According to a recent survey of immigrants in the US, despite increased tensions and difficulties, immigrants would still rather be in the US than their home country. The survey was conducted by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan organization in New York City, which contacted 1,002 immigrants from various nationalities and asked how their lives had been affected by the September 11th terrorist attacks. Only nine percent of respondents said that they faced increased discrimination. Despite the INS’ bad reputation, 57 percent of those surveyed said the agency did a good, if slow job.

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An immigrant from the Czech Republic was sentenced this week to 27 months in prison for employing dozens of undocumented immigrants in his janitorial service. Officials say that Lubomir Chocholak was part of a massive immigration fraud ring that covered almost the entire east coast of the US. At least seven others have been convicted in connection with the ring, and the investigation is still ongoing.

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Nearly 300 immigrants who thought that they were permanent residents have learned that their green cards are fraudulent and that they were victims of a scheme involving immigration consultants and a corrupt INS supervisor. Many of those defrauded are professionals who came to the US legally, but now face deportation. The INS supervisor, Leland Dwayne Sustaire, avoided jail time by testifying against the consultants who provided him with bribes – totaling at least $500,000 – in 1999. The four brokers who were convicted are all out of prison now, but for their victims, the story is just beginning as the government attempts to locate them all for deportation. The government claims that the immigrants knew that they were aware they were participating in fraud, even though one of the consultants convicted said they did not know.

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Reza Baluchi is an Iranian bicyclist traveled more than 46,000 miles across six continents on a tour for world peace until he ran into Border Patrol agents in Arizona two months ago. Since then, he has been in INS detention while officials try to figure out what to do with him. It is unclear when Baluchi’s travels began, but it was certainly before the terrorist attacks in September 2001. He carries with him photographs of himself at various places around the world, including Africa, Europe and South America. He says he planned to finish his journey in Canada, but that the terrorist attacks prompted him to change his plans, seeking to arrive in New York City on the one-year anniversary of the attacks. He applied for a US visa at the consulate in Monterrey, Mexico, but because he is Iranian, processing took months. While waiting, he cycled around Sonora, and, on one occasion, got lost and ended up crossing the border. Baluchi has applied for asylum in the US, claiming that he is not Muslim and that he has been persecuted for violating fasting laws during Ramadan.

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A former clerk at the Washington, DC, Department of Motor Vehicles has been charged with participating in a scheme to sell hundreds of fraudulent driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. Gwendolynn Dean, who is free on bond, resigned her job last year after the scheme was revealed. None of the roughly 900 people who obtained the fraudulent licenses are believed to have any connection to terrorism, but officials are disturbed that the scheme was able to continue until June 2002.

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An analysis of deportation records by the Atlanta Journal Constitution shows that the number of people deported to Muslim countries increased significantly from October 2001 to September 2002, growing faster than deportations to any other countries. During 2002, the number of people deported to Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Yemen rose from 655 to 1,627. At the same time, the total number of deportations fell by 18 percent, with deportations to Mexico falling by 24 percent.

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A federal court judge recently made permanent her temporary order preventing deportations to Somalia. The judge imposed the order while a lawsuit challenging the legality of deportations to Somalia is pending. In the lawsuit, those facing deportation and their advocates argue that Somalia, which plunged into civil war in 1991, does not have an official government and therefore cannot agree to accept deportees. The INS argues that because Somali law does not require a person to have entry documents, there is no need to obtain formal government permission for the deportations.

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A former Sun Microsystems employee has filed a lawsuit against the computer company, claiming that the company fired her, along with more than 2,500 other employees, so that they could hire foreign workers on H-1B visas. According to the lawsuit, the company did so because it believed that foreign workers would work longer for less pay, and were easier to control.

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A New Jersey appellate court this week ruled that a lower court judge was in error when she allowed prosecutors to close bail hearings for a man believed to have sold fraudulent driver’s licenses to two of the September 11^th hijackers. After the hearing, from which even the defendant, Mohamed el-Atriss and his attorneys were excluded, the judge doubled bail to $500,000. According to the appellate court, there was no evidence that the federal government believed the case involved matters of national security, and ordered the judge to hold an open bail hearing by the end of the month.