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February 28, 2007

White House Pushes Immigration Overhaul

For weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has waged a clandestine charm offensive on behalf of an immigration overhaul. He consulted with supportive lawmakers, listened to adversarial congressmen and slipped into the private offices of wary senators, the only sign of his presence the beefy security men waiting outside.

Today, Chertoff launches a higher-profile effort to win enough votes to pass a comprehensive overhaul when he testifies at the first Capitol Hill hearing on immigration legislation since Democrats took over. NICOLE GAUOETTE in the Los Angeles Times.

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Low Pay and Broken Promises Greet Guest Workers

To a rice farmer from Thailand making $500 a year, the recruiter’s pitch was hard to resist — three years of farm work in North Carolina that would pay more than 30 times as much as he earned at home.

The pitch was so persuasive that the farmer, Worawut Khansamrit, put his farm up as collateral to pay the recruiter $11,000 to become a guest worker. But after he arrived in North Carolina with 30 other Thai workers, he found there was only about a month’s work. He was then taken to New Orleans to remove debris from a hotel damaged by Hurricane Katrina — work he says he was never paid for. This month, he and other Thai workers filed a federal lawsuit asserting that they were victims of illegal trafficking.

Mr. Khansamrit’s tale highlights the abuses that many guest workers face at a time when President Bush and many in Congress are pushing to expand the guest worker program as part of an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws. STEVEN GREENHOUSE in The New York Times.

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Mexico Hopes to Control Migration

President Felipe Calderon hopes to accomplish the sweeping immigration reform Washington has failed to adopt - not just cracking down on the southern border but also creating a guest-worker program and improving conditions for illegal Central American migrants.

Proving that controlled, regulated migration is possible is the immediate political goal of Calderon, who is unveiling the ambitious reforms shortly before President Bush visits Mexico on March 13-14. AP in The Washington Post.

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Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vision Misinterpreted by Affirmative Action Opponents

On a warm August day in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and gave stirring voice to the Civil Rights Movement's most basic aspirations.

Among the many ideas that he outlined in what has become known as his "I Have a Dream" speech was a hopeful vision for a future in which his children could "one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Surely King never dreamed then that his eloquence would one day be turned against initiatives designed to target the kind of political, economic and social injustices that gave rise to the historic movement he helped to lead. Since the 1980s, however, opponents of affirmative action have cloaked their assault on such programs in the potent rhetoric of King's dream. CORNELIUS BYNUM in The Journal and Courier

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Affirmative Action Harming Men on the Job?

In 1993, administrators at Northern Arizona University decided to give some of their professors a raise. Under the school's plan, female and visible minority professors would receive pay-equity raises of up to US$3,000 each. The plan excluded all 192 white male professors.

Eleven years later, an Arizona judge awarded US$1.4-million in back pay and raises to 40 of those male professors who brought a discrimination suit against the university. MITCH MOXLEY in the Edmonton Journal

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February 27, 2007

Prison Reform on the California Horizon?

For the first time in a generation, the prospects for significant prison reform seem tantalizingly at hand.

Last week, after a meeting with the leadership of the state Legislature, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "Everything is on the table."

That included an acknowledgment that the solution will almost inevitably involve releasing inmates who no longer pose a danger to society -- and continue to occupy prison space at huge expense to the taxpayers.

Admittedly, Schwarzenegger's hand was forced by the prospect of a court order that would impose a cap on the prison population, and a court ruling rejecting his plan to transfer inmates to private prisons in other states. Another hurdle has been the Legislature's refusal to endorse his multibillion-dollar scheme to build new prisons and jail facilities throughout the state. ANONYMOUS EDITORIAL in The San Francisco Chronicle

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Affirmative Action Policies in Texas Housing

Houston's affirmative action program -- it was created to stop discrimination but now it's helping the rich get richer. If you think affirmative action was controversial before, wait until you see what a multi-million dollar mess it has become.

Drive south on the bridge to Kemah and look to your right. It's hard not to notice an 11,000 square foot mansion. The property appraises at about $2 million. Do the owners look like they need affirmative action help from Houston's city hall? Well, they got it -- to the tune of $12 million. WAYNE DOLCEFINO in KTRK abc13.com

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Split decision: Deportation redefines families

"Port-au-prince: The couple stood amid the tap-tap buses and trash heaps last June, freshly deported and disbelieving. They had left their two small children in South Florida with relatives, unsure what to tell them, without a proper goodbye. Now, standing on a sun-baked street in Haiti, they realized they lacked money for even a phone call. The father wore his uniform from a Coral Springs gas station, the same clothes he wore 17 days earlier when federal immigration agents came to their Sunrise [Fla.] home."  RUTH MORRIS in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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Justice for construction workers

Abuses in the construction industry against immigrant workers, including underpayment, non-payment, overwork and dangerous conditions, are nothing new.  But workers are fighting back.  RUBEN CASTANEDA in the Washington Post reports on a federal class-action lawsuit filed last week in Maryland, and MYUNG OAK KIM, FERNANDO QUINTERO and LAURA FRANK do some in-depth reporting for the Rocky Mountain News in three pieces, here, here and here.

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February 26, 2007

A New Survey by Montana Police Aims to Reduce Racial Profiling

HELENA - An American Indian lawmaker said he wants police officers to keep track of the skin color of the people they pull over.

It's a way to curb racial profiling in the state, said Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Rocky Boy. Though Montana enacted laws in 2003 preventing police from stopping people based on race, Windy Boy said the problem still exists.

"Until society accepts the fact that racial profile discrimination is in existence in our society today, we'll never get over this hurdle," Windy Boy told the House Judiciary Committee Friday. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS in the Billings Gazette

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The Changing Color of Racial Profiling

10 years ago, when we thought about racial profiling, we would think about the unfair, prejudicial suspicion of people who were caught "driving while black". These days, however, "breathing while brown" appears to be a much more suspicious activity.

Ever since the attacks of 9/11, swarthy Middle-Eastern-looking men are often viewed as potential terrorists by the public and law enforcement alike. Middle Eastern men were responsible for 9/11, the logic goes. Al-Qaeda consists mostly of Middle Eastern men, they say, and so that's who law enforcement and security personnel should look at first. MARY SHAW in Philadelphia Freedom Watch

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Women Ousted From California Co-ed Prison

The Norco prison that houses the state's only coed inmate population has stopped accepting female prisoners and plans to transfer the women already there to make room for more men.

The move reflects both the corrections department's desperation for space in all of its 33 prisons as well as a burgeoning movement to reform the way women are treated in California prisons.

The prison always has had an unprecedented mix of genders because of its intensive drug rehabilitation efforts. Of the prison's roughly 700 female inmates, about 500 are drug addicts sentenced to rehabilitation; the rest are felons. PAIGE AUSTIN from The Press-Enterprise on Fox11AZ News

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Politicians Push Census to Use Prisoners' Last Known Address

As Democrats in the New York State Senate strive to squeak out a long sought-after majority in the upper house of the legislature, they might just get help from tens of thousands of convicts from Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx.

The U.S. Census Bureau counts the state's 71,466 prisoners as "residents" of their cells upstate, inflating the populations of small towns such as Malone, Chateaugay and Dannemora, where the prisons are located.

It's not just an academic problem for data nerds, according to Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts-based nonpartisan research group that has taken the lead in pushing the census bureau to count prisoners at their last known address. That's because all those city people puffing up the populations of small towns in the north add up to an entire extra senate district, and help account for the generation-long Republican hold on the state senate. EILEEN MARKEY in City Limits Weekly.

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Directo a México

Immigrants who wire money get help from the Fed; Directo a México lets customers without Social Security numbers wire money at little cost. Molly Hennessy-Fiske in the Los Angeles Times.

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February 25, 2007

Border Crime Down, Many Fear Immigrants Targeted

Crime in Texas border counties dropped overall in the first year of Gov. Rick Perry's state-led border security operations, but increased in some of the border's most populated and violent regions.

Crime dropped in the 16 Texas-Mexico border counties by 8.2 percent on average between 2005 to 2006, two years of crime report data the El Paso Times analyzed show.

Some lawmakers and civil rights advocates, though, said the decreased crime reporting did not ease their concerns that some local officers are using grant money meant for fighting drug-related and violent crime to target undocumented immigrants. BRANDI GRISSOM and LOUIE GILOT in the El Paso Times.


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Citizen Requests Soar Before Big Changes

Citizenship applications are skyrocketing in Southern California and across the nation, as green card holders rush to avoid a proposed fee increase, a revised civics test and possible changes in immigration law.

Applications filed in Los Angeles and six surrounding counties shot to 18,024 in January from 7,334 in the same month last year, a 146% increase, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Nationwide, the number hit 95,622, up from 53,390, a 79% increase. ANNA GORMAN and JENNIFER DELSON in the Los Angeles Times.

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Race, Politics and a Bridge in South Carolina

A powerful congressman, James E. Clyburn, wants to connect this forlorn central South Carolina community of about 500, across an artificial lake and swamp, to the equally destitute settlement of Lone Star, population 214, using nine miles of bridge and roadway.

The House majority whip has staked his pride and a lifetime’s tempered pugnacity on ending that echo and this hamlet’s isolation with a new bridge. He faces the derision of hunters, environmentalists and much of South Carolina's political establishment, who all see it as a pork-barrel waste of $150 million.

Undergirding Mr. Clyburn’s 10-year fight for what opponents mock as a “bridge from nowhere to nowhere” is the issue of race, the starting point in his four-decade ascent. The potential beneficiaries are mostly poor, rural blacks; the opponents are largely whites. ADAM NOSSITER in The New York Times.


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Time, and Time Served

According to New York State prison statistics, 31,043 parole hearings were held in 2005. One of them was for William R. Phillips, Inmate No. 075-A-0322.

For Mr. Phillips, a veteran former New York City police officer who, well into his 70s, is one of the oldest inmates in the state, parole hearings were a futile routine. For this parole hearing, his fourth and possibly last, Mr. Phillips struck a desperate tone.

Mr. Phillips’s was convicted of a double homicide and the dozens of cases he worked to make as a police offer were thrown out. Despite claims of a frame-up and allegations of prosecutorial misconduct that reached the United States Supreme Court he remains behind bars, serving a sentence of up to life in prison.

But in the next few months, Mr. Phillips, now 76, may win his release in court. A victory in his case could also set a precedent for the state’s most violent felons seeking parole, nearly all of them rejected under former Governor Pataki.

The issue at hand stands at the very core of the prison system: rehabilitation. After three decades behind bars, Mr. Phillips has accomplished virtually everything an inmate can do. 

Still, in the end, Mr. Phillips is routinely denied parole — decisions that spur anger in some judicial quarters.  GEOFFREY GRAY in The New York Times.

 

 

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February 24, 2007

Federal Supervision of Race in Littlerock Schools Ends

The Little Rock School District was released on Friday from federal court supervision of its desegregation efforts, almost 50 years after President Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to enforce an integration order that the Arkansas governor defied.

In a written order, Judge William R. Wilson Jr. of Federal District Court declared the district “unitary.” That meant it had met its obligations under court-ordered remedies to address lingering questions about its commitment to equal opportunity in education.

Judge Wilson said the school board could “now operate the district as it sees fit, answerable to no one” save its students, patrons and voters. STEVE BARNES in The New York Times.

 

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February 23, 2007

17-State Sweep Targets Illegal Hiring

In a sweep across California and 16 other states, federal immigration officials descended on eateries such as the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood on Wednesday and Thursday, arrested almost 200 illegal immigrants working for a janitorial company and filed criminal charges against the firm's top three officials.

Accusing Florida-based Rosenbaum-Cunningham International of building a business around "a ghost workforce that was paid in cash," agents raided establishments in 63 locations — including West Hollywood, Arcadia, Anaheim, Ontario, Orange, Irvine and San Diego.

The arrests are the latest high-profile attempt by the Bush administration to shore up its enforcement credentials as Congress and the White House gear up for another round of debate over the nation's immigration laws that is expected to begin within weeks. NICOLE GAOUETTE and ADAM SHRECK in the Los Angeles Times.

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One Immigrant Family's Hopes Lead to Jail Cell Suicide

It took 20 years of sacrifices and separations for Nery Romero’s parents, immigrants from El Salvador, to obtain legal residency for the whole family in the United States. But Mr. Romero, 22, quickly forfeited his right to stay.

His criminal convictions — for an attempted robbery in 2003, and for breaking into two parked cars to steal stereos in 2005 — were more than enough to make him deportable. So it was not exactly a surprise when his probation officer showed up at his parents’ home in Elmont, on Long Island, on Feb. 8 with a half-dozen immigration agents who took him from the room he shared with his girlfriend and infant daughter.

Mr. Romero was taking a powerful prescription painkiller for an unhealed leg injury, and his girlfriend says the agents took along the medication, assuring her that he would get proper care.

Five days later, he was dead. He hanged himself with his bed sheets in a cell at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey, the authorities said. And they were quick to suggest an explanation.

A closer look, though, reveals a different and more complicated picture of Nery Romero’s short life and unusual death. It raises questions about his treatment in the jail, where the family and other inmates say he spent days crying out for painkillers that he never received. It also shows the long shadow cast by his parents’ immigration: Like so many, they came for the sake of their children, yet disrupted the children’s lives along the way. NINA BERNSTEIN in The New York Times.

 

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February 22, 2007

U.N. Questions Canada Over Racial Discrimination

GENEVA: A United Nations anti-racism panel wants to know if Canada can ensure that it will avoid repeating the mistakes that led to the U.S. deportation of a Syrian-born Canadian to Damascus, where he was tortured and imprisoned for nearly a year.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized last month for Ottawa's role in the ordeal of Maher Arar — one of the best-known cases of so-called "extraordinary rendition" in which the U.S. transfers foreign terror suspects without court approval to third countries for interrogation.

But the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has asked what steps Canada has taken since on new guidelines for information sharing and monitoring of security probes, so that forces "have clear policies and more training on issues of racial, religious and ethnic profiling." ASSOCIATED PRESS in the International Herald Tribune

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Prison Reform Efforts Need to be Strengthened

Shouldn't California's prison reform efforts match its prison overcrowding problem?
Prison overcrowding has been an issue in the state for several years. California's prison system is designed to hold 100,000 inmates but currently houses roughly 175,000, with a good portion sleeping in gyms, on cots in the common areas, or two-to-a-cell that was only designed for one. BYRON WILLIAMS in The Huffington Post

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DNA Lab Slows Investigations

California's crime labs are facing huge delays in processing DNA samples that could help identify the guilty and free the innocent, says a state commission that is recommending emergency funding to hire more technicians.

While the sleuths on ``CSI'' and other TV crime dramas get their lab results in a matter of minutes, the Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice says in real life the process can take six months in California. BRANDON BAILEY in the San Jose Mercury News.

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Troops on Border Help Fuel Drop in Migrant Arrests

Just last year, immigrants from Brazil and countries other than Mexico rarely hired human smugglers — they turned themselves in after crossing the Rio Grande because limited jail space forced agents to give them an appointment with an immigration judge. Few ever showed.

Today, new jail space, a simplified deportation process for so-called OTMs (other than Mexicans), and a border deployment of thousands of National Guard troops is responsible for a 27 percent drop in apprehensions of migrants along the Southwest border over the last four months, Border Patrol officials said. JAMES PINKERTON and SUSAN CARROLL in The Houston Chronicle.

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Detention Facility for Immigrants Criticized

The day Mustafa Elmi turned 3 years old he had to report to his cell three times for headcount. To be able to get one hour of recreation inside a concrete compound sealed off by metal gates and razor wire he had to pin his picture ID to his uniform.

Such routines characterized Mustafa's life, as well as that of his mother, Bahjo Hosen, 26, during their first seven months in the United States, the country to which they fled to escape political persecution in their native Somalia. They ended up in the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, one of the nation's newest detention centers for illegal immigrants that the Department of Homeland Security touts as an "effective and humane alternative" to keep immigrant families together while they await the outcome of immigration court hearings or deportation. SYLVIA MORENO in the Washington Post.

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California Prison Drug Treatment Called Waste of Money

California's $1-billion investment in drug treatment for prisoners since 1989 has been "a complete waste of money," the state's inspector general said Wednesday, and has done nothing to reduce the number of inmates cycling in and out of custody.

One study of the two largest in-prison programs found that recidivism rates for inmates who participated were actually a bit higher than those of a group of convicts who did not receive treatment, Inspector General Matt Cate said. JENIFER WARREN in the Los Angeles Times.

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An Rx to Thin California Prison Population

California's prisons are jammed with thousands of mentally ill inmates who didn't get help before their incarceration and aren't likely to get much while locked up. Not only is that like a chapter out of the Dark Ages, but the high rate of repeat crimes among parolees is costing taxpayers a fortune.

Tomorrow, state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, will introduce a bill that calls for a complete overhaul of mental health care behind bars, with the goal of putting a big dent in both the overcrowding problem and the high recidivism rates. STEVE LOPEZ in the Los Angeles Times.

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2 Groups Compare Immigrant Detention Centers to Prisons

Two advocacy groups for refugees said on Wednesday that the Bush administration routinely detained immigrant families in prisonlike housing that separated young children from their parents and sometimes provided inadequate medical care, food and educational opportunities, despite calls from Congress to house such families in “nonpenal, homelike environments.” RACHEL SWARNS in The New York Times.

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N.Y.U. Student Republicans Mount Jaunty "Immigrant" Hunt

They’re not exactly descending upon Washington Square Park with horse and hound, but members of the College Republican Club of New York University have certainly managed to offend some rather more proletariat sensibilities with their “Find the Illegal Immigrant” challenge, scheduled for today between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
TOM ZELLER in The New York Times Blog

BILL HUTCHINSON in the New York Daily News. 

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February 21, 2007

Muslim Woman's Body Denied Transport Because of Racial Profiling

Racial profiling is common practice at airports and is often used against Arabs traveling to and from Palestine and Israel. Now an Israeli airline is even refusing to carry the corpse of a Muslim woman back to her homeland.

Palestinian media sources reported on Thursday that Israeli El- Al airlines have refused to carry the body of Lamis Jarrar from the USA to her homeland.

Jarrar, a lecturer at the Howard University in Washington, died last Friday. Her relatives wanted her body to be transported to Israel so that she could be buried in her hometown of Akka. However, El Al officials told the relatives they "don't carry the body of a Muslim" and that they would not allow the body to be transferred aboard their one of their planes. POLLY BANGORIAD in IMEMC News

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Affirmative Action Then and Now

Affirmative action and other set-asides for minorities and women have come under increasing fire in recent years. These programs, first started decades ago, were once a given in higher education for everything from admission to financial aid. Today, women and minority students cannot count on the same level assistance from affirmative action that their parents may have received.

The backlash against affirmative action comes largely from the group that feels damaged by these programs--white males. As the standard of living for African Americans in the United States has risen, whites claim that the “leg up” provided by set-aside programs constitutes an unfair advantage. Similarly, white males point out that since women now make up the majority of college students, they can hardly claim discrimination. The critics of affirmative action promote a merit-based system, in which admission and scholarships are awarded to the most worthy, with race or gender not considered at all.  CHRIS DAVIS in Education Training

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California and New York Continue to Battle Prison Overcrowding

New York's Eliot Spitzer, the tough ex-prosecutor turned governor, wants a commission to examine closing some of his state's dozens of prisons. Meanwhile, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pressing for $11 billion in bonds to add 78,000 beds to California's already burgeoning and overtaxed system.

What's going on here? Partly, it's what both men inherited. New York's prison population peaked at 71,000 inmates in 1999 but has dropped by 8,000 since. Major explanations: dropping crime levels (especially in New York City) and increased efforts to find alternative treatment for nonviolent offenders.

California's prison population, meanwhile, has continued to surge. It's now at 173,000 inmates, an $8 billion yearly bill. Overcrowding and threats of riots are so serious that a senior prison official last year warned of "an imminent and substantial threat to the public." NEAL R. PEIRCE in The Houston Chronicle

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February 20, 2007

Lower Voter Turnout Is Seen in States That Require ID

States that imposed identification requirements on voters reduced turnout at the polls in the 2004 presidential election by about 3 percent, and by two to three times as much for minorities, new research suggests.

The study, prepared by scholars at Rutgers and Ohio State Universities for the federal Election Assistance Commission, supports concerns among voting-rights advocates that blacks and Hispanics could be disproportionately affected by ID requirements. But federal officials say more research is needed to draw firmer conclusions about the effects on future elections. CHRISTOPHER DREW in The New York Times.

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Tougher Tactics Deter Migrants at U.S. Border

All along the border, there are signs that the measures the Border Patrol and other federal agencies have taken over the last year, from erecting new barriers to posting 6,000 National Guardsmen as armed sentinels, are beginning to slow the flow of illegal immigrants.

The only available barometer of the decline is how many migrants are caught. In the last four months, the number has dropped 27 percent compared with the same period last year, the biggest drop since a crackdown immediately after 9/11. In two sections around Yuma and near Del Rio, Tex., the numbers have fallen by nearly two-thirds, Homeland Security officials say. JAMES MCKINLEY in The New York Times.

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Supreme Court Split Over Affirmative Action Case

In a split decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the affirmative action policy of Michigan's Law School constitutional, but struck down the school's undergraduate admissions policy which used a point-based system.

In the case against Michigan's Law School, Grutter v. Bollinger, the nation's highest court ruled the system used for admissions was constitutional in a 5-4 vote.

Justice Sandra Day-O'Connor wrote in the majority opinion that the U.S. Constitution "does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS in The State News at Michigan State University

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China Considers Rehabilitation over Prison

The mainland's proposal to reform re- education of minor offenders through labor from a "prison" system into one of "special schools" may not serve its "well-intended" purpose, according to Hong Kong University associate professor of law Fu Hualing.

Re-education through labor, or laojiao, is an administrative measure under which the police are empowered to sentence a person guilty of minor offenses, such as petty theft, prostitution and illegal drug use to a maximum of three years' incarceration CAROL CHUNG in The Standard

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State Inmate Transfer Ruled Illegal

A Superior Court judge ruled today that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acted illegally by declaring an emergency in California's overcrowded prisons and transferring inmates to other states.

The ruling by Judge Gail Ohanesian says the governor violated the Emergency Services Act and the state constitution, and that contracts sending prisoners to lockups in Tennessee and Arizona are illegal.

The judge's order is stayed for 10 days, giving the state time to file an appeal. JENIFER WARREN in the Los Angeles Times.

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University to Retire Its Indian Mascot

The University of Illinois will retire its 81-year-old American Indian mascot, Chief Illiniwek, after the last men’s home basketball game of the season on Wednesday. The N.C.A.A. in 2005 deemed the buckskin-clad mascot an offensive use of American Indian imagery and barred the university from being a host of postseason events. AP in The New York Times.

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Court Backs White House on Detainees

A federal appeals court today upheld the constitutionality of a new law that strips federal courts of the authority to review the cases of foreign prisoners held by the military at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Twice before the United States Supreme Court has ruled that federal courts may consider habeas corpus petitions by the Guantánamo Bay detainees. In response to those decisions, Congress has twice rewritten the law in an attempt to limit the avenues of appeal by the detainees.

The most recent revision to the law, at issue in today’s decision, was signed by President Bush last October. It eliminated the jurisdiction of federal courts over habeas challenges by any non-citizens held as enemy combatants, and set up a military review for the prisoners at Guantánamo, with limited right of appeal to the federal courts afterwards.

By a 2-to-1 vote, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the law, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, did not violate a provision in Article 1 of the Constitution that prevents the government from suspending habeas corpus — the right of a detained person to challenge the legality of the detention — except in “cases of rebellion or invasion.” STEPHEN LABATON in The New York Times.

 

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Justices to Revisit Thorny Issue of Sentencing Guidelines

The Supreme Court returns on Tuesday from a monthlong recess to face a daunting and urgent task: explaining what it meant two years ago when it ruled that the federal sentencing guidelines were to be treated as “advisory,” no longer binding on federal judges.

The decision that dropped that bombshell on the criminal justice system, United States v. Booker, has not penetrated public consciousness in the way that, say, the Miranda decision on the right against self-incrimination did a generation ago. But in its own way, it has been no less revolutionary, creating turmoil in criminal sentencing.

The justices will hear arguments on Tuesday morning in two cases that will provide the latest chapter, although almost certainly not the final one, in the court’s continuing and, to many, profoundly unsettling reappraisal of the roles of juries and judges in criminal sentencing. LINDA GREENHOUSE in The New York Times.

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February 19, 2007

The Privileged Side of Immigration

There are few among the select group who are officially classified as ''aliens of extraordinary ability'' or whose presence is deemed in the national interest.

In 2005, the year for which the most recent statistics are available, only 4,491 extraordinary ability immigrants became permanent residents -- compared to the almost 380,000 ''ordinary'' immigrants who obtained green cards through family or business sponsors.

In the past, the program has been perceived as either too lenient toward undeserving applicants or too strict toward truly talented ones. Today, some immigration experts say, the pendulum has swung toward rigidity. ALFONSO CHARDY in the Miami Herald.

 

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Racial Profiling a Rising Problem in the Downtown San Jose Club Scene

Tensions are rising in downtown San Jose between club owners, cops and the public over alleged racial profiling in and around the area's numerous clubs and bars. By JAMES HOHMANN, RODNEY FOO, MARIAN LIU and LESLIE GRIFFEY in The San Jose Mercury News

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Affirmative Action Methods Questioned in Arizona

 National anti-affirmative action activists are investigating Arizona's higher-education admissions policies, but university officials say they aren't concerned.

 Race is not used in admissions decisions at the University of Arizona, Arizona State University or Northern Arizona University, officials said.

 American Civil Rights Coalition, a California-based organization that is partly responsible for removing race from college-admissions decisions in California and Michigan, is investigating university admissions methods in Arizona and eight other states. The organization plans to announce its findings this month. EUGENE SCOTT in The Arizona Republic

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Immigrants Struggle With Rising Fees

Supporting herself and a 7-year-old son on a preschool teacher's salary in suburban Marin County, one of the nation's priciest housing markets, keeps Russian immigrant Sveta Nikitina on a tight budget.

One expense she can't control is the rising cost of filing the forms she needs to work and travel in the United States while she waits to become a permanent resident.

Those fees have already pushed her careful bookkeeping into the red.

And now her plans -- and those of many other immigrants -- could be pushed out of reach by a proposal to increase the filing fees for more than two dozen forms by an average of 66 percent. The increases are likely to be implemented by summer. AP in The New York Times.

Posted by Amanda Becker at 11:21 AM | | TrackBacks (0)

Nafta Should Have Stopped Illegal Immigration, Right?

The North American Free Trade Agreement, enacted by Congress 14 years ago, held out an alluring promise: the agreement would reduce illegal immigration from Mexico. Mexicans, the argument went, would enjoy the prosperity and employment that the trade agreement would undoubtedly generate — and not feel the need to cross the border into the United States.

But today the number of illegal migrants has only continued to rise. Why didn’t Nafta curb this immigration? The answer is complicated, of course. But a major factor lies in the assumptions made in drafting the trade agreement, assumptions about the way governments would behave (that is, rationally) and the way markets would respond (rationally, as well). LOUIS UCHITELLE in The New York Times.

Posted by Amanda Becker at 11:19 AM | | TrackBacks (0)