NEWS  BYTES

A few months ago, stories about foreign nationals being denied entry at the Portland, Oregon International Airport were widespread.  Legitimate business visitors were being put on planes back home, often after spending the night in jail.  At least one female visitor was strip-searched.  The uproar over the situation was widespread and eventually led the director of the INS Portland office to leave his position.  Since then, the denials of entry at Portland have dropped substantially.  Since August, only two people were denied entry, compared with an average of almost 30 a month over the previous year.  The INS attributes the improvement to better training and increased cultural awareness of inspectors at the airport.  According to the new director, the INS is also working more closely with Delta Airlines, the main international carrier at the Portland airport.

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The state of Iowa is continuing its efforts to attract immigrants, this time with three ,000 grants to cities to encourage immigrants to come there.  The governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, has been trying for some time to increase immigration to the state, which is losing much of its native population.  He has called upon people to give the latest plan a chance, saying, “This will not be easy.  It has never been easy.  But it has never been more necessary.”  The grants will be used to develop programs to welcome immigrant workers in an effort to avoid some of the tensions that often accompany immigration.  Efforts will focus on recruiting immigrants already in the US.

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Santa Clara County, California has approved a plan to use its share of the national tobacco settlement funds to provide health care coverage to all uninsured children in the county.  The county, which is in the heart of Silicon Valley, has a very high cost of living and is home not only to successful high-tech immigrants, but also to immigrants who work in service industries with lower wages and have a difficult time coping with the rising costs of everyday needs.  San Jose, the largest city in the county, is considering a similar plan.

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A California attorney was sentenced to 18 months in prison for her role in an international baby smuggling scheme.  According to evidence presented at the trial of Janice J. Doezie, pregnant Hungarian women were brought to the US where the baby would be born and then sold to couples in California.  Babies themselves were also smuggled into the US.  Authorities say Doezie was involved in the sale of at least 13 babies, and helped recruit the mothers by offering them anywhere from ,000 to ,000 per child.  Doezie maintains that while what she did was against the law, she did it for the right reasons.

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A fifth person has pled guilty to charges of involvement in a marriage fraud scheme designed to help immigrants get green cards.  Marycel Diaz, a US citizen, said that she was supposed to receive a car in return for her involvement, but did not.  The alleged ringleader of the group, Juanita Zamora, recently entered a plea of not guilty and will go to trial sometime next year.

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Nine prison guards from York County, Pennsylvania have been charged with aggravated assault and conspiracy in connection with the beating an inmate from Jamaica last June.  According to other employees at the prison, the inmate became violent and was subdued, but the guards did not stop there, and proceeded to kick and punch the inmate.  Attorneys for the guards say that there is no foundation to the charges and that their clients will plead not guilty.  The inmate was being held pending his deportation, which will now be delayed until the case is resolved.

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A native Puerto Rican who moved to Iowa five years ago was recently elected to the city council of Storm Lake, Iowa.  Hector Velez says that his Hispanic heritage may have helped him in the community, which has seen a large increase in the Hispanic population over the last decade.  Storm Lake was also the location, earlier this year, of a series of anti-immigration ads run by a national group, blaming immigrants for a perceived decline in the quality of life in the community.  

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The American Immigration Law Foundation is collecting information on cases where the INS has denied adjustment of status or a consulate abroad denied an immigrant visa to beneficiaries of petitions for family members that were reinstated after the petitioner died.  The INS seems to be taking the position that because the petitioner is dead and cannot provide an affidavit of support, that the beneficiary is inadmissible.  If you have information about such a case, please send a one-page summary to Traci Hong at thong@alif.org. 

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The INS is going forward with the development of a Coordinated Interagency Partnership Regulating International Students (CIPRIS) fee collection program.  Last March, the INS delayed implementation of the program in response to concerns from educational institutions.  This October, however, Congress passed new legislation dealing with the CIPRIS fee.  Under this new version, the INS will collect fees from students coming to the US after they have been accepted at a US school, but before they apply for the visa.  The standard fee will be , but will only be for au pairs, camp counselors and summer work/travel participants.  Regulations are currently being written, and will be effective when released, as the October law exempts them from the standard comment requirement.

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NAFSA, the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors, has issued its year 2000 Economic Impact Statement, which addresses the economic impact of foreign students in the US.  According to the statements, international students and their dependents have contributed approximately billion to the economy during the 1999-2000 academic year.  This is up nine percent from the previous year.  The estimates are available on the NAFSA website at http://www.nafsa.org/advo/econimpact.html.

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The city of Honolulu will begin offering its written driver’s license exam in eight different languages beginning in April 2001.  The test will be offered in English, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Samoan, Tagalog, Tongan, and Vietnamese.  The city used to offer the test in multiple languages, but had to stop in the late 1980s because of budget constraints.  It is hoped that offering the test in multiple languages will encourage people who are not currently licensed because they cannot speak English to become licensed drivers.

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The US Commission on Civil Rights, an independent US government agency, is planning to begin a close study of the impact of US immigration laws on immigrants’ civil rights, particularly those laws that call for the detention of children and asylum seekers, expedited removal and the deportation of immigrants for minor crimes committed long ago.  Mary Berry, the head of the Commission, said when announcing the study that US “immigration policies and the way that they are implemented have obvious civil rights implications involving race, national origin and religious discrimination issues.”

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About 400 workers have won a million settlement for unpaid wages and overtime.  Most of the workers, who were employed as grocery deliverers by A&P and Food Emporium in New York, are West African immigrants.  The settlement comes as a result of two suits, one filed in state court by the Attorney General of New York and the other filed in federal court by the National Employment Labor Project.  The grocery stores were accused of paying the delivery workers far less than the minimum wage.  New York law requires them to be paid .20 per hour with tips; the drivers were paid between .25 and .75 per hour.

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An INS agent stationed in New Jersey is pursuing an assault case against his supervisor.  During a hearing in municipal court last week, the agent testified that the supervisor shoved him and hit him in the throat after he mistakenly walked into a closed-door meeting.  The supervisor has denied any such action, and his attorney believes that the agent was angry at being passed up for a promotion.

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An Austin, Texas man was recently arrested on charges of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping for posing as an INS agent and luring women from bus stops to rape them.  Officials say the man would dress in outfits resembling Border Patrol uniforms and tell women that he was an INS agent.  Police say that he attacked at least five women.

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According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the most recent Journal of the American Medical Association, tuberculosis remains a problem among immigrant communities in the US.  While overall rates of the disease declined between 1993 and 1998, the period covered in the report, the rate among immigrants increased.  The rate of TB among the native born population was 5.8 cases per 100,000 people, while among the foreign born population was 32.9 per 100,000 people.  The report also estimates that within the next two years, the rate will reach 50 per 100,000 people.  Researchers say the study indicates that while efforts to control TB are working, greater efforts need to be made in immigrant communities.  The study is available at http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/current/abs/joc00347.html