Two must reads we’ve seen so far today:  One was today’s Washington Post Metro section front page look at law students aiding in immigration law clinics.  With so much deportation going on and with so many obstacles to legal immigration and staying legal, it’s all hands on deck. 

The second was the lead story in Sunday’s New York Times by Julia Preston on how the business community is starting to stir to put pressure on GOP lawmakers about immigration.  Employers trying to play by the rules are being tarred with the same brush as bottom-feeding employers who exploit the illegal status of workers.  Until we find ways of allowing for sufficient legal immigration, many small business owners are suffering.

The Post story looks at how much need there is for legal counsel in immigration-related matters.

But there is a growing realization, students and professors said, that policies on issues such as asylum and due process are evolving as never before, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A growing immigrant population also means that legal status often complicates what might have once been simple criminal or labor cases.

 

“It’s not just that people think immigration is important, but they’re seeing that it affects everything,” said Hiroshi Motomura, an immigration law professor who will join UCLA in the fall.  – Karin Brulliard, “Law Students Rush to Meet Needs In Booming Field of Immigration,” Washington Post, July 7, 2008

The Times story looks at how at the state and local level, businesses are uniting to keep up the pressure for immigration reform and beat back harmful initiatives aimed at immigrants – which are having a tremendous impact on the economy and business environment.

The offensive by businesses has been spurred by the federal enforcement crackdown, by inaction in Congress on immigration legislation and by a rush of punitive state measures last year that created a checkerboard of conflicting requirements. Many employers found themselves on the political defensive as they grappled, even in an economic downturn, with shortages of low-wage labor.

 

Mike Gilsdorf, the owner of a 37-year-old landscaping nursery in Littleton, Colo., saw the need for action by businesses last winter when he advertised with the Labor Department, as he does every year, for 40 seasonal workers at market-rate wages to plant, prune and carry his shrubs in the summer heat. Only one local worker responded to the notice, he said, and then did not show up for the job.

 

Mr. Gilsdorf was able to fill his labor force with legal immigrants from Mexico through a federal guest worker program. But that program has a tight annual cap, and Mr. Gilsdorf realized that he might not be so lucky next year. His business could fail, he said, and then even his American workers would lose their jobs.

 

“We’re not hiring illegals, we’re not paying under the table,” Mr. Gilsdorf said. “But if we don’t get in under the cap and nobody is answering our ads, we don’t have employees.” His group, Colorado Employers for Immigration Reform, is pressing Congress for a much larger and more flexible guest worker program. – Julia Preston, “Employers Fight Tough Measures on Immigration,” New York Times, July 6, 2008

Littleton, Colorado?  Isn’t that where anti-legal-immigration firebrand Rep. Tom Tancredo is from?  Boy, his agenda sure is helping the local folks!!!

For more information on what the business community is facing and how they are pushing back, visit ImmigrationWorksUSA.

If our goal is to have an immigration system that almost all rational intending immigrants choose to go through rather than around, then we need to do more than just focus on fencing and boots on the ground at our Southern border.  Today’s lead editorial in the New York Times makes this point superbly.

Immigration policy has mostly been directed by opponents of legal immigration for the last two decades.  They have helped bottle up legal immigration channels so that they can then shout bloody murder at the resulting illegalities in the labor market.  They direct all the focus on the fence –”The Great Wall of Chihuahua,” which the Supreme Court says can be built with no consideration for any laws, foreign or domestic — and on the Border Patrol force than cannot recruit, train, and deploy agents at nearly the rate the do-little Congress has authorized.  Add substandard detention conditions, massive and record-setting round-ups, and truncated or non-existent due process for those swept up, and you have our current approach to controlling and regulating immigration.

But how effective is it?

The National Guard is leaving the border at the end of the month. And even though the border states want them to stay, the Bush administration is declaring victory. That’s how good things are down there.

 

Too bad, though, that the results that restrictionists predict from victory — an end to illegal immigration, the expulsion of illegal immigrants, the restoration of jobs to American workers, the protection of American culture and language from a Hispanic invasion — are not coming anytime soon. That’s because fixing immigration has very little to do with any of the hustle and bustle along the 2,000-mile line from San Diego to Brownsville, Tex.

According to research by the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego (summarized here) more than 90% of intending immigrants from Mexico get through the gauntlet at the border somehow.

Maybe establishing law and order in our immigration system is more complicated than just focusing on the border, enforcement, and deportation alone.

This is not to argue for giving up on enforcement. The real victory will come when a repaired, well-patrolled border coincides with a repaired, well-run immigration system that requires undocumented workers to come forward and be legalized, has expanded avenues for legal workers, including would-be citizens, and cracks down on illegal hiring as staunchly as it protects workers’ rights.

 

There is a long list of things to do to make the immigration system correspond to American values and economic realities, and the country is doing just about none of them. We’re paying a huge price to pay for an ineffective fence and some symbolic victories on the border. — “False Victory at the Border,” New York Times editorial, July 5, 2008

Well said, Grey Lady.

As we are learning (and have reported here previously), one consequence of being put in ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention is quite literally death.  Because of the way health care for immigrant detainees is restricted, many face consequences and 83 have died in recent years.  Now it appears that at least some think ICE leaders have been less than honest in congressional testimony about the standards of care given detainees.

CQ Homeland Security reporter Caitlin Webber reports that experts on detention and advocates for detainees feel that Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security and the head of ICE, failed to disclose that “non-emergency conditions are assessed or treated only if doctors believe their illness would prevent deportation.”  According to the critics interviewed by Webber from the Detention Watch Network, the ACLU National Prison Project, and the New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, the policy is problematic for a number of reasons, but that this is not the first time senior ICE officials have not fully disclosed the standard for care.

“What I find most troubling . . . is that it is the second time now that ICE has been called to testify before Congress on the issue of medical care in detention and it’s also the second time that it has misrepresented the standard,” Tom Javits, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, said in an interview.

Javits said Gary E. Mead, assistant director for management of the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations” also diluted the non-emergency care standard in testimony Oct. 4, 2007, before the House Judiciary Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law Subcommittee. – CQ Homeland Security, “ICE Officials’ Testimony on Detainee Medical Care Called Into Question,” June 16, 2008

Pressed by the CQ reporter, Homeland Security/ICE spokesperson Kelly Nantel came up with this telling response:

“We are in the deportation business. . . . Obviously, our goal is to remove individuals ordered to be removed from our country…We address their health care issues to make sure they are medically able to travel and medically able to return to their country.” – CQ Homeland Security, “ICE Officials’ Testimony on Detainee Medical Care Called Into Question,” June 16, 2008

What does this statement mean for all of those who are detained but are seeking relief in immigration court – like asylum seekers? Or those who should be given relief to testify against employers or traffickers? It’s the classic idea that immigration enforcement is just about booting people out of the country rather than attempting to ensure that all of our immigration laws are fairly enforced.

We are witnessing an unprecedented period best described as enforcement on steroids without reform.  The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, which follows government law enforcement data closely, indicates that by several measures we are in a new era of unleashing the Department of Homeland Security and the courts in the war on immigrants. 

TRAC reports that immigration-related convictions were up 96.3% in February 2008 compared to the same month in 2007 (see “Immigration Convictions for February 2008”) and that the U.S. set a new record for immigration-related prosecutions in March 2008 (see “Surge in Immigration Prosecutions Continues”).

[A]ccording to timely data from the Justice Department. The total of 9,350 such prosecutions was up by almost 50% from the previous month and 73% from the previous year.

The dramatic changes in the number of defendants charged with immigration-related charges are based on case-by-case information obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United states Attorneys…

The spurt in the prosecutions of individuals charged with various immigration crimes is the result of “Operation Streamline.” Under this recently intensified administration policy, according to news reports and interviews with federal public defenders, the government has charged a rapidly growing number of undocumented aliens with various federal criminal charges in selected districts along the Mexican border. “Operation Streamline” began as a pilot project in December 2005 in Del Rio, Texas. – “Surge in Immigration Prosecutions Continues,” Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

The editorial writers at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday addressed this new enforcement era with an editorial headlined “Abhorring a vacuum: The absence of comprehensive immigration reform from Congress is resulting in a crackdown — a repudiation of who we are as a nation.”

A recent New York Times article described how authorities throughout the country are using existing laws to round up illegal immigrants, with deportation as the end game. This is a nuclear, enforcement-only approach that disintegrates families and local economies.

Workplace raids occurred last month in Postville, Iowa, at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. They resulted in 260 illegal immigrants sentenced to five months in prison on charges related to federal identity theft laws.

In Florida’s Santa Rosa County, the sheriff had businesses searched for illegal immigrants, making arrests on charges of violating state identity theft laws.

One consequence of this is precisely what immigration foes want: more apprehensions, more deportations and a pall of fear cast over the immigrant community and those who would join them. Other consequences, however, include a repudiation of who we are as a nation of immigrants and swimming against a global tide that makes labor as fluid as goods. – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial, “Abhorring a vacuum,” June 16, 2008

This has been a bad month or so for the Department of Homeland Security.  Congressional oversight hearings have been called to examine recent revelations of deaths in detention, lack of health care, and forced drugging of detainees.  Processing of citizenship applications remains hopelessly backlogged to the point that hundreds of thousands – perhaps more than a million – legal immigrants will not be able become citizens in time to vote in November.  This week, the Bush Administration announced that the flawed E-Verify worker verification system would be extended to all companies with federal contracts, thus placing additional pressure on an experimental system that is already underperforming.

As the bad news keeps piling up, editorial boards are taking notice.

Today the Los Angeles Times addresses E-Verify and other wacky developments in our hysteria to do something about immigration:

It’s legitimate to demand that contractors seeking Uncle Sam’s money jump through a few more hoops. And although Chertoff’s claim that E-Verify is “99.5%” accurate seems overstated (a new Government Accountability Office report indicates that the system produces uncertain results 8% of the time, and a 2006 report cited a 4% error rate in Social Security records, which E-Verify relies on), the collateral damage may be less troubling than the damage to the country’s sense of itself.

As we hustle to show resolve in the immigration “crisis,” we’re getting used to the idea that all private endeavor is subject to Washington’s prior approval. What kind of country do we want? A few years ago, a border wall would have seemed a relic from medieval China or Central Europe in the totalitarian era. Now it is official U.S. policy. – Los Angeles Times editorial, “Over the line: The anti-immigration furor is pushing us toward irrational policies, June 11, 2008

The New York Times in an editorial supporting a new bill introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) that would create mandatory detention standards across the immigration detention system including basic, minimal medical care, has this to say about deaths in detention:

The government should be rushing to improve the oversight and care in its sprawling detention system to protect all detainees. Instead, the official reaction has been slow and defensive, promised improvements are piecemeal, and criticism of the system is making immigration hard-liners indignant…

Whether immigrants are legal or illegal has nothing to do with their right to humane care. As Ms. Lofgren bluntly put it: “You are not supposed to kill people who are in custody.” – New York Times editorial, “Dying in Detention, June 11, 2008

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff will be called before the House Committee on Homeland Security again on Thursday at 10 a.m. for additional questioning, presumably about these and other matters.

One of the new trends that we see as more bad news is the expeditious way immigrants swept up in home and workplace raids are being railroaded through the criminal justice system to deportation.  In the aftermath of the massive raid in Postville, Iowa, last month, immigrants were strongly encouraged – some would say coerced – into waiving rights, waiving access to relief from deportation, and pleading guilty to criminal, not just civil, charges during mass drive-by hearings.  The best overview we’ve seen comes from New America Media, a consortium of ethnic media outlets.

Wendy Sefsaf, a Washington-based writer for NAM, breaks down this complicated issue of due process denied and legal immigration status denied, using Postville and other recent stories to illustrate (We recommend you read the whole article).

In May, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid took place at an Iowa kosher meat-packing plant. It was the largest raid ever. Nearly 400 employees at Agriprocessors were rounded up and interrogated by immigration officials. The search warrant executed by ICE also laid out a range of workplace abuses, including physical abuse. According to the government’s own warrant: “In February, Source #7 told ICE agents he or she observed a Jewish floor supervisor duct-tape the eyes of an undocumented Guatemalan worker shut and hit the Guatemalan with a meat hook.”

…

If the government warrant itself outlined abuse, the workers should have been eligible for protected status. However, they were treated as criminals, not victims.

In another case in Louisiana, Indian workers were trafficked to the United States and housed in substandard conditions while their wages were held back, in order to pay back the $20,000 they were charged to come the United States to work at Signal Construction in New Orleans. After they walked out on their jobs en masse, the Department of Justice opened a trafficking investigation case acknowledging their victimization, yet refusing to protect them.

In past cases similar to Signal Construction, “continued presence” was automatically granted, allowing the workers to stay on in the United States while the case went ahead. According to Dan Werner of the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Continued presence is discretionary on the part of the Department of Justice, but people used to get processed on the spot. This delay is a new thing.” The lawyers representing the Indian workers have been told they must submit their clients for deportation hearings.

The remedies available to victims of trafficking and crimes are known as “T” and “U” Visas, and 5,000 T visas and 10,000 U visas are available annually.

Congress created these visas to protect victims, particularly those who could serve as witnesses to crimes. However, these cases show a possible change in policy to deport instead of protect these victims. – New America Media, News Report by Wendy Sefsaf, “Rush to Prosecute Leaves Immigrant Victims of Crimes Without Protection,” June 11, 2008

Advocates who watch the troubling world of immigration detention and due process closely (eg: the Detention Watch Network, Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service, and the Rights Working Group, among others) have recently been emphasizing “alternatives to detention” like ankle devices and regular check-ins with authorities who can also provide legal services to those who have a path to become legal.  These alternatives are not only more humane, they are cost-effective.  Unfortunately, to the Department of Homeland Security, “alternatives to detention” means getting people deported as quickly as possible, preferably without all that pesky due process or those meddlesome immigration judges, lawyers and translators.