"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/27/'06 11:45 PM
"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/27/'06 11:45 PM
4/27/'06 - The following article(s) were found in the media. Several stories are provided ... with links to the original sources ... for your convenience:
- Immigration Impact - Part I
- Amid debate, more immigrants file to be citizens
- Find middle ground on immigration
- Decent wages would secure U.S. borders
- Young illegal immigrant finds unwanted spotlight as robotics wizard
- 3 buses used in immigration rally burned
- Tres autobuses incendiados en Doraville (Article in Spanish)
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04/27/06
Immigration Impact--Part I
There are more than 300,000 illegal immigrants living and working in Georgia and another 55,000 living in South Carolina. They farm our crops, build our homes, landscape our lawns.
The immigration issue is creating a lot of debate. We've seen hundreds of thousands of Hispanics rallying for fair immigration reform, while new immigration laws are brewing at the state and federal level.
Illegal immigrants are having an impact on our community in many ways. They are dominating some of our labor forces, filling our schools with their children, and affecting our crime rate.
From local politicians to police, advocates to educators and the average American, to some illegal immigrants themselves, they are all talking about the immigration impact.
From the onion fields of Wayne and Tattnall Counties to the construction sites in Chatham County, the faces of Hispanic migrant men dominate the landscape.
Should we send them home? Does our economy need them? Are they taking jobs away from Americans? Depends whom you talk to.
"I think it's unfair to the small contractors and subcontractors like myself for people to come in and do the work that we're doing for half the price that we're doing," said American worker Paul Ambrose. "It's drawing our pay rate down."
"We're forking out welfare every day," noted Michael Holbrook. "Those jobs are available to those people, they're too lazy to work. Others come into the county, they may be illegal but at least they are willing to work and put their money back in society."
The debate rages on in the news, on Capitol Hill, in our neighborhoods. Georgia and South Carolina have some of the highest illegal immigrant populations in the nation.
US Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA Dist. 1) is fighting for immigration reform. "The current system has given us 11 million illegals, that's the estimate," he said. "We know if we stay on the current path, that's going to get higher and higher."
Alonso is one of those illegal immigrants. He's 22 years old. Alonso walked across the United States-Mexican border four years ago. He's afraid of being deported, but he's not afraid to tell us why he's here.
He came to savannah to work construction. "Normally between ten to 12 and more hours a day, five to seven days a week," said Diego Torres of the Latin American Service Organization--or LASO--helping to translate for us.
He says Alonso pours concrete and lays cement slabs for new homes. "It's known for a fact that Latinos, Hispanics, especially people who come here to work and send money home, are working very hard," Alonso said through Torres. "They'll give more than 100 percent for very low wages."
Alonso makes $10 an hour, with no overtime and no benefits. That's about $5 to $7 less than American subcontractors get for doing the same work.
Whether it's working construction or harvesting onions, many migrant workers say they are doing jobs that American workers don't want. There may be a lot of truth in that.
This is hard, dirty work. "Last night, we worked until almost twelve o'clock," said Delbert Bland of Bland Farms in Reidsville, the largest grower of sweet Vidalia onions. "And I promise you, if you go get 300 local people who want to work till 11:30 on Saturday, if you find that I'll eat your hat, your lunch--all at one time. I promise you won't find it."
Bland hires more than 300 migrant workers and brings them here legally from Mexico with work visas. He pays them about $7 an hour. Bland's migrant field workers, working in teams of six, will fill 60 large crates a day.
"They are willing to work long and hard hours," said Rep. Kingston. "Employers tell me these are the best workers that they've ever had. I think Americans have to get their work ethic back for one thing, but if you pull the rug out from under the employers, you are going to have an economic push back and chaos we don't want to deal with. You have to have a system to get these people legalized, but not give them amnesty."
Until that happens, Alonso hopes to lay low and earn money. "Please stop thinking of us as criminals," he said. "What are we doing? Just working like everyone else who comes to this nation."
He pays for his food and rent. The rest goes to his family in Mexico. "He's been sending money home so his mother and family can have a better life," Torres told us.
That's his American dream.
We see the illegal immigrant workers in the fields, and we've also been seeing them more and more on the news as victims of crime or accused of committing crimes.
Tonight on THE News at 11, we'll ride along with Garden City police. They estimate that there are 6,000 to 8,000 illegals in their town. We'll show you some of the problems they've encountered, from deadly DUIs to break-ins, and hear how they are handling the immigration impact.
Reported by: Michelle Paynter, mpaynter@wtoc.com
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/0428metimmig.html
Amid debate, more immigrants file to be citizens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/28/06
Students in Mike Kovalsky's class at DeKalb Technical College work hard to answer questions that, to many Americans, might seem easy: When was the Constitution written? What kind of government does the United States have? What is the newest department of the Cabinet?
These are questions that increasing numbers of immigrants in Georgia and across the nation have been wrestling with recently. Citizenship applications rose nearly 30 percent from February to March against the backdrop of the immigration debate in Washington.
"I've wanted to do this for a long time," said remodeler Juan Carlos Ibarra, 39, a member of Kovalsky's class who entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico 20 years ago. He is now a legal resident living in Norcross. "But when it came time to fill out the [10-page] form, I would get discouraged."
Ibarra said watching immigrants rally this month for changes that could pave the way to citizenship for millions illegally in the country helped persuade him to tackle the process. Among those illegal immigrants is his wife, whom he would be able to help become a legal resident if he were a citizen.
"You can vote; you have more rights," Ibarra said of citizenship. "You can back your people and speak with authority. Being only a resident is not as good."
Even before the rallies, immigrants were already filling English classes, thronging how-to Web sites and filing forms to start the citizenship process. Advocates and community leaders say the next step is to sign them up to vote.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials report a significant rise in the number of March filings of N-400 and I-130 forms — respectively, the application for citizenship and the petition for residency for a relative — from the number filed in February.
Chris Bentley, CIS spokesman, said March normally is a strong month for such activity. But this year's numbers are considerably higher than last year's. And he said application downloads and hits on how-to pages on the CIS Web site are also up: There were about 6.6 million in March, up from 5.3 million in February.
Immigrants are swelling the rolls at DeKalb Tech. Interest and attendance are up for the class taught by Kovalsky, who literally wrote the book on citizenship: His text is the reference for the course. Martha Coursey, director of adult literacy at DeKalb, said there were 200 people on the waiting list at the beginning of this term.
Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck said he had seen a steady stream of longtime legal residents who now want to take the final step to citizenship. And he has gotten "tons of inquiries" about naturalization on his Web site.
"They don't want to get caught behind the eight ball," Kuck said. "Most people say, 'I want to vote; I want to make a difference.' "
The National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, this week announced a campaign to train community leaders to conduct voter registration drives.
"Attention is being placed on engaging in the political process by becoming a citizen and a voter," said Clarissa Martinez, director of state and local policy at NCLR. "Community-based organizations that normally don't do this kind of work are now inquiring about how to start incorporating it into what they do."
Martinez said the April 10 demonstrations uncorked a new activism among Hispanics that they want to channel into direct political participation once people become citizens. She quoted a 2004 study by the American Immigration Law Foundation showing that new citizens who register to vote are more likely to show up at the ballot box than registered native-born citizens, even though their raw numbers are smaller. According to the Current Population Survey, 87 percent of new citizens who were registered to vote in 2000 actually voted, compared to 85.5 percent of native-born registered voters.
"We're looking for people to stay involved," Martinez said.
America Gruner is about to start training volunteers to sign up new voters and teach citizenship classes in Dalton beginning the third week of May. She said her organization, the Latin-American Community Alliance, signed up about 300 new voters before elections in 2004. She's hoping for at least 100 more this year.
"It's one of the most effective ways to get the needs of Hispanics to be taken into account," she said.
Kuck, who as vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association has been involved in policy discussions on immigration reform in Washington, said it's hard to predict how many new voters the registration drives might attract nationwide — at most, maybe a million.
But he said what is happening now is similar to what happened in the two years after California approved Proposition 187, a measure that denied some services to illegal immigrants and was later defeated in court.
Experts say the move caused Republicans, who backed 187, to lose political ground in California for more than 10 years.
Kuck said it's possible that measures cracking down on illegal immigrants — like a House bill passed in December that focuses on enforcement — could backfire on Republicans on a national level.
"That has the possibility of happening in various congressional districts in this country," said Kuck, who identifies himself as a Republican. "Florida is barely Republican now. If you naturalize 300,000 people in Florida this year, a lot of them are not going to be Republicans."
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http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0428edimmigration.html
Find middle ground on immigration
Legislation must secure borders, enforce workplace hiring rules and deal fairly with illegal workers
Published on: 04/28/06
When efforts to fashion a comprehensive immigration reform plan collapsed in a heap on the Senate floor just before the Easter recess, the smart money bet that Congress would once again abdicate its responsibility to tackle the issue. Some observers even predicted immigration reform was dead for 2006.
But the American public — long frustrated by the refusal of national leaders to stem the tide of illegal immigrants entering the country or crack down on those who employ them — has refused to let the issue die.
Now with Congress back in session, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) promises to bring the immigration debate back to the Senate floor in the next few weeks.
This week, President Bush also found his voice on the issue again, declaring that massive deportation of illegal immigrants is logistically impossible and tacitly supporting the compromise approach the Senate had been debating when it adjourned.
Even House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has indicated a willingness to back off some of the mean-spiritedness of the measure his chamber passed late last year.
The movement to do something now was fueled by events in those two short weeks while Congress was in recess:
• Latino immigrants — illegal and legal alike — took to the streets in huge number across the country, including 30,000 to 50,000 here in Atlanta. They called on Congress to embrace a plan that would allow most of the 11 million to 12 million undocumented workers a way to stay in the country legally and to gain eventual citizenship. A nationwide business and school boycott by Latino workers is planned for May 1.
• The Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security last week rounded up nearly 1,200 workers at IFCO Systems plants in 26 states, including Georgia, and arrested seven company executives for allegedly conspiring to recruit illegal workers and provide them phony documents. It was the largest single-day raid on illegal hiring in the country's history.
• The same agency, flexing its muscles for the first time in years, promised to hire 172 more enforcement officers and create 17 special teams of investigators to find the estimated 590,000 illegal aliens who have deportation orders pending against them, as well as monitor the status of thousands of illegal immigrants now serving time in state prisons who are supposed to be deported as soon as they are released. In Miami on Monday, the agency arrested 183 fugitives from 26 countries who had been convicted of sex offenses, cocaine trafficking and other felonies.
Moreover, 42 states are moving to enact laws dealing with the impact of illegal immigrants. Georgia's new statute dealing with public benefits for illegal immigrants and denial of tax breaks for those who hire them was signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue last week.
Against this backdrop of unprecedented activity, voters are demanding that Congress also take action.
The measure that stalled on the Senate floor a few weeks ago continues to offer the best chance of comprehensive reform. The president knows that, and ought to signal conservative members of his party that he expects them to get in line behind it.
For their part, Democrats in the Senate should agree to limited amendments of their compromise with Republican moderates — changes related to border security and workplace enforcement, for instance — but hold fast on the proposal in the bill that allows for more than half of those here illegally to work toward eventual legal status.
That idea got bipartisan backing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, as it should. If it gets 70 or more votes on the floor, the Senate would be in a strong position to insist the House conferees agree to it.
A final consensus on this issue can still be struck between the House and Senate. It would involve spending more to secure the border, aggressively enforcing workplace hiring rules and finding a fair and humane way to deal with undocumented immigrants whose labor sustains the nation's economy. If Congress leaves out any one of those critical elements — or refuses to provide adequate funding to make them work — it will not have achieved anything close to comprehensive reform. And members who face re-election in November should pay the price for that failure.
— Mike King for the editorial board (mking@ajc.com)
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http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0428edequal.html
EQUAL TIME
Decent wages would secure U.S. bordersPublished on: 04/28/06
Ever since President Bush unveiled his first guest worker plan, employer claims of labor shortages have dominated the economic side of the national immigration debate. Moreover, as Bush and his allies keep repeating, legal and illegal immigrants alike are mainly doing "the jobs Americans won't do" – physically demanding labor in low-paying but essential industries.
However, the most important statistics available show conclusively that, far from easing shortages, illegal immigrants are adding to labor gluts in America.
Specifically, when adjusted for inflation, wages in sectors that are highly dependent on illegals have either been stagnant or have actually fallen.
When too many workers are chasing too few jobs, employers typically cut wages, confident that beggars can't be choosers. What U.S. Labor Department data reveal is that the wage-cutting scenario is exactly what has unfolded recently throughout the economy's illegal immigrant-heavy sectors.
Take restaurants. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, illegal immigrants comprise 17 percent of the nation's food preparation workers, 20 percent of its cooks and 23 percent of its dishwashers.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, though, inflation-adjusted wages for the broad Food Services and Drinking Establishments category fell 1.65 percent between 2000 and 2005.
Ten percent of the nation's hotel workers are illegal immigrants, the Pew Center estimates. But the BLS data show that their inflation-adjusted wages fell nearly 1 percent from 2000-2005.
In the booming construction industry, illegal immigrants make up some 12 percent of the work force. But from 1993 —when median home prices began surging at a record pace — through 2005, inflation-adjusted wages in the sector rose only 3.02 percent. And from 2000 to 2005 — the height of the boom — inflation-adjusted construction wages actually fell by 1.59 percent.
These wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make clear that these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They're facing shortages of native-born workers who can accept poverty-level pay.
If the president and Congress have any interest in ensuring that American immigration policy helps raise and not depress living standards, they'll tell these employers to stop the special-interest pleading and do what their predecessors throughout American history have done: Raise pay high enough to attract the U.S. workers you need.
• Alan Tonelson is a research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation in Washington.
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http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/ap_newfullstory.asp?ID=74561
Young illegal immigrant finds unwanted spotlight as robotics wizard
The Associated Press - ATLANTA
On a giant convention floor bustling with swarms of excited teens tinkering with their robots, 18-year-old Amadou Ly looked wearily at reporters from underneath his black and silver cap. He'd much rather not share his "secret," he said, though his attorney told him to do so.
His secret is not some engineering wizardry that gives his high school team from New York a chance at victory in the international robotics championship that started Thursday.
What he's been hiding until this trip to Atlanta is that he's in this country illegally and he might be deported back to Africa as early the end of the year.
"No matter what work I do here, at the end of the day it might be zero," said the lanky senior from Senegal. "I never wanted to share this with people."
When he was 13, Ly came to the U.S. with his mother on a visit to New York in 2001 and she decided to overstay the tourist visa to give him an education in the States, even though he knew no English. About a year later, she returned to Dakar broke and left him in the care of a friend in Indianapolis, who soon changed her mind and sent the teen back to New York.
He found another Senegalese acquaintance and enrolled in Central Park East High School, where he's three months shy of graduation. He dreams of studying math and computer science at New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, where he's been accepted, but he doesn't have enough money _ or perhaps enough time.
Ly's in the middle of deportation proceedings that started in November 2004, after a police officer asked for his visa after he was injured in a car accident on his way to Michigan with two Senegalese friends.
Since Ly could only produce a school ID and a birth certificate from Senegal, he was handcuffed and taken into custody by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after being treated at a hospital for back injuries, he said.
He was released back to New York and granted extra time to find an attorney he could afford, said his lawyer, Amy Meselson of the Legal Aid Society. He will be in court in July, with deportation possible by the end of the year in the worst-case scenario, which Meselson thinks unlikely because she hopes judges will be lenient with a teen.
The teen said he was scared when his mother left him, scared when federal agents got him, and scared this week when he had to reveal to his robotics team, East Harlem Tech, that he couldn't fly with them to Atlanta for the competition because he had no valid ID to use to board a plane.
Three days a week for six weeks, as long as janitors didn't kick them out of spare rooms, Ly and his 18 teammates worked with donated tools to build a robot capable of shooting balls into a goal, winning the regional championship and ticket to Atlanta. They were shocked when told Ly would have to join them by train, an 18-hour ride _ they thought his passport had expired, not that he was fighting to stay in this country.
"I felt real bad," said 17-year-old Glenn Wright. "If I was him ... Just thinking what college to go to is hard for me, I don't know how I could handle it."
Ly says he's only hoping he can stay long enough to master English and get more education so he can go back and help his countrymen instead of having to start from scratch, beginning with taking classes again in French, his mother tongue.
"In Senegal, I may eat breakfast today but tomorrow it is not promised," he said. "I don't have a problem going back but I want to finish my education. I admit being overstayed, but at least I'm not doing anything bad for the country."
The immigration judges who are reviewing his case might allow him to stay. Ly's full of promises _ he'll make sure not to do anything wrong and will pay taxes if he's allowed to work, he says ingratiatingly.
And if he's sent back to his family in Dakar, what will he miss the most?
"Everything," he says, a wistful smile spreading over his face.
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http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/0420mettorch.html
3 buses used in immigration rally burned
By TERESA BORDEN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/20/06
Three buses from a company that provided free transportation to marchers at an April 10 immigrant rally burned early Wednesday while they were parked in Doraville.
Carlos Ochoa, owner of Royal Bus Lines, would not speculate on whether the fires had anything to do with his support of the rally in Atlanta.
"I would not want to believe that this happened because of the march," said Ochoa, who offered six of his 16 buses for the rally, part of a nationwide protest for broad immigration reform. "But looking at the buses like this makes me feel sad."
Across the country, some workers who attended marches in Chicago, Detroit and Houston have been fired for unexcused absences from work. In Houston and Los Angeles, as well as in Florida, students were suspended or cited for walking out of school to support immigrant protests.
The cause of the Doraville fire had not been determined Wednesday, said Capt. Eric Jackson of the DeKalb County Fire and Rescue Department. Capt. C.D. Atkinson of the Doraville Police Department said he had seen no indication of any other possible crimes at the scene.
Ochoa said Royal employees told him the fire occurred between 12:45 a.m. and 1 a.m. Two of the employees, drivers Miguel Tercero and Efrain Menjivar, live across the street from the Church Street parking lot where the buses are kept.
Tercero said Menjivar's stepson heard an explosion and went out to see what was happening. Police and firefighters were already on the scene.
"It is a very difficult and hard thing; it makes you wonder what is happening," said Tercero, a 54-year-old naturalized citizen from Honduras. "It gives me such sadness to see there are people who can do things like this."
The burned 20-passenger buses — which amounted to a loss of about $120,000, plus earnings of $300 per bus each day they are idle — belonged to Cesar Tejada, one of about seven subcontractors and owner-operators who work for Ochoa's local transportation service.
Tejada said he feels targeted, especially because a similar bus-burning occurred last July in the same location.
Venus Gines, president of Dia de la Mujer Latina, an Atlanta organization that conducts health screenings and fairs on women's health issues, said she expects attacks against immigrants to ramp up as the national debate over immigration boils over.
Gines said her organization's mobile unit was vandalized last September. The perpetrators took nothing from the van except the tires and wheels, and "left a message for us saying they're going to keep us where they need us," she said.
Since then, Gines said, the group's Atlanta office has had two attempted break-ins, including one this week.
Ochoa, a naturalized citizen from Colombia, said he will not back down from supporting the goals of immigrants.
— Staff writer David Simpson contributed to this article.
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http://www.mundohispanico.com/locales/content/locales/articulos/articulo5.html
Tres autobuses incendiados en Doraville
Linda Carolina Pérez/ MH
lperez@mundohispanico.com
Linda C. Pérez / MH
Los tres autobuses, que se calcula valen unos 120.000 dólares, quedaron totalmente inservibles tras el incendio.
Tres autobuses al servicio de la compañía Royal Bus Lines quedaron totalmente destruidos como consecuencia de un incendio.
El incidente sucedió en la madrugada del miércoles 19 de abril, en un estacionamiento en la ciudad de Doraville, dijo Carlos Ochoa, propietario de la compañía de transporte.
"Los conductores están tristes, están desmotivados, pero estas cosas deben darnos más fuerzas para seguir prestando el servicio que estamos dando y no dejarnos caer", dijo Ochoa, de origen colombiano.
Al cierre de esta edición el Capitán Eric Jackson, portavoz de los bomberos del condado de DeKalb, informó que aún no habían determinado la causa del incendio.
Los tres autobuses, que estaban debidamente asegurados, eran propiedad de César Tejada, un subcontratista de Ochoa. Uno de los automotores estaba reemplazando otro que había sido incendiado el 9 de julio del año pasado. La investigación de ese incidente determinó que el bus había sido incendiado intencionalmente, pero no se produjo ninguna captura.
"No hay una respuesta de las autoridades. Yo le dije al investigador: 'si ustedes no toman cartas en el asunto, me vuelven a quemar los buses' y ahí está nuevamente. ¿A quién acudo si no es más que a la policía?", expresó indignado Tejada.
Tanto Tejada como Ochoa manifestaron que no han recibido ningún tipo de amenaza.
Ochoa descartó que el incendio fuera consecuencia de su participación en la Marcha por la Dignidad del Inmigrante, el 10 de abril, cuando seis de sus autobuses hicieron recorridos para transportar gratis a quienes participaron en la actividad.
Ochoa estima que cada uno de estos vehículos genera entre 300 y 350 dólares al día y que tres buses nuevos pueden costar unos 120.000 dólares.
"Le pedimos a la comunidad entera que si saben algo, vieron o escucharon algo, por favor que notifiquen a la policía de Doraville", dijo Ochoa.
La compañía de autobuses lleva más de cinco años en el mercado, ofreciendo servicios de transporte, principalmente a los hispanos.
Inicialmente cubría sólo la ruta de Buford Highway y en la primavera del año pasado adicionó un recorrido desde y hacia Sandy Springs.
Antecedentes
Linda C. Pérez / MH
Carlos Ochoa, propietario de Royal Bus Lines, indicó que no ha recibido amenazas ni personales ni contra su empresa.
Royal cuenta con una flota de pequeños buses que pasan cada 10 a 12 minutos durante las horas pico, siete días a la semana, cobrando una tarifa de 1,50 dólares, es decir 25 centavos más barato que MARTA.
En abril del año pasado un conductor de Royal protagonizó un altercado con un chofer del sistema de transporte metropolitano de Atlanta, MARTA, en una parada de autobús que las dos compañías comparten sobre Buford Highway. La disputa se solucionó amistosamente el 22 de abril en la Corte de Magistrados de DeKalb, sin que hubiera necesidad de que un juez intercediera.
Por otro lado, en junio de 2005, varios conductores de Royal organizaron un paro que terminó con la renuncia de uno de ellos, quien acusó a la compañía de malos tratos y precarias condiciones de trabajo.
En su momento Ochoa, propietario de la empresa, explicó cómo funciona la distribución de turnos y aseguró que lo único que procura es que se cumplan las reglas de su compañía.
El 9 de julio de ese mismo año, desconocidos incendiaron un autobús en el mismo estacionamiento de Doraville. En esa ocasión un conductor que vio las llamas, logró salvar otros dos automotores que se encontraban cerca.
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Erik Voss
erik@ICAtlanta.org
404-457-5901 Direct
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