New York, September 2010
The United States Immigration Newsletter
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DOJ Approves Voter ID System that Checks for Citizenship
 Atlanta, GA:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has approved the state of Georgia’s new voter identification and citizenship verification system after years of legal battle. The new voter identification system was first implemented in
Georgia in 2007 by then Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel. The system is designed to cross check information from voter registrations, and compare it with databases for
social security and driver’s licenses. However, the fact that the voter-identification system is also used to verify the citizenships of registered voters has been questioned by the administrations of both former president Bush and current President Barack Obama. Critics have claimed that the voter identification system doesn’t allow certain minorities to vote, and that it therefore violates the 1965 voting rights act. In 2008 a naturalized U.S. citizen was identified by the voting-identification system as not being a U.S. citizen, even though he showed proof of naturalization. He filed a lawsuit against the former Georgia Secretary of state, and the new voter identification and citizenship verification system was halted, as Georgia is one of 16 states in the U.S. that require pre-clearance from the Department of Justice, or by the U.S. district court in Washington, to alter their voting procedures in any way. Finally, in 2010, current Georgia secretary of State Brian Kemp filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, who eventually approved the new voter identification and citizenship verification system.
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Illegal Immigration Kills in Record Numbers
 Tucson, AZ:
So far this year, the dead bodies of 170 people who tried to cross the border from Mexico to the U.S. have been found in Pima County, Arizona.
The Deputy Chief Medical Examiner says that this year is a record-breaking year. In one single day in July, seven bodies were found. Fifty nine dead border crossers were found during the whole month of July. The coroner is using a refrigerated 50-foot trailer truck to keep the dead bodies away from the Arizona heat. More than half of the people died from heat-related causes. That one day in July it was 108 degrees. Most of the people found dead in the
Arizona desert remain unidentified; often only skeletal remains, or bodies are mummified in the dry heat. Death tolls increased dramatically in 2000 after the border security was enhanced in California, forcing illegal immigrants to choose more distant, remote, and dangerous routes. The increase in illegal immigration deaths occur at the same time that
illegal immigration in general has decreased. Even with the enhanced border security, 61 percent less illegal immigrants were caught at the border last year compared to 2000. So far this year the number of illegal immigrants caught at the border has
decreased even more. A spokesperson for the Border Patrol in Arizona says it’s
more difficult to cross the border from Mexico today than it was earlier. So far
the worst year in terms of dead border crossers in Pima County was 2007, when
218 bodies were found. |
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Work Places Audited, Employers Fined, but Illegal Immigrants Go Free
 Washington, D.C.:
A new report has shown that there has been a higher number of work-place audits to uncover illegal immigration under President
Obama than under President Bush. According to the same rapport, employer fines have tripled to $3 million, and the number of arrested company executives is slightly up, since Obama took over the presidency. However, the number of illegal workers who have been arrested and deported in connection with the work-place audits, are down by 80 percent. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested 900 workers in workplace audits in the 2010 fiscal year, which ends September 30. In 2008, under President Bush, more than 6000 illegal workers were arrested and deported as a result of workplace audits. John Morton, who is the current director of ICE, maintains that President Obama and his administration is taking a tough attitude toward illegal workers, and that ICE has deported more illegal immigrants under the Obama administration than ever before. Particularly, ICE is deporting more criminal illegal immigrants than before, according to Morton. Julie Myers, who directed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Bush, disagrees with the way ICE is now letting many of the illegal workers go. She says that letting illegal immigrants go and not deporting them, is in fact
amnesty. While many are critical to letting illegal immigrants off the hook, others say that paper audits of illegal employers actually do more to combat the hiring of illegal immigrants, than the high-profile raids that were executed under the Bush administration. |
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Accuses Obama of Taking Immigration Reform in to His Own Hands
 Washington, D.C.:
The leaders of 17 conservative organizations has written a letter to the white House where they urge the Obama administration to not try to
sidestep Congress and Immigration laws by using the executive powers of the presidency
to
reform the immigration system. The conservative activists say in the letter that they think that using executive powers to get around current immigration laws would further polarize the debate over immigration that is already
quite inflamed. One activist said that the Obama administration is afraid that the number of illegal immigrants will go down, and would rather keep them in the U.S. to make them into voters that can vote for the Democratic Party. The reason
behind the letter to the White House is an 11-page memo from the Department of Homeland Security. The
DHS memo suggest a number of administrative changes that could help illegal immigrants threatened by deportation to stay in the U.S. There are even indications that the suggestions in the memo could possibly become “meaningful Immigration reform.” The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says that the memo should not be considered to be the policy of the Obama administration, but that it was merely written for brain-storming purposes. |
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Illegal Immigration Across the Sea
 San Diego, CA:
An increasing number of illegal immigrants from Mexico are taking to the Pacific Ocean to cross the border in to the United States. The reason for the increase
in sea-born migrants is the fact that crossing the U.S.-Mexican land
border illegally has gotten much more difficult to do. As border enforcement has increased, migrants are forced to travel longer distances over more remote areas;
with substantial risks of getting injured or even killed. For an increasing
number of people, the route over the waters from the area around Tijuana to Los
Angeles seems like a good alternative. The number of arrests of illegal
immigrants at sea has been record high each year for the past three years, as
the border enforcement at sea is being enhanced to meet the increase in sea-going migrants. 753 illegal immigrants were arrested on the shores and in the waters off of southern California in the past year. That is twice as many and the year before, and more than three times as many as the year before that. Mexican smugglers use pangas, old, 25-feet- long wooden boats with a single engine. As enforcement in the waters off California increases, the old pangas has to go further away from the coast, and land further north. Although pangas has been used for smuggling from
Mexico to the U.S. since the Prohibition, there was a large increase in human smuggling using pangas in 2007. One trip, smuggling 25 illegal immigrants across the border, can generate as much as $100.000 for the smugglers. So far only two people have been known to die trying to cross the border by sea, but another eight was rescued from atop their overturned panga
only late last year. |
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Better to Be an Immigrant in New York Than in Arizona
 New York, N.Y.:
Although a small majority of the white population in New York likes Arizona’s new and controversial immigration law, most New Yorkers are against the new law. This is the conclusion of a recent survey
conducted by a New-York news paper. As for the population of New York as a whole, the people who are against the controversial law outrank those in favor of it by almost 2-1. As for the black population in New York, almost 80 percent were against the law, along with 70 percent of the Latinos. At the same time, while illegal immigration raises much concern in
Arizona, most New Yorkers do not view illegal immigration as a serious problem locally. For 65 percent of the New Yorkers, illegal
immigration is not a problem at all, or a minor problem. One surprising conclusion of the survey is that Latinos are the
ones most likely in New York to call the police on an illegal immigrant. The only group of New Yorkers more likely to call the immigration police than Latinos, were the New Yorker who are members of the Republican Party. |
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