The Times provides a behind the scenes update on what's happening in the negotiations on the big immigration bill. One interesting development - apparently the idiotic provision requiring people to travel to Mexico for a day and then reenter the US in order to legalize is being tossed.

The Discover America Partnership ® is a new initiative that aims to increase tourism to the US with the ultimate goal of improving America's image around the world. The Partnership aims

to empower the American people as our greatest ambassadors – by increasing their opportunities to interact with international visitors. With each new visitor, we have an opportunity to share what is best about America – our diversity, our energy and our optimism.

To bolster the argument that tourism is good for America, some interesting data is cited by the group:

• 42 percent increase in favorable opinion of the U.S. among those who have visited the country
• 72 percent of those who have visited the country have a positive opinion of Americans
  
• 68 percent of those who have visited the country think America has a high-quality of life; only 48 percent of those who have not visited the U.S. share that opinion
  

The organization has some powerful backers including the American Hotel and Lodging Association, Disney, Marriott and, most recently, former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge.

Well, say what you want about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but here's one powerful person who didn't get out of being deported despite her status. The AP gives the 411:

In September, Al Jader pleaded guilty to two counts of visa fraud for lying on immigration forms, and two counts of harboring an alien for keeping the two women at her house though she knew their visas had expired.

In a deal with prosecutors, six counts of forced labor were dropped in exchange for guilty pleas on the other charges.

Prosecutors alleged that Al Jader forced two domestic servants from Indonesia to work long hours, while holding their passports in a safe.

Al Jader submitted fraudulent forms to the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia guaranteeing the women would work eight hours daily for $1,500 a month, they charged.

The women were actually paid just $300 per month after arriving in February 2003 to cook, clean and care for Al Jader's disabled husband and their children.

Ohio resident John Demjanjuk lost the latest appeal on his deportation case. Demjanjuk was found to be a Nazi concentration camp guard several years ago and had his US citizen stripped in 2002. Demjanjuk has been fighting deportation for more than 12 years after initially be tried in Israel - and acquitted - of being concentration camp guard Ivan the Terrible.

But new evidence was found showing that Demjanjuk was, in fact, a different concentration camp guard.

After Demjanjuk was stripped of his citizenship (based on lying to gain residency in the US), he was placed in deportation proceedings. He was ordered deported in immigration court and he lost today at the Board of Immigration Appeals. Demjanjuk's family says he will appeal.

Major news from USCIS (courtesy of Bender's Immigration Daily).

USCIS reviewed the current INA provisions governing the H classifications as well as its governing regulations and policy guidance. Neither the statute nor regulations addresses whether time spent in H-4 status counts against the six-year maximum period of admission available to an alien seeking H-1B status. Further, USCIS has not issued any recent policy guidance that clarifies the issue.

USCIS, therefore, is now clarifying that any time spent in H-4 status will not count against the six-year maximum period of admission applicable to H-1B aliens. Thus, an alien who was previously an H-4 dependent and subsequently becomes an H-1B principal will be entitled to the maximum period of stay applicable to the classification.

Hat tip to Dan Kowalski at Bender's Immigration Daily (also named as a top resource and a publication I'm proud to serve as an editorial board member) for pointing out this list.

The United Food and Commercial Workers have come to the defense of workers arrested in last week's raids on Swift meat packing plants around. the country, according to the Greeley, Colorado Tribune.

The union filed suit on behalf of several arrested workers claiming that ICE's raids violated the workers Fourth Amendment rights on unlawful searches and seizures as well as their Fifth Amendment rights. According to the unions:

"The courts have held that deportable noncitizens enjoy a range of due process rights including the following: the right to be represented by counsel, the right to access free legal services lists, the right to medically adequate treatment, the right to access telephones, and the right to self-help and other legal reference materials."

My friend Doug Stump from Oklahoma is quoted in his local newspaper today in an article discussing the one thing that is sure to get USCIS to move a long-stalled case - a court order. Immigration lawyers - our firm included - are turning more and more to the courts as USCIS seems to grow less and less concerned with dealing with cases that fall off the normal track. The "writ of mandamus" should only be sought when all reasonable actions have been taken, but some lawyers seem to be scared of this option, afraid that USCIS will punish their clients. This is unfounded and lawyers that frequently file writs will tell you that the opposite is a more likely result.

The New York Times lead editorial this morning concerns the Swift meat packing plant raids last week. The Times hits the nail right on the head:

The Swift raids are powerful evidence that I-9’s and Basic Pilot are ineffective and disingenuous, a nod to by-the-books technical lawfulness that allows a far vaster world of illegality to flourish. Swift and other large-scale employers of immigrants, like farms and hotels, may insist that they never knowingly hire people illegally. But as long as the jobs they offer are the kinds whose pay and conditions consistently fail to attract native-born Americans, their protests will ring hollow. This system is brilliantly efficient at bringing lots of cheap products and services to market, which is great unless you mind its essential lawlessness, anonymity and reliance on an enormous work force of silent, compliant, frightened people whose bitter choice is to stay here illegally or go home and be desperately poor.

The current system puts employers in a no win position. They know they must certainly have undocumented immigrants working at their facilities, but to do more than following the I-9 and the Basic Pilot Program rules could expose them to discrimination suits.

The Times correctly notes that only comprehensive immigration reform is going to effectively solve employers' problems:

The system needs what Mr. Bush and Congress have refused to give it: a way to end the sham. Comprehensive immigration reform is good for the economy, giving companies access to a secure and stable work force. It is good for national security, allowing law enforcement to go after real criminals and leave honest working people alone. And it is good for the immigrant workers across the country, terrorized by Tuesday’s raids, who just want to keep doing their jobs, no matter how hard and distasteful.

At first I thought yesterday's raid on meat packing plants across the US was just a re-run of the numerous raids on employers that have occurred over the last few years. But today we learn that Swift, the company targeted, was a participant in the DHS Basic Pilot program which is designed to make it easier for employers to comply with immigration laws. Employers can check electronically to see if workers are legally in the US. The problem apparently is that employees were using identities of real people and not fake documentation. The DHS has come under criticism for targeting an employer that has been making extra efforts to comply with immigration law as opposed to employers that ignore the law all together.

The National Law Journal has a front page story on Visalaw Interanational, the new alliance we helped create with immigration lawyers from around the world.

OK, I wanted to try out Google's new online spreadsheet program and needed a good project to use as my guinea pig. I've been wanting to do a chart of union, management and service organizations that provide consultations in O and P cases and decided to use that to test Google's way cool new online, free competitor to Microsoft Excel. And guess what? It was a breeze to use. I converted the document to a PDF and have uploaded at the end of this post.

You can find Google Spreadsheets at http://spreadsheets.google.com.

unions2.pdf

Apparently, its a mixed bag.

Langlois%2010-6-06%20FY06%20year%20in%20review.pdf

Got the word officially that Nolan Rappaport is leaving the staff of the House Immigration Subcommittee. Nolan has been there for half a dozen years and was at the BIA for many years before that. He's a class act who did a lot of good for the pro-immigration community and his absence will be sorely missed. Nolan hasn't announced his future plans yet, but we wish him only the best. He will be missed.

We've been informed here at SSB that Lynden Melmed, Texas Republican Senator's Chief Counsel on the Immigration Subcommittee in the Senate, will assume the chief counsel position at USCIS, a job recently vacated by Robert Divine who has drifted off in to the ether (just kidding - Robert's a friend of mine and is back in private practice competing with me for Tennessee clients :-) ).

Well, at least they sort of figured out quickly just how bad a policy change this was. AILA informed its members yesterday that USCIS would no longer accept I-907 premium processing forms signed by the applicant and would only take the form if signed by the petitioning employer or an attorney (as long as a G-28 signed by the employer was submitted separately for the I-907 form). Now USCIS is telling AILA it will take I-907s signed by the applicant or attorney as long as a G-28 was submitted previously or with the later filed I-907 application that is signed by the employer. Nice how USCIS makes this announcement AFTER if changes its policy. Apparently, it sent back cases all over the country to attorneys who followed the rules. Lovely.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association is reporting today that USCIS has responded to its request for designation of Lebanese for Temporary Protected Status. According to USCIS, it is consulting with other agencies and may issue TPS designation down the road, but it won't do so at this point. It reminded AILA that USCIS has other tools at its disposal to help people affected by war breaking out in one's home country.

Fr0m the Colorado Morning News today:

Special agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement executed civil search warrants at six Swift & Co. plants in the midwest and Colorado to break a large identity theft scheme.

Swift is the third-largest beef producer in the U.S., and operations at six plants were suspended today as federal agents investigate the possible hiring of illegal immigrants, ICE officials said.

The surest way to disrupt the American food supply is to start seriously enforcing US immigration laws. Our entire agriculture industry is dependent on mostly illegal foreign labor. Meat packing is as well. The poultry industry too. And for those of you who say we just don't pay enough to get American workers, are you prepared to pay double or triple to eat? Everything has a cost.

Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) responded to raids at meat packing plants around the country with a call for Congress to enact a comprehensive immigration reform package.

“ICE’s action at multiple Swift plants today is a clarion call for the nation to complete its work on comprehensive immigration reform. We need to have laws in place to take us from today’s chaos and lawlessness to law and order. That law and order system must include: increased border security, strict enforcement of immigration laws including a sound employer verification system, and a realistic method of dealing with the human and economic reality of millions of undocumented workers in America.

“This past year, the Senate passed bi-partisan legislation to address our broken borders. The House of Representatives had an opportunity to enact a law and order system. Unfortunately, they chose not to. The impact of their inaction is not limited to the immigrant community. Today’s action at Swift will have a strong ripple effect on the rest of the livestock industry. Weld County is the most profitable agricultural county in Colorado, with over $1 billion in agricultural sales. Today’s move by ICE will greatly impact the economy there.

“The tragedy of continual inaction towards comprehensive immigration reform has both human and economic consequences. It is what happens when we have a do-nothing Congress which refuses to act. What is happening at Swift today sends a strong signal to Congress that we must act with all due speed to enact comprehensive immigration reform. When Democrats take control in January, I hope today’s occurrences will motivate us to act.”

Jerry Kammer of the Copley News Service reports that Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), the incoming chair of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee and presidential candidate John McCain (R-AZ), his co-sponsor of S.2611, the Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill, met with Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Jose Guttierez (D-IL), two leading voices on immigration in the House of Representatives.

Blake is predicting that legislation will be brought up in the House in the late winter. The plan is for the Senate and House to deal immediately with Iraq and a raise in the minimum wage before turning to immigration.

Despite a last minute push to deal with H-1B numbers and nurse green cards, Congress adjourned in the wee hours of Saturday morning having only passed three pro-immigration measures for the entire year. Two of the bills dealt with health care. One was an extension of the small H-2C nurse program and another extended the Conrad 30 J waiver program for doctors. These were straight reauthorizations of the programs without change. You can find more about these extensions by going to our new health care immigration blog.

The other bill that passed moved minor league athletes and ice skaters to the P visa category from the H-2B and O-1 categories. That will have a very positive effect on people in these fields. A summary of the new P visa bill can be found in our new fashion, arts and sports immigration law blog.

A strong push is still being made to address green card shortages for nurses, too few H-1B numbers, J-1 waivers for MDs and H-2B problems for athletes. The odds are excellent for the MDs, decent for the athletes and much longer for the nurses and professional workers. We expect Congress to work until late tonight before closing shop for the year and turning matters over in January to the Democrats. We'll update readers today and tomorrow as we get news.

Here's my Powerpoint from a talk I gave yesterday to the Rotary in East Memphis.

Dan Kowalski at Benders forwarded this beauty of a quote from a notice of intent to deny. The matter was brought to the attention of a law student a legal clinic. The examiner's words are stunning:

"During the course of the interview you displayed signs of extreme nervousness. Specifically your hands and voice trembled and you, in fact, stated that you were very nervous. Additionally it was noted that your husband was educated as a physician and even though he speaks English as a second language he is articulate and correct in his use of the language. You, on the other hand, are highly inarticulate and do not speak grammatically correct English. Your inordinate nervousness raised the level of suspicion as to your candor and the obvious great difference in the levels of yours and your husband's educational levels creates a question as to the validity of your marital relationship."

So, uh, because you're not smart enough and you were super nervous at the most important interview of your life and you had trouble communicating in your non-native language, we're going to banish you either with your American spouse or break up your family. Have a nice day. Don't call us, we'll call you. This type of nonsense was supposed to go away when INS broke up three years ago. I guess the old culture remains in many quarters.

Friday's Boston Globe reports that Massachusetts Governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who regularly calls for cracking down on employers who hire people illegally in the US, has relied for years on a landscaping company that hires Guatemalans illegally in the US. It's not unusual, of course, to read about politicians who apparently think their rhetoric applies to everyone but themselves. Really, I suspect that just about every loudmouth, sanctimonious politician who threatens to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants probably has either hired an illegal alien directly or has hired a firm to do the dirty work for them.

How else could you explain this doozie of a blunder. The new test ask applicants for naturalization what the longest river is in the United States and in the study materials USCIS gives the WRONG answer! According to the brilliant folks who decided to make the examination more "meaningful," the longest river in the United States in the Mississippi River. Actually, it's the Missouri River. The Mississippi measures 2,340 miles. The Missouri measures 2,540 miles. Incidentally, the Missouri is the fourth largest river in the world behind the Nile, Amazon and Yangtzee.

In case you viewed with horror the new USCIS web site at http://www.uscis.gov, you may be relieved to know the USCIS has left up its old web site at http://149.101.23.2/graphics/index.htm. USCIS noted that the site was going to go down on November 30th, but we were pleased to see it was still up this morning. Hopefully, the USCIS folks who came up with the new web site have been slapped and told to go back to the drawing board and the old site will be brought back. Remember New Coke?

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