Author: mopress

by Greg Moses

Immigrant advocate Ralph Isenberg is hopeful that a new federal memo on prosecutorial discretion will change the way things work in the Dallas area.

In a memo of June 17, 2011 Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) John Morton affirmed that ICE officers and attorneys share discretionary powers to determine the value of prosecuting individual cases.

“ICE must prioritize the use of its enforcement personnel, detention space, and removal assets to ensure that the aliens it removes represent, as much as reasonably possible, the agency’s enforcement priorities, namely the promotion of national security, border security, public safety, and the integrity of the immigration system,” said Morton in the background section of his six-page memo.

Isenberg, who has been an advocate for several immigrants, says that “all the cases I’m working on are going to have some meaningful relief coming, if the Morton memo is followed.”

Recently, Isenberg has been a public advocate for Saad Nabeel, a Texas college student who was deported to Asia; Olga Zanella, a young Dallas area resident who was threatened with deportation following a traffic violation; and Hector Lopez, an Oregon college student who was deported to Mexico, but who returned to the USA for a Christmas Eve reunion with his mother.

“Basically the memo says we don’t have the time to go after students, elderly, pregnant women, or people with medical problems,” said Isenberg on Sunday morning, speaking via telephone.

“Dallas says we can’t treat anyone special otherwise everyone gets to stay,” says Isenberg. “This memo says you will treat people different. It says that the elderly are important to this country. Minors are important. Kids who grew up here are important. Students are important. But if you’re a felon, you don’t count, get the hell out of here.”

Isenberg says he is waiting to see how ICE authorities in the Dallas office will respond to the memo.

“If the memo wasn’t intended for action, why release it?”

During fiscal year 2010 the Department of Homeland Security apprehended 517,000 foreign nationals, detained 363,000, removed 387,000, and “allowed” 476,000 to “to return to their home countries without an order of removal,” says an annual report issued on June 17 by the Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS).

Mexican nationals accounted for 83 percent of those apprehended, 73 percent of those removed, and 61 percent of those detained. Nationals from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador counted for 29 percent of detentions and 18 percent of removals.

Of the 387,000 removals, 29 percent were “expedited” by immigration officers without hearings. And 94 percent of expedited removals involved nationals from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador.

While total removals were down slightly compared to 2009 (387,242 v 395,165), expedited removals (111,118) in 2010 were near record levels (112,718) set in 2008.

Of the removed, 169,000 were counted as criminal aliens. And 62,000 of the criminal aliens were counted as violating immigration laws or traffic offenses.

130,840 removals were “reinstatements” of previous removal orders, accounting for 34 percent of all removals, up from 30 percent in 2009, continuing a trend in the rising number and percentage of “reinstatements” since 2005. The countries of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador account for 98 percent of the record number of removals via “reinstatement” during FY 2010.

–gm

In 2010 there were 24.4 million foreign-born workers making up 15.8 percent of the US labor market says a roundup report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

With an unemployment rate at 9.8 percent, foreign-born workers fared no better than native-born workers, and they made less money.

“Native-born workers were more likely than foreign-born workers to be employed in management, professional, and related occupations (38.9 versus 28.0 percent), and in sales and office occupations (25.3 versus 17.3 percent),” said the BLS report.

“Foreign-born workers were more likely than native-born workers to be employed in service occupations (25.0 versus 16.4 percent); in production, transportation, and material moving occupations (16.1 versus 10.8 percent); and in natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations (13.6 versus 8.6 percent).”

In terms of earnings, “the median usual weekly earnings of foreign-born full-time wage and salary workers ($598) were 77.5 percent of the earnings of their native-born counterparts ($771). Among
men, median earnings for the foreign born were $610 per week, while the native born earned $873 per week. The median usual weekly earnings for foreign-born women were $577, compared with $686 for native-born women.”

While earnings of foreign-born and native-born workers were “similar” for white, black, or Asian workers, there was a significant difference between Hispanic workers, with foreign-born Hispanic workers making 76.4 percent as much as native-born Hispanic workers.

While close to one third of workers had college degrees, whether foreign-born or native-born, there was a 12 point difference in “some college or an associates degree” (17.1 of foreign-born versus 29.9 percent native born). And a downright disparity in high school equivalency.

“In 2010, 26.5 percent of the foreign-born labor force age 25 and over had not completed high school, compared with 5.4 percent of the native-born labor force.”

According to numbers published by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), about one third of the foreign-born population in the US is considered “unauthorized.” If labor force participation is the same for authorized and unauthorized foreign-born populations, then about 5 percent of the US labor market would be comprised of unauthorized foreign-born workers.

According to DHS tables, 80 percent of the “unauthorized” population would generally be classified as Hispanic; therefore, 4 percent of the US labor market would be foreign-born, “unauthorized,” Hispanic, and earning wages that pay 76.5 cent per every dollar paid to native-born Hispanics.–gm

The administration of President Barack Obama is setting records for felony prosecutions of immigrants, as “illegal reentry” becomes “the most commonly recorded lead charge brought by federal prosecutors during the first half of FY 2011,” says a report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

While the administration is pursuing fewer and fewer cases of misdemeanor “illegal entry” the numbers of felony “illegal reentry” prosecutions in 2011 is projected to reach more than 37,000 or more than double the number of such cases (17,679) recorded in 2007.

“Illegal reentry is a felony offense and results in longer sentences than the second most frequent immigration charge brought this year, illegal entry, which is classed as a petty misdemeanor,” says the TRAC report.

“During the first six months of 2011, the average prison sentence was 14 months for those convicted where illegal reentry was recorded as the lead charge. This contrasts with an average of only 1 month prison time for convictions where the recorded lead charge was just illegal entry. Together, these two statutes account for over nine out of ten (91 percent) of all immigration criminal prosecutions.”

This is the first year that the number of felony reentry charges exceeds the number of charges for misdemeanor entry.

“Virtually all prosecutions for illegal entry (98 percent) are the result of investigations by the Border Patrol, and the number of border apprehensions have fallen off sharply particularly beginning in FY 2007,” says the TRAC report. “Relative to the number of apprehensions at the border, however, the odds of being criminally prosecuted have actually been climbing.”–gm