NEWS BYTES
A
17-year-old boy who was working in the US without INS authorization was killed
when a 200-pound metal ball fell from a crane and struck him.
According to officials, the crane was not being used in the Durango,
Colorado construction project in which Luis Carlos Sotelo was involved, but
workers decided to use it to move equipment they were using.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the
accident.
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Speaking to reporters after meeting with Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo
de la Concha, US Attorney General John Ashcroft said that the Bush
administration was interested in developing a new guest worker program.
While declining to give any specifics on what the US would support,
Ashcroft did say the administration sees such a program as a way to improve
relations with Mexico.
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A City Council member in Philadelphia has called upon the city to create a new
office designed to recruit immigrants to move to the city.
The move comes after census reports have made clear that Philadelphia is
suffering a steady population decline due in large part to the failure of the
city to attract new immigrants. During
the 1990s, the city lost four percent of its population.
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Ghulam Mangal, a native of Afghanistan, was recently sentenced to four years in
prison on charges of extortion, assault and fraud. He was found guilty of forcing street vendors, most of whom
were immigrants, to pay him to set their carts up in certain areas of
Washington, D.C. Mangal is said to
have collected as much as $50,000 from three vendors over three years.
Mangal was granted asylum in 1998.
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A recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading civil rights
organization, accused various anti-immigration groups of being linked to racist
groups. Officials of the
anti-immigration groups, including Dan Stein of the Federation for American
Immigration Reform, deny any connections with racist organizations.
According to the SPLC report two organizations that, along with FAIR,
have been running anti-immigration advertisements on television have clear
racist links. The director of the American Immigration Control Foundation
is a founding member of the League of the South, a white supremacist group.
The director of NumbersUSA is an editor for “Social Contract,” a
publication that carries articles by “white nationalists.”
Stein argues that even if there are racist organizations involved in the
anti-immigration movement, such ideologies are unrelated to immigration issues.
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An INS agent was arrested last week on charges of conspiracy to smuggle
undocumented immigrants into the US. Jose
Flores Lopez, along with two others, faces conspiracy charges.
According to the FBI, which investigated the case, Lopez is the leader of
the smuggling ring.
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Authorities last week discovered a 12-year-old Mexican girl who was being kept
in slave-like conditions by her Texas employer. The girl was discovered after neighbors heard her screams and
called authorities. She was in an
advanced state of malnutrition and showed signs of having been repeatedly
beaten. Her employer, Sandra Luz
Bearden, was arrested and could face life in prison.
Officials say that Bearden convinced the girl’s parents to let her
employ the girl, saying that she would have a better life than she would in
Mexico. They say that at first the
girl was well treated, but in March, Bearden began chaining the girl up outside
the house.
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This week actress Sigourney Weaver was profiled in the New York Times.
The article focused on her efforts in lobbying Congress to end the
practice of expedited removal. In a
letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), she referred to her experiences in the
Philippines while filming a movie, writing that in an “atmosphere of political
oppression, I realized how lucky I was to have America to go back to and call
home.” Since 1987, Weaver has
served on the board of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
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According to a recent report published in the American Journal of Public Health
based on a survey of about 2,600 middle school students in Massachusetts,
immigrant children are less likely than native children to use alcohol and
illegal drugs. Despite the lower
usage rates, however, immigrant children reported a substantial amount of peer
pressure to engage in risky behavior, and were less likely than others to seek
parental support in dealing with the pressure.
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Census data released this week shows that immigration to California has had a
tremendous impact on the way people in the state live.
The focus of the new data is the age of the population in living
arrangements. The average age in
the state is just over 33, two years younger than the national average.
There was also an increase in the percentage of married couple families,
due in large part to immigrants who hold traditional views of marriage.
The average family size in California is 3.43, nine percent larger than
the national average.
THE
ABC'S OF IMMIGRATION - NATURALIZATION
– RESIDENCY REQUIREMENTS, PART II
SISKIND'S IMMIGRATION BULLETIN