 NEWS BYTES
According to a recent study from the American Public Health Association, immigrants to the US generally live longer than native born US citizens. The study showed that immigrants are less likely to die of heart disease, lung cancer or suicide, regardless of their economic or educational status. Because immigrants tend to have lower incomes and less access to health care, researchers believe that the reasons for the difference are primarily cultural. Overall, male immigrants have an 18% reduced risk of mortality, while female immigrants have a 13% reduced risk.
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This week the Supreme Court granted a hearing in a case dealing with the ability of prisoners and detainees to sue private prison companies for constitutional violations. Since 1971, inmates have been able to sue federal employees for violations of their constitutional rights, and this ruling has been extended to many private parties performing traditional government functions. The case the Supreme Court will hear involves a halfway house in New York run by Correctional Services Corporation for the federal Bureau of Prisons. However, the case will have tremendous implications for people held in INS detention. Of the approximately 20,000 people held in INS detention, an increasing number are held in private facilities.
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California courts have begun to offer a class called “How to Live in America,” designed to help immigrants understand the widely followed social conventions in the US, conventions that are, in many cases, vastly different from those in their home countries. Those participating in the course are offered it as a way to reduce the sentence for various traffic offenses. The idea behind the class is to inform immigrants of the law so that they will be able to follow it. The course originated in Colorado, and was quite successful. Now other states are looking into similar programs.
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The government recently dropped the charges against a woman from the Dominican Republic who erroneously believed she was a US citizen and voted in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. Carolina Murry, the daughter of a US serviceman and a Dominican mother, moved to the US at the age of three. She grew up believing she was a citizen, and it was not until she applied for a passport in 1998 that she learned she was not. The prosecuting attorney asked that the charges be dropped after an investigation showed that there was no willful violation of law. Murry, who is currently in deportation proceedings based on illegally voting, hopes that in light of the new development the INS will drop its deportation efforts. Murry may also become a citizen under a newly passed law, which prevents the use of illegal voting as a bar to a showing of good moral character when the person had lived in the US before the age of 16 and reasonably believed that they were a citizen.
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The Miami INS District Director, Robert Wallis, who played a key role in the raid that reunited Elian Gonzalez with his father, is being promoted. It was recently announced that he would become the new Director of the INS Central Region, headquartered in Dallas. The Central Region oversees INS activities in 18 states, including five that border on Canada, as well as Texas and New Mexico. Wallis has been with the INS for 27 years.
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The newly expanded jail in Bergen County, New Jersey is in the process of concluding a deal in which it will house INS detainees awaiting deportation. Officials are looking to the agreement with the INS to boost the facility’s revenues, which have been falling over the past few years. The jail would receive about a day for each detainee, as much as .5 million a year.
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In Chicago last week the INS arrested two Mexican citizens on charges of producing fraudulent identification and immigration documents. During the arrest, INS agents seized more than 3,500 fraudulent documents with a street value of approximately 0,000. It is thought to be one of the largest document seizures ever in the Chicago area. If convicted the two men face up to 15 years in prison.
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The Lt. Governor of Texas, Bill Ratliff, recently explained what he meant by his comment about “illegal immigrants clogging” government services in Texas. The remark, given in a speech last week, was immediately met with criticism from advocacy groups, who felt the comments were racist, and that undocumented immigrants were being used as a scapegoat for the state’s larger budget problems. In his explanation, Ratliff said that he was not attempting to blame undocumented immigrants, but was instead simply trying to point out that the federal government should take more responsibility for the financial costs associated with undocumented immigration.
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In 1999, two women who were stopped at the San Ysidro border entry in California told inspectors that they were promised safe passage to the US in exchange for working as prostitutes until their debt was paid off. The women, Vladislava Touloucheva of Russia and Evgenia Tsimbal of Belarus, are now about to become the star witnesses in a trial of a couple alleged to have run an international prostitution ring. According to prosecutors, the couple, Alexander Rashkovski and Nataliya Vladmirovna Kozlova, “coerced and enticed” at least three women to come to the US to work as prostitutes. They claim that the women are lying because they want to remain in the US.
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