President Barack Obama on Thursday assured frustrated supporters of a promised overhaul of U.S. immigration laws that he remains committed to fixing a system he says is broken.

What remains unclear is whether Congress will send him a bill this year.

Obama said he told the senators and the advocacy groups that "my commitment to comprehensive immigration reform is unwavering, and that I will continue to be their partner in this important effort."

The immigration issue is an important one for Obama, who has promised to work to solve problems. Hispanics voted heavily for Obama in the 2008 presidential election, making the difference in key states like Florida, and their votes will be critical in the November midterm elections. Latino voters who don't think progress is being made on the issue may not go to the polls.

After meeting for more than an hour with Obama, immigration advocates told reporters they want Schumer and Graham to at least release their blueprint before a planned March 21 demonstration at the Capitol, with a bill introduced in the Senate soon after.

Of the total, about half of the immigrants had convictions for violent crimes or drug offenses. Most of the crimes were committed in the United States, authorities said.

The arrests, though, raises questions about why the immigrants hadn’t been deported earlier, immediately after they'd served their time for criminal convictions.

A new program, called Secure Communities, seeks to link jail staff with federal data banks to ensure that those with criminal convictions are removed from the country. There are only 110 jail locations in the country that now use the program.

Secure Communities has come under scrutiny for the relatively low number of persons caught who have been convicted of violent crimes – or what’s known in ICE as a "level one" offense.

Carrollton, Farmers Branch, Irving, Mesquite and Dallas and Denton counties are among the jurisdictions using Secure Communities processes. The program began in November 2008. 

To obtain a K-3 visa, the U.S. citizen will file Form I-130 Petition for Alien Relative along with supporting documentation and the filing fee of $355. Once U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) receive Form I-130, USCIS will issue a receipt notice indicating that they received the petition. The U.S. citizen will thereafter file Form I-129F Petition for Alien Fiancé with USCIS and include the I-130 receipt notice, and other supporting documentation. There are no filing fees when filing Form I-129F in this second step.

If the Immigrant Petition (Form I-130) has not been decided, and Form I-129F has been approved by USCIS, the file will be sent to the National Visa Center (NVC). The NVC will process the K-3 visa petition and send the K-3 petition to the U.S. Embassy or Consulate where the marriage took place or visa applicant's country of nationality. The K-3 visa applicant will be instructed by the U.S. Embassy or Consulate of further administrative processing.

If both Form I-129F (K-3) and Form I-130 (Immigrant Relative petition) have been approved by USCIS and both petitions were received by the NVC, the NVC will process the immigrant visa petition since there is no need to process the K-3 visa.

Please call us at (214)999-9999 for further information on K-3 visas or other immigration related questions.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow held off on imposing the sanctions against the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the Friday ruling, but indicted he would do so at a later date once related issues were ironed out.

Since early 2008, Arpaio has run 13 immigration and crimes sweeps consisting of deputies and posse volunteers who flood an area of a city — in some cases heavily Latino areas — to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders.

The handful of Latinos who filed the lawsuit against Arpaio's office alleged that officers based some traffic stops on the race of Hispanics who were in vehicles, had no probable cause to pull them over and made the stops so they could inquire about their immigration status.

This new rule by Mexican authorities shouldn't change travel habits, because it has been the law in the U.S. since June 2009 that U.S. travelers returning to this country from Mexico must show their passports.

Thirty-seven words. In this week's State of the Union address -- which was more than 7,000 words long and lasted longer than an hour -- all President Obama devoted to the issue of immigration reform was 37 measly words.

Here they are: "And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system -- to secure our borders, enforce our laws and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation."

It's disappointing that Obama didn't spend more time on this pressing issue -- but not surprising. Even though, elsewhere in the speech, Obama reminded Democrats in Congress that "the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills," this White House spent the first year in office running for the hills on immigration reform.

In fact, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once referred to the issue as the real "third rail" of American politics. You touch it, you die.

Every immigration reform advocate in the country -- including many Latinos -- should be disappointed in Obama. Many of them bought the fairy tale that a Democratic president would magically be more committed to immigration reform than a Republican one. And they expected Obama to make good on the promise he made, while addressing the annual meeting of the National Council of La Raza in July 2008 as a candidate, to treat comprehensive immigration reform as "a top priority in my first year as president."

That obviously didn't happen. And, regardless of what Obama's defenders say, it wasn't just because the president found other things to do. The truth is that immigration reform was always going to be an especially tough issue for Democrats since it splits the liberal coalition with Latinos on one side and organized labor on the other.

While many unions support giving illegal immigrants a shot at legal status, they balk at another element in the mix: guest workers, which organized labor claims would undermine U.S. workers who would -- even as we speak -- be happily doing the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs if foreign workers hadn't beaten them to it.

As for what Obama said in his speech, you'll notice that he was careful not to use hot-button phrases: "comprehensive immigration reform," "guest workers," "earned legalization." He was just as careful to emphasize positive phrases: "enforce our laws," "contribute to our economy," "enrich our nation."

Oh brother. Those 37 words must have been focus-grouped 100 times.

Next, Obama also played it safe by basically selling the rhetorical equivalent of mom, puppies and apple pie. By limiting his immigration remarks to feel-good generalities, the president decreased the likelihood of being attacked by opponents.

How does someone oppose "fixing our broken immigration system" or a call to "secure our borders"?

And finally, in going to bat for "everyone who plays by the rules," Obama can't very well be talking about illegal immigrants since they didn't play the rules to get here, stay here or work here. In fact, they are, by their very nature, rule breakers.

So either Obama is telegraphing that he won't be aggressively pursuing a path to earned legalization for illegal immigrants and will instead focus on the low-hanging fruit of enforcement only, or he is redefining what it means to "play by the rules," and what he means is that he aims to help those illegal immigrants who -- having broken the rules to get here -- might now be willing to adhere to a set of conditions to stay here.

There's a big difference between those two approaches, and only time will tell what the president is prepared to do to -- as he said -- fix a broken system.

Obama had it right the first time when he was campaigning for president. The answer is comprehensive immigration reform. "Enforcement only" won't work because it never does. It's just another way for lawmakers to take the easy way out, and -- as Obama said -- run for the hills.

Our elected officials need to grab the immigration issue whole with a comprehensive approach that includes: 

• Guest workers to do jobs Americans won't do at any wage;

• A tamper-proof identification card for all U.S. workers to help employers know who is legally eligible to work;

• New employer sanctions that include stiffer fines and jail time for repeat offenders;

• A condition-laden pathway to earned legalization for illegal immigrants who have been in the United States since before 2005;

• More workplace raids and speedier deportations to deal with those who can't or won't meet those conditions;

• A revamping of the immigration system for legal immigrants so that we put more emphasis on the demands of the labor market and less on family reunification;

• A ban on welfare and other social aid programs for those legalized with the exception of emergency health care;

• And efforts to secure the border, not with walls to nowhere but with better and smarter technology that helps Border Patrol agents stay one step ahead in their ongoing battle of wits with immigrant smugglers.

Mr. President, there is no way to say all that in 37 words.

January 27, 2010

Washington D.C. - In the State of the Union Address this evening President Obama made clear his ongoing commitment to immigration reform noting "we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system - to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation." Some may continue to argue that immigration reform is too politically risky to move on this year and that we should focus instead on rebuilding our economy. However, comprehensive immigration reform is compatible with economic reform as it would generate needed economic growth, create jobs and increase tax contributions by ensuring that everyone working in the United States is doing so legally. In fact, immigration reform would allow us to take full advantage of the opportunities for economic growth that immigrants bring.

• A 2007 report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers concluded that immigration as a whole increases the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by roughly $37 billion each year because immigrants increase the size of the total labor force, complement the native-born workforce in terms of skills and education, and stimulate capital investment by adding workers to the labor pool. 

• Immigrants do not compete with the majority of natives for the same jobs because they tend to have different levels of education and to work in different occupations. In fact, The roughly 90% of native-born workers with at least a high-school diploma experienced wage gains because of immigration between 1990 and 2004, ranging from 0.7% to 3.4% depending on their level of education, according to a 2006 study by Giovanni Peri, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California-Davis. 

• Immigrant entrepreneurs are twice as likely as Americans to start business and immigrant inventors account for more than one quarter of all U.S. patents according theKauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, 2008.  

• According to a 2010 study by UCLA professor Raul Hinojosa, comprehensive immigration reform that includes a legalization plan for the unauthorized would contribute a cumulative $1.5 trillion to the Gross Domestic Product over ten years, as more tax revenues are collected, wages increase for U.S.-born and legalized workers, and immigrant workers spend more in our economy.  The report also finds that wages for immigrant and native-born workers would rise in part because workers will have more bargaining power in the workplace.  

• The libertarian Cato Institute also reported that "legalization of low-skilled immigrant workers would yield significant income gains for American workers and households."  

The 11 newly designated countries are: Croatia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ireland, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Serbia, Slovakia, and Uruguay.

These 11 new countries join the 28 previously designated countries eligible to participate in these programs.

More information is available at: www.dhs.gov.

Furthermore, TPS holders will not be removed from the U.S. through July 22, 2011, and are eligible to apply for work authorization in the United States. The TPS registration period is for 180 days, so it is vital that nationals of Haiti in the United States on or before January 12, 2010, apply for TPS before July 20, 2010.

I wanted to pass on some news that may be of interest to your readers, just posted this morning:  Thomsen Reuter’s CLE division, West LegalEdcenter, is hosting a FREE webcast seminar on Haiti and immigration law.  It focuses on the ramifications of the recent, and significant policy changes announced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State pertaining to Haitian nationals currently in the US, as well as orphans in the process of adoption. 

Here is a link:   http://tinyurl.com/ydbkekf

Produced by the National Bar Association, the webcast will take place this Monday, January 25, 2010 at 3 p.m. EST. 

Let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely, 

Mike Weiner
West LegalEdcenter, A part of Thomsen Reuters

Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails. For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. Even in 2008, when The New York Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about who these people were and how they died.

But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.

The documents, obtained over recent months by The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, concern most of the 107 deaths in detention counted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since October 2003, after the agency was created within the Department of Homeland Security.

 The City Council next month will discuss requiring city contractors to ensure that their employees are working legally in the United States.

"I want people we do business with to show they're doing their due diligence," said council member John Gorena, an opponent of illegal immigration who narrowly won a seat on the council last year.

He's proposing that the city expand its use of E-Verify, a federally maintained electronic database system containing Social Security and other records. The system is used by the federal government for sizable contracts.

Twelve states require the use of some elements of the system to verify employment status of workers. Three states – Arizona, Mississippi and South Carolina – require all employers to use some level of E-Verify. Texas has no such requirement.

Lewisville already uses E-verify for its employees. The city also requires that its contractors comply with federal immigration laws. However, the city has no way to verify that contractors are hiring only legal workers.

That would change under Gorena's proposal to require contractors to confirm workers' employment status with E-Verify.

Gorena's proposal, made this week, received a lukewarm reception from other council members, who were concerned about straying too far into immigration policies.

Farmers Branch has become known for its battles over illegal immigration and is in costly litigation over its ordinance banning illegal immigrants from renting apartments.

The U.S. government today launched a massive outreach effort to alert the nation about this year's census, kicking off a $340 million promotional campaign that will travel across the country in the upcoming months.

After launching today in New York City's Times Square, the census road tour will stop at more than 800 events nationwide, including high-profile sporting events such as the Super Bowl and the NCAA Final Four. There is even a scheduled stop at New Orleans' Mardi Gras.

It is all part of an effort to notify the American population about this spring's census. In March, the census form (10 questions for most Americans) will arrive in mailboxes, the government's once-a-decade attempt to paint a new portrait of the country.

Then on April 1, only about 100 days away, comes National Census Day.

One fact that the public might learn is that the 2010 census form is the shortest in history. The bureau says it can be completed in only 10 minutes. For the first time since 1930, the bureau is using just one form, not two. The bureau has also unveiled a bilingual form that will be sent to areas with high Hispanic populations.

The objective is to maximize the number of completed forms that get mailed back to the bureau. Non-responses, the bureau knows, can be very costly. For every one percent increase in the number of people who mail back their forms, the bureau saves $80 million by not having to seek them out.

However, a recent analysis conducted by the bureau said there may be a three-percent decrease in mailed-back forms, caused by government mistrust, fear of identity theft, and the surge in home foreclosures.

The census will also have to overcome other issues, such as Hispanic advocacy groups calling for illegal immigrants to boycott the census unless immigration laws are not changed. The boycott is led by the National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders, a group claiming to represent 20,000 evangelical churches in 34 states.