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1. Study: Issue helps FL Dems
2. GOP woos Hispanic candidates
3. VA enforcement program lauded
4. Experts debate nature of decline
5. OH group begins campaign

1.
Study: Immigrants help Democrats in Florida
By William Gibson
The South Florida Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), February 19, 2010

More immigration means more voters who tend to support Democratic candidates in Florida and other key electoral states.

This is especially true in South Florida, where the rising immigrant population has helped shove Broward and Miami-Dade counties firmly into the Democratic camp.

These are among the conclusions of a University of Maryland study released on Friday.

“As for Florida, immigration has also steered this once solid Republican state in an increasingly Democratic direction,” wrote James G. Gimpel, professor of government at the University of Maryland. “This was not always the case, of course, as the earliest waves of Cuban immigrants greatly bolstered Republican prospects in South Florida.”

“The old exile politics that helped hawkish Republicans win in South Florida has faded, and the immigration flows have been decidedly less Cuban in origin with time.”

Miami-Dade gave Republican Ronald Reagan 56 percent of the two-party vote in 1980 (setting aside third-party votes.) In 2008, John McCain won just 42 percent of the two-party vote in the county.

“Next door, Broward County was a safe Republican jurisdiction a generation ago,” the study says. “Broward had moved resolutely into the Democratic camp by the turn of the new century, though this development was also facilitated by the retirement migration of elderly Democrats from the Northeast.”

The study was released by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that wants to restrict immigration.

Some advocates for limited immigration say Democrats have a partisan motive to increase quotas and support reforms that would give unauthorized immigrants a path to citizenship.

The study does not connect those dots but makes the point that immigration generally helps Democrats. Click here to see the full report.
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http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/dcblog/2010/02/study_immig...

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2.
GOP's Demographic Wager: Courting Latino Candidates
By Peter Wallsten
The Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2010

Some high-profile Republicans are adopting a softer vocabulary on immigration and trying to recruit more Hispanic candidates, a response to the party's soul-searching about tactics that many strategists believe have alienated the country's fastest-growing voter bloc.

In Texas, George P. Bush, the half Mexican-American son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has founded Hispanic Republicans of Texas, a political action committee to promote Hispanics running for state and local offices.

In California, GOP gubernatorial front-runner Meg Whitman, the former eBay Inc. chief executive officer, tells Hispanics she would have voted against a Republican-backed 1994 measure barring illegal immigrants from receiving social services.

And Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee and an opponent of past efforts to make a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, has been meeting with Hispanic leaders to find a new tone on that and other points of contention between Hispanics and conservatives.

For Republicans, such efforts carry risks, especially as conservative activists try to push GOP candidates to be more ideologically pure. Opposition to "amnesty," a buzzword used by critics of proposals to legalize the 12 million illegal immigrants believed to be living in the U.S., remains a reliable applause line.

Nonetheless, many in the party have concluded that opposition to immigration legislation, a debate that is sometimes racially charged, has alienated millions of otherwise conservative Hispanic voters.

Republicans won just 31% of Hispanic votes in the 2008 presidential election, according to exit polls, down from more than 40% four years earlier, as the party took a hard line on immigration policy. That was a big factor in handing President Barack Obama his Electoral College victory and a seven-point win over Republican Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.). If current demographic and voting trends continue, Hispanics' growing share of the electorate could make Republican electoral college victories a near impossibility as early as 2020.

The Republican efforts could prove crucial in Hispanic-heavy states in this year's elections. Party strategists fear a heavily Democratic Hispanic vote could hurt Republican chances in governors races in Texas, California and Florida, and make it harder for a Republican presidential nominee in the future to win states with fast-growing Hispanic populations.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, who is coordinating some of the party's internal discussions, called the tandem effect of rising Hispanic population and dwindling Republican support an "untenable delta."

Mr. Gillespie blamed the problem on past Republican rhetoric. He said the GOP needed to think about "tone and body language" in discussing the issue. "We have to make clear to Latino voters that we care as much about welcoming legal immigrants into our country as we do about keeping illegal ones out," he said.

Mr. Gillespie and other strategists say the party needs to win more Hispanic voters through economic and social issues. Focus groups in Florida and Nevada conducted by Resurgent Republic, a group co-founded by Mr. Gillespie, found big concerns about debt among Hispanics.

The Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a group set up by Princeton University Professor Robert George, a leading intellectual voice among Christian conservatives, plans to spend at least $500,000 spread over a handful of races to help pro-immigration Republican candidates, according to Alfonso Aguilar, a former Bush administration immigration official who runs the group. A key position for the group, said Mr. Aguilar, is legalizing illegal workers.

Another GOP-affiliated group, the Hispanic Leadership Fund, plans to target three races this year, supporting conservative Hispanic candidates and promoting other Republicans who back more liberal immigration laws.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142405274870379150457507973281597456...

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3.
Questions over drop in migrant population
By Daniel González
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix), February 21, 2010

Arizona has seen the sharpest decline in undocumented population of any state, losing 18 percent, or more than 100,000, of its illegal immigrants in 2008, according to a new government report.

Experts agree that the decrease in Arizona's undocumented immigrant population was fueled by the staggering loss of jobs the state experienced during the recession, and that to lesser extent immigration crackdowns also contributed to the decline.

But the situation does not simply mean a certain number of people have left the country. In any given year, some new illegal immigrants arrive in the U.S. and others leave.

Experts agree that the number of new illegal immigrants entering the country is in decline. But there is disagreement over whether the number of people leaving has increased.

The question is important as the Obama administration and Congress prepare to tackle the divisive issue of comprehensive immigration reform.

If more immigrants than normal have departed, that could boost the argument of those who support more immigration enforcement, such as employer crackdowns. The statistics show illegal immigrants will leave the country, they say, if government makes it harder for them to get work.

But if departures have not increased, the decline is simply because new immigrants aren't coming to replace those who leave. This could aid those who support immigration reform. They say the country's large illegal-immigrant population will remain and must be addressed, because when the economy returns, so will more migrants.

The numbers

Arizona's undocumented immigrant population fell from 560,000 in January 2008 to 460,000 in January 2009, according to newly released estimates by the Department of Homeland Security.

The undocumented population is difficult to count. Most illegal immigrants either entered the country illegally, or stayed after their visas expired. DHS relied on immigration, visa and other data on foreign-born residents from several government agencies to come up with its estimates, including the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the State Department.

No other state in the nation experienced such a large percentage decrease in its undocumented population, according to the report. In Florida and New York, the size of the undocumented population fell by 14 percent, while California's fell by nearly 9 percent.

Nationally, the undocumented immigrant population decreased 7 percent during the same period, from 11.6 million to 10.8 million.

The decline in the undocumented population, both in Arizona and nationally, comes following a huge surge in the illegal immigrant population that had continued for most of a decade.

Between January 2000 and January 2008, Arizona's undocumented population grew 70 percent, according to the DHS report. Nationally, it grew 37 percent.

The reasons

Experts point to two factors for the huge decrease in Arizona's undocumented population: the economy and stepped-up immigration enforcement.

"I don't think it's any big mystery. It's the economy dropping off more than anything else, but I think enforcement also played a role," said Erik Lee, associate director of the North American Center for Transborder Studies, a think tank at Arizona State University.

Arizona had a net loss of 261,000 jobs during the recession, which started in December 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is 9.8 percent of the state's workforce, the second-largest percentage in the U.S. behind Nevada.

Immigrants, both legal and illegal, are largely concentrated in the construction, manufacturing and hospitality industries, which were particularly hard hit. The state's construction industry lost more than 78,000 jobs during the recession, a 37 percent drop, according to data from the Arizona Department of Commerce.

Arizona also has cracked down heavily on illegal immigration. The crackdowns include crime sweeps and jail immigration screenings by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and a statewide employer sanctions law, which took effect in January 2008. The law requires employers to use a federal program to electronically verify whether new employees are legally eligible to work in the U.S. It also has the power to suspend or revoke the business licenses of employers caught knowingly or intentionally hiring illegal workers.

Arizona "has had a very bad job market and it has had a very robust enforcement scene, with the hiring law, and Sheriff Joe," said Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C., that favors reductions in immigration.

At the same time, the federal government has deployed thousands of additional Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border, including hundreds more in Arizona, erected hundreds of miles of fencing and barriers, and deported thousands of illegal immigrants from the U.S.
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/02/21/201002...

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4.
Program that IDs jailed illegal immigrants sought for deportation gets high marks
By N.C. Aizenman
The Washington Post, February 22, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/21/AR201002...

For nearly a year, Fairfax County's Adult Detention Center has quietly helped pilot a far-reaching program designed to identify criminal illegal immigrants and assist the federal government in removing them from the United States.

Although controversy over civil liberties issues has surrounded similar efforts, the Fairfax program, Secure Communities, has had a lower profile. It automatically checks the digital fingerprints of anyone processed at the jail against immigration databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. If someone is found to be an illegal immigrant whom officials want to deport, an officer of DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, calls the jail's booking desk within an hour to place a "detainer" on the person.

Fairfax, which will mark the one-year anniversary of its enrollment next month, was among the first of only 116 jurisdictions nationwide to participate. Prince William County, the District and Prince George's County, which enrolled more recently, are the only other Washington area jurisdictions to sign up. The Obama administration plans to expand the program, which costs about $200 million a year, to all 3,100 local jails nationwide by 2013.

In Fairfax, 619 inmates were targeted for removal in 2009 because of the program. About 474 illegal immigrant inmates were identified by other means, for a total of 1,093 -- a 40 percent increase from 2008, even though the jail's population shrank slightly.

About a third have been deported. The rest are in immigration proceedings or serving their sentences.

ICE officials said it's difficult to attribute all of the increase to Secure Communities. If the program hadn't been in place, they said, they might have mounted other equally effective efforts in the jail.

But Fairfax Sheriff Stan G. Barry, who runs the detention center, gave the program high marks. "It's been absolutely fantastic," he said. "We've been able to identify a lot more individuals who are threats to our community and have them removed."

Officials point to the Fairfax police arrest March 27 of a Belgian man accused of solicitation of prostitution. The Secure Communities check revealed that he was in the country illegally, had encountered local police more than a dozen times under various aliases and had been convicted of crimes that ranged from assault to attempted armed robbery.

It's possible that the man might have been caught even if Fairfax didn't use Secure Communities. Since July 2008, the Virginia legislature has required jail officials to notify immigration authorities of any foreign nationals in their custody.

However, inmates can lie about their citizenship. And in the past, during periods when many inmates were brought through the jail at once, sheriff's deputies often lacked the time and training to take a closer look, Barry said.

"It involved a lot of guesswork," he said. When deputies did call ICE, there was no way to ensure that ICE agents followed up.

The immigration databases that the Secure Communities program taps are not infallible. They list only foreigners who entered the United States on a visa or who were caught trying to sneak in but later released. Those who have never crossed paths with immigration authorities are not singled out -- the same as U.S.-born citizens. But ICE officials can investigate further.

Secure Communities gives federal officials full control over which illegal immigrants are deported. The Obama administration has announced that its priority is to remove those guilty of violent or serious crimes. (Being in the country illegally is a civil violation, not a criminal offense.)

By contrast, under a similar but more controversial program known as 287g, after the legal provision that created it, local jail officials are trained and deputized to determine which inmates are illegal immigrants and to decide whether to pursue deportation. Immigrant advocates worry that this offers local officials who might be prejudiced against immigrants a way to target them.

In Frederick County, one of a handful of Washington area jurisdictions that participate in 287g, Sheriff Charles A. Jenkins said his policy is to target every inmate identified as an illegal immigrant for deportation.

That has amounted to 605 inmates since the jail enrolled in 287g in April 2008, Jenkins said, about 9 percent of the total jail population. Jenkins said that deporting even low-level offenders is beneficial.

"One of the first persons we processed [for deportation] was driving under the influence of alcohol through a school zone during school hours at 30 miles over the speed limit," Jenkins said. "Is he any less of a threat to the community than a [top-level] offender? I would argue no."

Barry said he supports leaving discretion with federal authorities. "In an ideal world of unlimited resources, should we deport everyone who committed an offense? Sure. But we can't deport everyone," he said.

To Barry, who was considering enrolling in 287g when federal officials approached him about Secure Communities, perhaps the strongest argument is financial.

A smaller facility such as Frederick County's detention center can conduct immigration investigations during its regular duties. But Barry estimated that using 287g would have required him to dedicate eight to 15 people at an annual cost of as much as $3 million. Secure Communities is funded entirely by the federal government.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors limits on immigration, said the automated nature of Secure Communities also can help insulate local officials from allegations that they are singling out immigrants through racial profiling -- a concern that has dogged the 287g program.

"There's no judgment call, no decision to make, like: 'Is that a foreign name? Do I run it?' " Vaughan said.
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/02/21/201002...

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5.
Group pushes immigration reform
By Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer, February 19, 2010

Immigration reform activists launched a campaign Friday in Cincinnati to overhaul immigration laws that they say destroy families and hurt the nation's economy.

The effort, dubbed "Reform Immigration for America," is part of a national push for changes that would include granting legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.

"We are calling on Congress to make comprehensive immigration reform, and we want them to make it a priority," said the Rev. Jim Schutte, a Catholic priest in Cincinnati. "Now is the time. We just can't wait any longer."

But opponents of the reform effort say this is the worst possible time to ask Congress to act.

They say the reform campaign is misguided and unlikely to get much traction in Congress because of the brutal political climate and upcoming mid-term elections, which tend to make lawmakers wary of hot-button issues like immigration.

"They're trying to drum up interest in passing amnesty for illegal immigrants," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors tougher enforcement of immigration laws.

"It's not going anywhere," he said. "There's no chance. I'm not even sure why they're bothering at this point." He said the chances for reform were much better in 2006 and 2007, when Congress failed to pass a law despite support from a Republican president and Democrats in Congress.

The pro-reform activists who turned out Friday at the Su Casa Hispanic Center in Cincinnati said they are undaunted by the challenges they face in Congress. They said they are reaching out to lawmakers across the country, including Ohio Sen. George Voinovich, and are urging them to move forward with immigration reform.
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http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100219/NEWS01/2200327/Group+pushes+...