-  Abused Wife Wins Political Asylum in US

-  Federal complaint: Filipino teachers held in 'servitude'

-  Asylum seeker realized her dream but now is missing

-  Settlement opens door for hundreds of legal immigrants to becomeU.S. citizens

-  Immigration officials target 14 US cities in campaign against human trafficking

-  Balloon boy parents to plead guilty; Mother faced deportation to Japan

-  U.S. Identifies 111,000 Immigrants with Criminal Records

-  Immigrant girls and women seeking green cards will no longer be required to get HPV vaccine

-  Record Foreign Student Attendance Highlights DHS “Open Doors” Policy

-  Secretary Napolitano Announces Rule Proposing Permanent Global Entry Program

The Newser is reporting that the Obama administration has recommended that a Guatemalan woman who came to America fleeing horrific domestic abuse be granted political asylum. Rody Alvarado Peña's case has been in the courts since 1995 and lawyers say the decision will finally clarify the rules on whether abused women in foreign countries can seek asylum in the US.

Alvarado suffered a decade of abuse from her husband, an ex-soldier, and came to the US out of fear for her life, court papers state. Experts testified that only 2% of the thousands of domestic murders in Guatemala over the last decade have been solved, adding weight to arguments that Alvarado, as a battered woman, could be considered part of a persecuted group. “I thank God it came out well,” Alvarado, who works as a housekeeper for elderly nuns in California, tells the New York Times. “But it wasn’t easy to wait this long for immigration to make a decision.”

http://www.newser.com/story/72909/abused-wife-wins-political-asylum-in-us.html

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USA Today reports that many Filipino migrant teachers, in America on an H1-B Visa, have been abused and held in near ‘servitude.’ The teachers allegedly endured intimidation, humiliation, extortion and a long, painful separation from family members.

On Oct. 20, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) filed a lengthy complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor. The unions allege the companies through which the teachers received their visas kept the teachers in 'virtual servitude' by holding onto their U.S. work visas unless they kept paying inflated fees, commissions and rents.

Teachers were charged more than $16,000 apiece — about four times what they would earn annually as teachers in the Philippines — to get and keep jobs with public schools here. Federal law prohibits charging most fees to H-1B workers — employers are supposed to pay them. If they charge any fees, employers aren't allowed to collect them until workers draw their first paycheck in the USA.

The situation underscores the vulnerabilities of a small but growing corner of teacher recruitment: the H-1B visa program, which last year brought an estimated 6,000 teachers to the USA to fill harder-to-staff jobs in subjects such as math, foreign languages and special education. An estimated 19,000 migrant teachers work in U.S. schools, according to AFT, which last month warned of 'widespread and egregious' abuses of imported teachers. 'I'm very concerned that there are more places like this,' says American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. 'Even if it was an isolated incident, it would be horrible, but my hunch right now is that it's not isolated.'

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-10-27-filipino-teachers_N.htm

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The Los Angeles Times has issued a report about an Iranian immigrant named Gilda Ghanipou who has spent the last nine years on the run. Abandoned by her Muslim family for converting to Christianity, she has shuttled from one place to the next, terrified of being deported to Iran, where apostasy can be punished by death. Over a period of five years, she lived at over 25 different addresses. Last year, Ghanipour stumbled upon a retired immigration judge, Bruce Einhorn, and his Pepperdine University Law School students, who championed her quest for asylum. Ghanipour won the case, but she doesn't know it. The devoutly religious woman vanished shortly before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted her request at the end of August. Police haven't been able to find her and the coroner has no record of her.

According to written statements, Ghanipour spent her childhood in the city of Arak and her adolescence in Tehran. She married in 1979 shortly after graduating from high school and moved with her husband to Germany to escape the fundamentalist rule of the Islamic regime. She periodically visited relatives in California and returned briefly to Iran to help her father sort out her mother's will. While on one of those trips, she was arrested by the Iranian secret service and interrogated about suspicions that she was a German spy.

After divorcing her husband, she came to live with relatives in California, on a six month visa. While in California, she was approached by Evangelical Christians. 'And on the 30th of November 2000, while on a legal visit in the U.S., she ‘received Jesus Christ as my savior and became a Christian believer.' The decision alienated her family.

Ghanipour tried repeatedly to resolve her immigration problems. She filed for an extension of her visa, only to have it rejected because the wrong fee had been submitted. That happened because a Sherman Oaks notary who had posed as an immigration attorney provided an outdated form, defrauding her of money in the process.

In May, she appeared with Einhorn and another clinic attorney before an asylum officer with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Einhorn and Ghanipour returned two weeks later, hoping for a decision, but were told that it would be mailed. However, once they received positive notification, they were unable to locate Ghanipour.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-asylum24-2009oct24,0,6616785.story

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The Los Angeles Times reports that hundreds of legal immigrants in Southern California who have been waiting years for citizenship will have their cases resolved as a result of a settlement with the federal government. The immigrants were stuck in lengthy delays as they waited for the FBI to complete their security name checks and for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to approve their citizenship applications.

The settlement, approved in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, sets a six-month deadline for the government to decide on hundreds of citizenship applications from Los Angeles, Santa Ana and San Bernardino. The settlement also ends indefinite delays in processing naturalization applications, according to the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center, filed the suit in 2007 and argued that legal permanent residents lost jobs, were prevented from voting and missed out on in-state tuition breaks because of the delays.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/new-citizens.html

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The Associated Press has announced that, according to federal immigration officials, fourteen cities are being targeted in a new campaign alerting people about human trafficking. The 'Hidden in Plain Sight' program, sponsored by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, features billboards highlighting 'the horrors and the prevalence of human trafficking,' which is equivalent to 'modern-day slavery.'

The words 'Hidden in Plain Sight' are displayed on the advertisements with a toll-free number people can call to report situations where they believe people are being sexually exploited or forced to work against their will. Cities in the new campaign are Atlanta; Boston; Dallas; Detroit; Los Angeles; Miami; Philadelphia; Newark, N.J.; New Orleans; New York; St. Paul, Minn.; San Antonio; San Francisco and Tampa, Fla.

Bruce Foucart, an ICE special agent in charge of New England, said officials hope the billboards persuade residents to report suspected cases to ICE or local law enforcement. About 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked each year around the world and about 17,500 of them end up in the United States, according to ICE. Immigration officials say the victims are lured from their homes with false promises of well-paying jobs but are trafficked into the commercial sex trade, domestic servitude or forced labor. Foucart said victims who cooperate with law enforcement are offered temporary status and can later apply to stay in the U.S. permanently.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-human-trafficking-signs,0,6289570.story

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The Coloradoan in Fort Collins, reports that the parents of Fort Collins Balloon Boy Falcon Heene will enter guilty pleas as part of a deal to avoid deportation to Japan for the mother, Mayumi Heene.

In a statement, Heene attorney David Lane said Mayumi will plead guilty to false reporting to authorities, a misdemeanor, with a stipulated sentence to probation.

Father Richard Heene will plead guilty to attempting to influence a public servant, a felony, with a stipulated sentence to probation, according to the statement.

http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20091112/NEWS01/91112005/Balloon-boy-parents-to-pleadguilty-Friday-mother-faced-deportation-to-Japan

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The New York Times reports that Federal authorities have identified more than 111,000 immigrants with criminal records being held in local jails, during the first year of a program that seeks to deport immigrants who have committed serious crimes. Among the immigrants identified through the program, known as Secure Communities, more than 11,000 had been charged with or convicted of the most serious crimes, including murder and rape, domestic security officials said. About 1,900 of those have been deported.

John Morton, the top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called the program “the future of immigration enforcement,” because, he said, it “focuses our resources on identifying and removing the most serious criminal offenders first and foremost.”

About 100,000 of the detained immigrants identified through the system had been convicted of less serious crimes, ranging from burglary to traffic offenses. Of those, more than 14,000 have been deported. Obama administration officials have worked to distinguish their immigration enforcement strategy from the Bush administration’s, which centered on high-profile factory raids and searches in communities for immigration fugitives.

Obama administration officials said Secure Communities, started under President Bush but expanded under President Obama, is a relatively low-cost way for the authorities to concentrate resources on deporting the most dangerous immigrants. In the first year, 95 cities or counties in 11 states have joined the program. The police department of Washington, D.C., announced that it would also join. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at the news conference that she hoped the program would expand to the whole country by 2013.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13ice.html

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The Associated Press is reporting that immigrant girls and women will no longer have to be vaccinated against HPV, or human papillomavirus. The vaccine will no longer be on the list of immunizations female immigrants ages 11 to 26 must receive before becoming legal permanent residents.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the change. The CDC said it will require immunizations for which there is a public health need either at the time the person immigrates or changes their status to green card holder.

Girls and women seeking to become legal permanent U.S. residents were required to get at least the first dose of the HPV vaccine, which protects against some strains of the virus blamed for cervical cancer. It was added to the list of required vaccinations for immigrants in July 2008. Soon after, a coalition of more than 100 immigrant, health and women's advocacy groups challenged the requirement, saying it was unfair to require the HPV vaccine for immigrants but not for most U.S. citizens.

At $400 to $1,000 for the three-shot series, the vaccine was an added burden on applicants already paying more than a thousand dollars in application fees and hundreds of dollars for mandatory medical exams. 'It also put the financial burden on the individual woman and her family,' Gabriela Valle, senior director of community outreach and mobilization for California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-immigration-hpv,0,4453564.story

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The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) announced that the publication of the 2009 Open Doors Report, a comprehensive account of international student enrollment in American institutions, shows that despite the global economic downturn, record numbers of international students are traveling to the United States to study at institutions of higher education.

Equally important, these numbers showcase the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Open Doors Policy of balancing efforts to secure the nation's student visa system while still recruiting the best minds from around the world.

"More secure borders and ongoing openness are not mutually exclusive, and I think the success the United States is experiencing in attracting students from around the world proves this point," said Lou Farrell, Director of the Student Exchange and Visitor Program (SEVP) within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "The partnership ICE has developed with the academic community has been critical

to our efforts, and we will need to maintain that partnership as our system continues to evolve."

At more than 670,000, the latest surge in foreign students choosing the United States marks a rate of growth not seen since 1980 and continues a pattern of continuous growth over the past three years.

http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?docid=30589

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AILA is reporting that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano has announced the publication of new proposed rule that would establish Global Entry—a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) voluntary initiative that expedites the international arrivals and admission process for trusted travelers through biometric identification—as a permanent program.

Global Entry—currently a pilot program at 20 U.S. international airports—allows pre-approved members a streamlined, automated alternative to regular passport processing lines. The program currently reduces average wait times by more than 70 percent, with more than 75 percent of travelers using Global Entry processed in under five minutes.

The proposed rule would end the current pilot and make Global Entry permanent—allowing CBP to expand the program to additional U.S. international airports. Those members currently participating in the pilot will have their time credited to the five year membership as proposed in the rule, so there will be no break in membership or need to re-apply when the program becomes permanent.

http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?docid=30606

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