Middle East
For Civilians, 'There Is No Safe Zone In Gaza'
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Morning Edition, January 8, 2009 · Israel is preventing reporters from entering the Gaza Strip to cover the offensive against Hamas. Ayman Mohyeldin, a television reporter for Al-Jazeera English, has been in Gaza since the Israeli air strikes began. He tells Renee Montagne that the Israeli offensive has been punishing and that "there is no safe zone in Gaza."
(Because of intense interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, NPR makes available free transcripts of its coverage. The transcript for this story will be available soon. Please check back later today or tomorrow.)
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Sentosa Nurses in their own words
From WBAI, NYC's Pacifica affiliate. Reporter Fred Nguyen taped a forum entitled "The Human Face of Immigration" featuring representatives from the Sentosa 27 nurses. Please visit www.radio4all.net/pub/files/siddharta5@yahoo.com and scroll to the very bottom, to the file entitled 450-1-20080127-HumanImmigration.mp3
Happy Listening!
Happy Listening!
Filipino Nurses, Healers in Trouble
Filipino Nurses, Healers in Trouble
By JOSEPH BERGER
for the New York Times
Published: January 27, 2008
THEY are recruited in their homeland with perks like free airfare. Some have been offered thousands of dollars in bonuses to relocate. And in the process, they have become a mainstay of the New York area's hospitals and nursing homes.
They are nurses from the Philippines, and they are highly prized here because they speak English, are trained in American-caliber medicine and enjoy a reputation for tender care — the legacy of a society in which families tend to their own sick and aging relatives.
"We're honest, industrious and don't complain a lot," explained Elmer Jacinto, 32, a registered nurse.
His voice, however, carried a palpable note of sarcasm. He and nine other Filipino nurses on Long Island did complain, and now they find themselves caught in what he called "a nightmare" — a disturbing new chapter in the upbeat story of one of this nation's most successful immigrations.
The 10 nurses are under indictment in Suffolk County on charges of endangering the welfare of five chronically ill children and one terminally ill man. They are accused of walking off their jobs at the Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Smithtown in April 2006 without providing sufficient notice for the nursing home to replace them on coming shifts.
Although their resignations were prompted by a seemingly commonplace dispute with their employers over what the nurses say were broken promises and shabby working conditions involving a total of 26 Filipino nurses and a physical therapist, the 10 defendants could each be sentenced to a year in jail and lose their nursing licenses. Their trial was scheduled to start Monday, but it appears that it will be put off until March.
The district attorney's office conceded that the patients suffered no harm, and acknowledged that it could not recall a similar prosecution against nurses in the state. But it said the nurses' crime was serious: four of the children they left behind were on ventilators that demand round-the-clock monitoring.
"They walked off their jobs, and the critical care patients didn't have the health professionals to attend to their needs," said Robert Clifford, a spokesman for Thomas J. Spota, the Suffolk district attorney.
The case has drawn wide attention and outrage in the Philippines, where legislators have held hearings into how the nurses were treated by the company that recruited them. Filipinos there and in the United States have rallied to support the nurses, joined by the American Nurses Association, which has said in a statement that "the real patient endangerment lies in the deplorable conditions that led the nurses to leave."
The pushback has even taken on a political tinge. Commentators in both countries, citing an investigation by Newsday, have questioned whether favoritism was shown the nursing home owners because of their political influence and campaign contributions, and because of letters written to the Philippine president and other officials by Senator Charles E. Schumer. The senator and the owners have denied exerting any unusual pressure.
But what no one denies is that the case is a startling anomaly in what has been a remarkably successful migration of people seeking to work in a single occupation. More than half of American nurses trained abroad are from the Philippines, and they alleviate a perennial shortage of nurses in this country.
Of the New York area's 215,000 Filipinos, 3 out of 10 work as nurses or other health-care practitioners, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Susan Weber-Stoger, a Queens College demographer. Many of the rest are their spouses, children or aging parents. That migration explains the large colonies of Filipinos in places like Jersey City and Bergenfield, N.J., a middle-class suburb, where Robert C. Rivas, mayor from 1999 to 2003, claimed to be the only Filipino mayor in the Northeast.
The indicted nurses pose a strange counterpoint to that success: the image of highly educated legal immigrants complaining about being exploited as green, overly trusting newcomers.
"You were treated like dirt," said Juliet Anilao, 36, a mother of two and another of the nurses indicted. "All we wanted to do was work and send money home."
MR. Jacinto, a soft-spoken native of a small Philippines island, saw medicine as his ticket out of poverty. He not only received a nursing degree, but also graduated from medical school in the Philippines in 2004 with stellar board scores.
Deciding to leave one's homeland is always wrenching, but American salaries were a large incentive. "You can earn here $3,000 a month in America while a doctor in the Philippines earns $400 a month and a nurse $200," Mr. Jacinto said.
He came to New York in November 2005 with 21 other nurses who had been recruited by a Filipino agency that works mainly for SentosaCare, a network of 16 nursing homes with headquarters in Woodmere, N.Y., and operated by Benjamin Landa of Brooklyn and Bent Philipson of Monsey, N.Y. Mr. Landa owns eight other homes independently, and together with SentosaCare, the network of 24 homes has more than 5,000 patients and 5,000 employees. The 22 nurses who came over here in November 2005 say they were promised they would earn the same pay as American nurses and would quickly receive green cards giving them the status of permanent residents.
But Mr. Jacinto says he soon got some surprises: for two months, he was paid as a clerk, at a salary far below that of a nurse. It took more than half a year to get the green card. And he was not assigned to the SentosaCare-affiliated home in Queens that had sponsored his entry, but to Avalon, 40 miles east.
For weeks, he said, he slept on a couch in a frigid living room of a nurses' staff house in Smithtown where the only toilet was frequently clogged. When he finally received nurses' pay, he said, it was $24 an hour instead of the $34 that federal law requires immigrant nurses be paid to prevent undercutting of American workers' salaries. He did not receive the same health insurance and workers' compensation benefits as other nurses, he said, and was not paid for sick days or holidays.
Ms. Anilao said Avalon employed so few aides on the night shift that she regularly had to change soiled diapers and sheets and cart them away. The nurses complained that raises they were promised were wiped out by a reduction in work hours from 37.5 per week to 35.
Howard Fensterman, SentosaCare's lawyer, denied that the nurses were mistreated or shortchanged, and rejected complaints that staffing was inadequate. SentosaCare, he said, had successfully employed 350 nurses from the Philippines over the years and had never experienced a wave of resignations.
The nurses say that when their complaints went unaddressed, they turned to the Philippines consulate in New York, which put them in touch with an immigration lawyer, Felix Vinluan. Mr. Vinluan concluded that their contract had been breached and on April 6, 2006, he filed a discrimination complaint with immigration officials in Washington. He also advised the nurses that one option was to resign.
On April 6 and 7, 14 nurses in four SentosaCare homes other than Avalon submitted their resignations, and late on the afternoon of April 7, 10 Avalon nurses followed suit. They say they offered so little notice because they were worried that SentosaCare might drum up charges against them that could jeopardize their licenses.
Still, the nurses say, they left confident that the elderly and the patients in a pediatric unit would be taken care of because they knew of nurses waiting for assignment in two other SentosaCare staff houses. According to the nurses and their lawyers, only one of the 10 indicted Avalon nurses was working at the time the resignations were handed in and only two were scheduled for 7 a.m. shifts 12 hours away. Some had as many as four days off before resuming work.
"No patient was ever placed in jeopardy," Ms. Anilao said. "Not a single shift was unattended."
Susan O'Connor, Avalon's administrator, has said, associates say, that she had only 12 hours to rustle up replacements for five nurses who had resigned and were scheduled to start the 7 a.m. shift. In her 30-year career — enduring snowstorms, fires and strikes — the walkout created the single scariest night of her professional life, she has said. Ms. O'Connor is a major witness in the criminal case and has been advised by SentosaCare lawyers not to comment publicly.
Mr. Fensterman has argued that finding substitutes was especially difficult because the replacements had to be experienced in monitoring ventilators for sick children. "If they vomit into the tubes and the tubes are not cleared, they can asphyxiate themselves," Mr. Fensterman said.
Sharon Bannon of Farmingdale, whose severely brain-damaged daughter Jodie, 24, is a patient in the pediatric unit and requires a breathing apparatus, said she was upset that the nurses resigned abruptly.
"They left my child unattended and it could have been a potential hazard," she said in a telephone interview. "Jodie is critical and she can't be left. Luckily, the home was able to handle it."
THE case escalated. SentosaCare filed a civil suit charging the nurses with breach of contract and lodged a complaint with the State Department of Education. The nurses filed complaints against SentosaCare's recruiting arm in the Philippines, and the government effectively suspended the company's recruiting privileges.
But in June 2006, the suspension was lifted, and last September Newsday reported that Senator Schumer had written four letters over two months to officials in the Philippines — including one to the president — to get the suspension reviewed. In the two months after the suspension was revoked, the newspaper reported, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, whose chairman is Mr. Schumer, received nearly $75,000 from investors, vendors and lawyers associated with SentosaCare.
Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, said all the senator asked for was due process, not "any outcome in any direction." Mr. Schumer, he added, writes letters for many constituents and SentosaCare "was a major employer on Long Island and operates in an industry Schumer is active on."
Newsday also reported that the SentosaCare partners, allied investors and their lawyer, Mr. Fensterman, have donated $750,000 to Democratic and Republican campaign funds, though Mr. Fensterman said that the amounts lumped together the contributions from his associates in other industries. In 2003, Mr. Fensterman contributed $1,500 to the campaign of Mr. Spota, the district attorney prosecuting the nurses, the newspaper said.
Mr. Fensterman is chairman of the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency, which awards leases and tax incentives, and is Mr. Schumer's campaign finance chairman for Long Island. Mr. Landa was, during the governorship of George E. Pataki, a member of the state's Public Health Council, which reviews proposals for new health care institutions like nursing homes.
Mr. Fensterman and spokesmen for Mr. Schumer and the district attorney's office deny that campaign contributions played any role in the prosecution of the nurses or the Philippine government's actions.
"Because I made a $1,500 contribution to Tom Spota four years before, does that mean that I'm disenfranchised from seeking the help of an elected official?" Mr. Fensterman asked.
In September 2006, after two hearings, the New York State Education Department, which licenses nurses, rejected SentosaCare's charge that the nurses had abandoned patients. (That finding has been buttressed by the results of a New York State Department of Health review, announced on Jan. 16. "The shifts were covered," said a department spokesman, Jeffrey Hammond, "and the patients were not placed in jeopardy.")
But last March, the district attorney, who had met 10 months earlier with Mr. Fensterman, Mr. Landa and Mr. Philipson, secured the grand jury indictment, which also charged the nurses' lawyer, Mr. Vinluan, with conspiring in the resignations.
James O. Druker, a lawyer for the nurses, argues that the case should never have been brought. Mr. Vinluan, he said, was "indicted for giving the nurses legally correct advice" and his clients "were indicted for following his advice."
It took months for some of the nurses to find other jobs, they say, because every time they applied employers would Google their names and up would pop articles about the indictment. Mr. Jacinto and Ms. Anilao now work at a hospital in Queens.
Something of a mystery still lingers: Why were matters allowed to reach such a state? Why would nurses who forsook their homeland to seek well-paying work risk those jobs? And why would SentosaCare's owners risk their successful recruitment of Filipinos by seeking prosecution?
Company officials say they sought to keep nurses from imperiling fragile patients.
"A message needs to be sent," Mr. Fensterman said, "that if nurses can simply walk out on patients with impunity, that is a danger for all Americans, whether in nursing homes or hospitals."
One nurse, Ms. Anilao, said some things were more important than a salary.
"I wasn't raised by my parents to bow down," she said, " and take all those things just for the money."
By JOSEPH BERGER
for the New York Times
Published: January 27, 2008
THEY are recruited in their homeland with perks like free airfare. Some have been offered thousands of dollars in bonuses to relocate. And in the process, they have become a mainstay of the New York area's hospitals and nursing homes.
They are nurses from the Philippines, and they are highly prized here because they speak English, are trained in American-caliber medicine and enjoy a reputation for tender care — the legacy of a society in which families tend to their own sick and aging relatives.
"We're honest, industrious and don't complain a lot," explained Elmer Jacinto, 32, a registered nurse.
His voice, however, carried a palpable note of sarcasm. He and nine other Filipino nurses on Long Island did complain, and now they find themselves caught in what he called "a nightmare" — a disturbing new chapter in the upbeat story of one of this nation's most successful immigrations.
The 10 nurses are under indictment in Suffolk County on charges of endangering the welfare of five chronically ill children and one terminally ill man. They are accused of walking off their jobs at the Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Smithtown in April 2006 without providing sufficient notice for the nursing home to replace them on coming shifts.
Although their resignations were prompted by a seemingly commonplace dispute with their employers over what the nurses say were broken promises and shabby working conditions involving a total of 26 Filipino nurses and a physical therapist, the 10 defendants could each be sentenced to a year in jail and lose their nursing licenses. Their trial was scheduled to start Monday, but it appears that it will be put off until March.
The district attorney's office conceded that the patients suffered no harm, and acknowledged that it could not recall a similar prosecution against nurses in the state. But it said the nurses' crime was serious: four of the children they left behind were on ventilators that demand round-the-clock monitoring.
"They walked off their jobs, and the critical care patients didn't have the health professionals to attend to their needs," said Robert Clifford, a spokesman for Thomas J. Spota, the Suffolk district attorney.
The case has drawn wide attention and outrage in the Philippines, where legislators have held hearings into how the nurses were treated by the company that recruited them. Filipinos there and in the United States have rallied to support the nurses, joined by the American Nurses Association, which has said in a statement that "the real patient endangerment lies in the deplorable conditions that led the nurses to leave."
The pushback has even taken on a political tinge. Commentators in both countries, citing an investigation by Newsday, have questioned whether favoritism was shown the nursing home owners because of their political influence and campaign contributions, and because of letters written to the Philippine president and other officials by Senator Charles E. Schumer. The senator and the owners have denied exerting any unusual pressure.
But what no one denies is that the case is a startling anomaly in what has been a remarkably successful migration of people seeking to work in a single occupation. More than half of American nurses trained abroad are from the Philippines, and they alleviate a perennial shortage of nurses in this country.
Of the New York area's 215,000 Filipinos, 3 out of 10 work as nurses or other health-care practitioners, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Susan Weber-Stoger, a Queens College demographer. Many of the rest are their spouses, children or aging parents. That migration explains the large colonies of Filipinos in places like Jersey City and Bergenfield, N.J., a middle-class suburb, where Robert C. Rivas, mayor from 1999 to 2003, claimed to be the only Filipino mayor in the Northeast.
The indicted nurses pose a strange counterpoint to that success: the image of highly educated legal immigrants complaining about being exploited as green, overly trusting newcomers.
"You were treated like dirt," said Juliet Anilao, 36, a mother of two and another of the nurses indicted. "All we wanted to do was work and send money home."
MR. Jacinto, a soft-spoken native of a small Philippines island, saw medicine as his ticket out of poverty. He not only received a nursing degree, but also graduated from medical school in the Philippines in 2004 with stellar board scores.
Deciding to leave one's homeland is always wrenching, but American salaries were a large incentive. "You can earn here $3,000 a month in America while a doctor in the Philippines earns $400 a month and a nurse $200," Mr. Jacinto said.
He came to New York in November 2005 with 21 other nurses who had been recruited by a Filipino agency that works mainly for SentosaCare, a network of 16 nursing homes with headquarters in Woodmere, N.Y., and operated by Benjamin Landa of Brooklyn and Bent Philipson of Monsey, N.Y. Mr. Landa owns eight other homes independently, and together with SentosaCare, the network of 24 homes has more than 5,000 patients and 5,000 employees. The 22 nurses who came over here in November 2005 say they were promised they would earn the same pay as American nurses and would quickly receive green cards giving them the status of permanent residents.
But Mr. Jacinto says he soon got some surprises: for two months, he was paid as a clerk, at a salary far below that of a nurse. It took more than half a year to get the green card. And he was not assigned to the SentosaCare-affiliated home in Queens that had sponsored his entry, but to Avalon, 40 miles east.
For weeks, he said, he slept on a couch in a frigid living room of a nurses' staff house in Smithtown where the only toilet was frequently clogged. When he finally received nurses' pay, he said, it was $24 an hour instead of the $34 that federal law requires immigrant nurses be paid to prevent undercutting of American workers' salaries. He did not receive the same health insurance and workers' compensation benefits as other nurses, he said, and was not paid for sick days or holidays.
Ms. Anilao said Avalon employed so few aides on the night shift that she regularly had to change soiled diapers and sheets and cart them away. The nurses complained that raises they were promised were wiped out by a reduction in work hours from 37.5 per week to 35.
Howard Fensterman, SentosaCare's lawyer, denied that the nurses were mistreated or shortchanged, and rejected complaints that staffing was inadequate. SentosaCare, he said, had successfully employed 350 nurses from the Philippines over the years and had never experienced a wave of resignations.
The nurses say that when their complaints went unaddressed, they turned to the Philippines consulate in New York, which put them in touch with an immigration lawyer, Felix Vinluan. Mr. Vinluan concluded that their contract had been breached and on April 6, 2006, he filed a discrimination complaint with immigration officials in Washington. He also advised the nurses that one option was to resign.
On April 6 and 7, 14 nurses in four SentosaCare homes other than Avalon submitted their resignations, and late on the afternoon of April 7, 10 Avalon nurses followed suit. They say they offered so little notice because they were worried that SentosaCare might drum up charges against them that could jeopardize their licenses.
Still, the nurses say, they left confident that the elderly and the patients in a pediatric unit would be taken care of because they knew of nurses waiting for assignment in two other SentosaCare staff houses. According to the nurses and their lawyers, only one of the 10 indicted Avalon nurses was working at the time the resignations were handed in and only two were scheduled for 7 a.m. shifts 12 hours away. Some had as many as four days off before resuming work.
"No patient was ever placed in jeopardy," Ms. Anilao said. "Not a single shift was unattended."
Susan O'Connor, Avalon's administrator, has said, associates say, that she had only 12 hours to rustle up replacements for five nurses who had resigned and were scheduled to start the 7 a.m. shift. In her 30-year career — enduring snowstorms, fires and strikes — the walkout created the single scariest night of her professional life, she has said. Ms. O'Connor is a major witness in the criminal case and has been advised by SentosaCare lawyers not to comment publicly.
Mr. Fensterman has argued that finding substitutes was especially difficult because the replacements had to be experienced in monitoring ventilators for sick children. "If they vomit into the tubes and the tubes are not cleared, they can asphyxiate themselves," Mr. Fensterman said.
Sharon Bannon of Farmingdale, whose severely brain-damaged daughter Jodie, 24, is a patient in the pediatric unit and requires a breathing apparatus, said she was upset that the nurses resigned abruptly.
"They left my child unattended and it could have been a potential hazard," she said in a telephone interview. "Jodie is critical and she can't be left. Luckily, the home was able to handle it."
THE case escalated. SentosaCare filed a civil suit charging the nurses with breach of contract and lodged a complaint with the State Department of Education. The nurses filed complaints against SentosaCare's recruiting arm in the Philippines, and the government effectively suspended the company's recruiting privileges.
But in June 2006, the suspension was lifted, and last September Newsday reported that Senator Schumer had written four letters over two months to officials in the Philippines — including one to the president — to get the suspension reviewed. In the two months after the suspension was revoked, the newspaper reported, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, whose chairman is Mr. Schumer, received nearly $75,000 from investors, vendors and lawyers associated with SentosaCare.
Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, said all the senator asked for was due process, not "any outcome in any direction." Mr. Schumer, he added, writes letters for many constituents and SentosaCare "was a major employer on Long Island and operates in an industry Schumer is active on."
Newsday also reported that the SentosaCare partners, allied investors and their lawyer, Mr. Fensterman, have donated $750,000 to Democratic and Republican campaign funds, though Mr. Fensterman said that the amounts lumped together the contributions from his associates in other industries. In 2003, Mr. Fensterman contributed $1,500 to the campaign of Mr. Spota, the district attorney prosecuting the nurses, the newspaper said.
Mr. Fensterman is chairman of the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency, which awards leases and tax incentives, and is Mr. Schumer's campaign finance chairman for Long Island. Mr. Landa was, during the governorship of George E. Pataki, a member of the state's Public Health Council, which reviews proposals for new health care institutions like nursing homes.
Mr. Fensterman and spokesmen for Mr. Schumer and the district attorney's office deny that campaign contributions played any role in the prosecution of the nurses or the Philippine government's actions.
"Because I made a $1,500 contribution to Tom Spota four years before, does that mean that I'm disenfranchised from seeking the help of an elected official?" Mr. Fensterman asked.
In September 2006, after two hearings, the New York State Education Department, which licenses nurses, rejected SentosaCare's charge that the nurses had abandoned patients. (That finding has been buttressed by the results of a New York State Department of Health review, announced on Jan. 16. "The shifts were covered," said a department spokesman, Jeffrey Hammond, "and the patients were not placed in jeopardy.")
But last March, the district attorney, who had met 10 months earlier with Mr. Fensterman, Mr. Landa and Mr. Philipson, secured the grand jury indictment, which also charged the nurses' lawyer, Mr. Vinluan, with conspiring in the resignations.
James O. Druker, a lawyer for the nurses, argues that the case should never have been brought. Mr. Vinluan, he said, was "indicted for giving the nurses legally correct advice" and his clients "were indicted for following his advice."
It took months for some of the nurses to find other jobs, they say, because every time they applied employers would Google their names and up would pop articles about the indictment. Mr. Jacinto and Ms. Anilao now work at a hospital in Queens.
Something of a mystery still lingers: Why were matters allowed to reach such a state? Why would nurses who forsook their homeland to seek well-paying work risk those jobs? And why would SentosaCare's owners risk their successful recruitment of Filipinos by seeking prosecution?
Company officials say they sought to keep nurses from imperiling fragile patients.
"A message needs to be sent," Mr. Fensterman said, "that if nurses can simply walk out on patients with impunity, that is a danger for all Americans, whether in nursing homes or hospitals."
One nurse, Ms. Anilao, said some things were more important than a salary.
"I wasn't raised by my parents to bow down," she said, " and take all those things just for the money."
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
New York No Longer Safe for Undocumented Immigrants
New York No Longer Safe for Undocumented Immigrants
Sing Tao Daily, Posted: Jan 02, 2008
NEW YORK – The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been forcefully checking the status of private companies’ employees in 2007. At the end of this year, ICE is conducting checks both at big companies in New York City and on the street in the Chinese community there, which frightens the neighborhood. ICE officers said they have reasons other than catching undocumented immigrants for the checks, according to the Sing Tao Daily. The Chinese-language newspaper reported that ICE reviewed employees of Fresh Direct, an Internet vegetable and fruit delivery company this month. As a result, more than 100 of its Hispanic employees did not return to work. Kelly Nantel from ICE said their catch of undocumented employees and employers who hired illegally doubled last year’s number.
Sing Tao Daily, Posted: Jan 02, 2008
NEW YORK – The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been forcefully checking the status of private companies’ employees in 2007. At the end of this year, ICE is conducting checks both at big companies in New York City and on the street in the Chinese community there, which frightens the neighborhood. ICE officers said they have reasons other than catching undocumented immigrants for the checks, according to the Sing Tao Daily. The Chinese-language newspaper reported that ICE reviewed employees of Fresh Direct, an Internet vegetable and fruit delivery company this month. As a result, more than 100 of its Hispanic employees did not return to work. Kelly Nantel from ICE said their catch of undocumented employees and employers who hired illegally doubled last year’s number.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Filing fees will increase drastically
Atty. Glenn Rose, Feb 14, 2007
(from Philippine News)
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is proposing to nearly double the filing fees for people applying for U.S. citizenship and drastically increase the filing fees for people trying to get a green card.
The Immigration Service (a division of the DHS) announced last week that it wants to raise the filing fees for citizenship from $330 to $595 (almost double) and add an $80 fingerprint fee on top of that. The filing fee for applications for green cards will increase dramatically from $325 to $905 plus the $80 fingerprint fee.
The Immigration Service claims that the new fees would reduce processing times by 20% and provide money for increased background checks. The Service expects to raise more than $2 billion over the next two years due to the fee increases. In addition to the claim of better service, the money is to be spent on improving immigration offices, technology, and hiring and training of workers. Other filing fees for work permits, replacement of green cards, and family petitions are also expected to rise substantially. The amount of fee increases for some of the other petitions have not yet been announced.
The largest jumps in filing fees are for entrepreneurs who want to immigrate to the United States to invest in business and create jobs. The fees for their applications will jump from $475 to a staggering $2,850. Fees for people applying to become legal residents under the 1986 law granting amnesty will significantly rise from $180 to $1,370.
The last major increase in fees was put into effect in the spring of 2004. Fees were also increased by $10 for most petitions on October 26, 2005 to cover the increased costs due to inflation. The Service is required to do a cost analysis every two years to determine if immigration costs are covered by the fee structure. The Service claims that the present fee structure does not cover the costs of administrating immigration.
Presently, the average of cumulated fees for all applications is about $264. The average will now rise to $438. Most immigration advocates compare the plan to increase the cost of applications as tantamount to highway robbery. Immigrants have no choice but to pay these fees. Advocates complain that this giant jump will put immigration benefits “out of reach” for those in low paying jobs.
Last week, Senator Ted Kennedy highly criticized the fee increases saying they would “price the American Dream out of reach for some qualified immigrants.” On the other hand, anti-immigrant lawmakers claim that taxpayers should not bear the burden of paying for the costs of immigration. Representative Lamar Smith from Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said that “it was right for the people who benefit to pay the cost of that benefit, not [the] taxpayer.”
Some members of Congress want to review the Immigration Service’s cost analysis. However, unless Congress passes an oversight law, the Service’s fee increases are not subject to Congressional approval. Any immigration legislation passed by Congress during 2007 is likely to include a guest worker program. The new fee increases do not include the cost of administrating a guest worker program.
Constant fee increases will be a fact of life in the next several years. The present fee schedule will probably be increased drastically sometime in June of 2007. Persons who want to apply for citizenship or a green card should apply now before the fees go up. They should always work with a qualified immigration attorney when filing any (but the simplest) applications. An immigration lawyer can file applications much more efficiently because of their experience.
Attorney Glenn Rose is experienced in successfully filing all types of immigration applications. He was born in the Philippines, and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of six. He is a naturalized citizen. His law office is located in downtown San Francisco at 580 California St. (415) 283-3281. He is a member of the American Bar Association (ABA) and American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).
1 of 1
(from Philippine News)
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is proposing to nearly double the filing fees for people applying for U.S. citizenship and drastically increase the filing fees for people trying to get a green card.
The Immigration Service (a division of the DHS) announced last week that it wants to raise the filing fees for citizenship from $330 to $595 (almost double) and add an $80 fingerprint fee on top of that. The filing fee for applications for green cards will increase dramatically from $325 to $905 plus the $80 fingerprint fee.
The Immigration Service claims that the new fees would reduce processing times by 20% and provide money for increased background checks. The Service expects to raise more than $2 billion over the next two years due to the fee increases. In addition to the claim of better service, the money is to be spent on improving immigration offices, technology, and hiring and training of workers. Other filing fees for work permits, replacement of green cards, and family petitions are also expected to rise substantially. The amount of fee increases for some of the other petitions have not yet been announced.
The largest jumps in filing fees are for entrepreneurs who want to immigrate to the United States to invest in business and create jobs. The fees for their applications will jump from $475 to a staggering $2,850. Fees for people applying to become legal residents under the 1986 law granting amnesty will significantly rise from $180 to $1,370.
The last major increase in fees was put into effect in the spring of 2004. Fees were also increased by $10 for most petitions on October 26, 2005 to cover the increased costs due to inflation. The Service is required to do a cost analysis every two years to determine if immigration costs are covered by the fee structure. The Service claims that the present fee structure does not cover the costs of administrating immigration.
Presently, the average of cumulated fees for all applications is about $264. The average will now rise to $438. Most immigration advocates compare the plan to increase the cost of applications as tantamount to highway robbery. Immigrants have no choice but to pay these fees. Advocates complain that this giant jump will put immigration benefits “out of reach” for those in low paying jobs.
Last week, Senator Ted Kennedy highly criticized the fee increases saying they would “price the American Dream out of reach for some qualified immigrants.” On the other hand, anti-immigrant lawmakers claim that taxpayers should not bear the burden of paying for the costs of immigration. Representative Lamar Smith from Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said that “it was right for the people who benefit to pay the cost of that benefit, not [the] taxpayer.”
Some members of Congress want to review the Immigration Service’s cost analysis. However, unless Congress passes an oversight law, the Service’s fee increases are not subject to Congressional approval. Any immigration legislation passed by Congress during 2007 is likely to include a guest worker program. The new fee increases do not include the cost of administrating a guest worker program.
Constant fee increases will be a fact of life in the next several years. The present fee schedule will probably be increased drastically sometime in June of 2007. Persons who want to apply for citizenship or a green card should apply now before the fees go up. They should always work with a qualified immigration attorney when filing any (but the simplest) applications. An immigration lawyer can file applications much more efficiently because of their experience.
Attorney Glenn Rose is experienced in successfully filing all types of immigration applications. He was born in the Philippines, and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of six. He is a naturalized citizen. His law office is located in downtown San Francisco at 580 California St. (415) 283-3281. He is a member of the American Bar Association (ABA) and American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).
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New tactic: ICE officers posing as police
New tactic: ICE officers posing as police
Atty. Glenn Rose, Feb 21, 2007
(From Philippine News)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers are now posing as local police in order to gain entry into the homes of immigrants. This new tactic is causing great concern among civil liberty advocates because it breaks down the relationship between immigrants and real local police officers.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims that the title immigration officers may use the title of police because they are federal law enforcement officers and their function is to police illegal immigrants. However, the DHS strategy is a ploy to get immigrants to open their doors to ICE officers trying to make a bust on immigrants who they believe are illegal.
It needs to be noted that ICE arrests are really called detainment because of the violation of immigration laws. Violation of immigration laws is not a criminal act that falls under the scope of traditional police activities. Illegal immigration is an administrative violation of the terms of the Immigration and Nationality Act passed by Congress and regularly revised. Although the consequences of arrest by immigration officers are similar to a regular police arrest, being detained by immigration officers is not considered an arrest based on a criminal act.
The fact that federal agents are now posing as police to make busts, makes it much more difficult for immigrants to understand the legal system in the United States, and undermines their fragile trust in the local police. Immigration officers misidentify themselves to gain entry into private homes, usually, in the early morning hours because it is proven that people are more likely to open their doors to the local police.
Recently, there have been success stories about immigrant cooperation with the local police. The ICE bust procedures threaten to undermine the police-immigrant relationships in many cities and towns. ICE public relations spokesperson, Lori Haley, recently defended the use of the word “police” by stating that immigrants who don’t understand English generally understand the word “police.” She also stated that the term is fair since ICE agents are technically federal police. However, this is not the term used for any federal law enforcement officer. Traditionally, the term “police” has always applied to local law enforcement officers.
People who are detained by ICE officers are taken away in handcuffs and detained at local city and county jails awaiting administrative deportation by the DHS, or, in about 40% of cases, by an Immigration Court. ICE officers will typically check out all other persons in the house or vicinity when looking for an individual immigrant. This is called collateral activity, because the bystanders will also be detained (arrested) if they cannot prove they are in the U.S. legally. This new tactic has created a lot of fear in the immigrant community.
ICE agents usually try to apprehend illegal immigrants in their homes between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. in the morning. Immigrants need to know that they do not have to open the door unless the officer has either an arrest or search warrant. If the door is opened, even by a crack, the ICE officers are allowed to enter the home and arrest the person who they are looking for and any other person in the house who is illegal. Immigrants should be very wary of opening a door to strangers. ICE officers do not wear uniforms and are dressed in civilian clothes. If the person knocking at the door insists on coming in, persons in the home may refuse to open the door. They should ask them to slip the arrest warrant or search warrant under the door. Usually, ICE officers do not carry warrants with them. Any document that may be slipped under the door must have the word “Warrant” on it and be signed by a judge. Normally, the ICE officers will yell and threaten, and then go away. But, they will come back another day. Any immigrant in this predicament should call an experienced immigration attorney.
Attorney Glenn Rose was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States as a small child. He is a naturalized citizen. Attorney Rose is experienced as a lawyer in Immigration Courts and representing clients with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) branch. His office is located in downtown San Francisco at 580 California St., (415) 283-3281. He is a member of the American Bar Association and American Immigration Lawyers Association.
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Atty. Glenn Rose, Feb 21, 2007
(From Philippine News)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers are now posing as local police in order to gain entry into the homes of immigrants. This new tactic is causing great concern among civil liberty advocates because it breaks down the relationship between immigrants and real local police officers.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims that the title immigration officers may use the title of police because they are federal law enforcement officers and their function is to police illegal immigrants. However, the DHS strategy is a ploy to get immigrants to open their doors to ICE officers trying to make a bust on immigrants who they believe are illegal.
It needs to be noted that ICE arrests are really called detainment because of the violation of immigration laws. Violation of immigration laws is not a criminal act that falls under the scope of traditional police activities. Illegal immigration is an administrative violation of the terms of the Immigration and Nationality Act passed by Congress and regularly revised. Although the consequences of arrest by immigration officers are similar to a regular police arrest, being detained by immigration officers is not considered an arrest based on a criminal act.
The fact that federal agents are now posing as police to make busts, makes it much more difficult for immigrants to understand the legal system in the United States, and undermines their fragile trust in the local police. Immigration officers misidentify themselves to gain entry into private homes, usually, in the early morning hours because it is proven that people are more likely to open their doors to the local police.
Recently, there have been success stories about immigrant cooperation with the local police. The ICE bust procedures threaten to undermine the police-immigrant relationships in many cities and towns. ICE public relations spokesperson, Lori Haley, recently defended the use of the word “police” by stating that immigrants who don’t understand English generally understand the word “police.” She also stated that the term is fair since ICE agents are technically federal police. However, this is not the term used for any federal law enforcement officer. Traditionally, the term “police” has always applied to local law enforcement officers.
People who are detained by ICE officers are taken away in handcuffs and detained at local city and county jails awaiting administrative deportation by the DHS, or, in about 40% of cases, by an Immigration Court. ICE officers will typically check out all other persons in the house or vicinity when looking for an individual immigrant. This is called collateral activity, because the bystanders will also be detained (arrested) if they cannot prove they are in the U.S. legally. This new tactic has created a lot of fear in the immigrant community.
ICE agents usually try to apprehend illegal immigrants in their homes between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. in the morning. Immigrants need to know that they do not have to open the door unless the officer has either an arrest or search warrant. If the door is opened, even by a crack, the ICE officers are allowed to enter the home and arrest the person who they are looking for and any other person in the house who is illegal. Immigrants should be very wary of opening a door to strangers. ICE officers do not wear uniforms and are dressed in civilian clothes. If the person knocking at the door insists on coming in, persons in the home may refuse to open the door. They should ask them to slip the arrest warrant or search warrant under the door. Usually, ICE officers do not carry warrants with them. Any document that may be slipped under the door must have the word “Warrant” on it and be signed by a judge. Normally, the ICE officers will yell and threaten, and then go away. But, they will come back another day. Any immigrant in this predicament should call an experienced immigration attorney.
Attorney Glenn Rose was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States as a small child. He is a naturalized citizen. Attorney Rose is experienced as a lawyer in Immigration Courts and representing clients with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) branch. His office is located in downtown San Francisco at 580 California St., (415) 283-3281. He is a member of the American Bar Association and American Immigration Lawyers Association.
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‘Immigrants Bring Crime’ Is a Myth
‘Immigrants Bring Crime’ Is a Myth
New America Media, Commentary, Walter Ewing, Posted: Feb 22, 2007
Editor’s Note: Government and academic studies prove decisively that the common belief that immigrants, especially undocumented ones, bring criminality is based on a big lie. Walter Ewing is a Research Associate at the Immigration Policy Center. IMMIGRATION MATTERS regularly features the views of the nation's leading immigrant rights advocates.
******
Among the many troubling aspects of the public debate over immigration is the power of myths over facts. One of the most enduring myths about immigration, despite literally decades of evidence to the contrary, is the belief that immigrants are more likely to commit crime than the native-born.
This myth is so widespread and unquestioned that it has been the catalyst for scores of local governments to consider anti-immigrant ordinances over the past year. These calls to crack down on undocumented immigrants, the employers who hire them and the landlords who rent to them, are framed in part as “anti-crime” ordinances.
The city council of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, for instance, passed an ordinance last September claiming that “illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates” and that the council therefore must protect legal residents of the city from “crimes committed by illegal aliens.”
Because most of the undocumented immigrants in Hazleton and other communities throughout the United States are young men from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America, who have little money or formal education, it is assumed that they are more likely to commit crimes than the native-born.
Government and academic studies, however, have demonstrated repeatedly for over a century that immigrants actually are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born. Even though immigration has increased dramatically over the past decade and a half, the crime rate in the United States has declined.
Since 1994, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has more than doubled to 12 million. Immigrants, both legal and undocumented, now comprise just under 13 percent of the population. Yet, according to the FBI, between 1994 and 2005 the violent crime rate (murder, robbery, rape, assault) fell 34.2 percent and the property crime rate (burglary, theft) dropped 26.4 percent.
Cities with large and growing immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Chicago also experienced this downward trend in crime. If immigration—either legal or undocumented—were associated with crime, then crime rates should be rising.
An upcoming report from the Immigration Policy Center further dispels the notion that immigration and crime are connected. Using data from the 2000 Census, the report shows that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to be behind bars. Among men age 18 to 39 (who comprise the vast majority of inmates in federal and state prisons and local jails), immigrants were five times less likely to be incarcerated than the native-born in 2000.
About 3.5 percent of native-born men were in prison, compared with 0.7 percent of foreign-born men. Immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala were much less likely to be in prison than native-born, non-Hispanic whites. Roughly 0.7 percent of foreign-born Mexican men and 0.5 percent of foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men were in prison, compared with 1.7 percent of native-born, non-Hispanic white men.
These findings are not new. Three government commissions investigated the relationship between immigration and crime during the last era of large-scale immigration to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when millions of immigrants arrived from Italy, Ireland, Russia, Poland, and other nations in Europe. All three commissions came to the same conclusion: immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than natives.
As the [Dillingham] Immigration Commission of 1911 concluded: “No satisfactory evidence has yet been produced to show that immigration has resulted in an increase in crime disproportionate to the increase in adult population. Such comparable statistics of crime and population as it has been possible to obtain indicate that immigrants are less prone to commit crime than are native Americans.”
Despite a century’s worth of evidence that immigration does not breed crime, the stereotype of immigrants as criminals continues to flourish in the media and among policymakers. Popular movies and television shows often feature gun-wielding, drug-dealing criminals from south of the border. News reports of violent crimes committed by gangs such as the Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) often overshadow the fact that an extraordinarily small number of immigrants are in gangs and that gangs are found in every ethnic group among both natives and the foreign-born.
Adding insult to injury, many politicians regularly declare their resolve to stem the criminal tide allegedly unleashed by undocumented immigrants. Even President Bush, who favors immigration reform that creates more legal channels for immigration to the United States, declared in a May 15, 2006 address to the nation that illegal immigration “brings crime to our communities.”
There is no denying that crime is a serious problem in the United States. But it is not a problem created or even aggravated by immigration. Quite the opposite, in fact. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes of all types than the native-born. This suggests that crime is linked not to one’s place of birth, but to the many other forces which foster crime in this country, especially in relatively poor communities: high rates of divorce and family disintegration, high rates of alcohol and drug abuse, etc.
The solution to crime does not lie in immigration policy. And the solution to undocumented immigration does not lie in misguided “get tough” policies that scapegoat immigrants as criminals.
See More Immigration Matters
New America Media, Commentary, Walter Ewing, Posted: Feb 22, 2007
Editor’s Note: Government and academic studies prove decisively that the common belief that immigrants, especially undocumented ones, bring criminality is based on a big lie. Walter Ewing is a Research Associate at the Immigration Policy Center. IMMIGRATION MATTERS regularly features the views of the nation's leading immigrant rights advocates.
******
Among the many troubling aspects of the public debate over immigration is the power of myths over facts. One of the most enduring myths about immigration, despite literally decades of evidence to the contrary, is the belief that immigrants are more likely to commit crime than the native-born.
This myth is so widespread and unquestioned that it has been the catalyst for scores of local governments to consider anti-immigrant ordinances over the past year. These calls to crack down on undocumented immigrants, the employers who hire them and the landlords who rent to them, are framed in part as “anti-crime” ordinances.
The city council of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, for instance, passed an ordinance last September claiming that “illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates” and that the council therefore must protect legal residents of the city from “crimes committed by illegal aliens.”
Because most of the undocumented immigrants in Hazleton and other communities throughout the United States are young men from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America, who have little money or formal education, it is assumed that they are more likely to commit crimes than the native-born.
Government and academic studies, however, have demonstrated repeatedly for over a century that immigrants actually are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born. Even though immigration has increased dramatically over the past decade and a half, the crime rate in the United States has declined.
Since 1994, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has more than doubled to 12 million. Immigrants, both legal and undocumented, now comprise just under 13 percent of the population. Yet, according to the FBI, between 1994 and 2005 the violent crime rate (murder, robbery, rape, assault) fell 34.2 percent and the property crime rate (burglary, theft) dropped 26.4 percent.
Cities with large and growing immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Chicago also experienced this downward trend in crime. If immigration—either legal or undocumented—were associated with crime, then crime rates should be rising.
An upcoming report from the Immigration Policy Center further dispels the notion that immigration and crime are connected. Using data from the 2000 Census, the report shows that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to be behind bars. Among men age 18 to 39 (who comprise the vast majority of inmates in federal and state prisons and local jails), immigrants were five times less likely to be incarcerated than the native-born in 2000.
About 3.5 percent of native-born men were in prison, compared with 0.7 percent of foreign-born men. Immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala were much less likely to be in prison than native-born, non-Hispanic whites. Roughly 0.7 percent of foreign-born Mexican men and 0.5 percent of foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men were in prison, compared with 1.7 percent of native-born, non-Hispanic white men.
These findings are not new. Three government commissions investigated the relationship between immigration and crime during the last era of large-scale immigration to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when millions of immigrants arrived from Italy, Ireland, Russia, Poland, and other nations in Europe. All three commissions came to the same conclusion: immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than natives.
As the [Dillingham] Immigration Commission of 1911 concluded: “No satisfactory evidence has yet been produced to show that immigration has resulted in an increase in crime disproportionate to the increase in adult population. Such comparable statistics of crime and population as it has been possible to obtain indicate that immigrants are less prone to commit crime than are native Americans.”
Despite a century’s worth of evidence that immigration does not breed crime, the stereotype of immigrants as criminals continues to flourish in the media and among policymakers. Popular movies and television shows often feature gun-wielding, drug-dealing criminals from south of the border. News reports of violent crimes committed by gangs such as the Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) often overshadow the fact that an extraordinarily small number of immigrants are in gangs and that gangs are found in every ethnic group among both natives and the foreign-born.
Adding insult to injury, many politicians regularly declare their resolve to stem the criminal tide allegedly unleashed by undocumented immigrants. Even President Bush, who favors immigration reform that creates more legal channels for immigration to the United States, declared in a May 15, 2006 address to the nation that illegal immigration “brings crime to our communities.”
There is no denying that crime is a serious problem in the United States. But it is not a problem created or even aggravated by immigration. Quite the opposite, in fact. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes of all types than the native-born. This suggests that crime is linked not to one’s place of birth, but to the many other forces which foster crime in this country, especially in relatively poor communities: high rates of divorce and family disintegration, high rates of alcohol and drug abuse, etc.
The solution to crime does not lie in immigration policy. And the solution to undocumented immigration does not lie in misguided “get tough” policies that scapegoat immigrants as criminals.
See More Immigration Matters
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