"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/26/'06 3:40PM
"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/26/'06 3:40PM
4/26/'06 - The following article(s) were found in the media. Several stories are provided ... with links to the original sources ... for your convenience:
- Not all Latinos fall in line for boycott
- Extremists hijacking immigration issue
- Immigrant protests, worries mount
- Perdue: Illegals must not abuse welfare services
- Justices consider immigrant labor case from Georgia
- Yes, the law can be enforced, but will you like the result?
- Student's Prize Is a Trip Into Immigration Limbo
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Justices tackle immigration and RICO
Are companies that recruit undocumented workers racketeers?
Chief Justice John Roberts asked whether a racketeering allegation was too specific.
In a case that raises the highly charged issue of illegal immigration, justices were asked to deal with only a small piece of the debate: whether corporations like Mohawk Industries Inc. can be sued under civil provisions of a federal law originally designed to fight organized crime.
The key question is whether a corporation that contracts out a service, such as recruiting, can be part of an illegal "enterprise" under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970.
In 1996, Congress expanded the anti-racketeering law's reach to include violations of immigration law, such as the hiring of illegal workers.
Several justices voiced concern over whether corporations fit a confusing definition of enterprise that Congress placed in the anti-racketeering law.
The law focuses more on associations of individuals, and justices seemed reluctant to allow the government or -- anyone filing a lawsuit -- to expand on what lawmakers may or may not have meant.
Justice Stephen Breyer questioned whether it is wise to "RICO-ize vast amounts of commercial activities" that have "nothing to do with organized crime," especially because winning parties in anti-racketeering lawsuits can collect triple damages, far more than usual.
Chief Justice John Roberts wondered if the lawsuit brought by Mohawk's current and former workers should have alleged a more general criminal conspiracy, not an illegal agreement under the anti-racketeering law.
And Justice Antonin Scalia said he did not want to issue a decision that would allow lower courts to delve into "the minds of corporations," trying to determine whether firms are conducting their own affairs or that of a separate, illegal enterprise.
The high court's decision could be significant because it likely would affect both criminal and civil uses of the anti-racketeering law, particularly by the Justice Department. Federal prosecutors have long used the law to seek prison terms for corrupt union officers and money damages from crooked unions and pension funds.
The Mohawk employees' lawsuit has not gone to trial and is on hold while the company appeals a trial court judge's refusal to dismiss the case. Mohawk denies knowing it had illegal workers on its payroll.
The Atlanta-based 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court, finding that Mohawk and the recruiters constitute an enterprise under the law.
Carter G. Phillips, Mohawk's lawyer, told Justice David Souter that providing ID cards to workers is part of the company's normal business, not part of a racketeering enterprise. The lawsuit alleges the ID cards help illegal workers elude detection.
Bush administration lawyer Malcolm L. Stewart said such actions shouldn't be considered separately. "There's no rule that a corporation can't simultaneously be conducting its own business and that of a separate entity," he said.
Stewart also said Congress may not have had corporations in mind when it wrote the anti-racketeering law. But, he said, lawmakers couldn't have wanted to exclude illegal activities from the statute's reach just because they didn't think of it at the time.
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http://www.ajc.com/wednesday/content/epaper/editions/wednesday/atlanta_world_44e46be2a5b5516100d8.html
Not all Latinos fall in line for boycott
Teresa Borden - Staff
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Latino leaders in Atlanta who helped organize an April 10 immigrant march attended by thousands are now divided over what to do next.
The rally was part of a nationwide mobilization that brought together flag-waving immigrants, legal and illegal, to oppose a strict immigration reform measure passed by the U.S. House in December and to demand broad immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
The House measure would make illegal presence in the United States a felony and mandate the building of a 700-mile wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. Other, more permissive measures considered in the Senate include a guest worker program that would allow illegal immigrants to register and, given certain conditions, eventually become U.S. citizens.
Across the nation, some Latino leaders have thrown their support behind a Latino boycott of U.S. businesses and a sickout scheduled for May 1. Organizers in Atlanta are urging immigrants not to buy anything, including gasoline, on that day and to stay home from work if it doesn't put their jobs at risk. No Atlanta rally is scheduled.
Some who were involved in the Atlanta march are dismayed that the call to stay home on May 1 isn't stronger.
"How else are we going to demonstrate our economic power?" asked Francisco Zamora, a member of the March 17 Alliance, the group that organized the Atlanta march.
Adelina Nicholls, a principal organizer, said the aftermath of the marches exposed rifts among some Latino leaders that required several meetings and arguments before they were resolved.
"More than a division, there's been an internal struggle for power," Nicholls said. "It reflects a lack of discipline, a lack of political maturity, because we are a young organization. But I believe we've been able to redirect the group again. . . . This is what happens with movements like this."
Carolina Colin-Antonini, an adjunct professor of immigration studies at Georgia State University, said the dissent is a sign that "the movement is trying to find its head, because right now there are many people who are leading it."
Colin-Antonini said that, because Latinos comprise many nationalities, attitudes and agendas, they find it harder than other minorities to pull together. Immigration reform is the only issue that unites them in large numbers.
"Here in Atlanta the modus operandi has been more reactive than proactive," Colin-Antonini said. "Hispanics don't really have the kind of established political organization that would pursue a Latino agenda in a systematic way, like African-Americans have to pursue their interests."
A feud over strategy
In cities across the country, organizers of the April 10 marches said they were overwhelmed by the turnout --- between 30,000 and 60,000 in Atlanta and an estimated 2 million nationwide. But following what became an immigrant celebration, those same organizers and leaders are now feuding over whether to join the boycott and sickout.
In Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, leader of the nation's largest Roman Catholic diocese, who became a major voice in the immigration debate when he spoke out against the House measure, last week called for workers to "go to work, go to school and join thousands of us for a major rally afterward."
But others urged the boycott and sickout, saying that that action would drive home the message about Latino economic power. By the end of the week, Los Angeles County officials had warned employees that unexcused absences, including taking a sick day without a doctor's note, could result in docked pay.
In Chicago and Washington, some immigrant leaders, fearing an anti-immigrant backlash, say they're not joining the boycott. They believe the timing is wrong, given that Congress is just returning to work after an Easter break.
Meanwhile, in Mexico City, a word-of-mouth campaign has been urging people to buy nothing from U.S.-based businesses, such as Sam's Club and McDonald's, on May 1.
Local Latino leaders say they've been receiving messages of solidarity from friends and relatives in Mexico. But march organizers walk a fine line between the euphoria of the nationwide activism and the fear that participants, especially those in the country illegally, could lose their jobs.
Raids bring fear
Last week, a series of coordinated immigration raids on plant sites of a Houston-based pallet-making company in several cities cast a pall on illegal immigrants' willingness to show their faces in public. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff used the raids, on IFCO Systems North America, to highlight his announcement Thursday of a new effort to go after those who hire illegal immigrants. The raids, including one in Atlanta, netted nearly 1,200 illegal immigrants and seven of the company's current and former managers.
Other operations last week in Miami, Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa resulted in the arrest of 130 fugitive criminals and 53 illegal immigrants, authorities said.
The day after Chertoff's announcement, rumors of further raids circulated in metro Atlanta. Some people even left their jobs early for fear that immigration agents might be in the area, Nicholls said. So organizers decided against a May 1 rally in part to keep participants from becoming targets of immigration officials.
"The atmosphere with these raids has people very worried," Nicholls said.
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http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=DELAISLA-04-26-06
Extremists hijacking immigration issue
By JOSE DE LA ISLA
Hispanic Link News Service
26-APR-06
MEXICO CITY -- A friend of mine asked me, during the height of the pro-immigrant demonstrations, "So what's the problem? What does Mexico need? More jobs, huh?" He believes like most people that all you have to do is put salve on a sore spot. He wants a quick-fix answer.
Ronald Reagan once said, "There are no easy answers, but there are simple ones." It's that kind of flashlight perspective that's needed now. Away from my Texas home, I am more concerned about how the U.S. presence of undocumented immigrants, as a public policy issue, got hijacked. It has been turned into something frightening, even before hard issues concerning future U.S.-Mexico relations are addressed seriously. Take, for instance, Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist's scary threat to the Orange County Register: "I will not promote violence in resolving this, but I will not stop others who might pursue that."
The Southern Poverty Law Center (www.splcenter.org) reports that elected U.S. officials were targets of death threats after the Senate Judiciary Committee backed President Bush's guestworker plan. Still other threats were made against the protesters and even Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Postings to a Yahoo user group called "Close Borders" advocate killing young, pro-immigration protesters. One nativist wants nuclear weapons to guard our border.
Some of these agitators are linked to white-supremacist groups. Some insist there's a Latino "reconquista" conspiracy to take back the Southwest.
You might say the above threats come from the nut and violent fringe. But consider that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano just had to veto one bill that would have allowed local police to arrest migrants on "trespassing" charges and another measure to put more U.S. troops on the Mexican border by taking away the governor's "commander in chief" authority over the National Guard.
Reporting on the spreading U.S. backlash, Mexico City media note a disappointment in the further erosion of the moral high ground the United States held previously. Hate acts and extreme measures are stealing the spotlight.
Extremists are helping put the United States in the tradition of the Great Diaspora when Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492; the Chinese Exclusion Act passed by the U.S. Congress in the late 19th century; and forced expulsions by the United States of "Mexicans," including many who were U.S. citizens, during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The "authoritarian personality" has re-emerged in U.S. public affairs, not from common sense but from "an emotional response," writes Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life in Chestnut Hill, Mass. Such people "identify with the strong and are contemptuous of the weak."
Because of relative prosperity and need for labor, U.S. businesses, weekend gardeners, carpenters, small contractors, and others have procreated a bastard in the family.
What if we apply Reagan's "simple but not easy" answer to the undocumented immigrant issue and demonstrate the moral grit to take responsibility for our complicity? What if we make these workers and their families legitimate, not as a bad thing but a good one?
For our own society's sake, it's important to come clean by denouncing extremist nuts. After that, we can address the "jobs" thing in Mexico.
My friend listens to hard-right talk-radio as entertainment. There, hosts edge up ratings with inflammatory words about the weak. Somehow, the toxic information has invaded his discernment. He needs relief from their grip.
(Jose de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. He may be contacted by e-mail at joseisla3(at)yahoo.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com)
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http://www.ajc.com/gwinnett/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/0426gwxprotest.html
Immigrant protests, worries mount
As immigrant protests mount, so do worries
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/26/06
As he slurped down a margarita at his favorite Mexican restaurant, Snellville political activist Bob Griggs glanced at TV images of protesting illegal immigrants and their supporters.
What gall, Griggs thought. And the TV reporter said there would be more: a national economic boycott on Monday. Griggs, whose activism is normally limited to Gwinnett politics and land-use issues, vowed to make illegal immigration his latest cause. "Something snapped," said Griggs, a Web design specialist. "This hasn't been a burning issue with me."
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MOST POPULARInflaming negative reactions from the public is just one concern of Latino leaders debating whether to support the no-buy, no-work boycott on Monday, International Labor Day. Some participants might risk losing their jobs as employers lose patience with the third protest in Georgia since late March. And frustrated Hispanic students could once again skip school by the thousands — against the pleas of Latino leaders — in their desire to participate.
"There are dangers," said Teodoro Maus, one of the organizers of a march that drew an estimated 40,000 people to north DeKalb County earlier this month. "But I think they're dangers that we're willing to chance."
The U.S. House passed a bill that would make being in the country illegally a felony and would fund construction of a barrier along part of the Mexican border. Supporters say the legislation would make America safer and help cut the flow of illegal immigrants, whose numbers are estimated at more than 11 million nationally and between 250,000 and 800,000 in Georgia.
Earlier this month, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed into law a crackdown on illegal immigrants and those who hire them in Georgia.
Maus, a former Mexican consul in Atlanta, called the measures a "slap in the face" to all immigrants. And while there hasn't been 100 percent agreement on what to do Monday, leaders of the March 17 Alliance of Georgia — the group that has organized the last two protests in the state — finalized a plan.
They are encouraging immigrants to participate in that national boycott so long as they don't endanger their jobs. School students should attend class, Maus said, and wear white shirts as a show of support.
Other groups are throwing their support behind protests after work and school hours. The Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials will join a march and rally of high school and college students in Athens, said Jerry Gonzalez, GALEO's executive director. The 5 p.m. march will begin and end at First Christian Church at the corner of Pulaski and Dougherty streets in Athens.
What to do on Monday has been the question of the hour crackling on Spanish-language radio in Atlanta. "It's a decision of the individual," Flavia Jimenez of the National Council of La Raza told listeners last week on VIVA (105.7 FM). Skipping out on work comes with real dangers, counseled Jimenez, an immigration policy analyst with the Hispanic advocacy group. "In the United States, there isn't a right to just not work."
Hispanic leaders across the country have been split over Monday's boycott. Some call it an effective nonviolent protest in the mold of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Others warn that too much protesting could hurt their cause just as immigration reform talks return to the U.S. Senate, which is deeply divided over what to do with illegal immigrants.
About 61 percent of the nearly 8,000 likely voters surveyed in a Zogby Interactive poll earlier this month said recent protests have made them less sympathetic toward the plight of undocumented workers.
Griggs, for one, wrote a manifesto that called on Americans not to patronize "Hispanic-owned or Mexican-themed" businesses on Cinco de Mayo and the week after. Griggs said he personally would not be sipping those margaritas at his favorite Mexican restaurant on the May 5 holiday that celebrates the Mexican army's defeat of French invaders. "It angers me when the interlopers so brazenly demand the protection of the same law that they flaunted with their very first steps on American soil," Griggs wrote.
Then he posted the column on his Web site — a community guide with a blog dedicated to politics. Atlanta-based radio personality Neal Boortz talked about it last week on his nationally syndicated show and chatted with Griggs.
More than 20,000 people clicked on Griggs' column, which normally gets a few hundred hits.
Griggs, who wants Congress to make halting immigration a top priority, said he's trying to send a message to Washington.
Then again, so is Jessica Zapata, a 19-year-old cashier at Monterrey Mexican Restaurant — Grigg's favorite. Zapata, whose family left Mexico for the United States when she was a toddler, said she won't be working or spending come Monday.
Zapata said that unlike the hastily arranged boycott in Georgia last month, news of the latest protest has been circulating through Spanish-language TV and radio for weeks.
"It'll be like that movie 'A Day Without a Mexican,'" Zapata said. "Everybody's talking about it now."
But the decision was easy for Zapata; Monday is her day off.
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Perdue: Illegals must not abuse welfare services
Governor's remarks come during speech in Gainesville
By HARRIS BLACKWOOD
The Times
 Tom Reed The Times Gov. Sonny Perdue addresses the Gainesville Kiwanis and Lions Clubs at the Civic Center on Tuesday. Perdue qualified Monday for re-election to a second term. |
Gov. Sonny Perdue said Tuesday that he thinks it is wrong for immigrants to walk into the country and make their first stop at the welfare office.
Perdue's remarks, which drew a round of applause, were made during a speech to a combined meeting of the Gainesville Kiwanis and Lions Clubs.
The governor made no reference to the immigration bill, which he signed into law last week, during his prepared remarks.
But during a question and answer session, he said that he hopes the bill will send a message to Washington.
"It's a cry out to our federal government to say, 'People, understand that we need some help and we've got to secure those borders,'" Perdue said.
The governor, who qualified for re-election on Monday for a second term, spent most of his time in a litany of accomplishments during his three and a half years in office.
He touted the new Center for Innovation and Manufacturing Excellence which opened at Lanier Technical College in February.
"If you go into a modern manufacturing plant, you're going to see a lot of high technology," said Perdue. "It's not just brawn anymore. People have to have math skills, science skills and calculation skills to compete in the manufacturing envirionment."
He said the center would train worker for "leading edge" manufacturing facilities.
Perdue said afterward that he was pleased that the White House was taking some action on gasoline prices.
President Bush on Tuesday ordered a temporary suspension of environmental rules for gasoline, making it easier for refiners to meet demand and possibly dampen prices at the pump.
Perdue said that he has no plans to eliminate sales taxes as he did in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
"The state cannot suppress the prices on natural gas, gasoline and other things," Perdue said. "The tax portion is only a small portion. We did that in an emergency situation that we thought was very temporary.
"It's very dangerous for a state to go out and try to supplant higher prices with tax policy. We need an energy policy in this nation that works."
He also said that he believes the current criminal investigation by South Korea into the activities of the automaker Kia will not change their plans to locate in Georgia.
"Kia is on track," Perdue said. "We are continuing to work with Kia. Obviously, the executives in Kia have some questions they need to answer for the Korean officials and that doesn't have anything to do with the business deal we signed."
Perdue will face either Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor or Secretary of State Cathy Cox, both Democrats, in the November general election.
Contact: hblackwood@gainesvilletimes.com, (770) 718-3423
Originally published Wednesday, April 26, 2006------------------------------------
http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/ap_newfullstory.asp?ID=74504
Justices consider immigrant labor case from Georgia
The Associated Press - WASHINGTON
As the fight over rewriting immigration law heats up, corporations are coming under fire for using recruiters to find and hire workers who are in the United States illegally.
The allegations against corporations will figure prominently in arguments before the Supreme Court when justices hear an appeal Wednesday by a Georgia floor-covering company accused by current and former employees of hiring hundreds of illegal immigrants to suppress wages.
Justices are being asked to decide only a piece of the highly charged issue: whether corporations like Mohawk Industries Inc., a rug and floor-covering manufacturer, can be sued under civil provisions of a federal law originally designed to fight organized crime.
The key question is whether a corporation that contracts out a service, such as recruiting, can be part of an illegal "enterprise" under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970.
In 1996, Congress expanded the anti-racketeering law's reach to include violations of immigration law, such as the hiring of illegal workers.
The high court's decision could be significant because it likely would affect both criminal and civil uses of the anti-racketeering law, particularly by the Justice Department. Federal prosecutors have long used the law to seek prison terms for corrupt union officers and money damages from crooked unions and pension funds.
The Mohawk employees' lawsuit has not gone to trial and is on hold while the company appeals a trial court judge's denial of the company's motion to dismiss the case. Mohawk denies knowing it had illegal workers on its payroll.
The Atlanta-based 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court, finding that Mohawk and the recruiters constitute an enterprise under the law.
In court filings, Mohawk's lawyers argued the anti-racketeering law pertains to individuals _ such as gangsters or drug dealers who enter into agreements to commit crimes _ not corporations.
Corporations are the primary victims of organized crime, the lawyers said. The anti-racketeering law "was designed to clean up infiltrated corporations (and other organizations) through the prosecution of individual ... defendants," they wrote.
But the Bush administration disagreed, arguing that a ruling in favor of Mohawk would insulate the most sophisticated racketeering schemes used by combinations of corporations and other legal entities.
In friend-of-the-court filings, several proponents of immigration controls urged justices not to usurp Congress' intent in adding immigration violations to the anti-racketeering law.
White-collar criminals should not be given "an undeserved free pass," wrote lawyers for the National Association of Shareholder and Consumer Attorneys, a nonprofit group whose members represent victims of corporate fraud.
Mohawk, however, insists it was conducting its own affairs through the recruiter, not those of a separate enterprise.
The company's supporters said in court filings that a ruling against Mohawk would be unfair to corporations and discourage them from contracting out and saving money.
Because of significant shortages in skilled labor in recent years, manufacturers have been forced to rely on recruiting firms to meet demands for workers, wrote lawyers for the National Association of Manufacturers and other groups.
The case is Mohawk Industries v. Williams, 05-465.
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Yes, the law can be enforced, but will you like the result?
| Posted 4/25/2006 9:15 PM ET | E-mail | Save | Print | Subscribe to stories like this  |
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There are promises to tighten borders, to deal with illegal aliens already here and to crack down on employers who hire and harbor illegal immigrants.
It's largely a political charade — the latest installment of which played out Thursday when the Bush administration promised a new enforcement strategy: using criminal statutes against employers who blatantly ignore the law. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff trotted out Exhibit A: Raids in 26 states at the plants of IFCO Systems North America Inc. Not only did the government arrest more than 1,180 illegal workers, it also charged several IFCO managers in a scheme to hire and harbor them.
Fine, as far as it goes. If companies are allowed to flout the law, everyone loses respect for it. But as a strategy to rein in illegal immigration, crackdowns are mostly myth.
The law is enforced only in fits and starts. Beginning in the late 1990s, enforcement plummeted. In 1998, immigration authorities arrested about 14,000 illegal immigrants at worksites. The next year, arrests dropped by 80% — and kept on dropping, according to a study by Congress' non-partisan Government Accountability Office. In 2003, there were just 445 arrests, the GAO reported.
Even if the government wanted to use worksite arrests to stamp out illegal immigration, it doesn't have the manpower. Homeland Security has about 325 agents to enforce the law against 7.2 million illegal workers. But the biggest reason crackdowns on business don't work is that powerful forces don't want them to.
Consider a strategy tried in 1998, one that had all the makings of success. In Operation Vanguard, authorities focused on the meatpacking industry in Nebraska. After comparing records at every plant in the state against Social Security numbers, they notified the employers of about 4,700 suspect workers. The program worked so well that 3,500 workers disappeared.
The long-range plan was to repeat the experiment industry by industry and state by state. This, immigration authorities logically concluded, would persuade employers that it's more economical to hire legal workers. With jobs drying up, illegal immigration would slow. All of this would be done without disruptive raids or wholesale deportations, such as those voted by the House of Representatives in January. But the plan worked too well.
Unions, immigration advocates, the industry and Nebraska's politicians stampeded to protest. Plants couldn't find workers. Livestock demand dropped. Nebraska's economy was disrupted, and immigrant families were torn apart. In a year, Vanguard was gone.
What to conclude from the experience?
First, that the law can be enforced, just as so many people today are urging. But also that once the results appear, many of those same people are likely to change their minds.
That is the perpetual dilemma of America's immigration debate. People want the law to have meaning. They also want the services that the immigrants provide.
Ways exist to address that dilemma —expanded legal immigration coupled with meaningful employer enforcement, for instance. But for now, trumped-up schemes and anti-immigrant pandering rule the stage.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/nyregion/26deport.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Student's Prize Is a Trip Into Immigration Limbo
Amadou Ly boarded a train Tuesday for a robotics contest in Atlanta. He had no ID to get onto a plane.
A small, troubled high school in East Harlem seemed an unlikely place to find students for a nationwide robot-building contest, but when a neighborhood after-school program started a team last winter, 19 students signed up. One was Amadou Ly, a senior who had been fending for himself since he was 14.
The project had only one computer and no real work space. Engineering advice came from an elevator mechanic and a machinist's son without a college degree. But in an upset that astonished its sponsors, the rookie team from East Harlem won the regional competition last month, beating rivals from elite schools like Stuyvesant in Manhattan and the Bronx High School of Science for a chance to compete in the national robotics finals in Atlanta that begins tomorrow.
Yet for Amadou, who helps operate the robot the team built, success has come at a price. As the group prepared for the flight to Atlanta today, he was forced to reveal his secret: He is an illegal immigrant from Senegal, with no ID to allow him to board a plane. Left here long ago by his mother, he has no way to attend the college that has accepted him, and only a slim chance to win his two-year court battle against deportation.
In the end, his fate could hinge on immigration legislation now being debated in Congress. Several Senate bills include a pathway for successful high school graduates to earn legal status. But a measure passed by the House of Representatives would make his presence in the United States a felony, and both House and Senate bills would curtail the judicial review that allows exceptions to deportation.
Meanwhile, the team's sponsors scrambled to put him on a train yesterday afternoon for a separate 18-hour journey to join his teammates from Central Park East High School at the Georgia Dome. There, more than 8,500 high school students will participate in the competition, called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) by its sponsor, a nonprofit organization that aims to make applied sciences as exciting to children as sports.
"I didn't want other people to know," Amadou, 18, said, referring to his illegal status. "They're all U.S. citizens but me."
Most team members learned of his problem only yesterday at a meeting with Kristian Breton, 27, the staff member at the East Harlem Tutorial program who started the team, inspired by his own experience in the competition when he was a high school student in rural Mountain Home, Ark.
Alan Hodge, 18, echoed the general dismay. "We can't really celebrate all the way because it's not going to feel whole as a team without Amadou," he said.
Amadou's teammates have struggled with obstacles of their own. When Mr. Breton called a meeting of parents to collect permission slips last week, only five showed up. One boy's mother had a terminal illness, Mr. Breton learned. Another mother lived in the Dominican Republic, leaving an older sibling to manage the household. One of the six girls on the team said her divorced parents disagreed about letting her go, and her mother, who was willing to approve the trip, lacked the $4 subway fare to get to the meeting.
But Amadou's case stands out. As he tells it, with corroboration from immigration records and other documents, he was 13 and spoke no English when his mother brought him to New York from Dakar on Sept. 10, 2001. He was 14 when she went back, leaving him behind in the hope that he could continue his American education.
By then, he had finished ninth grade at Norman Thomas High School in a program for students learning English as a second language. But his mother left instruction for him to take a Greyhound bus to Indianapolis, where a Senegalese woman friend had agreed to take him in and send him to North Central High School school there.
"It was the same thing when I was in Africa," he said, describing a childhood spent shuttling between his maternal grandmother and the household of his father, a retired policeman with 12 children and three wives.
The woman in Indiana, who had four children of her own, changed her mind about keeping him after his sophomore year, and he returned by bus to New York in the summer of 2004. "I had to find a way to help myself for food and clothes, and to buy some of my school supplies," he said, recalling days handing out fliers for a clothing store on a Manhattan street corner. "I ended up living with another friend — I'm under age and I can't live alone."
Taking shelter with a taxi driver, a friend of the family who could sign his report cards, Amadou enrolled in 11th grade at Central Park East. Under Supreme Court decisions dating to 1982, children have a right to a public education regardless of their immigration status, and in New York, as in many other cities, a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to legal status has prevailed for years.
But after the 9/11 attacks, practices around the country changed. On a rainy highway in Pennsylvania on Nov. 7, 2004, Amadou met a very different attitude when he had the bad luck to be a passenger in a car rear-ended by a truck. The state trooper who responded questioned his passport and school ID, and summoned federal immigration officers, who began deportation proceedings.
There is no right to a court-appointed lawyer in immigration court, and though Amadou's friends hired one for him at first, records show that the lawyer soon withdrew. "We really couldn't afford to pay," Amadou explained.
By the time the case was finally sent to a special juvenile docket in federal court after several adjournments, Amadou had already turned 18, closing off some legal options that can lead to a green card for juveniles, said Amy Meselson, a Legal Aid lawyer who took on the case last week.
At this point, she said, his best chance is probably a long shot: a measure included in an amendment to many Senate immigration bills, known as "The Dream Act," which offers a path to citizenship to young people of good moral character who have lived in the United States for five years, been accepted to college, or earned a high school diploma or the equivalent.
Opponents say the measure will encourage illegal immigrants, and subsidize their education at the expense of American children and their taxpaying parents.
But mentors for the team that calls itself "East Harlem Tech" seem to have no ear for such arguments.
"He's been a hard-working and diligent student with mathematical ability and a scientific mind," said Rhonda Creed-Harry, a math teacher at Central Park East. But though he has been accepted at the New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, he said he could not attend because he does not qualify for financial aid.
Ramon Padilla, a team mentor who stopped a year short of a college degree himself and now works in the audio-visual department at Columbia University , called the news that Amadou faced deportation "overwhelming."
"I'm telling you, he's a great kid, a very talented kid," he said, adding that Amadou played an important role in building the robot, with help from Frank Sierra, a buddy of Mr. Padilla who repairs elevators. Starting from a standard set of parts, each team had six weeks to design a robot that could move down a center line and throw balls into a goal. In the last round of the competition, Amadou helped his team form a winning alliance with teams from Morris High School in the Bronx and Staten Island Tech, which both advanced to the finals as well.
Mr. Breton, who made last-minute trips to the Bronx to gather parental permissions, said he was determined not to leave Amadou behind. "I started with 19 people, and I want to take 19 people to Atlanta," he told the student. "I want to make sure that everybody has the full opportunity, because I feel you've earned it."
Amadou returned the compliment. "Because of him, it happened," he said.
Yet on the train to Atlanta, accompanied by another staff member, Amadou was still worried. Bloomberg L.P., which is underwriting the full cost of the team's trip to Atlanta, plans to display its robot at the company's headquarters in New York and invite the team up to celebrate their achievement. He said he was afraid that he might be turned away for lack of the right ID to enter the building.
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Erik Voss
erik@ICAtlanta.org
404-457-5901 Direct
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