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1. Admin presses for E-Verify
2. USCIS suffering shortfall
3. Astronaut supports amnesty
4. CA judge clears sanctuary suit
5. Activists escalate debate

1.
Obama aide clashes with immigrant groups
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times, September 15, 2009

President Obama's new director of Citizenship and Immigration Services on Monday defended the accuracy of E-Verify, the government's electronic verification system for workers, putting himself at odds with immigrant rights groups that have been strong supporters of the president.

Expanding E-Verify is one of several immigrant enforcement moves the Obama administration has made that have caused alarm among rights and immigrant advocates. Those groups had hoped Mr. Obama would move early to overhaul the nation's immigration laws and give the nation's illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

But Alejandro Mayorkas, who was sworn in last month as director of USCIS, said the agency is continuing to improve the system and get it ready in case Congress mandates it for all U.S. businesses as part of an eventual immigration overhaul. The Obama administration has expanded use of the system, which matches workers' Social Security numbers against a database to determine whether they are eligible to work.

"The error rate is, as I understand it, smaller than it's ever been," Mr. Mayorkas said, adding that he takes the remaining errors very seriously. "I understand that a small error rate can still mean a good number of people are impacted, and so we are working every day. I am personally involved in the improvement of that error rate."

Early studies showed that about 0.5 percent of workers whose names were submitted to E-Verify were initially deemed ineligible but later found to be eligible - often because the worker's name or immigrant status had changed but the Social Security Administration had not been informed of the change.

"It seems that E-Verify has a kind of momentum that's undeniable at this point," said Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that calls for stricter immigration limits. He said E-Verify has passed vetting by federal courts and said if the federal government doesn't push to expand its use, states will.
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http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/15/obama-aide-calls-e-verify-re...

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2.
Immigration fee hikes not providing more revenue
By Suzanne Gamboa
The Associated Press, September 14, 2009

Washington, DC (AP) -- The government has collected hundreds of millions of dollars less than it thought it would from fee increases imposed two years ago on applications for citizenship and other immigration-related services.

The increases were supposed to generate an additional $1 billion in revenue for Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Homeland Security Department. Based on that, the agency predicted it would collect $2.33 billion in fees in this fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, but is expecting to come up about $282 million short of that prediction.

Agency officials blamed the shortfall on an overall drop in immigration-related applications being filed, possibly as a result of the ongoing economic slump. The agency has twice adjusted its estimated number of applications and the amount of revenue they would bring in. Immigration officials also are cutting back on some spending, looking to Congress for some relief, and is studying the fee structure as required every two years.

"Given the current economic climate, we anticipate that the current filing trend will continue. We will therefore continue to make the necessary adjustments while remaining dedicated to delivering on our public service mission," Alejandro Mayorkas, who took over as the agency's director in August, told The Associated Press on Monday.

The House Appropriations Committee also said immigration application filings are expected to remain down in 2010, and the agency's costs will far exceed fee revenue. A report attached to the 2010 Homeland Security appropriations bill said lawmakers "cannot, in good conscience," allow CIS to spend beyond its projected revenue from the fees.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jC8_JFggjWzK1fjGK2Nawe...

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3.
US astronaut says legalize undocumented Mexicans
By Julie Watson
The Associated Press, September 14, 2009

Mexico (AP) -- Spaceman Jose Hernandez said Monday the United States needs to legalize its undocumented immigrants — a rare, public stand for a U.S. astronaut on a political, hot-button issue.

Mexicans have hung on every word of NASA's first astronaut to tweet in Spanish — as Astro_Jose — since the son of migrants embarked on his two week, 5.7-million-mile mission to the international space station that ended Friday.

And they're still listening to him now that he is back on Earth.

During a telephone interview with Mexico's Televisa network, Hernandez pushed for U.S. immigration reform — a key issue for Mexico that has been stalled in Washington amid fierce debate.

"The American economy needs them," said Hernandez, 47, a California native who toiled in the cucumber, sugar beet and tomato fields alongside his Mexican-born parents. "I believe it's only fair to find a way to legalize them and give them an opportunity to work openly, so they can also retire in a traditional U.S. system."

NASA spokesman James Hartsfield told The Associated Press that Hernandez was expressing his personal views, "not representing NASA, the astronaut office or any NASA organization in his responses."
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jSeGTaesvTO4YrHzYV0ID8...

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4.
Judge lets victims' kin sue S.F. over sanctuary
By Bob Egelko
The San Francisco Chronicle, September 15, 2009

San Francisco -- The family of a father and two sons who were slain in San Francisco last year can go to state court with a claim that the city is to blame for failing to turn their alleged killer over to immigration authorities when he was arrested earlier as a juvenile, a federal judge has ruled.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera had asked U.S. District Judge Susan Illston to rule on the claim herself after dismissing the rest of the suit last month by Tony Bologna's widow and daughter. But Illston said Friday that the remainder of the family's case - that the city's negligence caused the killings - belongs in Superior Court because it is based on state law and challenges San Francisco's policies.

Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were shot to death near their home in the Excelsior district in June 2008. Edwin Ramos, 22, is charged with murdering them.

Ramos, a native of El Salvador whom prosecutors describe as a member of the MS-13 gang, was arrested twice as a juvenile, for an assault in October 2003 and an attempted purse-snatching in April 2004. Juvenile courts sent him to a shelter after the first incident and to the city-run Log Cabin Ranch in the Peninsula hills after the second.

Case records don't show whether police or juvenile courts knew that Ramos had entered the United States illegally. But under juvenile authorities' interpretation of the city's sanctuary policy at the time, they would not have passed that information along to federal immigration officials. Federal authorities learned of Ramos' status later but did not take him into custody for deportation proceedings.

The family's lawsuit says the city was responsible for the shootings because its policy allowed Ramos to go free.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/15/BAC519N0BR.DTL

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5.
Immigration, Health Debates Cross Paths
Activists on Both Sides Step Up Efforts
By Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post, September 15, 2009

As Congress's debate over health-care legislation lumbers toward a defining test for the Obama presidency, partisans on both sides of another issue -- immigration -- escalated their own proxy war this week, concluding that the fates of the two issues have become politically linked.

Trying to beat back a furor over whether President Obama's centerpiece initiative would subsidize health care for illegal immigrants, liberal supporters of an immigration overhaul on Monday called a main proponent of that claim a "hate group," citing its founder's ties to white supremacists and interest in racist ideas, such as eugenics.

The counterattack comes as opponents of illegal immigration plan a Capitol Hill lobbying push, starting when 47 conservative radio hosts hold a "town hall of the airwaves" in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday to highlight the costs of illegal immigration.

Strategists on both sides said the clash underscores how Republican activists have stirred populist anxiety against not only Obama's health-care effort but also other parts of his agenda, and how core Democratic groups have concluded that it is time to return fire.

In an ad published in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and a teleconference with reporters, America's Voice, an umbrella group of immigrant advocacy organizations, accused the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a prime lobby for reduced immigration, of leading xenophobic efforts to lower the number of Hispanic people in the United States.

Allies of America's Voice, including leaders of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group, and Media Matters, a news watchdog group, alleged that FAIR and related organizations play on nativist, racially charged fears to drown out debate.

"The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is designated a HATE GROUP by the Southern Poverty Law Center," the ad reads, citing a December 2007 listing by an independent group based in Montgomery, Ala., that monitors racist organizations. "Extremist groups, like FAIR, shouldn't write immigration policy," the ad concludes.

Dan Stein, president of FAIR, called attacks on the group's founder, John Tanton, false and outdated.

"Saying something that's not true or telling a lie 50 times doesn't make it more true than the first," Stein said, noting that the SPLC began its attacks earlier this decade. "They've decided to engage in unsubstantiated, invidious name-calling, smearing millions of people in this movement who simply want to see the law enforced and, frankly, lower levels of immigration," Stein said.

Ongoing Attacks

Supporters of immigration reform usually stopped short of such blunt attacks when Congress debated the issue in 2006 and 2007.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, said conservative activists have been trying to intimidate Congress by tapping into a thin but vocal vein of populist anger. Sharry acknowledged that the best scenario for a successful legalization push would be "a comeback victory for health-care reform." Obama has said he will turn to immigration next after energy legislation.

"We didn't call them out last time, we thought we were in a political debate. Now we realize it's part political debate and . . . part culture war," Sharry said. "These talk-show guys and FAIR, this isn't about immigration policy, as much as they think there are way too many Latinos in this country and they want to get rid of a couple of million of them."

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank spun off FAIR, said Obama and congressional Democrats have lost credibility in the dispute over health coverage for illegal immigrants and probably were surprised by its intensity.

"Right now there are a lot of members of Congress who might have thought the immigration issue wasn't as hot for opponents as it was a couple of years ago," Krikorian said. "They were disabused of that notion."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/14/AR200909...