Immigrant friendly initiative to bolster workforce, advocates say

投稿日時: 08/10/2014 投稿者: admin

Members of a newly formed task force charged with drumming up ways to attract immigrants to Cincinnati say they will focus on growing the region’s workforce by recruiting a talented immigrant pool.

Amid a growing national controversy over how the country should process children who immigrate here unaccompanied and illegally, Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley announced late last month that he had challenged a group of 80 volunteers to establish policies that will make the city more immigrant friendly.

Despite the timing of the announcement, members of the task force, which includes leaders who do business here in Butler County, say a chunk of their efforts will focus on luring legal immigrants to Ohio’s third largest city.

“We have a common belief that immigrants have made this country great and would be a wonderful asset (to the area),” Tom Fernandez, a co-chair of the immigration task force and a Cincinnati architect, said. “All we can do is create the best environment and assume that whatever we do is to attract the best that’s out there and retain a good immigrant community.”

The task force, which is comprised of attorneys, business leaders, police and even religious figures, among others, has split into subcommittees that will tackle subsets of the immigration issue — from law enforcement policies to how the city can welcome immigrants to the Queen City when they first arrive. The members hope to present a list of recommendations to the mayor by the beginning of next year, Fernandez said.

Butler County is sandwiched between two cities — Cincinnati and Dayton — that are actively working to recruit more immigrants to the area.

Both of those cities have had relatively weak foreign-born populations in the last five years. Population estimates show Dayton was home to 143,355 residents last year, and about 4.1 percent of the population in 2012 accounted for foreign-born residents. Overall, from 2008 to 2012, Ohio had a foreign-born population of 3.9 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Cincinnati fared better, with 5 percent of the 297,517 people living in the city during that period estimated to be immigrants. Still, among cities of similar size Cincinnati has a noticeably smaller foreign population. St. Paul, Minn., for example, boasted an immigrant population of 17.5 percent, while immigrants in St. Louis represented 6.8 percent of the population. Five percent of the people living in Butler County from 2008 to 2012 were also foreign born.

The Jungle Jim’s effect

Yousuf Ahmad, an immigrant from Abu Dhbai who came to Cincinnati 20 years ago, said the area has struggled to accommodate immigrants. Ahmad, now 40, said he use to drive to a grocery store once a month to buy the condiments and spices he missed from his homeland.

Two decades later much has changed: the Cincinnati region has more to offer in the way of international cuisine, he says, and Ahmad is now the president and CEO of one of the region’s largest health providers, Mercy Health.

“When Jungle Jim’s opened, I was one of the people crying,” Ahmad joked of the international food market in Fairfield.

Those seemingly slight comforts of home are the ones that could attract scores of immigrants here, said Ahmad, who is sitting on the immigration task force. He believes authentic international food restaurants, culturally-charged festivals and stores stocked with ethnic offerings could make the city more attractive to immigrants.

Bringing more immigrants to the area will also help recruit the type of workers he says he needs in his hospitals to help work with patients who don’t speak English or are from different countries.

“When we see patients in our facilities and our doctors’ offices who are of a different national origin, when that customer comes in, how do we make our care culturally competent? To have people working for us, of those (different) origins can be very helpful,” Ahmad said.

Jobs have even been lost before, in part, because of Cincinnati’s lack of diversity. Chiquita Brands International Inc., known for their bananas, moved hundreds of jobs out of the city to Charlotte, N.C. in 2012. Company officials cited difficulty in recruiting multilingual employees from the area, among other major reasons, in their decision to leave. Immigrants made up 15 percent of the population in Charlotte from 2008 to 2012.

Many students who come to the U.S. for a college degree end up traveling back to their home country after school, in part because they’re no longer legally allowed to stay here, Jon Weller, the director of international admissions at the University of Cincinnati, said. In recent years, higher education experts have been trying to figure out how to keep some of those well-educated students in the U.S. long after they’ve earned their diploma.

“The more international the city is, it’s better for the city, it’s better for the university, and it’s better for the state,” Weller said.

Laws of the land

What’s less clear is how the immigrant friendly policy will impact immigrants who are living in this region illegally.

Laxed enforcement of immigration laws have followed when immigrant friendly policies have been introduced in cities across the nation.

Dayton police, for example, stopped asking for proof of citizenship from crime victims or witnesses as well as low-level crime offenders when the city’s immigrant friendly policy was introduced in 2011.

In 2012, as officials in the city of Baltimore sought to further grow it’s blossoming Asian and Latin American immigrant population, the mayor issued an executive order banning police and city agencies from launching investigations to solely inquire about the immigration status of residents.

“We’re not here to arrest you, we’re here to protect you,” Catalina Rodriguez-Lima, the director of the mayor’s immigrant and multicultural affairs office, said of the message city officials are sending to immigrants.

Cincinnati city officials will likely want to find a way to offer more resources to help immigrants here get through the citizenship process legally, Raj Chundur, a co-chair of the task force and the director of Cincinnati’s information systems, said.

“The approach is to make resources accessible to people who may not be (knowledgeable) of the system,” Chundur said of the immigration process. “(So) you know what is legal and expected from the laws of the land.”

Economics professor James Brock said there’s a big difference in the type of economic impact the two immigrant groups — legal or illegal —can have on a region. Immigrants here illegally tend to take lower-paying jobs but many can still benefit from free public assistance, such as schooling, so their presence, he said, doesn’t typically stimulate the area’s economy.

Attracting legal immigrants — especially ones who can fill in-demand openings in computer science or health fields, for example — means there’s a better chance the local economy actually benefits.

“If they’re paid well, they’re going to buy a house, shop at Macy’s and eat at Jeff Ruby’s steakhouse,” James Brock, an economics professor at Miami University, said.

Local state representative Wes Retherford (R-Hamilton) said he worries how the immigrant-friendly policies in Cincinnati and Dayton could impact residents living in Butler County.

“To be perfectly clear, I think it’s a good thing to be immigrant friendly,” Retherford said. “But, we’re talking about being friendly to both immigrants who came here both the legal way and illegally. There’s a difference there. You don’t hear anybody saying, ‘Let’s kick out the ones who aren’t here legally.’”

Immigrants who aren’t here legally, Retherford said, have stressed local law enforcement agencies in recent years. He fears if the region is branded a safe haven for those who aren’t here legally, it could further strain police departments and sheriffs’ offices.

A spokesman with the city mayor’s office said officials didn’t have time to answer questions about how or if they plan to reach out to outlying communities for input on the city’s immigrant friendly initiative.

Many immigrants are living in the region legally but the city needs to help both groups, said Douglas Halpert, an immigration attorney and task force member.

“It’s a matter of how, as a city, do you treat those that are here?” Halpert said.

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More immigrant children fighting deportation in Ohio court

投稿日時: 08/10/2014 投稿者: admin

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More immigrant children have been fighting to stay in the U.S. in recent months at Ohio’s only federal immigration court.

Four states separate Ohio from the U.S./Mexican border, but this state has still felt the effects of a recent wave of unaccompanied immigrant children flooding the country this year.

This newspaper found the immigration court in Cleveland has dealt with a record-high number of child immigration cases this year, as more than 57,000 unaccompanied children, most of them hailing from Central America, have traveled to the border from Oct. 1 to July. During that time, 36 new child immigration cases have been entered into Ohio’s immigration court — double the amount of cases last year and the highest number since 2009 — according to federal records this newspaper obtained.

The court has also decided on 66 child immigration cases, again, the highest number on record in recent years.

The increase is directly related to the surge of children crossing the border, many of which are smuggled through drug cartels, said Bahjat ‘Bill’ Abdallah, a Cincinnati and Dayton immigration lawyer.

“There’s a rush of them because of some misinformation,” Abdallah said. “We’re hearing the cartels, they’re saying, ‘if you’re a kid, they’ll just give you papers.’ They’re not ducking the (border) officers, these children are coming to turn themselves in.”

Abdallah said he’s handled seven of the child immigration cases since March. In his decade as an immigration lawyer, he typically handled such a case every other year.

Nationwide, more than 41,000 juvenile immigration cases were pending as of June 30 — a nearly 40 percent increase since last year, according to figures from the Executive Office of Immigration Review.

Growing caseload

Once landing at the border, unaccompanied children are detained and either cared for at a federal facility or released into the custody of a relative or family friend, called sponsors, while they await court removal hearings.

Nearly 360 unaccompanied immigrant kids have been handed over to an Ohio adult. Typically, sponsors either know the family, are from the village the child came from or are related, Marilyn Zayas-Davis, an immigration lawyer in Cincinnati, said. Those in the care of a sponsor are more likely to have an attorney fight their impending deportation in the court system, she said, because the government isn’t obligated to provide legal counsel for immigrant court defendants.

“The ones with private attorneys are the ones staying with a relative or friend,” Zayas-Davis said.

She said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency will do an FBI background check on the sponsor, before releasing the child, and the sponsor has to sign paperwork guaranteeing the child will show up for court proceedings.

Zayas-Davis agreed that her juvenile immigration caseload has grown in recent months. She’s set to take on roughly a dozen child immigration cases so far this year, which is not typical for the lawyer of 15 years.

Many of those children will seek citizenship here with an asylum claim, and the court cases can take longer than three years to complete, Abdallah said.

The Cleveland court is staffed with three judges who oversee between 2,000 and 5,000 deportation cases entered into the system annually since 2009. The federal agency would not provide average daily caseloads for each of the judges.

But, the federal government has made efforts in recent weeks, amid the growing border crisis, to ease backlog on juvenile immigration cases, Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, said.

Last month, as the national spotlight turned to the influx of children crossing the border, the federal agency has made it a policy to give a child facing deportation a scheduling hearing within 21 days while an adult, who has a dependent, is suppose to get a trial within 28 days.

The agency has also taken to reorganize court dockets to prioritize cases involving unaccompanied children, adults with detained children and any other person who is in detention of the government.

“We are expediting hearings for our newly defined priority groups to work toward fast and fair adjudication of the cases before the agency, providing shorter wait times for a hearing before an immigration judge,” Mattingly said in an email statement.

The Cleveland court is one of 39 courts across the country that have pending juvenile cases, as of last week, Mattingly said. There are 59 U.S. immigration courts in the country.

Su Casa Hispanic Center, a Cincinnati resource center by Catholic Charities of Southwest Ohio, hasn’t seen a significant increase in the number of immigrants seeking help from the agency as a legal resource, Todd Bergh, the CEO of Catholic Charities, said. However, the agency, which is staffed with volunteers and lawyers, provided legal services 338 times last year, Bergh said.

“There’s a thousand different flavors of what your immigration status is and how you cure that,” Bergh said. “It’s very complex.”

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Immigrant kids rocketing into love for science

投稿日時: 08/09/2014 投稿者: admin

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DENVER – Sixteen Colorado kids, whose immigrant parents toil in agricultural fields, grabbed a few empty soda bottles, some construction paper and clay, and set about testing the laws of motion.

“We’re learning science and how to make different rockets,” said Natalie Menjivar.

“We take the bottles and put fins and nose conez on them,” said Kenya Falcon. “And we added clay at the top of the nose cone for height. That’s the first thing that will hit the ground.”

“I think it’s really fun making them and seeing how far they’ll go,” added Alexis Mosqueda.

Menjivar, Falcon, Mosqueda and several other 10 – 13 year old students who live at Casa de la Esperanza in Longmont are taking part in a unique “Rockets for Junior Astronauts” camp designed to help find the next generation of astronauts, scientists and mathematicians.

Tom Mason, an education and outreach specialist at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, says the camp is part of a 5-year project funded by NASA.

He said the first year is focused on basic rocketry, year three on advanced rocketry, and by year five, the campers immerse themselves in robotics and engineering.

“One of the main lessons I want them to take home is that engineering and rocket science is not an elite type of activity. It’s something that they can do in their everyday lives,” Mason said.

During the launch event, the students added a little water to their “rocket” and then handed it over to Mason, who attached it to the launch pad. The students then used a bicycle tire pump to add pressure to the soda bottle. At about 20 to 25 pounds of pressure, they then began the countdown.

The launch controller then pulled a string, releasing the pressure and propelling the rocket into the air.

“My team made it up to 90 feet,” said Menjivar. “Another team had theirs go up to 80.”

“It’s kind of amazing having a rocket that goes that high,” Mosqueda said.

When asked if he anticipates some of these students will become scientists, Mason replied, “I would hope so … that’s one of our objectives. (We want) to instill a passion in them for learning science and engineering — STEM principles of science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” said Mason.

Mason hopes that these immigrant students soar as high, or higher, than their rockets.

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Immigrant advocates, judges warn against fast-tracking border screenings

投稿日時: 08/09/2014 投稿者: admin

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A top federal immigration judge joined immigrant rights advocates on Friday and urged President Obama to take greater steps to guarantee legal protections for migrant families crossing the southern border.

The Obama administration, in recent months, has tucked hundreds of Central American children and parents into detention centers with the idea of getting them processed — and out of the country — as quickly as possible. Both the ongoing detentions and the front-of-the-line legal strategy are designed to deter a new wave of arrivals.

But Dana Leigh Marks, who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), warned Friday that the recent migrants — especially the kids — are special cases demanding special handling. Marks said the focus on speedy processing may come at the expense of the legal protections designed to ensure their well-being.

“We know of the political reality that is putting pressure on the administration to queue these cases quickly,” Marks said on a press call. “And yet, from a judge’s point of view — apart from politics … there are many challenges that we face in these cases that make them more likely to go slowly rather than quickly.”

Aside from the obvious barriers of culture and language, Marks argued, legal authorities also have the difficult task of making the kids comfortable enough to relate their experiences accurately.

“We have to create an atmosphere of trust for the court to proceed effectively,” she said.

Brian Moran, an attorney with the Paul Hastings firm, said it takes months to win that trust and gain enough information from the kids to make a sound determination about their ultimate placement.

“It takes awhile to get their story,” he said. “Number one, they’re children. They don’t tell us stories in the chronological way that adults might. They’re not cognizant of the legal principles that are important to us.”

Putting kids on a fast-track, Moran warned, “[is] really impossible to do.”

Stephen Manning, an immigration lawyer working pro bono with migrant families at a federal detention facility in Artesia, N.M., listed a series of grievances with the system. Among them, many migrants are being deported without ever having legal representation, he charged, and the few lawyers working with the families haven’t been able to advocate for their clients or call witnesses.

“The system isn’t set up here to be fair,” said Manning, a Portland-based partner with Immigrant Law Group PC.

While much of the media focus surrounding the border crisis has centered on the arrival of nearly 60,000 unaccompanied children since October, tens of thousands of families have also entered the U.S. over that span.

And while a 2008 human trafficking law ensures that the unaccompanied children go through an extensive screening process, the same is not always the case for the families, according to Michelle Brané, head of the Migrant Rights & Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission.

“For children who are accompanied by their parents … they are immediately placed into expedited removal proceedings, and only if they are able to articulate a fear — and [are] screened in by Customs and Border Protection to receive a full interview — do they receive one,” she said.

Aside from the facility in Artesia, the federal government has also established family detention centers in Karnes City, Texas, and Berks County, Pa. And while there was once the possibility of the immigrants being released during their screenings, the administration is now holding the detainees throughout the process, Brané said.

“All of these facilities are holding these families throughout the length of their proceedings, and it has been made very clear by the administration that they are being held there for the purpose of deporting them,” she said. “The policy of the administration has been to say that there will be no releases from these facilities until the conclusion of their case.”

Both chambers of Congress last week considered legislation to address the border crisis, including new funding to increase the number of immigration lawyers and judges managing the new arrivals. Neither bill went far.

The $2.7 billion package proposed by Senate Democrats won a simple majority but fell far short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a GOP filibuster. The $694 million bill championed by House Republicans passed Aug. 1 on a largely party-line vote, but it has no chance of becoming law in the face of Democratic opposition in the Senate and White House.

Marks said she was on Capitol Hill last week pressing appropriators in both the House and Senate to hike the funding for new judges “so that all cases can be heard in a timely manner.”

The administration is calling for 40 new immigration judges at the border, but NAIJ wants to increase the number by 75 each year over the next three years — the same boost called for in the comprehensive immigration reform package passed by the Senate 14 months ago, Marks said.

“Our solution to this problem is giving enough money to the system so that everybody’s case is heard in a timeframe that we feel is fair,” she said.

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Will illegal immigrant kids stay or be sent home? Depends if they have a lawyer – Border Patrol agent: We are …

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Two female detainees sleep in a holding cell, as the children are separated by age group and gender, as hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Nogales Placement Center in Nogales, Arizona, June 18, 2014.Reuters

WASHINGTON – What a difference a lawyer makes.

As the immigration crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border deepens, a review of deportation hearings for minors caught crossing reveals stark disparities depending on their legal representation. If they’ve got an attorney, they stand a fairly good chance of staying in the U.S. Without one — they’re probably getting sent home.

That is, if they show up at court at all.

The differences are detailed in a recent report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The report traces the status of more than 100,000 cases involving juveniles clogging the system.

Because crossing the U.S. border without authorization or documentation is a civil offense and not a criminal one, the government is not required to provide children — no matter how young — with publicly funded counsel. But legal representation is a key factor.

The report found that in cases where the child had an attorney, they were allowed to stay in the United States nearly half the time. Children who appeared in court alone or without any type of legal representation were deported nine out of 10 times, according to the report.

While foes of illegal immigration worry that the surge of illegal immigrant minors is going to open the door to “amnesty,” immigrant advocates are now focusing on the legal representation issue in a bid to aid those currently going through the court system.

Meanwhile, a growing number of children are taking a third option that’s not desired by either side of the debate — not showing up at court at all and effectively disappearing into the U.S.

At a July 22 federal immigration court hearing in Dallas, for example, 90 percent of the kids were no shows. In the past, the rate has hovered around 46 percent.

But groups are trying to bring the minors out of the shadows, and back into the courts. Near New Orleans, immigration lawyer Kathleen Gasparian is spearheading a campaign to pair area legal experts and Spanish-speaking translators with unaccompanied minors waiting for their deportation hearing.

Gasparian, a managing partner at law firm Ware Gasparian in Metairie, La., said her practice, which deals solely with immigration issues, saw a spike about six months ago in the number of children who needed legal counsel.

In the first seven months of 2014, 450 cases involving minors were referred to Louisiana’s immigration courts compared with a total of 71 cases in 2011.

Gasparian’s firm is offering a free training session in September for lawyers, legal workers and other volunteers, such as translators, interested in donating their time, Gasparian told FoxNews.com.

“Our firm has always had a strong commitment to pro bono work, but this is much more than we could handle,” she said. “The response from the community has been wonderful.”

So far, 15 attorneys have signed up for the September session. “Our goal is to get 20,” Gasparian said.

The New Orleans immigration court, one of only two in Louisiana that handles deportation cases, is currently facing a big backlog.

As of June 30, there were 1,216 pending cases in the state. Of those, 81 percent – 985 child defendants – did not have legal representation.

The State Bar of Texas has been actively looking for pro bono lawyers too.

“Please understand that legal assistance is going to be needed for many months,” the organization wrote on its website. According to the site, lawyers will be needed to help with deportation hearings, asylum cases and with assisting qualifying minors who want to apply for special immigrant juvenile status.

The surge of children making the more than 1,000-mile journey from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border to escape reported violence in their own countries has triggered calls for more funding from the Obama administration. Congress has not passed compromise legislation to address this, so President Obama has warned he may allocate resources on his own.

The majority of minors detained at the border not only face language barriers but also lack financial resources to hire legal help.

Several civil rights groups are suing the federal government for allegedly failing to provide free attorneys to juveniles facing detainment and deportation hearings.

The ACLU, for example, argues in its case that children are ill-equipped to represent themselves and therefore should have access to a lawyer. As that fight coils its way through the court system, several other legal aid groups are offering their services to children for free.

In California, immigrant rights attorneys also filed a lawsuit on July 31 seeking a preliminary injunction to block the U.S. Department of Justice from fast-tracking the deportation of Central American children without first making sure they have legal counsel.

Last year, 38,759 unaccompanied minors – mostly from Central American countries — crossed the southern border illegally. Of those, 1,800 were deported, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.

The rest were either granted asylum or are waiting for their cases to be heard as the brutal backlog of cases in U.S. immigration courts grows.

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