Case of instant local police – ICE data link.

What is interesting about this Chicago case, reported in the Wall Street Journal today, is that the police officer during a routine car stop could, through electronic search, instantly locate information that the driver had a deportation order issued to him in the mid 1990s. He, a Pole, was stopped in 2006 for driving while on his cell phone, which is banned there. Andrezj Derezinski came to the U.S in 1990 on a visa and overstayed, raising a family and starting businesses.
“State and local law-enforcement officers can in many instances determine with a quick computer search or phone call whether a person stopped for a traffic violation or arrested for a crime has violated immigration law. If a match is confirmed, ICE instructs the police officer to detain the person until an agent can take custody. In the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2007, ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center — which operates around the clock handling immigration queries — received a record 728,243 inquiries from local law enforcement, up from only 4,000 in fiscal 1996.”
According to the article, “About 580,000 illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S. are individuals who failed to heed their deportation orders, according to ICE.”. This seems a ridiculously low figure given as there are about 13 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. About half of these are thought to be here, as Derezinski, on a once valid visa.
The article in full:
Visa Violators Swept Up In Widening Dragnet
By MIRIAM JORDAN
April 10, 2008
CHICAGO — Polish native Andrezj “Peter” Derezinski came to the U.S. 18 years ago and was soon living the American dream. The 41-year-old father of three owns two homes, some commercial property and a thriving heating and cooling business here.

Continue reading Case of instant local police – ICE data link.

CT’s strategy to cut down on illegal workers

I have posted often on the tight association of hiring illegal workers with failure to take out workers comp insurance. Now WorkCompCentral, a leading source of information about workers compensation (subscription required) reports how Connecticut regulators are using stop work orders on uninsured job sites in part to crack down on hiring of undocumented workers. “The Connecticut Department of Labor’s use of a six-month-old law that allows investigators to stop work at job sites where workers aren’t covered by workers’ compensation insurance has proven a key tool in running unscrupulous subcontractors out of the state and cracking down on the use of undocumented crews, a top regulator said Thursday…. In some cases, investigators found undocumented workers being paid “off the books” without workers’ compensation insurance. In others, construction companies bought coverage but grossly underestimated the size of their payrolls, he said.”
According to WorkCompCentral, the state legislature decided to use this strategy to crack down on use of illegal labor when other strategies were deemed to be in conflict with federal law.
The report in full:
Gary Pechie, director of Wage and Workplace Standards for the labor agency, said legislation that took effect last Oct. 1 gave his investigators their first role in enforcing insurance laws, and has prompted 10 stop-work orders so far.

Continue reading CT’s strategy to cut down on illegal workers

Immigrants have lower incarceration, crime rates

Do immigrants have higher criminal rates than non-immigrants? Those critical of immigration, in particular the presence of illegal immigrants, often allege that crime rates are higher. Here are some articles which report that if anything the reverse may be truer.
“Incarceration rate lower for immigrants” ran in the San Francisco Chronicle this week. Its two leading sentences are: “Immigrants in California are far less likely to land in prison than their U.S.-born counterparts, a finding that defies the perception that immigration and crime are connected, according to a study released Monday. Foreign-born residents make up 35 percent of the state’s overall population, but only 17 percent of the adult prison population, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, which conducted the research.” I post the entire article below to hyperlinks for other related articles.
Immigrants in California are far less likely to land in prison than their U.S.-born counterparts, a finding that defies the perception that immigration and crime are connected, according to a study released Monday.
Foreign-born residents make up 35 percent of the state’s overall population, but only 17 percent of the adult prison population, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, which conducted the research.
Noncitizen men from Mexico between the ages of 18 and 40, which the study indicated were more likely to be in the country illegally, were eight times less likely to be in a ‘correctional setting,’ the study found.
The study did not address the visa status of those included among the foreign-born, which would include citizens and noncitizens, including those in the country legally and illegally.
Nonetheless, these results have implications for the current debates over immigration policy, said Kristin Butcher, co-author of the report.
‘Our research indicates that limiting immigration, requiring higher educational levels to obtain visas or spending more money to increase penalties against criminal immigrants will have little impact on public safety,’ Butcher said in a statement.
While immigrants often have lower levels of education and higher poverty rates, which are normally associated with higher crimes rates, other factors are probably contributing to the underrepresentation among the foreign-born in state prisons.
Current immigration laws, for example, screen legal immigrants for criminal activity. Also, all noncitizens – including those in the country legally – face deportation for crimes that carry a prison sentence of a year or more.
And those here illegally have incentive to avoid contact with the law, which could lead to detection of their immigration status.
The study acknowledged several factors that could affect the incarceration rates among foreign- and U.S.-born residents, including the possibility that one group might receive more lenient treatment within the criminal justice system or have greater resources to mount a defense.
Also, the deportation of foreign-born criminals also could affect the rates, the study said.
The PPIC report is available online at: http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=776
+++
Study finds immigrants commit less California crime
Reuters, February 26, 2008
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN246261520080226?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true
Report says immigrants commit fewer crimes
The Associated Press, February 25, 2008
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20080225-1503-ca-immigrantcrime.html
California: Study of Immigrants and Crime
By Julia Preston
The New York Times, February 26, 2008

Analysis of the Legal Arizona Workers Act

Late last year, Arizona Republic reporter Ronald J. Hansen has compiled the basics on Arizona’s new employer-sanctions law, which went into effect Jan. 1. The sanctions law, known as the Legal Arizona Workers Act, is intended to ensure that no businesses in Arizona knowingly or intentionally hire or employ illegal immigrants.
The article – Everything you need to know about the new employer-sanctions law:

Continue reading Analysis of the Legal Arizona Workers Act

South Carolina court approves workers comp for illegal immigrant

An insurance newswire reported that the state’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the claimant, Mario Curiel. The court cited prior decisions by North Carolina,
Florida, Georgia, Maryland and Minnesota.
The article:
COLUMBIA, S.C. 01/03/2008 (BestWire)-Illegal immigrants injured at work are entitled to workers’ compensation benefits, the South Carolina Supreme Court said in a ruling.
The court unanimously upheld a decision by the state’s Workers’ Compensation Commission and a lower court ruling that held the worker, Mario B. Curiel, was eligible for benefits because of an eye injury suffered while working on a demolition site.
The employer, Environmental Management Services, argued that because Curiel is a Mexican national who used false documentation to get the job, he was not eligible for benefits under the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
Although South Carolina law specifies workers’ compensation eligibility for any injured worker “including aliens … whether lawfully or unlawfully employed,” the company claimed IRCA’s prohibitions on the use of fraudulent documents to obtain employment superseded the state law.
“To the contrary,” wrote Justice James E. Moore for the court, “disallowing benefits would mean unscrupulous employers could hire undocumented workers without the burden of insuring them, a consequence that would encourage rather than discourage the hiring of illegal workers. We find IRCA does not pre-empt state law and claimant is not precluded from benefits under our Workers’ Compensation Act.”
Moore wrote that the decision was in line with those in other states, and specifically cited a 2002 North Carolina ruling in a similar case because, he said, the states’ workers’ compensation laws are the same. That decision, Ruiz vs. Belk Masonry Co., quoted from the original congressional hearings that IRCA is not intended “to undermine or diminish in any way labor protections in existing law.”
Moore also referenced similar decisions by courts in Florida, Georgia, Maryland and Minnesota.
The appeal also dealt with questions concerning the degree of damage to Curiel’s vision, and ordered the Workers’ Compensation Commission to make a determination.

A case study of identity theft involving illegal immigratns

Searching for a tangled case of identity theft by illegal immigrants? Here is one involving a woman citizen on workers comp whose identity was used by an illegal worker, who at the same time was receiving benefits of a work injury at another employer. This citizen’s husband’s identity also was stolen and that mixed him up with traffic violations incurred by the impersonator. In this article there is an unrelated third story of identity theft involving a woman on disability. The two women’s cases are linked to an employer, Koch Foods, which had hired the illegal workers and who was uncooperative in helping untangle the messes.
The story in full, from the Citizen Tribune of Morristown, TN:
Newport, TN
Newport couple faces taxes on income never earned
BY ROBERT MOORE, Tribune Staff Writer
For Lora and Jamey Costner, a $7,854 federal income tax bill is the painful indigestion that followed two unsatisfying servings of identity theft cooked up by two former Koch Foods employees, records indicate.
The criminal cases involving the Newport married couple and the two illegal immigrants, who IRS records indicate worked for Koch Foods, have been resolved in the court system.
The bitter aftertaste that remains is the unpalatable possibility of having their wages garnished to pay tax bills on income they never earned at the Morristown chicken-processing plant.

Continue reading A case study of identity theft involving illegal immigratns

More on aftermath of December 2006 Swift raids

Thanks to Workers Comp Insider for alerting me to an excellent follow up on the raids. It is in CtW Connect (Courage to Win). Towns in Colorado, Minnesota and Nebraska are reviewed, with lots of hyperlinks. I have included the report in full below:
The ICE Raids: One Year Later
Today marks the one year anniversary of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s (ICE) raids of Swift and Co. meatpacking plants in six cities in Nebraska, Texas, Iowa, Minnesota and Utah. In all, 1,282 Swift employees were arrested.

Continue reading More on aftermath of December 2006 Swift raids

Domestic slavery in America among foreign workers

The New York Times on 12/3 ran a lengthy article about a slavery case now before the court on Long Island. The article refers to a handful of other domestic slavery cases in the U.S. How big is this problem? The article surmises that “5,000 to 7,000 migrant domestic servants take jobs each year in homes where they are highly vulnerable to abuse by their employers…” Thanks to Cathleen Caron of Global Worker Justice for bringing this story to my attention.
The entire story:
From Stand in Long Island Slavery Case, a Snapshot of a Hidden U.S. Problem
By PAUL VITELLO
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y., Nov. 30 — The two tiny Indonesian women know just a handful of English words. They know Windex. Fantastik (the cleanser, not the adjective). They know the words Master and Missus, which they were taught to use in addressing the Long Island couple they served as live-in help for five years in the sylvan North Shore hamlet of Muttontown.
Their employers, Varsha Sabhnani, 35, and her husband, Mahender, 51, naturalized citizens from India, have been on trial in U.S. District Court here for the past month. They are charged with what the federal criminal statutes refer to as involuntary servitude and peonage, or, in the common national parlance since 1865, the crime of keeping slaves.
The two women, the government charged in its indictment, were victims of “modern-day slavery.”

Continue reading Domestic slavery in America among foreign workers

Spitzer waffles on driver licenses for illegal immigrants

The New York Times in an editorial today says that New York Governor Sptizer, who announced plans to issue drivers licenses to qualified illegal immigrants, has retreated, apparently in response to pressure from the Department of Homeland Security. The new plan is very complicated, providing some ID for illegal immigrants but in an attention grabbing way, as the editorial describes:
Governor Spitzer Retreats
Gov. Eliot Spitzer has confronted the most intense public criticism of his political career — and caved. Not so long ago, Mr. Spitzer was doing the right and brave thing, planning to offer driver’s licenses to qualified but undocumented immigrants. The plan was inherently fair and would have made the state and its roads safer. Unfortunately, it also made Mr. Spitzer the target of some very nasty rhetoric from his political opponents, while his allies offered mostly weak-kneed support.

Continue reading Spitzer waffles on driver licenses for illegal immigrants

Driver licenses in New York State

New York State Governor Spitzer has made it official policy to grant driver licenses to anyone, including undocumented residents (of which there may be 750,000, including children). This is a sensible approach. The New York Times reports that “The move drew angry responses from Republicans in the state who charged that the governor was in danger of giving valid state identification cards to potential terrorists.”
Here is the entire text of the Times’ editorial on the matter:
Gov. Eliot Spitzer made a very important if politically hazardous decision yesterday. He decreed that New York State’s Department of Motor Vehicles will award driver’s licenses to those who can prove who they are and pass the tests, not only those in good standing with the federal immigration authorities. That decision is correct for all who use New York’s roads.
Like other governors and mayors, Mr. Spitzer is trying to deal with Washington’s failure to produce a coherent immigration policy that would deal humanely with the 12 million illegal immigrants who have come to America to work, often in the lowliest of jobs. That lack of resolve forced states and sometimes local communities to figure out how to cope with reality — housing, working conditions, all sorts of local problems. Mr. Spitzer’s licensing rules are an attempt to deal with higher accident rates among unlicensed drivers — many of whom flee the scene because they fear immigration authorities.
The new rules would expand the kinds of documents that would be accepted by the state to get a license. A Social Security card would no longer be required if there are enough other documents, like an up-to-date passport, a birth certificate or other items. The governor promised new security measures — such as making sure state officials are trained in verifying foreign documents and using photo comparison technology to make certain one person does not get more than one license.
Mr. Spitzer and his administration argue that licensing more people would not only make the roads safer, it might result in a lowering of New York’s high automobile insurance rates. If that really does happen — and it is worth reminding the governor of this promise — less costly insurance would be another bonus.
The move drew angry responses from Republicans in the state who charged that the governor was in danger of giving valid state identification cards to potential terrorists. That argument is absurd on its face; organized terrorists hardly lack access to forged documents. It also fails to deal with the need to bring more of the state’s immigrant workers out of the shadows so that if they drive — and they will drive — they can do it safely. Also, New York State would have a better idea who many of these residents really are.
With these enlightened changes, New York will join eight other states that do not require applicants for drivers’ licenses to prove their immigration status. Like New York, these states want a drivers license to achieve what it is supposed to do — certify a safe driver.