To coincide with the five-day window in which foreign nationals can participate in a once-a-year visa lottery, The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Senator Charles Grassley (R) Iowa, “is expected to unveil legislation seeking reforms to the H-1B program.” http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/03/27/still-coming-to-america/

What Congress needs to understand is that this educated international talent is an asset to the American economy. Congress needs to avoid knee-jerk reactions and should enact a needs-based system that meets the requirements of today’s industry to compete in this global economy. Top international professionals, many of whom have been educated in the U.S., must be allowed to play a role in our economic recovery. Many assume the U.S. is a world leader in innovation, but in reality, we are ranked a lowly #8, behind the likes of Hong Kong, Singapore and Switzerland, according to a study by the Boston Consulting Group and the National Association of Manufactures. www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_14/c4125newsyoun236571_page_3.htm

H-1B professionals play an important role in the U.S. They are scientists and engineers who promote innovation, and innovation promotes economic growth that is critical to our nation’s best interest. It is well established that foreign-born professionals file more U.S. patents and start more businesses proportionally than their U.S. counterparts. A December 2008 study from Harvard Business School found that immigrants comprise nearly half of all scientists and engineers who hold Doctorate Degrees in the United States.
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/images/File/…/U.S.%20Economy%20Still%20Needs%20Highly%20Skilled%20F

Denying U.S. employers access to foreign professionals, including those educated in the U.S., forces this international talent into the arms of our overseas competitors. According to the National Science Board (NSB), the value of highly skilled science and engineering workers from different parts of the world cannot be measured in simple numerical terms given that science is, by its very nature, “a global enterprise” dependent upon the exchange of ideas from a diverse range of perspectives.
http://blog.thehill.com/2009/02/10/skilled-foreign-workers-create-new-employment-for-americans/

Some countries, such as Canada, have a forward-looking immigration policy. A year ago, the Canadian province of Alberta launched a program to attract H-1B-level workers from the United States. Since April 2008, more than 2,000 people have applied … drawn by the “easier immigration system.”
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/24/american_dreams_deferred/

U.S. lawmakers may be focused on putting restrictions on the country’s primary temporary work visa, H-1B, but new H-1B visa holders each year represent just seven in 10,000 civilian workers in the U.S., according to a report by an American public policy organization, the National Foundation for American Policy (NAFP). This makes claims that such individuals are “destroying” large numbers of U.S. jobs unsupportable.
www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2009/gb20090330_511899.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index.

A March 2008 study of 120 technology companies by the NFAP found that 65% of these companies had reacted to the arbitrarily low limits on the H-1B visas by moving more of their work out of the U.S. to countries where the highly skilled workforce is available. www.nfap.com/pdf/080311h1b.pdf Clearly, restricting H-1B visas encourages job loss.

Protectionist H-1B restrictions will undermine the stimulus bill’s goals and limit access to professionals, which could delay our economic recovery. President Obama and Congress need to understand that we are a nation of immigrants, and this is key to resolving the economic mess. A vibrant, needs-based immigration system will allow employers to hire the best workers and will provide the security and strength that have made and will keep this nation great. Sending the top U.S. graduates back to China or India to compete with us is a threat to our national security, and the price our children will have to pay for this shortsightedness is simply too high.

Nearly a year ago, on May 12, 2008, we witnessed the largest worksite raid in US history when ICE stormed the Agriprocessor’s meat packing plaint in Postville, Iowa. The massive raid lead to the arrest and criminal prosecution of nearly 400 undocumented workers, mostly uneducated Guatemalan farmers. Federal prosecutors, in conjunction with ICE, cynically used the federal identity theft statute and criminal sentencing guidelines to coerce an overwhelming majority of the workers into guilty pleas for crimes they could not have logically committed. In many cases the workers had no idea they were even pleading guilty to a crime. Further exacerbating the debacle, the government did little to create even the semblance of due process. Workers were detained by ICE on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa where they were processed like livestock through a conviction-deportation assembly line with limited access to criminal defense counsel, and almost no access to immigration attorneys. The entire spectacle was a national disgrace and remains a stain on our judicial system.

Thankfully, this year things appear to be a little different. Elections have consequences. And last November’s was no exception. The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu reported on Sunday that homeland security secretary Janet Nepolitano has delayed ICE worksite raids while DHS reviews its immigration enforcement policy, with an eye on re-evaluating targets. http://tinyurl.com/d62vax. And Nepolitano is not the only one skeptical of the raids policy. The Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, has spoken out quite forcefully against ICE raids, calling them “Un-American.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tytKpD6b548]

This is a promising sign.

Clearly, President Obama remains under pressure to continue Bush’s nearly exclusive targeting of undocumented workers as the perpetrators of illegal immigration. Yet, the administration appears to understand that the real villains are the bad actor employers who attract undocumented workers to the U.S., only to victimize them with appalling working conditions and substandard wages. A DHS worksite enforcement policy that targets abusive employers and recognizes that the undocumented workers are victims, not criminals, would be an important first step toward the amelioration of the repressive immigration policies of the past 8 years. And it might even begin to change the hateful tone of the national immigration debate into a realistic discussion about how best to develop a functional, orderly, safe, and humane immigration system which includes a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented workers in the U.S.

There was shocking news this week about the USCIS–management shortcomings have undermined efforts to eliminate backlogs: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=42356&dcn;=e_gvet!

Let’s be serious, we all have experienced the shortcomings that the DHS Office of the Inspector General points out in this report. Our clients have been abused by officers in Adjustment and naturalization interviews because of poor oversight of rogue officers, cases have been long delayed because there is no effective follow up by managers on case completion, and nothing short of a federal court lawsuit seems to move the USCIS to adjudicate long overdue cases.

Perhaps this report, in a new fresh administration, will spur some changes and follow up in the USCIS, under the direction of a new Director. We can only hope.

Check out “Border Control” The Times’ editorial arguing that a realistic border policy can only be implemented in conjunction with comprehensive immigration reform http://tinyurl.com/crt8x2.

And don’t miss Lawrence Downes’ thoughtful piece “Don’t Deport Benita Veliz”, calling for passage of the Dream Act http://tinyurl.com/cdc3t9. Writing about Benita Veliz, an undocumented young woman who has achieved amazing things but faces imminent removal, Downes beautifully articulates the spirit behind the Dream Act

“As for the country she knows and loves, if it were smarter and kinder, more like the country we see in fuzzy old documentaries, where hopeful families cluster on the decks of ships passing the Statue of Liberty, it would find a way to let her stay. It would let her go to law school. It would accept Benita Veliz as the American she is.

Its about time that the National Media started paying attention to America’s new Gulag system of immigrant detention. Building remote detention centers with private contractors in places without lawyers, monitoring or relation to the location of the detained immigrant’s family is just not right. Deporting men and woman, many with long term ties to the U.S. without allowing them to go to their homes, get their things and settle their affirs, is just not right. A student in my immigration law class at UGA Law School told me about his spring break trip to Matamoros Mexico where he saw an entire walking convoy of “deportees” returning to Mexico from the US, with their shrink-wrapped boxes containign what little of thier life in America they could take with them. This is just not right.

Really America, we can and must do better than this.

http://www.blogger.com/img/videoplayer.swf?videoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fv12.nonxt2.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D41e6df833b238a66%26itag%3D5%26begin%3D0%26len%3D86400000%26app%3Dblogger%26et%3Dplay%26el%3DEMBEDDED%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1276259978%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3D7BB3D88DDE17669C20323A048EB77F96929774FE.3F92E32687E81CAF226DD02B6E2A2FAD7D5AB05D%26key%3Dck1&thumbnailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer2%3Fapp%3Dblogger%26contentid%3D41e6df833b238a66%26offsetms%3D5000%26itag%3Dw320%26sigh%3DnH1CWtx5qrYHKChQbjmcAIF7rSQ&messagesUrl=video.google.com%2FFlashUiStrings.xlb%3Fframe%3Dflashstrings%26hl%3Den&nogvlm=1

This is my twenty-third year of living along the border here in El Paso, Texas next to Cd. Juarez.
From my window, I can see two of our ports of entry. I also spent four years as President of the El Paso Foreign Trade Association years ago working on the the funding, staffing, and creation of the first Dedicated Commuter Lane (DCL) in the State of Texas. The whole concept of the DCL is trying to reduce the haystack of those crossing the border by creating an expedited crossing option for those vetted by the government. The communities in the US and Mexico along our southern border have a complex and interwoven history, but we are used to working out solutions. Another developments have been through the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, the FAST lane, and the installation of technologies such license plate readers, radiation monitors, etc.

The violence in Cd. Juarez that we currently witness must end. El Paso is one of the safest cities of its size in the United States, but we have friends in Cd. Juarez who have had family members killed or kidnapped. My son, who is an 8th grader in El Paso, has a friend at school whose parent was gunned down. The relationship between Cd. Juarez and El Paso is a long and close one. We are vecinos and compadres. We share both in the challenges and benefits of being along the border. There are many who do not respect our true economic and cultural partnership with Mexico. In addition, some attempt to paint the issue of the flow of undocumented migrants to the US for work with the same brush as those gang members, who infiltrate the US as part of an international smuggling and trafficking network. This type of hyperbole does not address facts.

Bottom line, we must use our enforcement wisely, and enforcement without other cooperative efforts is not the final solution…. The US and Mexico should seek to seize the assets and operations of those who profit from such illegal activity and to cooperate more intensely on intelligence sharing. The US must end the illegal exportation of arms and money from the US to fund cartels operating in Mexico and elsewhere. Certainly, we are seeing increased attention to the problem with President Obama’s recent increase in enforcement support. Even with all of this enforcement activity and violence, Moody’s Investors Services this month noted that Mexico is not in danger of losing its investment grade rating. This statement as well as the Mexican government’s actions in Cd. Juarez to try to control the violence is not evidence of any current failure of state reaction, but instead an aggressive response to such violence.

Now, we know that CBP with assistance from local law enforcement and other enforcement officers will be conducting outbound inspections in El Paso trying to reduce the flow of money and weapons to Mexico. CBP as usual will have its hands full trying to facilitate legitimate trade and travel while interdicting illegal activties. It is important though for those within the beltway and away from the border to separate the problem of the emigration of weapons and money to Mexico and cartel violence from the issue of controlling the illegal entry of the undocumented to the US to find work. Both require complicated solutions, but are totally different problems. Conflating the two (eg working without authorization with trafficking) is similar to ignoring the difference between civil and criminal violations of law. (yes – illegal entry is a misdemeanor 8 USC 1325). We have had no mass influx from Mexico during these difficult times.

El Paso has some serious border fences, but the challenges and opportunities of the border region are not resolved by a fence nor should all enforcement related efforts be focused upon just the border. A layered enforcement approach is key to any true claims of success, and plans to address illegal migration or the horrible issue of drug trafficking or human smuggling require the same cooperative and comprehensive type of approach. The US has to operate effectively within the reality of our current global environment – no matter the issue at hand.

There is a debate raging on the website of the National Review–the bastion of Conservative Republican thought. This debate is between the inward thinking, anti-immigrationists lead by the false conservative and now outed xenophobe Mark Krikorian, along with his political ally Rep. Lamar Smith verus the forward thinking and pro-immigrant Richard Nadler. Nadler’s recent series of articles effectively and empirically rebutts the anti-immigration critics at the National Review on their sole immigration plan–mass deportation. Nadler points out what a deal breaker this plan is for Republicans and Hispanics into future generations. I have been echoing this point from the ground for some time, but Nadler takes it a step futher. He says that:

Hats off to the AILA advocacy staff for organizing a successful National Day of Action on Capitol Hill.

AILA members from all over the U.S. were in Washington, DC yesterday to lobby members of Congress on the need for a workable, user friendly, safe, and orderly immigration system.

The day started with an early morning issues briefing by our expert AILA and AILF national staff, followed by meetings with members of Congress and Congressional Staff in both the Senate and House of Representatives. Other AILA members went to liaison meetings at EOIR and USCIS on cutting edge practice issues of importance to our members and clients.

Coincidentally, just as AILA members were walking the halls of Congress, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, echoed our message on the need for immigration reform in remarks to the 13th Annual U.S.-Mexico Border Issues Conference. Pelosi spoke at a luncheon which was attended by AILA Immediate Past President Kathleen Walker. The Speaker forcefully condemned the horrific ICE raids that have broken up working families across the U.S. and emphasized the importance of both securing our borders and fixing the broken immigration system.

“Also of great importance to the border communities is of course the issue of immigration. And by that I mean we need comprehension immigration reform. For the first time in a long time, the opportunity exists to enact comprehensive legislation. President Obama has made this a priority for his Administration. I know that yesterday he met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to reiterate his commitment to immigration reform.

“The CHC, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has long taught the House Democratic Caucus and indeed the entire Congress what comprehensive immigration reform would look like. It would of course, secure our border, it would protect our workers, it would prohibit the exploitation of workers coming into our country and it would unite our families. Family unification is an important principle of our immigration and always has been.

“About a week and a half ago, Congressman Gutierrez was in San Francisco on a Saturday night. We were packed and jammed in St. Anthony’s Church, hundreds and hundreds of people came. We heard from families who have had raids into their homes and into their families where families were separated. And at the time, I said it there and I’ll say it here, that raids that break up families in that way, just kick in the door in the middle of the night, taking father, a parent away, that’s just not the American way. It must stop. It’s just not the American way. So we need this comprehensive reform, and we need it soon. And we need to stop those kinds of ICE raids in the meantime.

Source: http://www.speaker.gov

AILA’s National Day of Action culminated in a festive reception at the new AILA national headquarters at 1331 G Street in the heart of Washington, D.C. just a few blocks from the White House. AILA members and staff celebrated the success of the day and toasted AILA’s beautiful new home.

Yesterday brought a lot of hope. Maybe this year we really will see Congress roll up its sleeves and get to work on meaningful immigration reform.

What happened? The White House Fountain is Green.

Let me see, this morning we heard that President Barack Obama also has Irish roots, and of all things, it seems President Obama brought some green dye from his Chicago hometown to put in the fountain in front of the White House. Who would have thought that the Irish would be so honored at time a time when it seems that foreigners are blamed for so many failures in the U.S. currently by some.

U.S. immigration records indicate that by 1850, the Irish comprised 43% of the foreign born population in the U.S. 1847 was the first major year of the Famine emigration from Ireland. The Irish were known for keeping to themselves, being slow to assimilate, and increasing the influence of the Catholic church in the U.S. In response to perceived threats of such an “influx,” anti-Catholics formed a political party nicknamed the “Know Nothings,” who sought to reduce Irish immigration and to deny the Irish immigrants from naturalizing and acquiring political power. It was not unusual to see ads for jobs and housing in Boston and New York with a statement that “Positively No Irish Need Apply.” In the Civil War, Irish-Americans began to earn some respect via their service on both sides of the conflict. After the Civil War, Irish labor was pivotal during the industrialization of America. The Irish also first organized trade unions.

These poor Irish refugees helped build the U.S. and added to its current rich culture. Some claim that President Obama and at least twenty-three other U.S. presidents possess Irish ancestry. Back in the 1850′s though, historians cite that no group was considered lower than an Irishman in America. Many years later, Sigmund Freud would state as to the Irish, “This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.”

How did the Irish do it? Just like other immigrants who have followed them, by hard work, sacrifice, and perseverance. Today in the Wall Street Journal, Richard Lefrak and Gary Shilling published an article entitled, “Immigrants Can Help Fix the Housing Bubble.” So, immigrants are often blamed for the ills in the U.S. on the one hand by some, and yet at the same time are considered as the solution to our ills on the other. According to this WSJ article, in 2006 foreign nationals in the U.S. were listed as inventors on 25.6% of the patent applications filed in the U.S., up from 7.6% in 1998. The 2007 Council on Foreign Graduate Schools survey indicates that 55% of foreign nationals were enrolled in graduate engineering and biological and physical sciences in comparison to only 16% of U.S. citizens. Lefrak and Shilling posit that foreign nationals could be the potential answer to the housing crisis if allowed to immigrate.

It would be a refreshing breath of reality for Congress and the American public to have the political courage to support another economic form of relief historically relied upon by our economy and that is indeed the innovation, skill, and dedication as well as military service of foreign nationals. Agreed that illegal immigration does not create a level playing field for employees and must be addressed pro-actively, but to continue to ignore another positive solution in such hard times is basically shooting ourselves in the economic foot. We have got to be able to chew gum, talk, and walk at the same time (manners aside).

It is also important to recall that in 2005, immigrant households and businesses paid approximately $300 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. Take a look at this Immigration Policy Center report – http://tinyurl.com/crosc3.

Yes it is time for change and courage to revise our immigration laws so that they can be the economic driver that they should be.