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DETROIT, MI – Robert Johnson was down on his luck and short on cash last month when a man named Hunt offered him $800 to smuggle two Chinese immigrants in the trunk of his car into the United States through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. But what looked like easy money quickly turned into a legal nightmare for the laid-off Windsor auto mechanic, 29, who joined the growing ranks of Canadian and U.S. citizens arrested at the border recently, accused of smuggling Chinese and other Asian immigrants into the United States.

Since May, about a dozen otherwise law-abiding citizens, including a Wayne County juvenile detention officer, have been arrested at the tunnel or Ambassador Bridge and charged with smuggling Asian nationals into the country. (more…)

After weeks of heated debate, a bill cracking down on illegal immigrants and the companies that hire them moved one step closer to a vote in the state Senate on Tuesday. The Senate committee considering the plan voted 6-2 to recommend it be passed by the full Senate. The panel’s roughly 30 minutes of discussion on the plan _ which would deny some state benefits to undocumented adults and use the tax code to penalize employers with illegals on their payrolls _ was in sharp contrast to a pair of hours-long hearings held during the past two weeks.

‘I think everyone’s concerns were heard,’ said Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, the plan’s sponsor. ‘We’ve bent over backward to alleviate some of those concerns.’ (more…)

PHOENIX — Rejecting objections of improper constitutional intrusion, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted Tuesday to force Gov. Janet Napolitano to put National Guard troops on the border immediately. The move came despite opposition from Col. Ed Flinn who said the Governor’s Office told his agency to oppose the measure. Flinn said that is because it ‘appears to usurp authority from the executive branch, not because they’re opposed to the idea of the National Guard going to the border.

That drew an angry response from Sen. Dean Martin, R-Phoenix.
‘If she believes this an infringement on her executive power, she should be the one that is saying it,’ said Martin. He called it ‘totally inappropriate’ for a National Guard colonel to be at the Legislature lobbying for the governor. (more…)

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, kicking off the year’s immigration debate yesterday, said a bill to grant citizenship to illegal aliens probably cannot pass the Congress. ‘I wouldn’t have any objection to [a bill],’ the Pennsylvania Republican said. ‘But I think the political reality is that’s going to be very difficult to do and to get a bill.’

Mr. Specter is racing to produce an immigration bill out of his committee before the end of the month, when the Senate is scheduled to begin a floor debate on the issue. His proposal would allow new foreign workers temporary entry and would let current illegal aliens work legally and indefinitely — though it would not create a path to citizenship. (more…)

The number of illegal immigrants in the US has continued to grow by nearly half a million each year in spite of US efforts to increase security at the country’s borders, according to a survey released on Tuesday. The study, by the Pew Hispanic Center, said that the population of unauthorised migrants reached between 11.5m and 12m last year, accounting for nearly a third of the foreign-born population in the US. That number is up from roughly 8.4m in 2000.

The continued rise was driven primarily by the strong demand for low-skilled work in the US. “What we’re seeing is a labour migration that is tied to employment opportunities,” said Jeffrey Passel, the study’s author. (more…)

WASHINGTON — One of every 20 workers in the United States is an illegal immigrant, according to a new report that pegs the illegal population at 11.5 million to 12 million. Though increasingly dispersed around the U.S. as immigration ripples beyond traditional high-immigration states, the estimated 7.2 million illegal workers are clustered in several industries in particular, a Pew Hispanic Center study issued Tuesday found. Efforts to curb illegal immigration have not slowed the pace, the study said. Instead, the report’s author said, those efforts are having an unintended consequence: People who illegally enter the United States from Mexico are staying longer because it is harder to move back and forth across the border.

‘The security has done more to keep people from going back to Mexico than it has to keep them from coming in,’ said Jeffrey Passel, a senior research associate at the center. (more…)

NEW YORK, NY – Congress is headed toward approving a plan that would require employers to check every worker’s Social Security number or immigration work permit against a new federal computer database. Critics see the move – aimed at stemming illegal immigration – as the beginning of a government information stockpile that could be used to track U.S. residents. ‘We’re getting closer and closer to a national ID card,’ says Tim Sparapani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. The goal is to make sure everyone working in the USA is doing so legally.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which handles immigration, begins drafting its version of the bill today. The House bill passed in December. The bills would require that a pilot program now used by 5,000 employers to check the legal status of job applicants be made mandatory. (more…)

Eye opening as Friday’s massive pro-immigrant rally was for Chicagoans, it also caught the attention of activists on both coasts and on both sides of the debate over illegal immigration. Coming at a key juncture in the congressional debate over immigration, organizers of rallies in other U.S. cities immediately began dissecting and analyzing the tactics of the Chicago march, hoping to deliver the same effect, or even improve upon it.

‘We’ve been taught a lesson by Chicago,’ said Martha Ugarte, who is helping to organize a pro-immigrant march in Los Angeles this month. (more…)

President Bush extended a temporary worker visa by 12 months for 300,000 illegal immigrants Friday, in consideration of natural disasters that have stricken Central America in the last year. Illegal Nationals from Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador — who at 225,000 are the largest beneficiaries — can take advantage of the extension of Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to renew a legal permit to work. The extension applies only to Nicaraguans and Hondurans who have resided in the U.S. since Dec. 30, 1998, and Salvadorians present since 2001. TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to address the needs of foreign nationals whose home countries were in turmoil, either because of armed conflict, the effects of a natural disaster, or other ‘extraordinary and temporary conditions.’.

TPS was initially granted to Nicaragua and Honduras in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in 1998. A press release from the Justice Department in 1998 cited ‘death, displacement and damage in Honduras and Nicaragua’ as creating ‘extraordinary temporary conditions.’ (more…)

Like too many states around the country, state governments are tired of waiting for Congressional leadership to stem the tide of illegal immigrants, and so they are taking matters into their own hands. Oklahoma legislators decided to draft their own bill. Among the provisions of the bill is for state employees to report to immigration authorities anyone applying for services who can’t prove they’re citizens.

With a sizable Latino community in Oklahoma City, the seat of the state capitol, Spanish-language media urged their listeners to go to the State Capitol to show their opposition to the bill. (more…)

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