Immigration Reform

CINCINNATI - The Rev. Chris Beard is a theological conservative, make no mistake about it. He believes the Bible is the word of God. He believes the Holy Spirit speaks to him directly. He believes, as an article of faith, that abortion and same-sex marriage are wrong. Still, when a group of religious leaders in Ohio held two days of meetings in Cincinnati recently to talk about economic and racial justice, issues usually associated with the political left, there was Beard, a fourth-generation Pentecostal preacher with a disarming smile, a shaved head and a set of convictions that knock holes in the stereotypes about white evangelical Protestants.

DECATUR, Ill. — Wearing a black fleece pullover and blue cargo pants, Howard Buffett loaded his jumpy Slovakian-born German shepherd Bolek into his Ford F-250 Super Duty and radioed his crew that he was on his way. "Beans don't do well in the cold and wet, but I'm going to plant anyway," Buffett said before climbing into the cabin of his John Deere tractor. There he pressed the "resume" button and began planting small, red soybean seeds, 180,000 to the acre. He drove hands-free thanks to a sophisticated onboard global positioning system, which alone cost $20,000.

Few people felt the low turnout at this year's May Day march as acutely as Salvador Ramirez. Ramirez, an illegal immigrant from Jalisco, Mexico, pushed a cart among the few thousand immigrant-rights and labor activists Sunday on Broadway, selling American flags. "It's really bad," said Ramirez, 48, who said he lost his job as an electrician because of his lack of documents and became a street vendor a year and a half ago. About halfway through Sunday's march, Ramirez had sold only about 10 to 15 flags, which he buys for $7.50 a dozen.

Hundreds of Occupy marchers peacefully convened Tuesday evening in Pershing Square, an hour after the May Day protest in downtown Los Angeles took a tense turn. The mood was jovial as about 200 protesters listened to live music and watched performers. Earlier, police clashed with protesters at 4th and Hill streets, causing officers clad in riot gear to swarm the area. A police official said a female officer was struck in the head with a skateboard and taken to a hospital.

Despite entrenched opposition in Congress to immigration reform, President Obama in the State of the Union speech asked both chambers to resurrect the Dream Act, a bill that would create a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants who are college students and military service members. He also encouraged lawmakers to increase the number of visas for highly skilled immigrants, many of whom complete graduate degrees in the U.S. but are not authorized to work here. The U.S. currently awards about 140,000 highly skilled visas per year.

DECATUR, Ill. — Wearing a black fleece pullover and blue cargo pants, Howard Buffett loaded his jumpy Slovakian-born German shepherd Bolek into his Ford F-250 Super Duty and radioed his crew that he was on his way. "Beans don't do well in the cold and wet, but I'm going to plant anyway," Buffett said before climbing into the cabin of his John Deere tractor. There he pressed the "resume" button and began planting small, red soybean seeds, 180,000 to the acre. He drove hands-free thanks to a sophisticated onboard global positioning system, which alone cost $20,000.

When Juan Antonio Sigala was arrested in Puerto Rico by U.S. immigration agents in 1998 and faced deportation, he knew whom to call for help: South Pasadena attorney Enrique Arevalo. Sigala, who had gone to San Juan for an AIDS conference, knew of Arevalo from listening to the lawyer's Spanish-language radio show in Los Angeles that focuses on immigration law.

If any one person embodies the complex politics of immigration reform, it is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. As governor of Arizona in 2007, she signed one of the nation's toughest state immigration laws, the Legal Arizona Workers Act, which imposed harsh penalties on businesses that knowingly employed undocumented workers. Now, as the nation's top immigration official, she will be asked to weigh in on a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of that law. The case comes before the U.S. Supreme Court as Washington once again revives efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

President Obama defended his deportation policies and said Republicans remain an obstacle to overhauling the immigration system so that undocumented immigrants have a pathway to legal status. Speaking to a conference of Latino leaders Monday, Obama said that he and fellow Democrats are working to enact laws that would resolve the status of about 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. But Republicans have been a stubborn barrier, he said. Obama's comments seemed aimed at defusing criticism that he has not done enough to change the nation's immigration laws, a source of rising Latino anger.

Early American wisdom Re "To be a Paine patriot," Opinion, Jan. 30 After decades in which monopolists have been allowed to run riot through our economy, concepts such as the collective good and the public commons are music to my ears. Thomas Paine believed that the chief measure of Americans' patriotism was their willingness to sacrifice in proportion to their means and abilities. A patriot would forgo maximizing profits ? even forgo profits altogether ? if they came at the expense of the soldiery, the poor or the national debt.

It's the economy, brethren. That's the basic idea behind a new campaign launched Wednesday by a progressive faith-based organization to influence the 2012 election. The PICO National Network said it is enlisting clergy nationwide to register voters, get out the vote and spread a message of economic equality. Calling the campaign "Land of Opportunity," PICO said its goal is to sign up 75,000 new voters and reach a total of 1 million people who will support its message and vote for … well, there's the rub. Presumably restricted by IRS rules that prohibit churches and nonprofit organizations from supporting political candidates, PICO isn't supporting anyone in particular, its director of policy, Gordon Whitman, said in a conference call.

ATLANTA -- Mississippi's controversial illegal immigration crackdown bill died in a state Senate committee Tuesday, bucking a trend in Deep South states for more-stringent enforcement efforts. Reportedly still afoot, however, are other legislative maneuvers to get the core elements of the bill onto the desk of recently elected Gov. Phil Bryant, a strong supporter of an Arizona-style immigration law. Pro-immigrant groups say they are not ready to declare victory until the legislative session ends next month.

­The Obama administration is proposing to make it easier for illegal immigrants who are family members of American citizens to apply for legal permanent residency. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security will post for public comment an administrative change intended to reduce the time illegal immigrants would have to spend away from their families while applying for legal status, officials said. The current system requires the applicant to first leave the U.S. to seek a legal visa, but under the proposed change illegal immigrants could claim the time apart from a spouse, child or parent would create “extreme hardship” and allow them to remain in the U.S. as they begin the process.

Despite entrenched opposition in Congress to immigration reform, President Obama in the State of the Union speech asked both chambers to resurrect the Dream Act, a bill that would create a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants who are college students and military service members. He also encouraged lawmakers to increase the number of visas for highly skilled immigrants, many of whom complete graduate degrees in the U.S. but are not authorized to work here. The U.S. currently awards about 140,000 highly skilled visas per year.

Newt Gingrich planned to hold a town hall meeting for Latinos at a Mexican restaurant here Sunday, an odd enough event in New Hampshire, where Latinos are a tiny sliver of the population holding no sway in Tuesday's Republican primary. But then: chaos. Occupy protesters, kicked out of the event, banged drums, rattled the windows and screamed through a bullhorn: "Newt! Newt! Come outside with your hands up and your pants down! We have you surrounded!" Inside, Gingrich was hammered by a voter incensed by a recent statement he made about blacks and food stamps, and he was questioned about his commitment to immigration reform and his stance on corporate influence in politics.

When the Secure Communities program was launched by the federal government in 2008, it was billed as a way to find and deport immigrants with serious criminal convictions. In the three years since then, it has become clear that the program has instead targeted many non-criminals. And recently it was revealed that the program has also managed to ensnare more than 3,000 U.S. citizens as well. Indeed, in a news conference last week, civil rights activists identified four U.S. citizens from Los Angeles who were mistakenly detained under the program.

Comprehensive immigration reform emerged from the shadows last week when Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez of Illinois and a group of Democratic congressmen submitted a 600-page bill to jump-start the process. Many immigration advocates praised the opening salvo in what promises to be an epic battle on the order of healthcare reform -- if lawmakers can just be persuaded to turn their attention to the subject. Although President Obama promised on the campaign trail to shepherd immigration reform through Congress, the nation has been focused throughout 2009 on healthcare and the struggling economy, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and climate change; immigration reform never stood a chance.

Among Republican presidential candidates, it's been demagoguery as usual. Why have a substantive debate when you can exchange inflammatory sound bites instead, especially on immigration? But something surprising happened last week far from the campaign trail — on Capitol Hill, of all places. Just when we thought Congress would never act to address the nation's broken immigration system, members of the House made a critical breakthrough, voting overwhelmingly to approve a fix that will make American companies more competitive and the immigration system fairer and more welcoming.

The threat by six Republican presidential candidates to boycott a Florida debate speaks to a deep divide among Latinos in the United States. And it doesn't bode well for the future of immigration reform, either. The debate was being planned for late January by Univision, the largest Spanish-language television network in the United States (and the fourth-largest network overall in the country). But that was before a blowup between the network and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a Cuban American and one of the country's few prominent Latino Republicans.