Articles Posted in Uncategorized

Have you listed to the recent ads at the end of every show on NPR, brought to you by DHS. Sure sounds like a partnership between public radio and the goverment. NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher says they are not endorsing E-verify, the new verification program for employers to verify the legal status of workers.

This isn’t obvious to some listeners, who have criticized NPR for accepting funding to advertise the controversial program since the ads began running last month. NPR’s Ombudsman Alicia Shepard said she received more than 60 letters in response to the spots – a considerable sum on a single topic – primarily in protest. Shepard wrote a column on the topic and hosted a live online forum to answer listener questions. Critics questioned the relationship between DHS and NPR and took particular issue with E-Verify.

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The Name Check that are holding thousands of Citizenship and regular adjustment cases, are of major concern to many of our Blog readers and clients. Clients call me almost every day asking why there is no N400 interview scheduled, why after passing the interview they are still pending for months and months. I often tell them that the security clearance issue must be looked at on a case by case basis.

Earlier this year USCIS announced that by December, 2008, the FBI will process all name checks that have been pending more than one year. This is true in many cases, yet there are still numerous files that are pending.

By February, 2009, the FBI will process all name checks that have been pending more than 180 days. Finally, by June, 2009, the FBI plans on processing 98% of all name checks within 30 days and the remaining 2% in 90 days. This could be great news, but I doubt they will reach this goal.

It seems that in the near future Airline staff will function as semi immigration officers, examining travelers’ visas even before arrival to the US. U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that 15,000 airline personnel have now been trained through its Carrier Liaison Program, with 5,665 carrier personnel trained in fiscal year 2008 alone.

CBP has developed a training program specifically for the air carriers which includes a detailed workbook and sample travel document which allows participants to examine dozens of common security features. Benefits include reduced numbers of improperly documented individuals boarding aircraft destined for the U.S., as well as assisting carriers to reduce costs and penalties associated with boarding impostors or improperly documented passengers.

I am curious to see what they will do when a visa fraud case is detected, will they be forced to report CBP and thus create a negative record for the individual. We will keep monitoring this process and report further.

The recent drug and illegal alien busts show how the new x-ray machine helps screen for contraband coming from Mexico. Customs and Border Protection officials say its the first machine of its kind at the border.

The xray machine sits at the entrance to San Ysidro’s secondary inspection. That’s where agents send vehicles for extra screening. Agents in secondary, in some cases, would tear cars apart in a sort of Easter Egg hunt for illicit items. Customs agents say they’ve seized more than 3000 pounds of drugs since they began using the machine. More….

As Thanksgiving festivities end here in the US, we all have heard about horrible tragedy in India the loss of Rabbi and Rebbetzein Holzberg and the hundreds of people there.

Giving up friends, family and ultimately their lives in the service of the Jewish People. Their attack on Chabad was an attack against the free world.

The Holtzbergs arrived in Mumbai in 2003 to serve the small local Jewish community, visiting businesspeople and the throngs of tourists, many of them Israeli, who annually travel to the seaside city.

The following new regulations may be affecting some of the richest immigrants among us. Private Jet owners. Private jet owners have an average annual income of $9.2 mln and a net worth of $89.3 mln. The average age is 57 years old. 70% of them are men. So far they enjoyed the good life, coming and going into the US as they please. No more.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) published a final rule requiring that private jets to provide advance notice of their intended arrival or departure, and submit manifests of the persons on board. The new process is similar to the one currently in use by commercial aircraft and will standardize advance notice procedures for all CBP airports of entry.

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According to NPR, it’s not likely, and if nothing else that’s because of the economy. Labor economist Vernon Briggs of Cornell University says it’s harder to argue for legalizing millions of low-skilled immigrants when many more low-skilled Americans are likely to find themselves out of work.

“The unemployment rates for unskilled workers without high school diplomas, or only a high school diploma, are the highest in the United States,” says Briggs. “There’s no indication that our labor force is in desperate need of unskilled, poorly educated, non-English speaking workers.”

Supporters of legalization see it differently, arguing that the best way to make sure immigrants do not pose an unfair threat to American workers is to make the immigrants legal. But even ardent immigrant advocates admit the economic collapse does change something else.

It may become even harder to travel to the US if you are from a visa waiver country. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that beginning Jan. 12, 2009, eligible citizens or nationals from all Visa Waiver Program (VWP) countries must obtain approval through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) prior to traveling to the United States under the VWP. DHS formally announced the addition of seven allies to the list of countries authorized to participate in the VWP. The seven countries are the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, the Republic of Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia.

DHS state that required authorization through ESTA will substantially strengthen the security of the VWP by providing the department with the capability to conduct advance screening of VWP travelers. I feel that this will cause substantial delays and complications for travelers from such countries.

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The San Diego Union Tribune reports that San Diego County is set to participate in a new federal initiative that gives local law enforcement the ability to use fingerprints to check the immigration history and status of people who land in county jails. This is clearly a shift in the understanding that police officer are not immigration agents. But this will may well start to change.

The federally funded U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program was announced this week by agency officials during the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference at the San Diego Convention Center.

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According to the San Diego Union Tribune, although economic concerns reduced immigration to nearly a nonissue by the time the presidential campaign drew to a close, political experts believe it was largely responsible for the record turnout of Latino voters Tuesday, 66 percent of whom supported Barack Obama.

According to national exit poll results analyzed by the Pew Hispanic Center, only 32 percent of Latinos voted for Republican candidate John McCain, in spite of the Arizona senator’s track record as a proponent of immigrant-friendly reforms. That total represents a significant drop from what George W. Bush amassed in 2004. Bush received between 40 percent and 44 percent of the Latino vote that year and 35 percent in 2000.

But the heated immigration debate that dominated headlines two years ago, when hundreds of thousands marched in San Diego and other cities demanding reforms, may have been the catalyst that sent Latinos to the polls.