by

Never a dull moment here in San Diego County. Dozens of minor aftershocks continue to rattle nerves as well as the ground Monday following one of the strongest earthquakes to ever hit the region.

Two people were killed and at least 100 injured when a 7.2 temblor rocked Baja and the county Sunday afternoon. At least five subsequent quakes have measured 5.0 or greater, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

On the Immigration front, more than three dozen Haitian earthquake survivors were released from Florida immigration jails on last week after more than two months in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Many had lost relatives in the Jan. 12 earthquake; some had been pulled from the rubble themselves. In the chaotic days and aftershocks that followed, many had been seeking security, food or treatment at the Port-au-Prince airport when they were waved onto military transports or other planes by United States Marines, only to be detained for lack of visas when they landed.

Lawyers at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, who had urged their release for weeks, were jubilant as they waited with relatives outside the Broward County Transitional Center, a privately operated jail in Pompano Beach, for the last ones to walk out. Immigration officials said 40 Haitian survivors would be released on orders of supervision by nightfall. This came on the day that The New York Times reported that at least 30 earthquake survivors were being detained.

Read more here…

by

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….

by

Many students come to the US to gain great education and future opportunities as a result. At the same time, many prospective students, intend to use the student visa as a cover in order to stay in the US. After 9/11 the rules became tougher, if a student fails to attend school, he must be reported and and may be loose his status. Yet, there are some schools across the country that will enroll students, but will not require attendance. Only to make money.

A Florida language school helped illegally obtain student visas for foreign nationals who never went to class, violating laws enacted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks exposed weaknesses in the program, authorities said Thursday.

Eighty-one student visa holders purportedly studying at the Florida Language Institute have been arrested. None was on any federal watch list or linked to terrorism, U.S. authorities said, though investigators were checking their backgrounds. The school’s owner, Lydia Menocal, 58, and employee Ofelia Macia, 75, allegedly made $2.4 million over the past three years from foreign nationals applying for U.S. student visas. It was not clear how much they charged each student for the paperwork, authorities said.

Menocal and Macia were charged with conspiring to commit an offense against the U.S., and Menocal faces other charges including falsifying immigration documents, according to a grand jury indictment. ICE officials said the takedown of the school was the largest visa fraud investigation in the agency’s history
More here…

by

Anne Arundel County state senator is continuing his efforts to better identify illegal immigrants in the state’s prison system, hoping an increased number of deportations could save Maryland money. Well, it will take more than that to save them money.

The Senator has proposed legislation to require the state Division of Parole and Probation to contact the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency if a pre-sentence investigation report indicates someone has an unlawful immigration status. What a great use of government resources, as if the Division of Parole and probation is not busy as it is, but well he is a Senator.

“The main issue was to catch them on the front end,” he said. “It has the potential to have quite a bit of savings. Every dollar we can save is certainly a benefit.”

It certainly is….

Read more…

by

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.

Read more….

by

Sheriff Arpaio is determined to bring down illegal immigrants, even the Federal government is not a barrier anymore. It is Arpaio’s law or the highway. When the federal government stripped Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies of their power to enforce federal immigration laws on the streets, the sheriff repeatedly said nothing would change.

The sheriff said that starting today every one of his deputies will go through training to specifically target illegal immigrants. I wonder what kind of training that is?
The sheriff announced that he is ramping up the county’s fight against illegal immigration by increasing the number of trained deputies from 100 to nearly 900. Sheriff Arpaio also did not comment on when the new enforcement would start. Isn’t it time for some serious Fed action against this Sheriff to send a clear message to all the antis?
Read the article from AZ Family here

by

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.

Read more…

by

According to New America Media, Massachusetts could spell trouble for Democrats, but advocates of immigration reform say it’s not over yet.

By capturing the seat held by former Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy who passed away last summer, Republican Scott Brown brings a different vision to the historically blue state. While Kennedy was known as a champion of health care reform and was co-author of the 2006 McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill, Brown has spoken out against both.

But advocates of immigration reform were quick to dispel fears that the election could be the death knell for immigration reform in 2010.

“This was a race that revolved around the issue of change, and Scott Brown – in spite of having a long history of being anti-immigrant, was able to tap into that wave,” Ali Noorani, executive director of National Immigration Forum and chair of Reform Immigration FOR America, said in a telephonic press conference Wednesday. “What didn’t happen is that we did not articulate that immigration reform is part of that change agenda.”
Janet Murguía, president and CEO of National Council of La Raza, added that the campaign by Democrat Martha Coakley made a fatal error in the election in Massachusetts – It “did not engage the Latino community,” she said.

Advocates of reform also note that, while some predict that the Massachusetts Senate race could spell the end of immigration reform, “conventional wisdom” isn’t always right.

Read more…

by

I recently was interviewed by the Latin America News Dispatch about our work with Mexican clients relocating to San Diego. The majority of clients are in need of immediate assistance to relocate due to the increasing violence. Our work with Business owners is to assist with obtaining an E2 visa for new investors or L1A for Mexican companies setting up Branch offices in the US. We expect this trend to continue in 2010.

Paola Reyes write:

As Mexico’s two year-old drug war intensifies, leading to greater violence and insecurity in the city of Tijuana, many families are moving across the border to San Diego.

Some are taking their businesses with them.

From 2000 to 2008 there was a 34 percent increase in the number of Hispanics living in Chula Vista, San Diego’s second largest municipality, and an 11 percent increase in those living in San Diego. Overall Hispanics comprise 51 percent of the Chula Vista population and 28 percent of the San Diego population, according to the San Diego’s Regional Planning Agency.

“People go out less at night and business [at the Tijuana location] shrank,” according to Eduardo Angulo Venenzuela, a member of the family that owns the Mexican restaurant chain Los Arcos.

People living in San Diego go less frequently to Tijuana to eat as well, he added.

In order to compensate, many Tijuana restaurants came to them. Tacos El Gordo is a popular taco shop chain in Tijuana that recently opened a San Diego location. One online reviewer on Yelp aptly explained why the San Diego location is so popular, “I know the tacos in TJ [Tijuana] are so tasty and cheap but no one wants to go down there these days because of the killings.”

Read more…

by

This story was posted originally at Immigration Impact, we thought it is worth sharing today.

Today, we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose dream of equality and human rights changed the course of history. His legacy will be remembered this week by people of all colors and creeds who still believe in the American dream and who continue to fight for equality, civil rights and the basic human dignity they deserve. Over the weekend, thousands of human rights activists took to the street in Phoenix, Arizona, to march for civil rights and for “long-overdue federal action on immigration.”
So what is the link between immigration and civil rights? In a recent editorial, Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr., the pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Houston, connects Dr. King’s fight for equality with the struggle many immigrants face today.

Immigration is about human dignity and the nobility of parents of different tribes and nations facing the risk of coming to a foreign land, a land of opportunity, to work for a better tomorrow for their children…Dr. King invoked the truth, the truth being that all humans ought to be treated with a certain dignity. It would be natural for us to look to him as an example for fighting for a just cause.

Gerald Lenoir, director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, also draws parallels between the struggles of African Americans and the struggles of recent immigrants:
Even some of the migration experiences of African-Americans, coming from the South, leaving conditions of economic injustice and terrorism from both legal authorities and groups like the Ku Klux Klan, we see that same kind of movement in people across borders.

Something to think about.