New Orleans suit over H-2B guest workers

The Wall Street Journal (link not available) reported on a suit against Decatur Hotels, the largest pre-Katrina hotel firm in the City, alleging unfair and illegal exploitation of workers it had recruited to work.
The problems we hear about labor shortages in New Orleans and the Katrina cleanup are consistent with most post-disaster recoveries of large size. I have posted several times before about worker injury and work rights among cleanup workers for Katrina. One of the studies was by The New Orleans Workers Justice Coalition.

The lawsuit filed yesterday in federal court in Louisiana against closely held Decatur Hotels and Chief Executive F. Patrick Quinn III touches on the hot-button issue of finding workers for the Gulf Coast region following last year’s devastating Hurricane Katrina. That debate centers on whether companies are hiring foreign workers, mainly Latino migrants, because they are cheaper or because there is a dearth of U.S. residents available to take blue-collar jobs. Many illegal immigrants, mainly from Latin America, have been flocking to New Orleans to do cleanup work.

The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, involves an unusual move by Decatur to recruit foreign workers under a government program, known as the H-2B guest-worker program. To qualify for the program, employers must prove to the government that they cannot find U.S. residents to fill the jobs in question. The program is designed to hire foreign workers to do temporary work in nonagricultural areas, often on a seasonal basis.

Several other companies in the region have also hired foreign workers under the guest-worker scheme after winning approval from the Labor Department, according to worker-rights organizations. About 300 foreign workers are believed to have been hired early this year by Decatur to do housekeeping, maintenance and other work at its properties, according to officials at the National Immigration Law Center, a Washington-based advocacy group involved in the case. In the lawsuit, 82 workers from Bolivia, Peru and the Dominican Republic allege that Decatur and Mr. Quinn violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to reimburse them for fees paid to labor recruiters working as agents of the hotel chain abroad, as well as travel expenses and visa fees adding up to as much as $5,000. The lawsuit says Decatur should have made those payments in their first week of work to comply with labor law. The lawsuit further states that the company exploited the workers’ indebtedness and lack of familiarity with U.S. laws to violate their legal rights.

Continue reading New Orleans suit over H-2B guest workers

Why the Basic Pilot program is a failure

Earlier this month, James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, took apart the basic Pilot Program, created in 1996, as an ineffective tool to confirm legal status of workers. He proposed instead that Homeland Security be given access to IRS taxpayer files, which he says will nab employers that persistently hire illegals because it will more accurately determine fake and borrowed social security numbers. I am posting here to address the critique of the Basic Pilot Program.
The program works voluntarily by employers setting up an account with the Social Security Administration. The employer enters online the SSN number a new employee has given it. If the feds come back with a report of no match, then the employers needs to either get better proof from the worker or fire the worker.
The author notes that 10% of all submissions create mismatches. I contend that any verification program—whether to catch illegal workers, catch student truancy or confirm theater reservations – with an exception rate of 10% and is shot full of ambivalent motivations will never succeed on a big scale.
He contends:
Essentially, Basic Pilot could not and cannot identify imposters or stop unauthorized workers from creating false documentation, nor can it hinder employers from illegally hiring unauthorized workers.
Basic Pilot does not address the prin­cipal means illegal workers use to get jobs. There are many ways an undocumented worker can get around the issue of work authorization. These include:
* using fraudulent documents;
* using information that belongs to another, thereby committing identity theft; and
* being hired by an employer who does not follow the law.
Basic Pilot did not prove efficient at eliminating any of these. Basic Pilot cannot stop undocumented workers from falsifying information or using some­one else’s information, thereby disallowing those legitimate workers whose information was stolen the authorization to work.
The report in full:

Continue reading Why the Basic Pilot program is a failure

U.S. was 12.4% immigrant in 2005, vs. 11.2% in 2000

The New Times reports on the findings of the 2005 American Community Survey. The Survey results confirm what has been discerned already: more immigrants, chief among them Mexicans, and more spread out across the country.

Two decades ago, demographers said, some 75 percent to 80 percent of new immigrants settled in one of the half-dozen gateway states and tended to stay there. Then, in the last 10 to 15 years, the pattern shifted and increasing numbers began to stay in the gateways briefly and then move. Now, they say, the pattern is that more immigrants are simply bypassing the gateways altogether.

The Times reports that the survey is intended as an annual bolster to the bureau’s constitutionally mandated census of the country’s population every 10 years. It began as a test program in 1996 and has gradually expanded to where it can now provide detailed data for nearly 7,000 geographic areas, including all Congressional districts and counties or cities of 65,000 or more.
It goes on:
“What’s happening now is that immigrants are showing up in many more communities all across the country than they have ever been in,” said Audrey Singer, an immigration fellow at the Brookings Institution. “So it’s easy for people to look around and not just see them, but feel the impact they’re having in their communities. And a lot of these are communities that are not accustomed to seeing immigrants in their schools, at the workplace, in their hospitals.”
By far the largest numbers of immigrants continue to live in the six states that have traditionally attracted them: California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois. Immigrants also continue to flow into a handful of states in the Southeast, like Georgia and North Carolina, a trend that was discerned in the 2000 census. But it is in the less-expected immigrant destinations that demographers find the most of interest in the new data. Indiana saw a 34 percent increase in the number of immigrants; South Dakota saw a 44 percent rise; Delaware 32 percent; Missouri 31 percent; Colorado 28 percent; and New Hampshire 26 percent.
“Essentially, it’s a continuation of the Mexicanization of U.S. immigration,” said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies. “You would expect Mexicans to be increasing their share in places like Georgia and North Carolina, which already saw some increases, but they’ve also increased their share of the population, and quite dramatically, in states like Michigan, Delaware and Montana.”
More of America’s immigrants, legal or not, come from Mexico than any other country, an estimated 11 million in 2005, compared with nearly 1.8 million Chinese and 1.4 million Indians.

Pew Hispanic Center: immigration has not hurt American workers

The Washington Post reports on a new study concluding that American workers have not been harmed by immigrant labor. From the summary of the report, below, I’m not sure how much confidence I have in it. A major limitation of all the immigrant impact studies I have seen is that they do not take into account concentration of immigrant labor in industries which may be in fast growth mode and also cyclical. New immigrant labor in a region may depress wages of Americans in some fields and actually stimulate better wages and job growth for Americans in other fields by providing scarce resources of low wage labor. Skilled American construction workers can be said to benefit by the supply of unskilled and semi-skilled immigrant labor.
The article includes these passages:
High levels of immigration in the past 15 years do not appear to have hurt employment opportunities for American workers, according to a new report. The Pew Hispanic Center analyzed immigration state by state using U.S. Census data, evaluating it against unemployment levels. No clear correlation between the two could be found. Other factors, such as economic growth, have likely played a larger role in influencing the American job market, said Rakesh Kochhar, principal author of the report and an economist at the Pew Hispanic Center.
The study used Census Bureau data to compare the influx of immigrants and unemployment rates in each state between 1990 and 2000, a period of robust economic growth, and between 2000 and 2004, a period of slower growth. “We are simply looking for a pattern across 50 states, and we did not find one,” Kochhar said. “We cannot say with certainty that growth in the foreign population has hurt or helped American jobs.”
In the 10 states with the top employment rates from 2000 to 2004, for example, five states showed a high influx of immigrants while the other five showed little growth in the foreign-born population. “Even in relatively slow economic times, a relationship fails to reveal itself,” Kochhar said.
Some economists expressed reservations about the technique yesterday, arguing that such broad statewide data do not give an accurate picture of immigration’s effects on the labor market. “There’s an age, gender and educational component to this story that this report does not address,” said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Between 1990 and 2000, he said, immigrant workers did not take jobs away from American workers “because the strong economy was creating enough jobs to employ everyone who was looking for work.” But in the past five years, a subset of the workforce — native-born men age 16 to 24 with high-school diplomas — have in fact been displaced by immigrants, he said. “We argue that immigrant labor has changed the nature of work in a very negative way,” Sum said.
On the local level, too, some experts disputed the findings of the Pew report. While educated workers with specialized skills are not likely to be displaced by foreign-born workers, young unskilled laborers have felt the pinch in recent years, said Steven A. Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies in the District.
A recent study done by the center shows that the immigrant share of the young workforce in Maryland and Virginia nearly doubled in the past five years, peaking at 22 percent and 15 percent, respectively, in 2005. “Native workers who have little education in Maryland and Virginia are dropping out of the labor markets in droves” as the number of immigrants grows, he said. “Unskilled workers only account for a fraction of the total economic output, but if immigration plays a role in even a part of [the trend], that’s something we should be concerned about.”
The report pointed out that immigrants typically move to booming areas of the country with low unemployment rates. “It’s unclear as to whether immigrant workers help to cause that boom, but they certainly haven’t detracted from it,” said Randy Capps, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute.

ABCs of Immigration – H-2A (agriculture work) visas

By Greg Siskind, from from http://www.visalaw.com
The H-2A temporary agricultural visa is a nonimmigrant visa which allows foreign nationals to enter the U.S. to carry out temporary or seasonal agricultural labor or services. Given estimates that more than half of America’s agricultural workers are undocumented immigrants, the use of the H-2A visa is becoming more and more important.
What are employers required to do to obtain workers on H-2A visas?
Generally, employers must satisfy two criteria to hire nonimmigrant workers when filing an application with the USCIS:
1. The employer must show that able, willing, and qualified US workers are not available at the time and place needed
2. The employer must show that an adverse effect on wages or working conditions of similarly employed US workers will not result from the employment of foreign workers
Who may file an application for an H-2A visa?
• An agricultural company or employer who expect a shortage of U.S. workers needed to perform temporary or seasonal agricultural labor or services
• An authorized agent filing on behalf of an agricultural employer
The employer may be an individual proprietorship, a partnership or a corporation. A collective of agricultural producers may file as either a sole employer, a joint employer with its members, or act as an agent on behalf of its members.
What steps must employers follow to do to obtain workers via the H-2A process?

Continue reading ABCs of Immigration – H-2A (agriculture work) visas

A closer look at Immigration Voice

The Washington Post profiles Immigration Voice and its founder, Aman Kapoor. “Immigration Voice boasts 3,000 members; a fundraising goal of $200,000; and, most notably, a partnership with a high-powered lobbying firm, Quinn Gillespie & Associates LLC. The group’s transformation from an insular circle to a politically active movement offers a window into an alternative immigrant campaign being waged as the Senate this week resumes its work on immigration laws.”

Most members and all the core organizers of Immigration Voice hail from India, though Chinese membership numbers in the hundreds and is on the rise. Most arrived on an international student visa or a visa known as the H-1B, reserved for highly skilled workers who can stay for up to six years — unless an employer sponsors their green cards, which grant immigrants permanent residence in the United States and the right to live and work here freely. Over the past decade, the largest numbers of H-1Bs have been awarded to high-technology workers from India and China.

Many of the members are stuck in green card application purgatory:

About a half-million immigrants are caught in the green-card backlog, some as they wait for Labor Department approval or because quotas have been exceeded. In that time, they cannot be promoted or given substantial pay increases because that would mean a change in job description and salary. They turn to Web sites to compare their wait times with others, and their Internet handles, such as “stucklabor” and “waiting_labor,” exude their frustration.

While the immigrant marchers’ demands have covered a range of issues, including allowing immigrants to gain legal status and eventually citizenship, the members of this association are more narrowly focused: They want Congress to pass measures that would end the years-long wait for a green card. In fact, they warn that efforts to enable millions of illegal immigrants to remain here permanently would result in the same bureaucratic nightmare legal immigrants are now facing.

Another possible cause it has not been active in yet is increasing the number of H-1B visas:

Under a proposal introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the number of employment-based green cards being issued would increase from 140,000 to 290,000. Currently, no one country is supposed to take up more than 7 percent of the allotment, though unused green cards can be redistributed to countries that have already met their quota. That has made possible migrations in excess of 7 percent from nations such as India, China, Mexico and the Philippines. Under the proposal, the per-country cap would be increased to a hard and fast 10 percent. Proponents say this would prevent one country from dominating the category and would retain jobs for native-born Americans.

A profile of one volunteer:

During meetings on Capitol Hill, Maduros and at least one Immigration Voice representative lay out the group’s platform, weaving in the personal stories of members. Shilpa Ghodgaonkar, a Germantown housewife, has become a staple anecdote — and a frequent visitor on the Hill. For four years, she and her husband have been waiting for their green cards. Ghodgaonkar’s husband arrived on an H-1B visa, and she followed as his dependent, unauthorized to work here. To pass the time, she learned to cook. Then she volunteered as a career counselor in Montgomery County. Last year, she earned her MBA from George Washington University. In December, around the time Kapoor sent out his e-mail plea for mass mobilization, Ghodgaonkar had run out of options. “I just couldn’t keep quiet anymore,” Ghodgaonkar said. “I cannot be depressed anymore.”

“Building boom in Mexican town was born in Minnesota”

This Bremerton, WA Kitsap Sun article is about as insightful an analysis of inter-country financial flows from low wage immigrant workers as I have seen. A southern Mexico town of 30,000 is receiving about $2,000 per resident per year in remittances!
By Kevin Diaz, July 12, 2006

A pickup truck with Minnesota plates bounced down the dirt road on the edge of town, raising clouds of reddish dust. It caught the eye of a grazing Brahman bull and disappeared behind a clutch of mango trees bordering a new subdivision, where tangles of steel reinforcing bars sprouted from the roofs of unfinished concrete block houses.

Many of the new houses were paid for with money sent by a secret workforce in Minnesota. By Mayor Leopoldo Rodriguez’s estimate, almost a third of the town’s workers have crossed the border – many of them illegally – and headed north to work in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area over the past 10 years.

The money they wire back arrives daily by police escort in armored trucks. Altogether, it comes to between $4 million and $7 million a month, according to money-transfer agencies in the Twin Cities region. The cash has forged an economic link between Axochiapan and Minneapolis-St. Paul that is part of a global trend. It is changing Axochiapan, one household at a time.

Padre Miguel Franco Galicia, parish priest at the Church of San Pablo in Axochiapan…has visited Minneapolis several times to minister to his expatriate parishioners. He estimates that at least 60 percent of Axochiapan’s population receives money from family members working in the United States, most of them in Minnesota. ‘To be honest, I think there are more pluses than minuses, from an economic point of view,’ he said. ‘But the social devastation is enormous.’

Axochiapan (pronounced Ah-sho-chee-AH-pahn), a town of about 30,000 in southern Mexico, has known little but poverty for centuries. People made a living by farming, or by working in the gypsum mines outside of town. The recent flow of Minnesota money has improved life. Pizza deliveries, aerobics studios and Internet cafes, alongside tortilla shops and taquerias, now serve an increasingly cosmopolitan population.

More below….

Continue reading “Building boom in Mexican town was born in Minnesota”

Immigration Voice, or “Green Card applicants unite!”

Here is an activist organization worthy of the times: Immigrantion Voice I doubt there is another web source of infotmed information about professional working visa problems that is as informative as this site..

Immigration Voice is a non-profit organization (501 (c) (4) pending) working to alleviate the problems faced by legal high-skilled foreign workers in the United States. We act as an interface between this set of immigrants and the legislative and executive branches of the government.

The mission of Immigration Voice is to organize grassroots efforts and resources to solve several problems in the employment based green card process including (a) delays due to Retrogression (visa number unavailability for certain employment-based categories) (b) delays due to USCIS processing backlogs and (c) delays due to Labor Certification backlogs. We will work to remove these and other flaws by supporting changes to immigration law for high-skilled legal employment-based immigrants. High-skilled legal immigrants strengthen the United States’ economy and help maintain American technological superiority.

Under the tag “IV team” you’ll read about the activists in Immigration Voice: talented professionals caught in some small but interminable Kafkaesque nightmare. See this profile:

Aman Kapoor is the co-founder of Immigration Voice and is our liaison with other groups and agencies. Mr. Kapoor has been working in US for the last eight years. The prolonged employment-based immigration process has continued to hurt Mr. Kapoor’s career growth prospects. Mr. Kapoor possesses strong technical skills and has contributed in many high profile projects with large clients across the country. He has a Bachelors’ degree in Engineering and is presently pursuing his MBA in the U.S. His permanent residency application is being processed and the I-485 approval has been pending for more than 28 months. Mr. Kapoor and his family are now on third year EAD and continue to await approval of their Green Card application. Mr. Kapoor’s handle is WaldenPond and his email is aman@immigrationvoice.org

More aggressive enforcement by ICE re: employers

The NY Times is reporting a sharp increase in enforcement activity directed at employerts for hiring illegal workers. “While the old immigration agency brought 25 criminal charges against employers in 2002, this year Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already made 445 criminal arrests of employers, officials said. Some 2,700 immigrant workers were caught up in those operations, and most were deported, the officials said.”

Hiring illegal immigrants “has been a low-risk, high-reward enterprise,” said Brian M. Moskowitz, the agency’s special agent in charge for Ohio and Michigan. “We want to send the message that your cost of business just went up because you risk your livelihood, your corporate reputation and your personal freedom.”

The article deals largely with arrests made relating to a labor contractor, Garcia Labor, “because of a contract it had with ABX Air, a cargo airline that flies express shipments for DHL, with a fleet of 112 airplanes based at its privately owned airport in Wilmington, Ohio. From 1999 to 2005, the indictment charges, Garcia Labor sent more than 1,000 illegal immigrants, mostly Mexicans, to sort freight at ABX Air.”
I previously reported on a highly publicized ICE stricke against IFCO.

A source of practical advice for immigrant professionals

Leslie Kamenshire, a college administrator, began a few years ago to help foreign professionals in the Washington, DC area, to speed up their entry into the American workforce. She started a website, immigrantcareers.com, and published a book, Career Guide and Directory for Immigrant Professionals (Washington Metropolitan Area). She also has run some workshops. I just learned about her work and hope to post about her again soon.
She held a 7/20 workshop at which was directed to health professionals, lawyers, engineers, accountants, etc., and addresses these practical problems:
• how to get needed license or certification in Virginia, DC, Maryland
• who can help you prepare for the licensing exam
• who can evaluate your foreign credentials
• what are employment needs in the Washington area – & perhaps elsewhere
• where can you obtain help to start a small business or high tech venture