Democrats: Bush, GOP ‘scapegoat’ immigrants
VIA CNN.com
WASHINGTON (AP) — — Democrats blamed
President Bush and the Republican Party on Saturday for blocking
immigration legislation through an orchestrated campaign to “scapegoat”
immigrants.
In her party’s weekly radio address, Rep. Hilda Solis of California
said Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennesse, “lack real
leadership to stop extremists in their party” from thwarting
immigration legislation.
Earlier this month, the Senate failed to
pass a bill when Frist and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid could
not agree on a procedure for voting on amendments to legislation that
would strengthen border security, create a guest-worker program and
offer eventual citizenship to many of the estimated 11 million illegal
immigrants in the country.
“What America saw during the last few
weeks did not happen overnight,” said Solis, the daughter of Mexican
and Nicaraguan immigrants. “The Republican Party set out to scapegoat
immigrants in order to divide voters and win elections long ago, just
as they did in the past elections on issues such as gay marriage.”
Response to a comment about the Detroit firing of 15 women- By Ashwin Sharma, Esq.
I received the following comment in response to my post
about the 15 women who were fired recently from a Detroit meatpacking plant for
attending an immigrant rights protest.
My response is below Jennifer’s * comment.
——————
They were fired “for standing up for their
rights,” Herrada said.
If they are citizens, they had no need to stand up for thier rights.
If they are illegal ( undocumented) or whatever PCs call them these days, then
.. They have no rights to stand up for…. except the right to go back where
they came from and try to enter legally.
Many people , legal, or otherwise have lost jobs for playing hooky. This is not
new. And if these people didn’t show up where they were needed, when they were
supposed to be there… well then… what can I say. They had a choice.
— Jennifer
——————-
Dismissing this situation by referring to it as ‘playing
hooky’ is like calling football a game of catch. These women were most likely fired for exercising a political opinion about the new undocumented
alien guest-worker proposal, with
which the owner of the plant obviously did not agree.
These 15 women, along with the other protesters, are exercising certain ‘unalienable rights’ (remember that
term?) contained within the Constitution, which also, by the way, does extend a
degree of protection to undocumented aliens. A peaceful protest is a type
of ‘release valve’, the value of which is recognized by most people and all political scientists. These gatherings are obviously
much preferable to violent outbursts and certainly more effective at
publicizing and changing unjust laws.
In reference to the undocumented alien question: laws need to be re-examined
often. Just because a law is ‘on the books’ does not necessarily make it
just or unchangeable. Laws which become outdated must be either amended
or eliminated. For example, your right to vote as a woman, which you probably
take for granted, did not exist until someone ‘played hooky’ and entered into
peaceful protests in the Women’s Suffrage movement. Others who were not directly affected by the law, and who didn’t ‘need’ to join did so regardless, because it was the right thing to do.
I am sure you would
refer to that movement and the 15th and 19th Constitutional Amendments which it
helped create as positive developments in our history. However, at the
time, many detractors disgustedly referred to Suffragists as ‘troublemakers who
needed to get back in the kitchen’. One senator predicted
that “disaster and ruin would overtake the nation.” Another
Representative argued that approving such a measure would “cause
irreparable damage at great expense to the state.”
We have insufficient, ineffective and unjust laws regulating the lives of 11-12 million people in America. However, we have been given an opportunity to raise our voices to defend those who have no voice of their own. They must be extended rights and allowed to contribute to this country through a reasonable fine ($2000 has
been proposed) and their share of income taxes. We can use the tens of billions of
dollars they will happily provide the Government each year to strongly
supplement financing for border security, health care programs and education. We also need them to strengthen our economy by performing jobs Americans don’t want, expanding our industrial infrastructure and combating the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to China. The only other alternative is to allow the unchecked exploitation of these
people’s labor while pretending that we have the physical ability and funds to find/hold/process/remove all of these people.
An ideal democracy is a system of Government in which the weakest minority has the
same voice as the strongest majority. A great many people have received assistance in crossing the bridge to the American Dream
but are now frantically burning and cutting away at it to prevent
others from crossing. I urge all of you reading to spend several hours
investigating the facts and history surrounding the undocumented alien question.
There is no doubt in my mind that the guest-worker program endorsed by the
President and the ‘earned legalization’ proposal are the best solutions to this
problem for both sides.
— Ashwin Sharma
* Commenter’s name has been changed.
Immigrants’ firing leads to protest
15 women lose jobs after attending rally; manager says they were warned
Via The Detroit Free Press
April 11, 2006
|
Activists |
A manager at a Detroit meatpacking plant said Monday that 15
immigrant women were fired last month after attending a protest for
immigrant rights. He said they had been told that they would be
terminated if they missed work on the day of the protest.
But the
workers and an activist working on their behalf said the women were
given no such assurances. If the workers knew they would have been
fired for attending the March 27 rally in Detroit, they never would
have skipped the morning shift, said Elena Herrada, a Detroit activist
who is trying to help the women get their jobs back.
Herrada and
about 20 union officials went Monday to Wolverine Packing Co. offices
on Rivard to inquire about what happened. They were given a letter
signed by general manager Jay Bonahoom, explaining why the workers were
terminated.
Meanwhile Monday, marches were held in Washington,
D.C., Atlanta and other cities to protest proposed changes in
immigration rules. On Sunday, hundreds gathered at Holy Redeemer
Catholic Church in Detroit.
Some of the Wolverine workers were
undocumented, Herrada and one of the workers said, and wanted to march
in the Detroit rally to show their support for immigrant rights.
Tens
of thousands of people, mostly Latinos, protested legislation that
would make it a crime to help undocumented immigrants. The next
morning, when the women reported to work for their shifts as meat
cutters, a supervisor told them to clean out their lockers and go home.
Bonahoom
said that as far as Wolverine knows, the workers were documented, but
an employment agency does the actual hiring. He said the workers had
been told, “written and verbally,” on the Friday before the protests
that their attendance was mandatory on the day of the protest.
They were fired “for standing up for their rights,” Herrada said.
Navy sinks marriage-for-money scam
Eight sailors charged with taking $35,000 for sham marriages
JACKSONVILLE, Florida (AP) — Eight
sailors were charged Tuesday with arranging sham marriages to Polish
and Romanian women to help the women obtain U.S. citizenship and to
collect bigger military housing allowances for themselves.
An
investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement found that none of the women lived
with the sailors they married.
In all, the eight sailors received
$35,000 in fraudulent basic housing allowance payments, investigators
said. One sailor was allegedly getting $1,836 per month.
The Navy
terminated the allowances in November. If convicted, the seven current
and one former sailor from the USS Kennedy and USS Simpson could face
up to five years in prison per count.
Basic housing allowance is
a tax-free payment that active-duty members of the U.S. military
receive to offset their housing costs if they do not live on base. The
amount is based on location, marital status and the number of
dependents.
One of the women, a Polish nanny, was also charged,
and authorities were seeking seven other women, six of them Polish and
one Romanian.
Each paid $6,000 for the weddings to the sailors so
they could petition for U.S. citizenship, according to U.S. Attorney
Paul Perez.
The NCIS investigation began last September when a
Navy petty officer assigned to the Kennedy was approached by a seaman
from the Simpson with the opportunity to receive a basic housing
allowance for marrying a Polish woman.
The seaman who arranged
the marriage was to receive $6,000 from the woman and the petty officer
was to receive the basic housing allowance, officials said.
Five
of the sailors appeared Tuesday in federal court in Jacksonville. They
were released after each signed a $10,000 unsecured bond.
Rallies across U.S. call for illegal immigrant rights
(CNN) — Hundreds of thousands of
protesters turned out Monday in small towns and big cities across the
United States, demanding that undocumented immigrants get a chance to
live the American dream.
Organizers said their
“national day of action for immigration justice” included events in
more than 140 cities in at least 39 states, with drum-banging and
flag-waving masses chanting “Si se puede” — “Yes we can” — in rallies
from coast to coast.
The events served as a visible demonstration
of political clout for supporters of the nation’s estimated 11-12
million undocumented immigrants.
“The sleeping giant is awake —
wide awake — and we’re paying close attention,” said Jaime Contreras,
president of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, one of the
groups involved in organizing the demonstrations.
The protests
began in the morning in communities on the East Coast, then spread
across the country throughout the day and continued into the evening.
Two
of the largest demonstrations were held in Washington, D.C., and
Phoenix, Arizona. Organizers said 500,000 attended the event in
Washington and 200,000 in Phoenix, although police did not provide
official crowd estimates.
In a nod to criticism of demonstrators
who waved foreign flags at earlier pro-immigration rallies, the Stars
and Stripes were on prominent display at many of Monday’s events.
In Washington, protesters held up signs proclaiming, “We Are America.”
“What
we want to achieve is to send a very strong message to the Senate, to
the Congress in general and this administration that immigrants are fed
up, that we are tired, that we work very hard,” Contreras said.
“We
come to this country not to take from America, but to make America
strong. And we do not deserve to be treated the way we have been
treated,” he said.
Immigration bill may lose felony provison
GOP leaders say they don’t support legislation’s tough language
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The top Republicans
in both the House and Senate indicated Tuesday they don’t support
language in an immigration bill that would make entering the country
illegally a felony.
The proposal has drawn the ire of pro-immigrant groups that have staged a wave of protests in recent weeks.
The
provision making illegal immigration a felony was contained in an
immigration reform bill passed by the House in December. But in a joint
statement issued Tuesday evening, House Speaker Dennis Hastert of
Illinois and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee both
indicated they wanted the language dropped.
Frist and Hastert
also criticized House Democrats, who, they said, opposed efforts by
Republicans to strip the provision from the bill before it passed.
“Instead, they voted to make felons out of all of those who remain in our country illegally,” their statement said.
Frist
and Hastert did not specify whether they wanted unlawful presence in
the United States to be a misdemeanor or carry a lesser penalty.
Their
statement was also silent on the question of whether they had come to
any agreement on two issues that have split Republicans — creating a
guest-worker program, or allowing undocumented immigrants in the
country illegally to work their way toward legal status.
The
provision making illegal immigration a felony was part of a bill pushed
by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin
Republican. It passed the House in December by a vote of 239-182, with
only 36 Democrats supporting the final version of the measure.
Responding
to Tuesday’s criticism of Democrats by Hastert and Frist, Jennifer
Crider, a spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of
California, said “no amount of spin can change the fact that
Republicans wrote and passed the Sensenbrenner bill, which criminalizes
an entire population.”
Crider also said Republicans “are feeling
the heat” after demonstrations that brought out hundreds of thousands
of protesters Monday at rallies in at least 140 cities in more than 39
states.
National immigration marches kick off in Georgia
04/10/2006
VIA CNN.com
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Thousands of
marchers in white T-shirts filled the streets of an Atlanta
neighborhood, one of dozens of nationwide immigration rights protests
kicking off Monday.
Demonstrators in nearly 70 U.S. cities will be voicing support for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.
On
what is dubbed a “national day of action for immigration justice,”
Atlanta’s was one of 30 marches in the South alone as focus on the
immigration issue turned from Congress to the streets.
Other large protests are planned in New York, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.
Current Cap Count for Non-Immigrant Worker Visas For Fiscal Year 2007 as of 04/03/2006
04/10/2006
H-1B Cap Count as of 04/03/2006:
|
Cap |
Beneficiaries Approved |
Beneficiaries Pending |
Beneficiary Target 1 |
Total |
Date of Last Count |
|
|
H-1B |
58,200 2 |
76 |
1,555 |
61,000 |
1,631 |
4/3/2006 |
|
H-1B Advance Degree Exemption |
20,000 |
9 |
331 |
21,000 |
340 |
4/3/2006 |
|
H-1B (FY 06) |
58,200 |
—— |
—— |
—— |
Cap Reached |
8/10/2005 |
|
H-1B Advance Degree Exemption (FY 06) |
20,000 |
—— |
—— |
—— |
Cap Reached |
1/17/2006 |
USCIS Warns of Potential for Immigration Fraud
April 7, 2006
USCIS Press Release
Washington, D.C.– Although Congress has been debating immigration legislation, all customers should be advised that currently no temporary worker program exists for aliens unlawfully present in the United States. Congress has not passed any legislation that would create a temporary worker program. Therefore, there are no benefits currently available because this program does not exist. Customers should not pay any fees or fines to any person or organization claiming they can help apply for or receive benefits for a temporary worker program. Be wary of persons or organizations that claim they can assist in applying for benefits that do not exist.
Why the Immigration Deal Flopped – Via Time.com
Politics wins out, as a compromise plan falls apart. But don’t count out immigration reform just yet.
Talk about cold feet. Less than 24 hours after the leaders of the
Senate’s Democratic and Republican families had announced a marriage of
convenience on immigration reform, Minority Leader Harry Reid ditched
his Republican counterpart Bill Frist at the altar Friday, blocking the
bi-partisan bill he had backed the day before. Stunned Senators headed
to their home states for a two-week Easter recess, furious over the
break-up. “It’s a war,” said Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter.
Even members of Reid’s own party, most notably Senator Ted Kennedy, who
had worked for five years on an effective amnesty for the country’s
millions of illegal immigrants, was said to be furious.
Disappointed
members of both parties say it was Reid’s election-year ambitions that
ultimately doomed the immigration bill. The Democrats have a legitimate
chance to take back control of the Senate in November, and for a
life-long politician like Reid, few things are more important than the
opportunity to lead the world’s greatest deliberative body, his critics
say. A victory for Bill Frist on an issue as nationally charged as
immigration would not help the Democrats come election day. “It’s not
gone forward because there’s a political advantage for the Democrats not
to have an immigration bill,” Specter said.
But it’s not that
simple. After all, Reid had been ready to walk down the aisle Thursday
night, largely because the compromise he, Frist and 63 other Senators
had embraced was as close to perfect as any bill the Democrats could
hope for. It followed Ted Kennedy’s plan to put most of the country’s 12
million illegal immigrants (except for the estimated one million or so
who have been in the U.S. for less than two years) on an eventual path
to citizenship and open up a massive new legal immigration system for
low-wage workers; at the same time, it would have removed many of the
draconian penalties that were in a bill passed by the House last
December.
In retrospect, however, it may have been too perfect.
After initially signing on, Reid decided he might be walking into a
trap. Some Republicans wanted to vote on amendments that Reid believed
would have essentially picked apart the compromise plan; under one of
them, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security would have had
to certify that the border was secure before any illegal immigrants
could be made legal.
What’s more, even if he could defeat the
amendments, any bill the Senate passed would have to go into a
conference committee with the House — which wants to build a wall
along much of the U.S.-Mexico border, criminalize all illegal immigrants
in the U.S., and dramatically increase the penalties against those who
help them, from businesses to churches. Looking several moves ahead in a
game of legislative chess, Reid feared that the conference would produce
something that looked more like the House bill, which currently has no
amnesty provisions for making current illegals citizens, than the Senate
version.
Granted, when such a watered down bill came back to the
Senate, Reid could still block it by filibustering. But in a election
year, Reid knew that could be political suicide, forcing fellow
Democrats to vote against a bill Republicans would portray as securing
America’s broken borders. Those Democrats who were around in the last
mid-term election are still smarting from the votes they cast against
the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, an issue
Republicans cashed in handily at the polls. Giving Frist another
National Security vote to beat the Democrats with, they feared, was a
sure fire way to let Republicans maintain control of the Senate this
fall.
Reid had tried to get some kind of guarantee from Frist that
Republican Senators would support only the Senate version in conference,
and over the last 24 hours, Sen. John McCain worked to sign colleagues
on for just such an assurance. Frist’s chief of staff, Eric Ueland,
tried to be reassuring. “The Senate will defend the Senate position,” he
said. But Reid wanted more than that. “We have no safety net here,” says
a top Reid aide, “The Republicans have the President, the Senate and the
House.” In negotiations that lasted all night, Reid’s staff insisted on
a say in the make-up of the conference committee, but Frist wouldn’t
budge. “No majority leader is going to sign away the power of the office
or turn a weaker majority leader’s gavel over to his successors,” Ueland
said Friday.
In the end, Reid chose the only other way to avoid the
potential trap, which was to walk away from the deal.Yet that deal is
not completely dead. Specter vowed Friday that he would take the
compromise up in committee first thing on his return to Washington and
would send it to the Senate floor a week later.
Frist has not said
whether he will bring it back to the floor for a vote, but two things
could affect that decision. Serious pressure from the White House to get
a deal — pressure that so far, despite the President’s occasional
public statements, has been virtually non-existent — could move
Republicans forward. Or a backlash against the massive protests planned
by pro-immigration groups in coming days could make them dig in their
heels. The Senate’s dealmakers —John McCain, Ted Kennedy, Chuck
Hagel, Mel Martinez, Barack Obama and others — say they will continue
their weekly meetings in search of a compromise. For now though, as
Kennedy put it in what amounted to a major understatement, “politics got
in front of policy.”
Immigration marches expected nationwide
VIA CNN.com
DALLAS, Texas (AP) — Dozens of marches
were expected across the United States on Monday in support of an
estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants and in protest of recent
legislation aimed at toughening immigration laws.
On Sunday,
tens of thousands of people banged drums, waved U.S. flags and marched
in a protest in downtown Dallas, Texas, shouting “Si Se Puede!” —
Spanish for “Yes, we can!”
Marchers
included families pushing strollers with their children and ice cream
vendors who placed American flags on their carts. Many wore white
clothing to symbolize peace.
Police estimated the crowd at 350,000 to 500,000. There were no reports of violence.
It
was among several demonstrations that drew thousands of protesters
Sunday in New Mexico, Minnesota, Michigan, Alabama, Utah, Oregon, Idaho
and California.
“If we don’t protest they’ll never hear us,”
said Oscar Cruz, 23, a construction worker who marched among the
estimated 50,000 in San Diego. Cruz, who came illegally to the U.S. in
2003, said he had feared a crackdown but felt emboldened by the large
marches across the country in recent weeks.
In Birmingham,
Alabama, demonstrators marched along the same streets where civil
rights activists clashed with police during the 1960s and rallied at a
park where a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. stands as a reminder of
the fight for equal rights and the violence that once plagued the city.
“We’ve
got to get back in touch with the Statue of Liberty,” said the Rev.
Lawton Higgs, a United Methodist pastor and activist. “We’ve got to get
back in touch with the civil rights movement, because that’s what this
is about.”
Organizers in St. Paul, Minnesota, were surprised by
the crowd calling for change at a rally at the state Capitol. Police
estimated the crowd at 30,000.
The rallies also drew counter-demonstrators.
In
Salt Lake City, Utah, Jerry Owens, 59, a Navy veteran from Midway
wearing a blue Minuteman T-shirt and camouflage pants, held a yellow
“Don’t Tread on Me” flag.
“I think it’s real sad because these
people are really saying it’s OK to be illegal aliens,” Owens said.
“What Americans are saying is ‘Yes, come here. But come here legally.’
And I think that’s the big problem.”
The U.S. Immigration Law Blog by Ashwin Sharma 
Tax Treaty Benefits For Students And Business Apprentices From India
Via ILW.com
The United States has
income tax treaties with over 60 countries, all of which provide exemption
from tax for residents of the treaty country who come to the United States
for the primary purpose of their education or training. U.S. treaty policy
as embodied in Article 20 of the U.S. Model Treaty is to provide tax
exemption for payments for full-time education and training that arise
outside the United States. Over one-half of the U.S. treaties provide for
such a limited benefit for students and trainees including Article 21(1)
of the treaty with India. However, the treaty with India provides an
additional benefit for students and business apprentices.
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