Articles Posted in Immigration Reform

The UAE’s Ministry of Labor announced plans to use online filing system to speed up the application process for work permits across the country.

In the existing system, a representative from the company must go to the ministry’s physical location to apply for a work permit, a process that unnecessarily consumes time. The new system, on the other hand, will enable applicants to submit all documents electronically. Moreover, companies will be able to process the work permits through a software that they can buy, or use at selected service centers.

According to The National, Humaid bin Deemas, the executive director for Labour Affairs at the ministry, said we want to make sure that procedures will not form obstacles for any future changes in the criteria for the work permit and this move will work towards that end. It will also enable the ministry to concentrate more on formulating policies rather than spending time on mere procedures.

The system has been already introduced to companies that have more than fifty employees since the beginning of last year. However, the ministry plans to do a nationwide roll-out in the next period. Bin Deemas said in a press conference that the overall number of permits issued electronically until the end of August 2010 was 530,000 and the number of establishments that benefited from the service was 111,000. According to the Ministry of Labor, the move to an electronic system will reduce the time it takes to receive a primary application response from four days to four hours.

Some call this the strictest immigration bill ever introduced, is going through the Arizona legislature.

If the bill becomes law, one of its provisions would allow local police to check a person’s immigration status. Currently, that right is reserved for federal agents.

Arizona’s largest police union, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA), has come out in support of the bill.

Additionally, the bill states that officers cannot solely consider race, color or national origin when carrying out their duties.It also says that people living here illegally could face criminal charges and that blocking traffic to pick up passengers and bring them somewhere else for work would be a ticketable offense. Further, the bill would prohibit people from transporting or harboring illegal aliens.

Right now the bill is in the senate and is expected to pass. It will then go to the governor, and she too is expected to sign it. What does it say about the climate for sweeping reform? you tell me.

Immigration reform has been put on the back burner for the past year or so. It has been eclipsed by debates over health care reform and job creation. But for many rural farming communities, at least in the West, it’s an issue that continues to burn.

Out in Eastern Colorado, the tiny town of Yuma has recently weighed in on the immigration debate. The town council passed a unanimous resolution calling on the U.S. Congress and the president to “solve our ineffective immigration system.”
For generations the town has relied on immigrant labor, which used to be seasonal. But in the past decade those jobs have become permanent, thanks to the area’s expanding hog farms and feedlots. Today at least a quarter of Yuma’s population is Hispanic, more if you factor in illegal immigrants.

Full story here….

Another step towards Immigration enforcement by policee. Now in California. San Joaquin is one of the latest counties to be part of a Department of Justice and Homeland Security initiative that checks the immigration status of those booked into its jails
San Joaquin and Stanislaus now join eight other counties in California, including Solano, San Diego and Los Angeles, in running the fingerprints of everyone booked into their jails through Homeland Security immigration records, along with other routine criminal record checks.

If fingerprints match those in the Homeland Security database, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is automatically notified and can determine what actions, such as deportation, should be taken.

The goal of the system is to make sure that all those with violent criminal histories who are not naturalized citizens are not released back into the local community.

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Acoording to Haarez Magazine even as health care reform twists in the wind, immigration policy looms as the next big political debate, and Hispanics and Jews are moving to the forefront in a burgeoning political alliance.

The next three months are seen as critical in the fight for immigration reform, but the weakening of the Democrats, grip on Congress with the recent loss of a key Massachusetts Senate seat does not bode well for the passage of reform legislation.

The Jewish-Latino alliance on immigration issues builds on the heritage and experience of the Jewish community and on the enthusiasm and urgent needs of the Hispanic community, which has a strong interest in issues of family unification and the status of the some 12 million illegal immigrants, most of them from Latin America. But Jewish activists also see the joint work as an opening for cooperation with the Hispanic community on other issues, such as Israel.

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As Haiti reels from a devastating earthquake that flattened buildings and left thousands of people trapped under rubble, three Republicans from Florida are calling on President Obama to do what President Bush never did — grant temporary protected status to undocumented Haitians living in the U.S.

Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wrote a letter to Obama arguing that “the combined destruction from today’s catastrophic earthquake and the previous storms clearly makes forced repatriation of Haitians hazardous to their safety at this time…We strongly believe that it is for such a situation that Congress created TPS.”
Even Broward Democrat Alcee Hastings added his name to the effort, calling it “not only immoral, but irresponsible” to send the illegal Haitians back home.

The Obama administration has said that it wants to review the issue of the Haitians as part of a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. Coming to the aid of the mostly Catholic country are some advocacy groups with political punch, including the Catholic Church.

In February, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security went ahead with the deportation of 30,000 Haitians first ordered up by the Bush administration. In response, Haiti stopped issuing travel documents for them, leaving some 600 Haitians in detention centers. In June, the Washington Post did a series on substandard medical care provided to the detainees.

By July, Obama said he was “very sympathetic” to the plight of the Haitians, but by October the advocacy groups were publicly expressing their unhappiness. “I feel they are stringing us along, and we are in an awkward position,” said Randolph McGrorty, chief executive of Catholic Charities Legal Services. “Do we allow them to string us along because they are our allies or do we start calling them on the carpet for it?”
Now, given the utter destruction of the country’s already-limited infrastructure, political pressure is likely to grow even further on the administration to let the illegals stay. Already today the DHS issued a statement that will halt all deportation to Haiti as they continue to monitor the situation, further actions are expected by the government, we feel that this may a great opportunity to pass some sort of emergency legislation to allow the first wave of illegal migrants to stay in the US, maybe this is the bginning of something bigger.

For the complete LA Times story here..

Most permanent residents think that just by having the Green Card they are safe from deportation, they should think again.

When Jose Angel Carachuri-Rosendo was just 4 years old, his family moved from Mexico to Texas as legal U.S. immigrants. As the years passed, Carachuri-Rosendo firmly planted roots in the Lone Star State with his fiancée and four children, who were all U.S. citizens. But after a series of misdemeanor offenses, he was required to leave the place he had called home for more than 20 years. In 2004, he was convicted of possessing less than two ounces of marijuana, and in 2005 he was convicted of a second drug-possession offense for having a single anti-anxiety tablet, Xanax, without a valid prescription. After the second conviction, he was deported to Mexico.

In December the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the case in an effort to clarify the law and help lower courts make consistent determinations. The court will specifically address whether legal immigrants convicted of repeat minor drug-possession crimes should be subject to deportation.

What do you think is it reasonable to push somebody like Jose through the system and deport him, or should the government focus on hard criminals that can actually cause harm to our society instead. Some food for thought.

Read the Newsweek story here.

So as the year comes to an end, what will be the future of Immigration reform. President Obama’s administration has told immigration reform backers the president is committed to giving illegal immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship, officials said.

Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina and other top officials delivered the message in a conference call, the Los Angeles Times reports. Staff members have also told Hispanic leaders privately that President Barack Obama will back legislation in the next year.

All we know is that if nothing significant will pass in 2010, the prospects for a major reform will become impossible. Read more here…