House Health Care Bill a Mixed Bag for Immigrants
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
King County, WA setting a good example:
King County OKs 'don't ask' law on immigration
King County will continue providing services to residents without regard to citizenship or immigration status, under an ordinance adopted Monday by a divided County Council.
By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter
King County will continue providing services to residents without regard to citizenship or immigration status, under an ordinance adopted Monday by a divided County Council.
The council voted 5-4 for the law, which sponsor Larry Gossett said is intended to discourage racial profiling and "ratchet down the fear level" when people who are in the country illegally seek public-health services or deal with sheriff's deputies.
The law, which prohibits sheriff's deputies from asking about people's immigration status in most circumstances, continues current practices of the Sheriff's Office and Public Health — Seattle & King County, Gossett said. "The reason we wanted to codify it is in a few years there will be different members on the King County Council and a different executive."
The Metropolitan King County Council passed the ordinance after sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart said the county's "don't ask" policy has assisted law enforcement. "We could not do our job," he said, "if people were afraid to come to us as victims, as witnesses to crimes, if they were afraid that they were going to be deported over it."
Public Health Director David Fleming said, "Denying access to care because of citizenship status is not good medicine and is not cost-effective."
But council member Kathy Lambert said after voting against the ordinance, "We've been doing this since before 1992, so why do we have to put it in code?"
Lambert said she believes the county jails should investigate the citizenship of repeat offenders — something they don't now do.
Craig Keller, of Respect Washington, which advocates local enforcement of immigration laws, told the council, "If you pass this ordinance, you're throwing out a welcome mat to a greater population who are in the country illegally. ... The larger problem is the increasing population of illegal aliens and political corruption that comes with them."
The ordinance was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, the King County Labor Council and other groups.
Voting in favor were Councilmembers Gossett, Dow Constantine, Bob Ferguson, Julia Patterson and Larry Phillips. Lambert, Reagan Dunn, Jane Hague and Pete von Reichbauer voted no.
County Executive Kurt Triplett will sign the law, first proposed by his former boss, then-Executive Ron Sims, said Triplett spokeswoman Natasha Jones.
Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com
Monday, November 9, 2009
U.S. readies plan to ID departing visitors
Program would cover only those foreigners who leave by air
One U.S. program fingerprints and photographs foreign visitors, and a plan in the works would screen them at airports as they left, too. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/associated Press)
Sunday, November 8, 2009
The Department of Homeland Security is finalizing a proposal to collect fingerprints or eye scans from all foreign travelers at U.S. airports as they leave the country, officials said, a costly screening program that airlines have opposed.
The plan, which would take effect within two years, would collect fingerprints at airport security checkpoints, departure gates or terminal kiosks, allowing the government to track when roughly 35 million foreign visitors a year leave the country and who might be overstaying their visas, DHS officials said. The department plans to send the proposal to the White House as soon as next month for review and inclusion in President Obama's next budget.
Some experts and former government officials are skeptical. In a concession to industry, DHS said it probably will drop plans to require airlines to pay for the bulk of the program and is looking to cut costs, which could reach $1 billion to $2 billion over a decade, largely to be paid by taxpayers or foreign travelers. In addition, the program would not operate for now at land borders, where 80 percent of noncitizens enter and leave the country, because fingerprinting travelers there could cost billions more and significantly delay commerce.
The ultimate scope of the system -- how rigorous it is and its final price tag -- will signal how the Obama administration and a Democratic Congress balance expensive post-9/11 security mandates against the nation's financial constraints, analysts and former government officials said. Congress might have to reexamine the value of border controls that a few years ago were deemed critical for security and for curbing illegal immigration but that might be less effective than first thought or carry unpopular economic or diplomatic costs, they added.
Meeting a mandate
"It will be up to Congress to put its money where its mandate is," a senior DHS official said, outlining the plans on the condition of anonymity because Secretary Janet Napolitano has not made a final decision. "The administration and Congress have to decide how they want to implement this in times of budget austerity."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a prominent congressional supporter of the tracking requirement, said she was pleased with DHS's "long overdue" move.
"A biometric exit system is critical to tracking the arrival and departure of foreign nationals -- not just through a paper trail, but through fingerprints, photographs, and other fraud-proof biometric identifiers," Feinstein said in an e-mail statement.
The DHS proposal marks the latest government step to satisfy a 1996 mandate by Congress to automatically track when foreigners enter and exit the country. Independent analysts have estimated that 40 percent of illegal immigrants enter the country legally and overstay their visas.
Congress focused on inbound travelers after the 2001 terrorist attacks -- several of the hijackers held expired visas -- appropriating $3 billion since 2003 on the US-VISIT tracking program. The program collects biological identifiers, such as fingerprints and digital photographs, from all arriving foreigners except Canadians and Mexicans with special border-crossing cards.
In 2004, lawmakers ordered that similar information also be collected from noncitizens upon exit but did not set a deadline.
By the time Bush administration officials unveiled a $3.5 billion program in April 2008, however, political impetus for changes had weakened. Air carriers protested that they had not been consulted and should not bear the bulk of the liability and cost of what they argued was the government's duty to fingerprint travelers. The requirement also bucked industry trends of cutting costs by automating boarding processes and moving passengers away from ticket counters.
DHS officials accused airlines of obstructing the proposal. In the end, industry lobbyists persuaded Congress to delay the plan until tests were completed this year. Industry leaders said they still hope the administration consults them.
"As far along as they are in the process, they haven't spoken a word to trade associations or any of our airlines," said Ken Dunlap, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association, a trade group for 230 carriers.
Costs vs. risks
DHS officials said they are considering ways to hold down costs. Collecting fingerprints at security checkpoints would be cheaper than doing so at the departure gates, but checkpoints could be more prone to fraud by people who leave the airport instead of boarding their flights. Fingerprinting at departure gates, however, would require more workers, DHS officials said.
Such trade-offs raise more basic questions about the purpose of the program. Supporters say that, by collecting fingerprints and other data, officials can instantly check the identity of a foreign visitor leaving the country against security watch lists. It could also help target foreigners who have violated immigration law.
But critics point out that potential terrorists entering the country present a greater concern than those leaving. And, they say, when it comes to immigration violations, the new system would add only a marginal benefit.
DHS says it already can identify noncitizens who leave the country about 93 percent of the time by comparing passenger records of international airliners on arrival and departure. Officials said they think the rest mostly involve people who leave the country by land or whose names are recorded improperly at some point. Of the 200,000 to 400,000 travelers each year who immigration officials estimate overstay their visas, US-VISIT identifies those deemed a higher priority for investigation based on their nationality, age, sex and other biographical factors.
"The idea that there are serious national security risks that we've identified but we haven't pursued because we don't have an exit system is simply not plausible," said Stewart A. Baker, who was DHS undersecretary of policy from 2005 to 2008.
Among the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, the bigger problem is catching those considered a high priority, whether they overstay visas, commit serious crimes, violate deportation orders or pose other threats, Baker said.
The current system of tracking incoming visitors gave immigration officials leads last year on more than 14,000 who potentially presented a high risk, leading to 750 arrests. But the immigration agency office in charge of catching overstayers spent only $42 million on those investigations. Baker said that, before the government spends more to add names to the list of those in the country illegally, it should expand enforcement efforts.
Others noted that an airport-based system can be evaded by people who drive over the border.
"If you're doing this for immigration control purposes, how can you have a complete system without doing land" borders, said Robert C. Bonner, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from 2003 to 2005. "Other than congressional pressure, the question is, why do this?"
The senior DHS official defended the pending proposal. "This would add a level of certainty to the departures of one category of people who came into the U.S. . . . in the air category," the official said, adding, "It is a partial solution and it should never be seen as more than that."
http://ow.ly/APFJ
Immigrants can make important contributions to society, pope says
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- People should not look upon immigrants as problems, but as fellow brothers and sisters who can be valuable contributors to society, Pope Benedict XVI said.
The migration of peoples represents a chance "to highlight the unity of the human family and the value of welcoming, hospitality and love for one's neighbor," he said Nov. 9.
The pope spoke during an audience with participants of the Sixth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees taking place Nov. 9-12 at the Vatican.
The pope underlined the dramatic difficulties many migrants face in their efforts to survive or improve living conditions for themselves and their families.
"The economic crisis, with the enormous growth in unemployment, diminishes the possibilities of employment and increases the number of those who aren't able to find even unsteady work," he said.
The economic divide between industrialized and poor countries continues to grow, he said, and many people have no choice but to leave their homeland in search of a living -- even if it means accepting inhuman working conditions and experiencing great difficulties fitting in someplace new with different language, culture and rules.
Many immigrants today are fleeing "humanly unacceptable" living conditions, but they are not finding "the reception they hoped for elsewhere," said the pope.
Globalization means that working for the common good must extend beyond national borders, he said. True development comes through solidarity, addressing the unequal distribution of the world's resources, "dialogue between cultures and respect for legitimate differences," he said.
The pope said today's phenomenon of world migration can offer that needed opportunity to meet new cultures, foster understanding between peoples, build peace and promote development that benefits all nations.
Christians must be open to listening to the word of God who calls people to imitate Christ in caring for others and to "never be tempted to despise and reject people who are different," he said.
Conforming one's life to Christ's means seeing every man and woman as a brother or sister, children of the one God, he said.
This sense of brotherhood leads to being caring and hospitable toward others, especially those in need, he said.
"Every Christian community that is faithful to Jesus' teachings cannot but feel respect and concern for all people ... especially for those who find themselves in difficulty," he said.
"This is why the church invites all Christians to open their hearts to migrants and their families knowing that they are not just a 'problem,' but are a 'resource'" that can contribute to true development and the good of all people, he said.
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- People should not look upon immigrants as problems, but as fellow brothers and sisters who can be valuable contributors to society, Pope Benedict XVI said.
The migration of peoples represents a chance "to highlight the unity of the human family and the value of welcoming, hospitality and love for one's neighbor," he said Nov. 9.
The pope spoke during an audience with participants of the Sixth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees taking place Nov. 9-12 at the Vatican.
The pope underlined the dramatic difficulties many migrants face in their efforts to survive or improve living conditions for themselves and their families.
"The economic crisis, with the enormous growth in unemployment, diminishes the possibilities of employment and increases the number of those who aren't able to find even unsteady work," he said.
The economic divide between industrialized and poor countries continues to grow, he said, and many people have no choice but to leave their homeland in search of a living -- even if it means accepting inhuman working conditions and experiencing great difficulties fitting in someplace new with different language, culture and rules.
Many immigrants today are fleeing "humanly unacceptable" living conditions, but they are not finding "the reception they hoped for elsewhere," said the pope.
Globalization means that working for the common good must extend beyond national borders, he said. True development comes through solidarity, addressing the unequal distribution of the world's resources, "dialogue between cultures and respect for legitimate differences," he said.
The pope said today's phenomenon of world migration can offer that needed opportunity to meet new cultures, foster understanding between peoples, build peace and promote development that benefits all nations.
Christians must be open to listening to the word of God who calls people to imitate Christ in caring for others and to "never be tempted to despise and reject people who are different," he said.
Conforming one's life to Christ's means seeing every man and woman as a brother or sister, children of the one God, he said.
This sense of brotherhood leads to being caring and hospitable toward others, especially those in need, he said.
"Every Christian community that is faithful to Jesus' teachings cannot but feel respect and concern for all people ... especially for those who find themselves in difficulty," he said.
"This is why the church invites all Christians to open their hearts to migrants and their families knowing that they are not just a 'problem,' but are a 'resource'" that can contribute to true development and the good of all people, he said.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
For immigrants, illness can bring a death sentence
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While outside the prison gates the nation debates whether to overhaul the health care system with a public option, detained immigrants have no option at all. They cannot bring their own doctors to jail or get their own medication, even if they are willing to pay for them. If immigrants become sick in detention, they must rely on a system that has failed time and again to respond to even the most urgent medical needs.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts makes money on locking up immigrants. The Suffolk County jail, which can hold approximately 275 immigration detainees on any given day, receives $90 per detainee per day from the federal government. One alternative to detention - a GPS monitoring ankle device - costs about $12 a day.
As the lead investigator of a recent 18-month ACLU study of detention conditions in Massachusetts, I saw firsthand the systemic denial of medical care at the nine immigration detention sites - and the fear of retaliation for speaking up about problems.
I repeatedly requested and was denied access to reports filed with the government by lawyers from American Bar Association, who had permission to visit detainees at Suffolk and other county jails in Massachusetts. For years, the Bush administration kept these ABA reports a secret. Recently, however, the Obama administration made them public, and the ABA’s findings directly confirm that detained immigrants are often ignored or face excessively long waits to be seen by a doctor. Some reported that they waited months to be seen by medical personnel, while often growing sicker.
I was surprised to learn that detainees had written a letter to the Bar Association on the day Vincent Murphy died, alleging that he had died from a lack of medical care. They said he was “was coughing blood when he arrived, and detainees notified facility staff of his illness, but staff was ‘not willing to listen.’ ’’
Both the American Bar Association and the ACLU found that detainees fear retaliation if they dare to speak up at Suffolk County jail. Such fear is “at a level that the ABA has not encountered in the nearly five years that we have been visiting detention facilities.’’ ABA lawyers reported such difficulty finding detainees who would speak with them about conditions at Suffolk that they ended up talking to only two detainees, both of whom were so agitated and emotional with fear during their interviews that one of them “held his hands together to try to control his shaking.’’
Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security, recently announced plans to improve the immigration detention system. The deaths of two immigrants in Boston serve as a tragic reminder that the need for change is urgent and that the stakes are literally a matter of life and death.
Laura Rótolo is a staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts and author of the recent ACLU report “Detention and Deportation in the Age of ICE.’’
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Immigrant Jail Tests U.S. View of Legal Access
A startling petition arrived at the New York City Bar Association in October 2008, signed by 100 men, all locked up without criminal charges in the middle of Manhattan.
In vivid if flawed English, it described cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day.
The petitioners were among 250 detainees imprisoned in an immigration jail that few New Yorkers know exists. Above a post office, on the fourth floor of a federal office building in Greenwich Village, the Varick Street Detention Facility takes in 11,000 men a year, most of them longtime New Yorkers facing deportation without a lawyer.
Galvanized by the petition, the bar association sent volunteers into the jail to offer legal counsel to detainees — a strategy the Obama administration has embraced as it tries to fix the entire detention system.
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement considers the access to legal services at Varick Street as a good model,” said Sean Smith, a spokesman for Janet Napolitano, secretary of homeland security, who oversees immigration enforcement.
But the lawyers doing the work have reached a different conclusion, after finding that most detainees with a legal claim to stay in the United States are routinely transferred to more remote jails before they can be helped. The lawyers say their effort has laid bare the fundamental unfairness of a system where immigrant detainees, unlike criminal defendants, can be held without legal representation and moved from state to state without notice.
In a report to be issued on Monday, the association’s City Bar Justice Center is calling for all immigrant detainees to be provided with counsel. And an article to be published this month in The Fordham Law Review treats the Varick jail as a case study in the systemic barriers to legal representation.
The new focus on Varick highlights the conflict between two forces: the administration’s plans to revamp detention, and current policies that feed the flow of detainees through the system as it is now. A disjointed mix of county jails and privately run prisons, where mistreatment and medical neglect have been widely documented, the detention network churns roughly 400,000 detainees through 32,000 beds each year.
“Any attempt to get support or services for them is stymied because you don’t know where they’re going to end up,” said Lynn M. Kelly, the director of the Justice Center.
When she asked that the lawyers’ letters of legal advice be forwarded to detainees who had been transferred from Varick, she said the warden balked, saying he had to consider the financial interests of his private shareholders: 1,200 members of a central Alaskan tribe whose dividends are linked to Varick’s profits under a $79 million, three-year federal contract.
Federal officials would not discuss their transfer policies, but asked for patience as they try to make the detention system more humane and cost-effective.
“We inherited an inadequate detention system from the previous administration that does not meet ICE’s current priorities or needs,” said Matthew Chandler, a Homeland Security spokesman. Officials say they are committed to a complete overhaul, including less-penal detention centers with better access to lawyers.
The volunteer lawyers and the petition’s author, an ailing refugee from torture in Romania who spent eight months inside Varick, say many problems persist there, though the added scrutiny has led to improvements. Detainees who want a Gideon Bible no longer have to pay the commissary $7. Immigration officials are more responsive when a lawyer complains that a detainee in pain is not getting treatment.
But most detainees do not have a lawyer, and the few who do include men who have fallen prey to incompetent or fraudulent practitioners. Recurrent complaints include frigid temperatures, mildew and meals that leave detainees hungry and willing to clean for $1 a day to pay for commissary food. That wage is specified in the contract with the Alaskan company, which budgeted 23,000 days of such work the first year, and collects a daily rate of $227.68 for each detainee.
The Alaska connection is one of the stranger twists in the jail’s fitful history. Opened as a federal immigration detention center in 1984, Varick became chronically overcrowded after 1998, when new laws mandated the detention of all noncitizens who had ever committed a crime on a list of deportable offenses, expanded to include misdemeanors like drug possession.
A Dominican man there died of untreated pneumonia in 1999 — the first reported death in the nationwide detention system, which now counts 106 since October 2003.
The Varick facility, which is on the corner of Houston Street, fell short of national detention standards adopted in 2000, because it lacks any outdoor recreation space. But under a grandfather clause, it was allowed to remain open until 9/11, when the terror attack, blocks away, forced its evacuation. For years, it was shuttered. It quietly reopened in February 2008, operated by Ahtna Technical Services Inc., a subsidiary of Ahtna Inc. — still with no access to fresh air.
As an Alaska Native corporation, Ahtna has won numerous federal contracts without having to compete with other companies; last year it paid its tribal shareholders about $500 each in dividends. It hires a Texas subcontractor to supply guards and transportation, along with the shackles and belly chains routinely used on detainees being moved in or out.
Varick’s population includes illegal immigrants, asylum-seekers and legal immigrants who face deportation because they have past criminal convictions. Almost half of those screened by the volunteer lawyers have already been in detention for four to six months, according to the bar association report, and nearly 40 percent have legal grounds to contest deportation.
A few, the report says, have a possible claim to citizenship, which would make their detention unlawful. But the volunteers, including lawyers from 16 corporate firms, say they can offer only rudimentary legal triage to a handful of detainees a week.
The Department of Justice is asking Congress for money to expand the law project, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement invites Washington officials to visit the weekly triage sessions. The agency allowed a reporter to observe a session, but not to tour the jail. On a recent Thursday, only 11 of 35 detainees who had signed up made it into one of five glassed-in booths where they could consult with pairs of legal volunteers.
One, a 25-year-old Mexican, had been delivering food for an Italian restaurant on Madison Avenue until his detention. After a week in Varick, the government had not served him with a “notice to appear” telling why he was detained and setting the date and place where he would be heard by an immigration judge.
Volunteers were researching his case a week later when he was transferred to Atlanta. It could just as easily have been Louisiana or Texas, far from any free legal help, said Maria Navarro, a Legal Aid lawyer who supervises the volunteers. Even in cities, she said, lawyers are reluctant to represent detainees who may be suddenly moved far away.
Another 25-year-old, who had come to New York as a legal immigrant from Belize at age 2, told lawyers he had worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken to support his 5-year-old daughter, a citizen, when his sickle-cell anemia permitted. After a standing huddle, the lawyers told him that because his notice listed old convictions for possession of marijuana, he was ineligible for release on bond or with an electronic monitoring bracelet.
A Haitian, who had served time for at least one drug-related offense, had a lawyer but wanted a second opinion after being held in Varick for 16 months. He described himself as a barber, interpreter and legal resident of Brooklyn for 23 years.
“It is double jeopardy,” he protested, nursing a swollen jaw with teeth missing. “I become a diabetic here, because of anxiety, stress and suicidal conditions.”
Yet a detainee from the former Soviet Union praised the jail. “Varick is heaven” compared with some county jails in New Jersey (Bergen and Monmouth) and Florida, he said, citing abuse by anti-immigrant guards.
A century-long line of Supreme Court decisions holds that immigration detention is not a punishment or deprivation of liberty, and does not require legal counsel for fundamental fairness.
But Daniel I. Miller, 39, the Romanian whose petition reached the bar association, said his own case showed how high the stakes can be. Mr. Miller, a chef, fled his native land in 1994 after the secret police mutilated him for advocating gay rights. In New York, he had already been paroled for a criminal conviction — for signing his partner’s name on a contract — when immigration authorities detained him.
To no avail, records show, his lawyer and an outraged doctor at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan urged his release from Varick for treatment of tumors on his liver. Instead, he was transferred in April to the Orange County Jail in Goshen, N.Y., where he said he also circulated a petition. The authorities there accused him of trying to start a riot and sent him to segregation with a murder defendant.
“These people have no rules, that’s the main problem,” Mr. Miller said, speaking from the Midtown office where he is starting an organic catering business. He credits his lawyer, Howard Brill, for that turnaround: On Sept. 2, after almost a year in custody, an immigration judge granted him the right to stay in the United States.http://bit.ly/39MfhF
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