カテゴリーアーカイブ: Immigrant

Immigrants lobby to keep driver's license law

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) – Immigrant workers urged lawmakers on Wednesday to focus on improving New Mexico’s economy rather than considering RepublicanGov. Susana Martinez’s proposal to stop the state from issuing driver’s licenses to immigrants living in the country illegally.

Members of an immigrant rights group brought 5,000 petitions to the Capitol and planned to deliver them to lawmakers and the governor along with 100 plastic hard hats signed by immigrant oil field workers and more than 700 small milk cartons with photos of immigrant families.

“We are tired of being attacked, and we don’t want to be the victim of political bullying anymore,” Arturo Donlucas of Lovington, who’s worked in a diary for 12 years, said at a news conference.

He spoke in Spanish and his comments were translated into English at what organizers billed as an “immigrant day of action” at the Capitol.

The governor’s license proposal has failed in the Democratic-controlled Legislature since Martinez took office in 2011, but the governor wants lawmakers to again consider it during their 30-day session.

As Martinez has pushed to restrict licenses for immigrants in New Mexico, a growing number of other states are moving in the opposite direction.

Eight states, including California, Illinois, Nevada and Colorado, enacted laws last year to grant immigrants the privilege to drive. However, some of those states haven’t started issuing licenses.

Unlike a New Mexico driver’s license, the newly enacted driving privilege cards and licenses in other states can’t be used for identification, such as boarding an airliner or entering a federal building

New Mexico and Washington have the broadest policies in the country because the same license granted to a U.S. citizen is available to immigrants, including those here illegally.

Rep. Paul Pacheco, an Albuquerque Republican, is sponsoring a bill backed by the governor that would allow temporary driver’s licenses for certain immigrant youths but stop the state from granting licenses to other foreign nationals without proper immigration documents.

The temporary licenses would be for immigrants covered by a federal policy deferring deportation. However, those licenses couldn’t be used as identification to meet federal requirements, such as at airports.

The current licensing system has been in place since 2003.

“The right thing is to repeal it,” Pacheco said in an interview. “It’s a public safety issue.”

At the news conference outside the Capitol, oil field worker Angel Escarcega of Lovington said he and his immigrant co-workers need driver’s licenses for their jobs.

Lawmakers who support the governor’s proposal, he said, are “letting the politics of fear and divisiveness get in the way of doing what’s right for our local community.”

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Minister probes low immigrant wages

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28 January 2014
Last updated at 06:17








By Ed Davey and Guy Lynn
BBC London


















Secret filming of migrant worker moving mattresses

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Immigrant labourers gather each morning in Cricklewood and Tottenham








Evidence that some immigrant labourers are being paid significantly below the minimum wage is to be investigated, Business Secretary Vince Cable has said.

BBC researchers uncovered the evidence while joining mainly Romanian workers touting for labouring jobs in London.

The investigation was carried out in December, before Romanians had the full right to work in the UK.

Mr Cable said there was evidence of a “serious breach of the law”.

During the BBC London investigation, two Romanian researchers joined labourers gathering at locations in Tottenham and Cricklewood each morning looking for work.

They were told by the workers that builders frequently promised to pay them a fair wage – only to refuse to pay them the full sum at the end of the day. One labourer in Tottenham claimed he had once been paid £10 for almost a full day’s work.


Jamal SyeedJamal Syeed paid the lowest wages of all the employers filmed

One researcher was then employed by Jamal Syeed, a businessman.

Mr Syeed drove him to Birmingham to tile and plaster a shop. Skilled labour of this sort typically costs at least £100 a day but the researcher was only paid £40 for a nine-hour day – an hourly rate of £4.70. The current national minimum wage is £6.31 an hour.

While carrying out the work, the researcher was also told to sleep on a bare mattress in a tiny room which he had to share with another man. He described the conditions as “filthy”.

When challenged by the BBC, Mr Syeed said the researcher had in fact worked six hours for £40, not nine hours. This claim is not borne out by footage secretly recorded by the researcher, however.

Mr Syeed added: “We agreed that the man will carry out the plastering job for me on [a] £40 basis.

“But later on we agreed that after the inspection of the workplace the plaster man could give the estimate price as labour.”

Another researcher was paid £5.71 per hour – below the minimum wage.



Dangerous work




During one labouring job, a cement mixer with a broken wheel collapsed and nearly crushed a researcher.

And on another occasion he was told to climb a wobbly ladder and balance on the top to repair guttering.

After viewing the BBC’s secretly-recorded footage, Professor Richard Booth, director of health and safety consultants Hastam, called some of the safety breaches “crazy”.

Watching the footage of the cement mixer incident, he said that had the researcher not had the “presence of mind to get out of the way rapidly”, he “might have lost the use of both feet”.

“It’s a scandal,” he added.

“They are using inappropriate kit and untrained people. It’s dire.”

Prof Booth added: “It’s not just that this chap is being asked to do dangerous jobs – it’s evident nobody’s thinking about whether these jobs are dangerous.

“They don’t seem to care.”



Responding to the two men’s experiences, minister Mr Cable said it was a “serious breach of the law”.

He added: “Clearly that must be investigated.

“The minimum wage is a very important part of our system, it is a legal requirement, and employers must pay it.

“If they are found to have underpaid they will be fined up to £20,000.”

He urged anyone who felt they had been taken advantage of by employers to come forward, saying: “The minimum wage is only credible if it is enforced”.

“It is our aim to drive this off the streets, not just of London but throughout the country – this isn’t just a London problem,” he added.

During the investigation, researchers also uncovered scams and potentially criminal behaviour associated with the labour pick-up points.

One researcher was asked by a man to fly to Germany to pick up a suitcase full of “herbs” and return with it to the UK for money. Another man offered to buy the researcher’s passport for £1,000.

Running battles also broke out at the Cricklewood site when tensions between two rival groups of labourers – Bulgarian and Romanian – boiled over.

The next day numerous labourers were seen with cuts, bruises, black eyes and visible wounds, and there was a heavy police presence on the streets.

At the time of the investigation – before Romanians and Bulgarians were given the full right to work in the UK on 1 January – there were typically 15 people waiting on the street at each site. However, last week the number of labourers at the Tottenham site had swelled to more than 50.

Matthew Pollard, executive director of Migration Watch UK, said the black market labour was driving down wages for legitimate builders.


BuildersThese builders told the researchers their wages should go “under the radar”

After viewing the evidence, he said: “This footage is terrible. It’s unfair to decent employers who pay a proper wage and it’s unfair to the migrant workers who are clearly being exploited.

“But also it’s unfair to Londoners. How can Londoners compete when wages have been driven down this low?”

One potential employer told one of the undercover researchers he preferred employing foreign workers because they would work for less.

He said: “I don’t have money to pay English people.”

A different builder paid one researcher £50 for a day’s work mixing cement at a house in London’s exclusive Primrose Hill area – above the minimum wage.

However the labourer was told not to declare the money to the Inland Revenue.

The builder was filmed undercover saying: “Now we don’t want to pay tax, so you just pocket that [the money] and keep it.

“Most companies that go to pick people up where you are just want to pay you cash, under the radar.”

Only two companies have been prosecuted for not paying the minimum wage since the 2010 General Election.

Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna said: “At a time when families are facing a cost of living crisis, it is crucial that the National Minimum Wage is properly enforced.

“That’s why the findings of this investigation are so worrying.

“The authorities must urgently look into this matter and should come down hard on any rogue employers who do not pay the minimum.”

Audrey Mitchell, of the charity Thames Reach, which supports immigrant workers, said: “It’s disturbing to hear the reports of migrants being offered illegal work, well below the minimum age and often in dangerous conditions.”

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Marathon Bombing Puts Death Decision in Holder’s Hands

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, accused in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured more than 260, will probably face a capital punishment phase of his trial given the violence of the attack and the evidence against him, former federal prosecutors said.

The decision, expected this week, is in the hands of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who must sign off on any attempt to seek execution for a federal capital crime.

Holder is almost certain to seek death for the 20-year-old former college student, given the “heinous nature of the crime,” said Michael Kendall, previously a federal prosecutor in Boston and now a defense lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery LLP. “There won’t be a defense that he didn’t plant the bomb; the only thing there can be a real fight about is the death penalty.”

Holder’s decision comes as American prosecutors seek the death penalty less frequently. In 2013, Maryland became the sixth state in six years to end capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The number of executions in the U.S. fell to 39 from 43 in 2012, only the second time in 19 years that there were fewer than 40 executions. There were 98 executions in the U.S. in 1999.

Tsarnaev, a Russian immigrant of Chechen descent who is now a U.S. citizen, is accused of plotting with his brother to detonate homemade bombs near the marathon’s finish line on April 15, 2013, in the first deadly terrorist attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001. He pleaded not guilty in July to 30 counts, including the fatal shooting of a university police officer after the attack. A trial date hasn’t been set.

Four Killed

The explosions killed three people, Krystle Marie Campbell, 29, Lu Lingzi, 23, and Martin Richard, 8, according to the indictment. Tsarnaev is also accused in the post-explosion shooting death of Sean Collier, 27, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer.

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If Holder opts to pursue the death penalty, Tsarnaev will join almost 500 people the U.S. has sought to execute since federal capital punishment was reinstated in 1988. Only three of them have been put to death.

In Massachusetts, the U.S. has tried two cases seeking the death penalty. Neither resulted in a death sentence and one of them is being retried. Executions are unpopular in Massachusetts and not available under state law. The jury in Tsarnaev’s case will be drawn from residents of the state, while any execution would be carried out at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Punishment Poll

A Boston Globe poll in September found that a third of the city’s residents back the death penalty for Tsarnaev, while 57 percent support a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

All cases in which the U.S. wins a conviction and is seeking capital punishment require a second trial on sentencing, a death penalty phase. Jurors are asked to weigh mitigating and aggravating factors to decide whether the defendant deserves life in prison or death. Holder must advise U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. in Boston of his decision by Jan. 31.

If the U.S. decides to seek death for Tsarnaev, only potential jurors who say they are willing to impose a capital sentence can be chosen for the panel.

Under U.S. Justice Department policy, Holder received a recommendation on whether to seek the death penalty from U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz in Boston, whose office is prosecuting the case. Such reports, which aren’t public, include defense submissions on why the penalty shouldn’t be sought.

Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for Ortiz, didn’t return a call seeking comment on Holder’s decision and the Jan. 31 deadline.

Ex-Prosecutor’s Forecast

The Justice Department will probably seek death, although it will be a difficult choice both “politically and personally” for Holder, said Peter White, a former federal prosecutor in Virginia and Washington who’s now a litigation attorney at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP.

“If it isn’t sought for this — a terrorist act inflicting massive damage on innocent people, which could have killed more — what would it be sought for?” said White, who worked for Holder in the 1990s when the attorney general was U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and also considered whether to seek death for accused killers. “For him, that will be a very difficult decision. I know he takes that seriously.”

Defense Team

Tsarnaev is being housed at a prison medical facility in Ayer, Massachusetts. His legal team, led by Federal Public Defender Miriam Conrad, has spent months gathering evidence to persuade the U.S. not to seek his death, according to court records.

William Fick, a federal public defender in Boston, listed in a Sept. 27 court filing the challenges of gathering mitigating evidence. Tsarnaev’s family is “half a world away” and one potential witness in the U.S., Ibragim Todashev, was killed by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, according to the filing. Law-enforcement officials were questioning Todashev on May 22 about a triple-murder he was suspected of committing two years earlier with Tamerlan Tsarnaev when he became irritated and lunged at officers, two officials, who asked for anonymity because of the investigation, said in May.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team includes San Diego lawyer Judy Clarke, a death-penalty specialist who represented “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and 1996 Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph.

Mail Bombs

Kaczynski, a former professor at the University of California at Berkeley, used mail bombs to kill three people and injure 23 from 1978 to 1995 in a terror campaign against technology. He pleaded guilty in 1998 and is serving a life sentence. Rudolph also pleaded guilty and got a life term.

Kendall said he suspects Tsarnaev will change his plea to guilty to avoid a damaging trial over whether he and his brother Tamerlan, who died after a police shootout, were responsible for the attack. The case would then focus on whether it’s moral to kill murderers, Kendall said.

“If he were to go to trial on the issue of guilt or innocence, and put forward a defense about his mental health or his brother, a jury won’t find him not guilty — it would be unsympathetic,” Kendall said. “If he admits his guilt, it may be a more attractive defense. A jury is going to be more sympathetic if it’s just a death penalty issue.”

Tsarnaev ran over his brother with a stolen SUV as he fled police and later hid in a boat in the backyard of a suburban Boston home. He wrote messages on the wall and beams of the boat, the U.S. said.

Tsarnaev Message

“The U.S. government is killing our innocent civilians” and “I can’t stand to see such evil go unpunished,” he wrote, according to the indictment against him. He also wrote, “We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all,” according to the indictment.

His personal computer held instructions for making bombs out of pressure cookers and fireworks like the ones used in the marathon bombing, as well as files related to al-Qaeda and jihad, according to the indictment.

Since a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling paved the way for the federal death penalty’s restoration as part of a drug-crimes law a decade later, the U.S. has only executed three people.

Timothy McVeigh was executed by lethal injection in 2001, for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people and injured more than 800. Drug kingpin Juan Raul Garza was executed in 2001 and Louis Jones was put to death in 2003 for murder.

Colorado Prison

Kaczynski is serving his sentence at the federal administrative maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, as are Rudolph and Terry Nichols, McVeigh’s co-conspirator.

In federal cases where juries have been asked to decide between life and death, they called for 148 life sentences and 74 executions, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project. Appeals are pending in 17 cases, while other defendants are awaiting retrial or have had their sentences vacated, it said.

In Massachusetts, two defendants have been prosecuted under the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act. Gary Lee Sampson was sentenced to die in 2004 after pleading guilty to two counts of carjacking resulting in death. His sentence was overturned after an appeals court ruled that a juror had withheld information about her ability to be impartial.

Life Sentence

Kristen Gilbert, a former nurse at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Massachusetts who was tried under the act for killing four patients, was given a life sentence. In a third case, the U.S. dropped its charges against alleged killers Branden Morris and Darryl Green over a 2001 slaying to allow the state to prosecute instead.

The death penalty doesn’t always give victims additional satisfaction, according to White, the former prosecutor.

“In my experience, that varies as widely as people’s opinions about the death penalty,” White said. “Some victims believe it’s the ultimate vindication and gives them closure. Some victims I’ve talked to think death-for-a-death is not an appropriate resolution or wouldn’t be helpful to them.”

The case is U.S. v. Tsarnaev, 13-cr-10200, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net.

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Immigrant advocates getting cities to back them

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Immigrant advocates getting cities to back them

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Our family, (from Mexico), was the one in the corner that couldn't communicate, Jose Moreno, 41, says. The Cal State Long Beach Latino studies professor and Anaheim City School District board president, along with his siblings, chose professions to help families like theirs growing up.

Immigrant-rights advocates are turning to elected leaders across the nation to drive home their message to President Obama – stop deportations.

They are following the lead of the Los Angeles City Council, which in December adopted a resolution urging the president to cease them. Advocates are working with elected officials in Anaheim, Carson, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and other cities to introduce similar resolutions.

“It’s a movement that is taking hold across the nation as the next step in the immigrant-rights front,” said Guillermo Gómez, spokesman for an alliance in Chicago that is working with elected leaders to introduce a resolution in his city on Tuesday.

In Orange County, the Anaheim City Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a resolution that urges the president to “protect our families from destructive and needless immigration deportations.” It asks Obama to suspend deportations and expand a program, now available to young people, to all unauthorized immigrants with no serious criminal history.

The resolution is similar to L.A.’s declaration, urging Obama to use his executive powers to expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to all unauthorized residents until Congress decides what to do about reforming the country’s immigration system. Obama has said that he does not have that authority.

There have been about 2 million deportations since Obama became president – a record for any administration.

“Now, instead of calling for mobilization and fasting and vigils and prayers, we’re saying: ‘Go to your elected officials and have your representatives’ voices, through these resolutions, go to the White House,’ ” said Armando Vazquez-Ramos, a Cal State Long Beach professor and an organizer with the Protect Our Families Campaign.

On Friday, a group of religious leaders from different denominations joined Vazquez-Ramos, L.A. Councilman Gil Cedillo, who wrote the resolution in his city, along with other elected officials at a press conference as part of a “National Day of Action” on deportations. California Sen. Ronald Calderon, D-Montebello, presented a resolution he introduced on Thursday that echoes LA.’s declaration.

With phone calls and emails, advocates also are increasing pressure in hopes that the president will announce a moratorium on the forced removals during his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders are expected to announce in the coming week their proposal for immigration reform. And many Americans are asking their representatives to not give in to the pressure from immigrant supporters, saying that making citizens of the estimated 11 million unauthorized residents will hurt the nation and its citizens.

Opponents of illegal immigration plan to meet Monday with staff members of several California Republicans, including Congressmen John Campbell, R-Irvine; Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach; Ed Royce, R-Fullerton; and Ken Calvert, R-Corona.

“We stand with the 16 Republican Congress members who recently submitted a letter to President Obama demanding that American workers – more than 22 million looking for a job – be the focus of legislation, not illegal aliens,” said Robin Hvidston, executive director of We The People Rising in Claremont.

Supporters often cite the plight of children impacted by the deportations. On the Anaheim City School District, Jose Moreno, president of the Anaheim City School District Board of Education, said he plans to ask his colleagues to consider a resolution that would address the impact of deportations on children.

“In our schools, we have many students who are in mixed-status families – families where one adult/parent or a sibling is undocumented while other siblings are U.S.-born citizens,” Moreno said. “As educators, it is extremely difficult and morally unsustainable to engage children, build up their hopes for their futures, and push them to achieve to the best of their abilities when they are at daily risk of their families being torn apart.”

Carson Councilman Mike Gipson plans to ask his colleagues for their support in early February on a resolution that would be shared with South Bay cities.

“We have to speak with one voice, so that our president understands this affects all of us,” Gipson said.

Meanwhile, in Kern County, immigrant-rights advocates are working to produce similar resolutions, said Gonzalo Santos, a spokesman for the Kern Coalition for Citizenship. Last week, immigrant-rights supporters won “a big victory” in Kern County with the help of the American Civil Rights Union, Santos said. The Department of Homeland Security agreed to halt its practice of arresting people who went to Kern County courthouses to get married, pay fines or seek domestic-violence restraining orders.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7829 or rkopetman@ocregister.com

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Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Vital for American Innovation

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By Yatin Mundkur

Open borders brought Andrew Carnegie and Andy Grove to the U.S. They also brought Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger, a slew of German theoretical physicists to work on the Manhattan Project, and countless investors and entrepreneurs, including me.

Immigrants to the U.S. have been transforming the industrial geography and the technology landscape since the 1860s when Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie launched Keystone Bridge Company, which became the cornerstone of his mammoth steel empire. A century later, Palestinian-born Jesse Aweida launched Storage Technology in Colorado, spawning an ecosystem of storage companies in the region. Shanghai-born An Wang turned a $600 investment into Wang Laboratories in Boston in 1951, and nearly five decades later Russian-born Sergey Brin co-founded Google.

For venture capitalists who invest in the earliest stages of a business, the ability to draw on a vast pool of trained and experienced technology minds is critical. Indeed, many investments would probably never have been made if the right team, often including experts born outside of the U.S., had not been assembled.

(Image via Shutterstock)

(Image via Shutterstock)

Could some of these companies have been started by homegrown entrepreneurs? Possibly. But founding teams, especially in high tech, are a unique blend of knowledge, skill, and endeavor. Today, they are as likely to be immigrant as U.S.-born. Importantly, U.S. investors have a privilege those of no other nation have: to pick from a pool of the very best globally.

Fostering innovation in the 21st century is a uniquely challenging phenomenon. It’s about bringing together people and ideas. No country has nurtured innovation better than the United States, in large part due to our ability to attract the best minds in science and engineering from around the world. Diversity is one of our country’s greatest strengths.

A few contemporary examples of immigrant entrepreneurship: Aditazz, which aims to revolutionize building construction, was co-founded by Deepak Aatresh from India and Felicia Borkovi from Romania; Cellworks, designing new therapies that target a range of health issues, founded by Taher Abbasi, Shireen Vali, and Pradeep Fernandes, all foreign-born and U.S.- educated; high-def videowall maker Prysm was started by Amit Jain from India and Roger Hajjar from Lebanon, who studied at Boston University; and big data innovator Guavus was launched by Anukool Lakhina, another immigrant entrepreneur.

More than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants (90 companies) or by their children (an additional 114 companies), according to a report by the Partnership for a New American Economy.

In 2011, two of every three electrical engineering Ph.D. degrees in the U.S. were awarded to foreign nationals. Nearly as high a ratio of all E.E. Masters degrees were too, the National Science Foundation reports. These graduates are here in the U.S., ready to create companies and employ others. The cost of creating innovation teams around them would be far less—and the chance of success far greater—if we could be certain that those we recruit will be here for the longer run. Increasing the allocations of and more strategically implementing H1-B visas is crucial. FWD.us is one tech-industry-led organization (started by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg) that is fighting for such changes, through its support for comprehensive immigration reform.

The entrepreneur visa should also be part of the mix. Immigrants who have raised money from qualified investors already are permitted to work in the U.S. But the process of demonstrating that is costly and complex, bureaucratic and time consuming. The true test for the entrepreneur visa shouldn’t be whether someone can fight the regulators to a standoff. It should simply be, can the entrepreneur build a business that creates jobs and contributes to economic growth?

As immigrant entrepreneurs and immigrant investors, we are especially aware of how fertile the U.S. is for innovation. The access to seminal research, the willingness by investors to risk venture capital, an equities market that is willing to fund ideas still not fully proven, and a legion of corporate buyers all are critical to the process. But nothing is more critical than people and the talent they bring.

Sure, there is controversy over how far-reaching the U.S. guest worker program should be. And recently released reports suggest that Silicon Valley’s claim of a labor shortage—and one rationale for guest workers—is overblown. That may be, but it’s hard to question the necessity of tapping the best pool of talent—homegrown and foreign—to maintain our leadership as innovators.

In his book “The Next 100 Years,” Futurist George Friedman says that in the first half of the 21st century the population bust will create a major labor shortage in advanced industrial countries. “Today, developed countries see the problem as keeping immigrants out. Later, in the first half of the twenty-first century, the problem will be persuading them to come,” he writes.

We already have a willing army of highly skilled technology innovator immigrants here. Immigrants that aren’t displacing other workers aren’t depressing wages—simply building on the innovation leadership of America. We should focus on keeping them here.

Yatin Mundkur is a managing partner at Artiman Ventures, a Palo Alto venture capital firm. This article was originally published at Techonomy.com.

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Immigrant High-Tech Workers Not Costing US Jobs

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Rather than push out native workers, hiring skilled immigrants at United States high-tech firms will actually create company-wide job opportunities, according to new research. 

Many high-tech companies in the United States look overseas to fill talent gaps in their employment ranks by hiring skilled immigrants, often sponsoring the visas these workers need to live in this country. Critics say this can create an unpleasant fallout effect,the pushing out of older workers with higher salaries.

But new research indicates that although many tech firms do tend to favor employing younger workers, older native workers are not losing their jobs in droves directly as a result of the immigrants who are coming in.

“We don’t find rampant evidence of this idea that when a new immigrant comes in, the older worker is shown to the door,” said Harvard Business School Associate Professor William R. Kerr, who recently cowrote a working paper called Skilled Immigration and the Employment Structures of US Firms with Sari Pekkala Kerr of Wellesley College and William F. Lincoln of Johns Hopkins University.

In the United States, the immigration of skilled workers is particularly prevalent among firms in the technology fields.

In 2008, immigrants represented 16 percent of the US workforce with a bachelor’s education, and they accounted for 29 percent of the growth in this workforce during the period between 1995 and 2008. In jobs closely linked to innovation and technology, the share of immigrants was even higher, closer to 24 percent.

“Skilled immigration is important for the United States, where we do have a large Baby Boomer generation approaching retirement and leaving the workforce,” Kerr says. “Some European countries also have workforces that have been aging substantially, and the replacement rate in the population for some of these countries is even negative; not enough new people are being born to replace people in their later years. Countries around the world are looking at immigration as one of the ways to keep the population base at its size or greater, and even better if that can be a skilled workforce.”

Bitter Debate

Yet in the United States, specific policies and admission levels of skilled immigrants remain a topic of bitter debate.

Some who advocate for higher rates of skilled immigration have recently used the phrase “national suicide” to describe the limited admissions of skilled workers compared to low-skilled workers in the United States. But critics are opposed to expanding admissions, saying skilled immigration rates are already too high.

Most previous research focused on studying immigration through shifts in the supply of workers to a particular labor market. But Kerr and his fellow researchers took a rare route by looking at skilled immigration through the lens of the US firm by studying how the hiring of these immigrants affected the employment structures within 319 large employer firms and top patenting firms during the period between 1995 and 2008.

Many firms bring in immigrants through the firm-sponsored H-1B visa, the largest program for temporary skilled immigration to the United States. A company identifies a worker it wants to hire and then applies to the US government to obtain the visa.

Young workers account for a large portion of skilled immigrants, with 90 percent of H-1B workers under the age of 40. The visa is used especially for occupations in science, technology, engineering and math, which account for about 60 percent of successful applications. About 40 percent of H-1B recipients between 2000 and 2005 came from India, while 10 percent came from China.

Once the worker has migrated, the immigrant is essentially locked in with the firm until the person can obtain permanent residency or another visa. In many cases, the firm ends up sponsoring the immigrant for permanent residency, which strengthens the worker’s ties with the firm even more.

Opponents of skilled immigration argue that companies are saving money by underpaying their immigrant workers substantially. Although Kerr agrees that many immigrants are underpaid when compared to native workers, he notes that many studies find the average difference in pay is only about 3 to 5 percent, and others find no differences or positive effects. This may be because the laws that surround skilled visas don’t allow companies to pay much less than the prevailing wage.

“The most extreme studies find a differential of 20 percent or thereabouts, but even that difference is not as substantial as it first sounds,” he says. “There are legal fees and recruiting costs for hiring immigrants, and that kind of stuff will quickly wipe out any underpayment that a firm would get off a $50,000 salary. So I don’t have the belief that firms are using this to reduce the wage level that they have to pay their young workers in these companies.”

Kerr points to other factors beyond salary: “Younger immigrant workers are often more tied to the firm, are willing to work long hours, and often have fewer family commitments. Their salary may also be lower, especially relative to older workers whose salary has increased over time, but that can be second-order to these other traits.”

Source Article from http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2014/01/22/immigrant-high-tech-workers-not-costing-us-jobs/
Immigrant High-Tech Workers Not Costing US Jobs
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Stalled immigrant-rights bill could sway some elections

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The state House’s swift move to advance an immigrant-rights bill on the first day of this year’s legislative session could create a wedge issue that could affect the results of the November elections, some political experts said.

Lawmakers in the House on Monday approved with strong bipartisan support a proposal that expands state financial aid for college students in the country without legal status. The measure, however, is likely going nowhere in the Senate because Majority Leader Rodney Tom, the Democrat leading the predominantly Republican Majority Coalition Caucus, said his caucus has other priorities to focus on during the 60-day session.

“I’m looking for more dollars for state need grants, but not expanding the pool (of eligible student applicants) at this time,” said Sen. Barbara Bailey, Republican chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee.

Officials for Republicans in the House and Senate said their caucuses don’t have immigration-related bills they are putting forward this year.

Inaction this session on bills important to immigrants and minorities, such as the so-called Washington Dream Act, could become an election issue in November, when 24 seats in the Senate are contested. Ten of those Senate seats are expected to be challenged vigorously by both parties. About half a dozen of those seats are in suburbs in the Puget Sound area, including Tom’s.

“It’s an issue that can dramatically affect the swing races in suburban districts,” said Chris Vance, a Republican political consultant who has worked with immigrant-rights groups, like OneAmerica.

After a year where Congress failed to reform the nation’s immigration laws, the Washington Dream Act is a priority for immigrant-rights groups in Olympia this session. If the bill is signed into law, Washington would become the fifth state in the country to approve state financial aid for college students illegally in the country. California, Texas, New Mexico and Illinois have passed similar legislation.

Proponents have said the average number of college students in Washington each year who can’t provide proof of legal residency is about 550. They estimate that number would grow by about 20 or 30 percent if the financial-aid measure is approved.

“Denying financial aid to an entire generation of motivated Washingtonians benefits no one,” said Emily Murphy, a lobbyist for OneAmerica, an immigrant-rights group. “The Dream Act is about education and the economy, and we want to make sure we have a vibrant economy served by a well-educated workforce.”

During the debate on the House floor, opponents of the bill said the state can’t afford to expand the need-grants pool. One lawmaker said 30,000 students who applied for state financial aid didn’t get it.

“The statistics unfortunately trump the dream at this point,” said Republican Rep. Larry Haler of Richland.

Vance said that immigrant-rights groups are a key constituency of the Democratic Party and, combined, they can bring a lot of “passion and money” into a legislative district if they target it. A Republican can diffuse that pressure by supporting such a bill, he said.

But state Republican Party spokesman Keith Schipper said he doesn’t buy the argument that immigration-reform issues in Olympia would have an effect on the November elections.

“This is simply a distraction to get the voters’ minds off the issues they’re truly upset about,” Schipper said. “This is simply the Democrats fishing.”

Voters in November will focus on education issues, the rollout of the Affordable Care Act and taxes, Schipper said.

Minority and immigrant voters have shown they can affect election results in Washington state, a political expert said. After Gov. Jay Inslee won the governor’s office in 2012, University of Washington pollster Matt Barreto estimated that Latino and Asian voters broke 3-to-1 for the Democrat and helped him beat Republican candidate Rob McKenna, who had courted immigrant votes but couldn’t shake off the anti-immigrant image of the GOP.

“My hope is that Latino groups realize that the Legislature needs to work or change,” said Maru Mora, an immigrant activist and organizer of the annual May Day march in Seattle.

It’s harder to ascertain the impact of minority and immigrant voters at a district level. But Democrat political consultant Christian Sinderman pointed out that some of the swing districts for Senate races are in neighborhoods with significant numbers of immigrants.

These districts are “socially very progressive, especially the Microsoft and high-tech suburbs with immigrant families,” he said. “And even if they’re higher income, they’re still beneficiaries of having access to higher education and career opportunities.”

Vance said he agrees up to a point. The financial-aid measure can be characterized as an education issue and not so much an immigrant-rights issue, he said.

“You can make it about education … the core issue in suburban races — and suburban races are the battleground” for control of the Legislature, Vance said.






Source Article from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2022716529_immigrantbillxml.html?syndication=rss
Stalled immigrant-rights bill could sway some elections
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Immigrant Learning Center introduces latest program

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Let the shopping begin. Get exclusive promotions and sales from your favorite retailers. And never miss a great deal again.

Source Article from http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/malden/2014/01/immigrant_learning_center_introduces_latest_program.html
Immigrant Learning Center introduces latest program
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Immigrant stories: The psychotherapist and the letter of proof

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The first in an occasional series of Immigrant Stories, shining a light on the people trapped in Britain’s immigration system.


She had the letter to prove it.


When the Home Office told Mariam Harley Miller, a London psychotherapist, that she had just 28 days to leave the country it felt like a bad dream. But it wasn’t. The clock was ticking on the Australian citizen and it would not stop, no matter how strenuously she pointed out they had made a mistake.


She had in her possession a letter, sent by the Home Office, in which they assured her that her visa status was valid. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t listen. She was trapped in a system which made no sense, with a timer ticking down to her departure date.




Miller came to Britain in 2005, eleven years after marrying an Italian man and settling down on the continent. She was the archetypal hard-working, pull-your-sleeves-up immigrant: applying for work from overseas, taking the first four days in the UK to sort out her house and a car, and then starting her job the following Monday. Within six months she’d bought a house, using money she brought from selling her place in Italy. She was the type of person a country might welcome: smart, sassy, medically trained and ready to put in the hours.


A couple of years later her husband decided he didn’t want to live in Britain anymore and moved back to Italy. The pressure of time apart took its toll and the marriage fell apart. Miller rang the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to check if her immigration status was affected.


They asked how long she’d been married and how long she’d been in the UK. They were operating by the ‘three plus one’ rule – you were allowed to stay if you’d been married for more than three years and in country for more than one. Having been married for 14 years and in the UK for four, she ably satisfied it.


They reassured her she was able to stay and she asked for a letter to that effect, which was sent to her. Job done – or so she thought.


The next time she needed to contact UKBA was five years later, when she went online to fill in a form for leave to remain.


She was told the rules had changed and that she’d need to apply under the discretionary category. Still she had no idea what she was in for. She sent off the necessary documentation, including that letter from the Home Office and her passport. She would not hear back from them for 18 months.


“We waited a year and half,” she says.


“I couldn’t travel anywhere, couldn’t change jobs, couldn’t do anything at all except go to work.


“At the time I was planning on doing another masters – a third one. I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have my passport. My career ground to a halt at that point.


“My mum now is 80 so she can’t travel anymore. I haven’t been able to see her. At that point I thought that was bad enough. But then I got the response.”


They had refused her application on criteria which didn’t even apply to her. The Home Office categorised her as an Australian citizen, whereas her immigration status was based on being the spouse of an EEA national. They said she had failed to get leave of entry – a requirement which was irrelevant to her immigration status.


The solicitors wrote back again highlighting the mistakes in the Home Office’s response.


In October 2013, the Home Office sent its reply. There would be no change in the original decision. Miller had no right of appeal. She was given 28 days to leave the country.


The first thing she did was tell her boss at the Child and Adolescent Service clinic where she worked what was happening. And that’s when things got even worse.


“I was told I had to be escorted on and off the premises,” she says. “And then I was forced to go a panel hearing. The director of services was there, with the head of HR and senior managers. They called the immigration status ‘evidence against me’.  This was how they managed someone who dedicated nine years to the NHS. I wasn’t an illegal immigrant. I hadn’t lied to them. I was still perfectly legal. But my renewal application was refused, so I was treated like this.


“From that point on I was instantly dismissed. No severance pay. Nothing. Nothing at all. The whole thing upset me. But it was how I was treated at work that crushed me.”


Tired of explaining the situation to one friend after another and running out of things to distract her as she sat at home, Miller took to her laptop and wrote a Facebook post.


“I was saying: ‘This is what’s happened to me. And the reason I’m telling you this is because when you read in the newspaper how the government is reducing immigration – well, this is what that actually means. This is the reality of it.’”


Some friends copied and pasted the message onto their Facebook walls. In a couple of days it had gone viral. One friend got 40,000 shares on his post alone. Miller started getting bombarded with emails, friend requests and even phone calls.


“I was getting 400 emails a day. People found me on LinkedIn, Twitter, absolutely everywhere,” she says. “It was amazing. I had to get someone to take my phone number down off my website because I was getting so many calls.”


Strangers started offering her money to help her through a period without income – although she refused it. Her local MP, Labour shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna, got over his original reticence and became involved, writing letters to Theresa May about the case.


And suddenly, out of the blue, she got a call from the Home Office. Taken aback by the online response, she was offered a review of the case. That was on November 28th, at which point they said it would take three weeks. When I spoke to Miller on Monday, she was still waiting.


In the mean time, they have agreed to halt proceedings against her. But they neglected to inform anyone.


On Christmas day, Capita Business Services wrote to Miller on behalf of Home Office saying she needed to present a ticket out the UK by January 2nd or she was in trouble. In this context, trouble means you can be taken to a detention facility.


She informed the Home Office of the confusion, but last Monday Miller got another letter from Capita saying they hadn’t received her ticket and that they were starting proceedings against her. The Home Office assured her they would get Capita to stop, but Miller is not exactly bursting with confidence. There has been a breakdown in communication between the two departments and there’s no telling if the Home Office orders will get through.


“The feeling you get is of being a pariah,” she says.


“The word immigrant…” She pauses. There’s a short silence. “How it’s being used now… Like it’s something dirty.


“There’s this feeling that somehow you have to keep proving yourself all the time. That you’ve got to be worthy. It’s just so hard. It’s so hard.”


Miller is still waiting to find out what will happen to her. This is her immigrant story.


Source Article from http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2014/01/17/immigrant-stories-the-nhs-nurse-and-the-letter-of-proof
Immigrant stories: The psychotherapist and the letter of proof
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Immigrant pleads not guilty in East Village rape

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A Mexican immigrant pleaded not guilty to forcing his way into a young woman’s East Village apartment and viciously raping her Wednesday in Manhattan Criminal Court.

Fermin Flores allegedly came up behind the 22-year-old victim last Monday at about 5 am as she was entering her East Seventh Street pad and brutally attacked her, prosecutors said.

“The defendant followed her home pushed his way into her building and sexually assaulted her in various ways,” said Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Maxine Rosenthal.

Defense lawyer Brad Sage argued that his client was innocent and should be granted bail before Judge Joanne Quinones remanded him.

Flores held the terrified girl down as she begged him to stop and yelled for help, according to the criminal complaint.

The restaurant worker was caught on surveillance video in the hallway of the victim’s building, according to police.

Cops arrested Flores at the San Loco eatery in North Williamsburg where he works as a cashier, according to court papers. He lives in Washington Heights with his girlfriend and has no priors, his lawyer said.

The shaken victim was taken to Beth Israel Hospital after the heinous crime.

Neighbors reported hearing her screams the night of the rape.

Additional reporting by Larry Celona

Source Article from http://nypost.com/2014/01/16/immigrant-pleads-not-guilty-in-east-village-rape/
Immigrant pleads not guilty in East Village rape
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