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"Dry wall contractor Bill Valenzuela said that, as a business owner, he already has a lot of work to do before the end of the year. He must collect money to make payroll and fill out all of the records for the Internal Revenue Service, the city and the county. Having to meet additional state mandates would be a burden, he said. Valenzuela said the legislators who thought up the law have never run a business. "What experience have these people had that are passing these laws in Phoenix?" he asks. "Have they given it a thought? Have they lived it?" "
TED ROBBINS for NPR.
"Daniel is among a growing number of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan youth – many of them minors – running from gangs and seeking asylum in the United States, a noticeable trend that's developed over the past three years, according to attorneys and researchers. Such claims pose new challenges for federal asylum law and are compelling judges to consider the petitioners’ official status as children."
GABRIELA REARDON in City Limits.
Senior NPR correspondent Juan Williams saw a big story in a certain dry statistic earlier this month. As Williams wrote "53 percent of black Americans now agree that 'blacks who can't get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition.'"
Williams was quoting a poll on the attitudes of black Americans released Nov. 13 by Pew Research Center/NPR. African-Americans now seem to agree with a majority of whites that black poverty is a problem of individual responsibility rather than a social issue.
But if virtually everyone believes something, does that then make it true?
JAMES HANNAHAM in SALON.
Next week, Stanley Inc., of Arlington, Va., will take over the job of opening the mail and handling initial processing of citizenship and other applications at U.S. Agency of Citizenship and Immigration Services centers in St. Albans and Laguna Niguel, Calif.
Stanley is planning to use a different job classification system than the current contractor, which will result in a number of employees being paid about 12 percent less than they make now, officials said. AP on CNN.com.
The tension in Cooperstown, North Dakota reflects why the nation's debate over immigration is likely to be such a potent issue in next year's presidential campaign. More than 1,400 miles from the nation's southwestern border and far from the cities where the debate has been most prominent, the conflicts many communities face in dealing with an aging workforce are exposed in North Dakota like the flat prairie landscape after the fall harvest. KATHY KIELY in USA TODAY.
The Times worked from a list of DNA-exonerated prisoners kept by the Innocence Project — widely regarded as the most thorough record of DNA exonerations. The Times then gathered extensive information on 137 of those whose convictions had been overturned, interviewing 115.
The findings show that most of them have struggled to keep jobs, pay for health care, rebuild family ties and shed the psychological effects of years of questionable or wrongful imprisonment. JANET ROBERTS and ELIZABETH STANTON in The New York Times.
Having walked out of the Westchester County Courthouse vindicated yet petrified of the unpredictable tomorrows ahead, Mr. Deskovic found that his first year on the outside was more turbulent than triumphant. Still trying to recover what was stolen from him, he is, at 34, a free man who has yet to feel truly free.
At least 205 men and one woman nationwide have been exonerated through DNA evidence since 1989, including 53 who, like Mr. Deskovic, were convicted of murder. In gathering information on 137 of them over the past four months — one of the most extensive such efforts to date — The New York Times found that many faced the same challenges Mr. Deskovic has confronted, like making a living, reconnecting with relatives and seeking financial recompense for his lost years. FERNANDA SANTOS in The New York Times.
“This is un-American,” said Ms. Finne, 41, a Greenport native, echoing other citizens who condemned the home raids in public meetings and letters to The Suffolk Times, a weekly newspaper. “We need to do something about immigration, but not this.”
NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times.
In July and August alone, the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency received 2.5 million applications, including petitions for naturalization as well as for the entire range of immigrant visas. That was more than double the total applications it received in the same two months in 2006, said a spokesman, Bill Wright. JULIA PRESTON in The New York Times.
The application backlog is so large that Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, is months behind schedule in returning receipts for checks written to cover fees - an early step in the process."
SUZANNE GAMBOA for the Associated Press.
"At the U.S. District Clerk's office in Laredo, deputy clerk Ben Mendoza said the magistrate's docket has doubled since Streamline began. ''I'm getting calls constantly from families about where their relatives are being held," Mendoza said.
Arthur Thomas, deputy U.S. marshal in Laredo, said beds in Laredo jails are full, forcing immigrants to be sent as far away as Waco and East Texas.
Kathleen Walker, an El Paso immigration attorney and president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the zero-tolerance operation and the limited legal representation available to immigrants denies them due process, especially those with potential claims of asylum or U.S. citizenship."
JAMES PINKERTON in the Houston Chronicle.
DHS has the resources to continue workplace raids, but can't process citizenship applications fast enough. Must be an election cycle.
JOHN KING for CNN.
The proposal passed the first of two required votes on Tuesday night, putting San Francisco, with a population of 725,000, on track to become the largest city in the nation to issue identification cards to anyone who requests one and proves residence. JESSE MCKINLEY in The New York Times.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer formally announced today that he would abandon his plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, conceding that his best efforts to sell New Yorkers on the merits of his proposal had clearly failed.
The decision ends a bitter seven-week battle over the proposed policy that battered Mr. Spitzer and his fellow Democrats and drew national attention from critics of illegal immigration. NICHOLAS CONFESSORE in The New York Times.
While incomes have increased among both black and white families in the past three decades — mainly because more women are in the work force — the gain is greater among whites.
The study, based on data from some 2,300 families during the past three decades, shows a black family's income in 2004 was a little more than half that of a similar white family's. National Public Radio.
The jury said the operator, then known as Esmor Corp., and some former executives, should pay $100,000 to Somali immigrant Hawa Jama for negligent hiring and training, and $1 for violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act."
JEFFREY GOLD for the Associated Press.
Criminal Justice Journalists is pleased to announce that it has added three new chapters to the online
guide for reporters and editors who cover crime and justice. They cover prosecutors, guns/gun control,
and domestic violence.
The chapters were written by three distinguished journalists--Steve Weinberg of the University of Missouri (formerly IRE), David Krajicek, a freelance writer formerly of Columbia Journalism School and the New York Daily News,and Sarah Huntley of the Rocky Mountain News.
Check out the entire guide by clicking on our "Covering Crime and Justice" button on the front page.
But an unlikely champion from East Texas has penned a private bill in Congress that would allow 32-year-old Rrustem Neza to stay in the country until early 2009 – and give him time to receive a full rehearing of his political asylum case."
in the Dallas Morning News.
Barack Obama said publicly Thursday what many Democrats are fretting about privately these days, which is that the Republicans will be coming after them next year on the issue of immigration and they better get ready.
"Terrorism and immigration," Obama said. "That is going to be their campaign." DAN BALZ in the Washington Post.
They can be seen hanging behind the counter at the mini-mart, those brightly colored phone cards for calling Latin America, Africa and Asia. Often, they are the only reliable way for immigrants to stay in touch with their families.
But many buyers of these cards are being ripped off to the tune of millions of dollars a year.
Some cards fail to deliver the promised minutes. Others tack on confusing fees that may not be listed in the microscopic print on the back of the card. Still others round up each call to the nearest three-minute mark.
LAURA WIDES-MUñOZ for the Associated Press.
Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney forcefully opposed the legislation.
Thompson said at three campaign stops that from the start he opposed the bill, which would have provided a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants, while his rivals switched their stances after it became apparent there was widespread opposition to the bill among GOP voters. JOAN LOWY for the Associated Press.
When school officials at a Tucson high school found pot in a student's backpack, they called the cops. When the cops learned the student and his family were in the U.S. without papers, they called the Border Patrol. The entire family was deported to Mexico.
Students protested, and the Tucson police has changed its policy: no longer will they call the Border Patrol to schools or churches, though they will share information.
Reporting from the Arizona Daily Star are GEORGE B. SáNCHEZ and DALE QUINN; from the Tucson Citizen, MARY BUSTAMANTE and DAVID L. TEIBEL.
The "normal" routine on the U.S.-Mexico border (if anything can be called normal there) is for visa-less border crossers to be fingerprinted, photographed, and immediately shipped back across the line by the Border Patrol.
But based on pilot projects in the Del Rio sector of South Texas and elsewhere, "Operation Streamline" just launched in Laredo - one of the busiest ports of entry in the world. Under this "zero tolerance" program, all crossers, without exception, are charged with the misdemeanor crime of illegal entry in federal district court. Most plead guilty, serve some time in a federal penitentiary, and then get deported. Repeat offenders get hit with felony charges and even more time.
And now Arizona is looking at getting into the game.
Links are to stories by MICHAEL RILEY in the Denver Post, DAVID McLEMORE in the Dallas Morning News, and SEAN HOLSTEGE in the Arizona Republic.
Thousands of travelers who should have been barred from entering the country last year were allowed in by lax procedures of United States Customs and Border Protection officers, the Government Accountability Office reported yesterday. Persistent weaknesses reported in the inspection program included failures to stop vehicles or question pedestrians crossing the border, even after heightened alerts and stepped-up training. RALPH BLUMENTHAL in The New York Times.
They are jobs of last resort for people whose other options are few."
DAVID CRARY for the Associated Press.