabama, there's a new battle brewing in the immigration debate. Some counties have decided to enforce a decade-old law that requires a Social Security card to get a marriage license. The Catholic Church says this has led to a surge of couples living in sin.
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Support Surrounds Imam Facing Immigration Charges

Herald News, April 25. Ever since she can remember, 11-year-old Yasmine El Farra has felt comfortable both teasing her imam about his foreign accent, and considering him a man of quiet spiritual strength. "He makes America proud, makes the flag MORE red, white and blue," El Farra of Wayne wrote in a poem, she read before more than a 100 people gathered Thursday night to toast Imam Mohammad Qatanani, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County.
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Channel 8 Hour On Immigration Draws A Crowd

Houston Chronicle.com, April 24. t was a town hall meeting on immigration billed as "Houston Have Your Say," and Houstonians spoke up in person, via e-mails, over the phone and even on YouTube videos. In many ways, it was a first as more than three-dozen Houstonians, often on opposite sides of the immigration debate, gathered in a television studio Thursday evening to take part in a live exchange broadcast over Houston PBS Channel 8
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Test Run For 2010 Census Is Scaled Back, Worrying Experts

Associated Press, April 25. The Census Bureau has scaled back its dress rehearsal for the once-a-decade national head count in North Carolina and California, raising fears that thousands of soldiers, immigrants and other hard-to-reach people will go uncounted when the population survey is conducted in 2010. 'It's like sending up a rocket for a moon shot and not doing the final test on how to land,' warned former Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt, who oversaw the agency during the 2000 count.
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International Students To Pay More In Visa Fees

The Daily Texan. April 24. International students wishing to study in the United States may see their visa fees double to pay for improvements in a database that keeps information on nonimmigrant foreigners studying in the U.S. The Student and Exchange Visitor Program ensures that international students are in the U.S. for the purposes they stated in their application, according to the U.S. Department of State Web site. The updated fees would double the price of nonimmigrant student visas, officially called F and M visas, from $100 to $200 and raise exchange visitor, or J visa, fees from $100 to $180. "The fee increases are very minor in the grand scheme of things," said Vasanth Rajamani, a computer engineering graduate student from India.
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Los Angeles 'Is A Third World City'

Telegraph (U.K.), April 24. Los Angeles is becoming a 'Third World city' with immigrants making up half its workforce, says a new study. A third of immigrants have not graduated from high school and 60 per cent do not speak English fluently, the Migration Policy Institute found. It said this left immigrants ill-equipped to fill California's fastest-growing occupations, such as computer software engineering and nursing. The organisation added that as the so-called baby boomers reach retirement age, a similar pattern will spread across the US
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Hispanics In House Blast Dem Leaders On Immigration

Associated Press, April 23. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus denounced House Democratic leaders Wednesday as 'spineless' and little better than Republicans for failing to take on comprehensive immigration reform. Leaders of the all-Democratic caucus, which numbers two dozen, criticized their party leadership at a news conference for instead scheduling hearings on enforcement legislation and specific visa issues. They also complained that they are being blamed for opposing bills strongly supported by other Democrats that would add more visas for certain classes of immigrants, such as high-tech or seasonal workers. Instead, the Hispanic Caucus insists on a comprehensive approach that would provide a path for citizenship for some 12 million illegal immigrants now living in the U.S.
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Virtual Fence On Mexican Border Deemed Insufficient

Associated Press, April 23. The government is scrapping a $20 million prototype of its highly touted 'virtual fence' on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings, officials said. The move comes just two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced his approval of the fence built by The Boeing Co. The fence consists of nine electronic surveillance towers along a 28-mile section of border southwest of Tucson. Boeing is to replace the so-called Project 28 prototype with a series of towers equipped with communications systems, new cameras and new radar capability, officials said.
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Capitol Hill Sparks Fly Over Guestworkers

Frontera NorteSur News, April 22. With thousands of foreign workers granted H2-B visas to work legally in the US hospitality and other industries every year, debate over the future of the guestworker program is growing. For instance, employers in resort communities argue they cannot find enough willing local workers to fill available jobs and must resort to contracting foreigners. Opponents of the H2-B system, meanwhile, contend it is depriving US citizens of employment opportunities while creating a sub-class of easily exploitable workers. Divisions over the H2-B program were evident when a House judiciary subcommittee chaired by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca.) gathered testimony on Capitol Hill last week. On the pro side of the debate, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) urged Congress to expand the number of H2-B visas in order to meet vital economic demand. AILA President Kathleen Campbell Walker said adding more visas to the pool was a 'no brainer.'
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Four Groups Of Voters May Be Key To Election

Wall Street Journal, April 22. As Democrats head to the polls in the crucial Pennsylvania primary Tuesday, a much clearer view of the U.S. electoral puzzle is starting to emerge from the fog of Campaign 2008. Four groups of voters -- working-class males, young people, rural and small-town Americans and Hispanics -- stand out as the key pieces of that puzzle. All four groups are in flux, and they will provide the leading indicators of where the race is heading.
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Dems Set Plan To Battle McCain For Latino Votes

Arizona Republic, April 23. The Democratic Party may not have settled on its presidential candidate yet, but it has decided on a strategy to challenge presumptive Republican nominee John McCain's effort to court Hispanic voters. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the McCain campaign said the Arizona senator's support among Hispanics in his home state, where he won 70 percent of Hispanic votes in his 2004 Senate race, shows he is in a strong position to compete nationally for the key voting bloc. The Democratic National Committee on Tuesday announced the formation of a DNC Hispanic Leadership Council, which will spread the word about McCain's record on issues important to Hispanics.
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U.S. to Insist That Travel Industry Get Fingerprints

Washington Post, April 22. The U.S. government today will order commercial airlines and cruise lines to prepare to collect digital fingerprints of all foreigners before they depart the country under a security initiative that the industry has condemned as costly and burdensome. The proposal does not say where airlines must collect fingerprints -- at airport check-in counters, departure gates or kiosks somewhere in between. But the government estimates the undertaking will cost airlines $2.3 billion over 10 years, a U.S. homeland security official said.
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Lottery for Temporary Work Visas

New York Times, April 15. Federal authorities said they ran an electronic lottery to select 85,000 highly skilled immigrants to receive temporary work visas, known as H-1Bs, for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency received 163,000 petitions for the visas, which are limited to annual quotas of 65,000 for immigrants with skills in technology, science and engineering, and 20,000 for immigrants with advanced degrees from American universities. The agency said it would notify by June 2 the employers whose petitions for immigrant workers were selected in the lottery, and the visas would be fully processed by July 1. A waiting list was created in case some of the selected petitions do not meet the requirements.
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Immigration, Clerical Authority On Pope’s Agenda

Chicago Tribune, April 15. Shortly after he sets foot on American soil this week, Pope Benedict XVI will strive to set a tone of compassion and reassurance for a church haunted by the sins of sexually abusive priests. In Washington the pontiff will remind U.S. bishops of their mission to serve God by easing victims' pain and tending their flock. And in New York he will deliver a message of "trust and hope" to clergy in an effort to restore confidence in the church in his first visit to the United States as pope.
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Chertoff Defends Immigration Enforcement

Associated Press, April 13. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says he feels the pain of employers pinched by intensified efforts to control illegal immigration, but adds that until Congress enacts broad immigration reforms they shouldn't expect any changes in enforcement. In an interview with The Associated Press, Chertoff said this week that the rising complaints from businesses offer some evidence the Bush administration's approach is working.
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Immigration Is Out As Issue For Presidential Candidates

Media General News Service, April 13. The clamor over immigration reform has softened to a whisper along the presidential campaign trail. Last year, Congress was immersed in a bruising battle over fixing the nation’s immigration system. In that fight, John McCain was joined by fellow GOP Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida and eight other senators in unsuccessfully advocating a bipartisan comprehensive approach that some decried as providing 'amnesty' for undocumented immigrants.
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USCIS Announces U Visa Update

ilw.com. April 14. USCIS announced that, until further notice, it will not terminate interim relief for aliens who have not yet filed for U nonimmigrant status, except in those cases where USCIS is aware of adverse factors.
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Perfectly Legal Immigrants Until They Applied For Citizenship

New York Times, April 12. Dr. Pedro Servano always believed that his journey from his native Philippines to the life of a community doctor in Pennsylvania would lead to American citizenship. But the doctor, who has tended to patients here in the Susquehanna Valley for more than a decade, is instead battling a deportation order along with his wife.
The Servanos are among a growing group of legal immigrants who reach for the prize and permanence of citizenship, only to run afoul of highly technical immigration statutes that carry the severe penalty of expulsion from the country. For the Servanos, the problem has been a legal hitch involving their marital status when they came from the Philippines some 25 years ago.
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Bill Gates's Wish Is Homeland Security's Command

Slashdot, April 12. “PC World reports that DHS has extended the time foreign graduates of US colleges can stay in the country and work to almost two-and-a-half years, an 'emergency' change that drew kudos from Microsoft and other H-1B visa stakeholders. Looks like when Bill Gates says 'Jump,' the government asks 'How high?' Bill Gates's Congressional Testimony, March 12, 2008: 'Extending OPT from 12 to 29 months would help to alleviate the crisis employers are facing due to the current H-1B visa shortage. This only requires action by the Executive Branch, and Congress and this Committee should strongly urge the Department of Homeland Security to take such action immediately.
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Let's Build Ties, Not Walls, Mexico's Former President Says

Indianapolis Star, April 11. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox spoke at a luncheon at Downtown's Conrad Indianapolis on Thursday and stressed that his country and the United States must cooperate on immigration issues. The luncheon was part of the International Speaker Series of the Institute for Global Enterprise in Indiana, affiliated with the University of Evansville. Fox was Mexico's president from 2000 to 2006. A proponent of social reform within Mexico, Fox is known for his efforts to reach agreements with the U.S. on immigration regulation and drug-trafficking laws.
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Immigrants and Taxes – Do They Pay Their Fair Share?

Immigration Policy Center, April 11. Tax Day would seem to be an appropriate time to inject some bottom-line reality into the long-running debate over whether or not immigrants in the United States "pay their own way" as taxpayers. As with nearly all aspects of the immigration debate, the controversy over how immigrants impact the public treasury is far too often dominated by emotionally charged rhetoric rather than hard facts. Many of these much-needed facts are provided in a forthcoming report from the Immigration Policy Center by Stephen Moore, Senior Economics Writer at the Wall Street Journal and former director of Fiscal Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and Richard Vedder, Distinguished Professor of Economics at Ohio University. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2005 Current Population Survey and other sources, Moore and Vedder find that immigrants not only pay their own way in taxes, but play a hefty role in shoring up the teetering Social Security system, and provide a fiscal windfall to U.S. taxpayers by tending to come to the United States during their prime working years--after the costs of their education and upbringing have been borne by their home countries.
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Fifty States Now Compliant with Real ID

FamilySecurityMatters.org, April 11. This past week, the state of Maine agreed to comply with Real ID regulations. Maine was the last state to agree to comply with Real ID, making this a remarkable cornerstone for the program. All 56 U.S. jurisdictions and states have either complied with the law to implement Real ID security standards by May 11, 2008, or have applied for an extension of the deadline for security improvements.
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Twice As Many H1-B Applications Filed As Available

New York Times, April 10. Federal immigration authorities received about 163,000 petitions for temporary work visas for highly skilled immigrants for the year starting Oct. 1, officials said Thursday, nearly twice as many as the number of visas available. The government each year offers 65,000 visas, known as H-1Bs, for highly educated foreign workers, and 20,000 visas for immigrants with a master's degree or doctorate from an American college or university. Citizenship and Immigration Services closed the application period Tuesday after it had been open for the five-day minimum. Although petitions for the 2009 fiscal year increased by about 23 percent over 2008, immigration officials said they had expected an even higher number. A new rule penalizing employers who presented more than one petition for the same worker helped keep down the numbers, said Chris Rhatigan, a spokeswoman for the immigration agency.
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Immigrant Advocates Plan May 1 March

Houston Chronicle, April 10. Immigrant advocates in Houston on Wednesday called for supporters of comprehensive immigration reform to join a May 1 march downtown as part of a larger, nationwide protest. …Organizers said they were hoping to bring attention to a bill pending in Congress called the SAVE Act, or the Secure America with Verification and Enforcement Act, which would add an estimated 8,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents and require employers to use federal databases to verify the status of all workers. The SAVE Act offers no path toward legalization for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
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City Colombians Lean Republican Over Trade Issue

New York Sun, April 10. Some immigrants in New York City's Little Colombia may be changing their vote to Republican this year as a result of the Democratic candidates' opposition to a free trade agreement with Colombia. Although only a small slice of the electorate, Colombian immigrants in Queens are backing away in particular from Senator Clinton, a candidate who only a few months ago they ardently, and almost unanimously, supported. Even those who are against the deal are switching their allegiance - to Senator Obama, whom they view as a stronger opponent of free trade.
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Japanese Family Chooses Apple Pie And Baseball

The warm climate, aesthetic beauty and friendly residents of Gulf Breeze have always created regional appeal, but now it has earned international attention. Just ask one Japanese family that finally hit the jackpot in the green card lottery last year.
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Immigration Odyssey Ends In Green Card Lottery Winner’s Victory

Daily Report, March 24. A Kenyan immigrant has achieved victory in his decade-long quest to fix a bureaucratic snafu that almost led to his deportation. This month immigration officials approved Charles K. Nyaga for a green card, a goal that was achieved after a host of legislative efforts by Sen. Saxby Chambliss failed, but a move made by Nyaga's brother more than 10 years ago came to light to save the day.
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Senate To Debate HIV Travelers Ban

Houston Chronicle, March 23. Despite contributing billions to the international battle against AIDS, the United States remains one of only 13 nations -- including Iraq, Qatar and Armenia -- to ban HIV-positive foreign visitors and immigrants. Public health officials and advocates are calling on the U.S. government to lift the long-standing travel ban for foreigners with HIV, calling it draconian and politically motivated.
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Comprehensive Plan Needed On Immigration

Chicago Sun-Time, March 23. n place of meaningful immigration reform, both conservative and liberal politicians have hatched piecemeal plans. This won't work.
Conservative Democrats, including Rep. Melissa Bean of Illinois and Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, are joining Republicans to sponsor the Secure America with Verification and Enforcement Act, which calls for beefing up the border with Mexico and requiring employers to do more to not hire -- and to fire -- undocumented workers. The problem with the SAVE Act is that it is an enforcement-only piece of legislation and does not include a plan to legalize any of the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. It amounts to "deport them all."
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Chertoff Denies Senators' Real ID Time Extension

Washington Times, March 22. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has denied a request by key senators on both sides of the aisle to delay the deadline for states to comply with new federal regulations for state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards. Mr. Chertoff rebuked the lawmakers for requesting that the congressionally mandated timeline be changed to implement Real ID, saying 'this plain statutory language mandates the May 11 deadline.'
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Proposed Immigration Rules Altered

UPI, March 22. Top U.S. officials have altered proposed illegal immigration regulations in an attempt to satisfy a federal judge's ruling on the employment initiative. Members of President George Bush's administration have made minor changes to the proposed rules in an attempt to gain the support of U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer, who blocked the proposal as part of an ongoing lawsuit, The Washington Times reported Saturday.
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U.S. Proposes New H-1B Visa Rule

NDTV.com, March 20. The United States has proposed a new rule prohibiting the employers from filing multiple applications for H-1B visa, widely sought by Indians, for the same employee to ensure a fair and orderly distribution of available visas. ''To ensure a fair and orderly distribution of available H-1B visas, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will deny or revoke multiple petitions filed by an employer for the same H-1B worker and will not refund the filing fees submitted with multiple or duplicative petitions,'' the USCIS said in an announcement.
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Universities See Spike In Applications From Abroad

Seattle Times, March 22. For overseas students, a U.S. college education has suddenly gotten much cheaper — and many more are applying to study here. University of Washington officials say the number of foreigners applying to be freshmen this fall is up a whopping 40 percent. And the UW is not alone: Foreign applications are up 32 percent at Washington State University. Across the 10-campus University of California system, foreign freshman applications are up 25 percent this year and 50 percent over the past two years. The tumbling dollar, experts say, is one factor.
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Gonzales Touts Immigration Control

Tallahasee Democrat, March 20. The head of the nation's immigration service believes immigrants are vital to America - as befits someone born in Cuba who immigrated to the U.S. at age 4. But Dr. Emilio Gonzalez is an equally firm believer that strong immigration laws are vital to national security. 'Immigration is a good thing; controlled immigration is a better thing,' he said Wednesday. 'Immigrants have contributed so much to the United States. But the U.S. cannot be the repository for everyone in the world.'
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Congressional Testimony of Susan Ginsburg On Visa Waiver Program

U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, February 28. Chairman Feinstein, Senator Kyl, thank you for the opportunity to testify today before this distinguished committee. I will summarize my formal written statement and provide my full testimony for the record. Recognizing legitimate concerns that the Visa Waiver Program could pose security risks to the United States, it is important to explore ways in which the program’s structure could be modified to maintain its considerable benefits while also limiting potential exposure.
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Rising Immigration Not Linked to Crime Rates: Study

Yahoo News, March 19. Contrary to common beliefs, rising immigration levels do not drive up crime rates, particularly in poor communities, and Mexican-Americans are the least likely to commit crimes, according to a new study. Robert Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard University who studied crime and immigration in 180 neighborhoods in Chicago over seven years, found that first-generation immigrants were 45 percent less likely to commit violent acts than third generation Americans.
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Tech Group Lobbied for Immigration Bill

Associated Press, March 19. Technology trade group AeA spent $2 million in 2007 to lobby on patent and immigration reforms, investment in high-speed Internet service and other issues. The trade group, formerly known as the American Electronics Association, spent $1 million in the second half of 2007 to lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form posted online Feb. 13 by the Senate's public records office. AeA -- which counts Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc. and Google Inc. among hundreds of members -- also lobbied on homeland security matters, Internet spyware legislation, health technology, trade issues and other matters.
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Immigrant-Worker Visas Could Double If New Bill Passes

Arizona Republic, March 19. A bill introduced last week by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords would double the number of H-1B visas that allow immigrants to legally work in the United States. The Tucson Democrat's bill, known as the Innovation Employment Act, calls for increasing the limit of H-1B visas from 65,000 a year to 130,000 a year. The bill also would eliminate a 20,000-a-year cap on visas for foreign graduate or doctoral-program graduates who study science, technology, engineering or math. Another bill submitted by U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, would expand the annual visa limit even further to 195,000 for fiscal years 2008 and 2009.
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NumbersUSA Opposes H1-B Visa Expansion

OneNewsNow, March 17. An official with the immigration reduction group Numbers USA believes an attempt in Congress to import more foreign labor into the country would further endanger middle-class jobs held by Americans. Microsoft chairman and billionaire Bill Gates urged lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week to make it easier for Microsoft and other large tech companies like Google, Intel, and Hewlett Packard to hire foreign workers. Gates called on Congress to increase the number of the most common type of skilled guest-worker visa, called an H-1B.
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Texas Instruments Lobbied For Immigration Reforns

Associated Press, March 17. Semiconductor company Texas Instruments Inc. spent nearly $2.8 million in 2007 to lobby for immigration reform, funding for research and other issues. The Dallas-based company spent about $1.5 million in the second half of 2007 to lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form posted online Feb. 12 by the Senate's public records office.
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For Foreign Investors, Profit Isn't Only Goal

New York Times, March 16. Brian Goulding recently moved with his wife, Majella, and three young children to Wilmington, N.C. ''It's gorgeous here,'' he said, referring to the region's temperate climate. But Mr. Goulding also has a strong interest in the colder environs of northern Vermont and, specifically, the success of a new hotel at the Jay Peak ski resort, five miles from the Canadian border. If the hotel, expected to open next fall, succeeds, Mr. Goulding and his family, who are from Ireland, will be allowed to remain in the United States.
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3 More EU Nations Seeking Visa-Free Travel To U.S.

Associated Press, March 16. At least three recent newcomers to the European Union will opt this week for agreements with Washington on visa-free travel, the U.S. secretary for homeland security said Sunday. The official, Michael Chertoff, did not identify the three, but other officials said they were Slovakia, Hungary and Lithuania. They will join the Czech Republic, Estonia and Latvia, which have already signed preliminary deals on visa-free travel with Washington.
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Immigration Head Leaving

Associated Press, March 13. The head of the Homeland Security agency that ushers in new citizens said Thursday he is leaving the job. Emilio Gonzalez, director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, told The Associated Press he was announcing his plans to his agency's employees Thursday morning. He said he has informed the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff of his departure, and told some staffers Wednesday.
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With All the Talk About Illegal Immigration, a Look at the Legal Kind

Voice of America, March 9. Second of two programs on immigration issues in the US examines the rules for seeking permanent residency.
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Action On Immigration Reform Long Overdue

AG Weekly, March 8, OPINION. American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman may have summed up our nation’s immigration situation best this week saying up to $9 billion in agricultural production and the nation’s food security are at risk if immigration laws are not reformed. “Either we can make it possible for temporary foreign workers to help us grow the food in the U.S. or they will stay in their country and grow food for the U.S.,” he said.
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Immigration Bills Up But Will They Pass?

Yahoo News, March 7. State lawmakers around the country are proposing hundreds of bills this year aimed at curbing illegal immigration, but experts say the cost and public opposition will keep many from becoming law. Lawmakers in at least eight states are now sponsoring legislation similar to Oklahoma, which last May passed the nation's most comprehensive anti-immigration law.
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Since You Asked: Legal Immigration Easy As Pie