Contact Your Congressman About House Bill HR 5642 to Triple H-1B Visa Caps
Tags: Charles Boustany, Immigration, Louisiana
By: johnnyb
Dr. Boustany advocates labor relief for Louisana:
Local economies across the United States are facing an immediate labor crisis. Seasonal jobs that have been filled for years by temporary H-2B workers are vacant. Sugar cane is not being processed, rice crops can’t be sorted or bagged, and crawfish and crabs are being turned away by processors who simply don’t have the workers to clean and pick the fishermen’s catch.
The H-2B visa program provides the small and seasonal businesses that drive many of our nation’s regional economies with legal, seasonal workers. The FY 2008 cap of 66,000 H-2B workers was met this year on January 2. In past years, Congress acted responsibly and allowed certain returning workers to be exempt from the H-2B cap in order to help meet the needs of the many seasonal businesses that rely on these workers. Unfortunately, Congress allowed the returning worker provision to expire last year, and thousands of small businesses nationwide face critical job shortages.
The bipartisan returning worker provision is now being held as a political hostage. While American business owners suffer, legislation to fill this need sits idle. In response to the lack of action, I introduced H.Res.1025 to call up, for immediate consideration, Congressman Bart Stupak’s H.R.1843, the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act. This bipartisan measure reauthorizes the returning worker program, supplying small businesses with their essential workforce. It is my sincere hope that with my colleagues’ help we can find a quick resolution to the crisis occurring in local communities around our nation.
If you have any questions, please visit my website or feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 225-2031. This is an important small business and economic issue, and I look forward to working towards a solution.
Me: The 7th district is a small world, and I know some of the people he’s talking about. I talked with my Uncle who is a big proponent of the George Bush/John McCain immigration policy. Just get some foolproof ID cards for the H2B holders and the labor shortage is solved, right? Sounds good but living in Houston opens your eyes to the reality of open borders and the often adverse consequences of such policy over the long run. Flaunting of the law doesn’t stop with crossing the border.
Snarky comment: Yee ah, like his a really nice guy.
One you would just grow to love ..
Under BuZh, NO ACCOUNTABILITY is the new social norm.
Note the link: Social pandemics.
Which is worse: the luv guv or this piece of trash?
Um hmmm. Thought so.
Veeger
No problems so far, the immigration agent told the American citizen and his 22-year-old Colombian wife at her green card interview in December. After he stapled one of their wedding photos to her application for legal permanent residency, he had just one more question: What was her cellphone number?
The calls from the agent started three days later. He hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a private meeting. And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price — not realizing that she was recording everything on the cellphone in her purse.
"I want sex," he said on the recording. "One or two times. That's all. You get your green card. You won't have to see me anymore."
She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex "now," to "know that you're serious." And despite her protests, she said, he got his way.
The 16-minute recording, which the woman first took to The New York Times and then to the Queens district attorney, suggests the vast power of low-level immigration law enforcers, and a growing desperation on the part of immigrants seeking legal status. The aftermath, which included the arrest of an immigration agent last week, underscores the difficulty and danger of making a complaint, even in the rare case when abuse of power may have been caught on tape.
No one knows how widespread sexual blackmail is, but the case echoes other instances of sexual coercion that have surfaced in recent years, including agents criminally charged in Atlanta, Miami and Santa Ana, California. And it raises broader questions about the system's vulnerability to corruption at a time when millions of noncitizens live in a kind of legal no-man's land, increasingly fearful of seeking the law's protection.
The agent arrested last week, Isaac Baichu, 46, himself an immigrant from Guyana, handled some 8,000 green card applications during his three years as an adjudicator in the Garden City, New York, office of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He pleaded not guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges of coercing the young woman to perform oral sex, and of promising to help her secure immigration papers in exchange for further sexual favors. If convicted, he will face up to seven years in prison.
His agency has suspended him with pay, and the inspector general of Homeland Security is reviewing his other cases, a spokesman said Wednesday. Prosecutors, who say they recorded a meeting between Baichu and the woman on March 11 at which he made similar demands for sex, urge any other victims to come forward.
Money, not sex, is the more common currency of corruption in immigration, but according to congressional testimony in 2006 by Michael Maxwell, former director of the agency's internal investigations, more than 3,000 backlogged complaints of employee misconduct had gone uninvestigated for lack of staff, including 528 involving criminal allegations.
The agency says it has tripled its investigative staff since then, and counts only 165 serious complaints pending. But it stopped posting an e-mail address and phone number for such complaints last year, said Jan Lane, chief of security and integrity, because it lacks the staff to cull the thousands of mostly irrelevant messages that resulted. Immigrants, she advised, should report wrongdoing to any law enforcement agency they trust.
The young woman in Queens, whose name is being withheld because the authorities consider her the victim of a sex crime, did not even tell her husband what had happened. Two weeks after the meeting in the car, finding no way to make a confidential complaint to the immigration agency and afraid to go to the police, she and two older female relatives took the recording to The Times.
Reasons to Worry
A slim, shy woman who looks like a teenager, she said she had spent recent months baby-sitting for relatives in Queens, crying over the deaths of her two brothers back in Cali, Colombia, and longing for the right stamp in her passport — one that would let her return to the United States if she visited her family.
She came to the United States on a tourist visa in 2004 and overstayed. When she married an American citizen a year ago, the law allowed her to apply to "adjust" her illegal status. But unless her green card application was approved, she could not visit her parents or her brothers' graves and then legally re-enter the United States. And if her application was denied, she would face deportation.
She had another reason to be fearful, and not only for herself. About 15 months ago, she said, an acquaintance hired her and two female relatives in New York to carry $12,000 in cash to the bank. The three women, all living in the country illegally, were arrested on the street by customs officers apparently acting on a tip in a money-laundering investigation. After determining that the women had no useful information, the officers released them.
But the closed investigation file had showed up in the computer when she applied for a green card, Baichu told her in December; until he obtained the file and dealt with it, her application would not be approved. If she defied him, she feared, he could summon immigration enforcement agents to take her relatives to detention.
So instead of calling the police, she turned on the video recorder in her cellphone, put the phone in her purse and walked to meet the agent. Two family members said they watched anxiously from their parked car as she disappeared behind the tinted windows of his red Lexus.
"We were worried that the guy would take off, take her away and do something to her," the woman's widowed sister-in-law said in Spanish.
As the recorder captured the agent's words and a lilting Guyanese accent, he laid out his terms in an easy, almost paternal style. He would not ask too much, he said: sex "once or twice," visits to his home in the Bronx, perhaps a link to other Colombians who needed his help with their immigration problems.
In shaky English, the woman expressed reluctance, and questioned how she could be sure he would keep his word.
"If I do it, it's like very hard for me, because I have my husband, and I really fall in love with him," she said.
The agent insisted that she had to trust him. "I wouldn't ask you to do something for me if I can't do something for you, right?" he said, and reasoned, "Nobody going to help you for nothing," noting that she had no money.
He described himself as the single father of a 10-year-old daughter, telling her, "I need love, too," and predicting, "You will get to like me because I'm a nice guy."
Repeatedly, she responded "O.K.," without conviction. At one point he thanked her for showing up, saying, "I know you feel very scared."
Finally, she tried to leave. "Let me go because I tell my husband I come home," she said.
His reply, the recording shows, was a blunt demand for oral sex.
"Right now? No!" she protested. "No, no, right now I can't."
He insisted, cajoled, even empathized. "I came from a different country, too," he said. "I got my green card just like you."
Then, she said, he grabbed her. During the speechless minute that follows on the recording, she said she yielded to his demand out of fear that he would use his authority against her.
How Much Corruption?
The charges against Baichu, who became a United States citizen in 1991 and earns roughly $50,000 a year, appear to be part of a larger pattern, according to government records and interviews.
Maxwell, the immigration agency's former chief investigator, told Congress in 2006 that internal corruption was "rampant," and that employees faced constant temptations to commit crime.
"It is only a small step from granting a discretionary waiver of an eligibility rule to asking for a favor or taking a bribe in exchange for granting that waiver," he contended. "Once an employee learns he can get away with low-level corruption and still advance up the ranks, he or she becomes more brazen."
Maxwell's own deputy, Lloyd Miner, 49, of Hyattsville, Maryland, turned out to be an example. He was sentenced March 7 to a year in prison for inducing a 21-year-old Mongolian woman to stay in the country illegally, and harboring her in his house.
Other cases include that of a 60-year-old immigration adjudicator in Santa Ana, California, who was charged with demanding sexual favors from a 29-year-old Vietnamese woman in exchange for approving her citizenship application. The agent, Eddie Romualdo Miranda, was acquitted of a felony sexual battery charge last August, but pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to probation.
In Atlanta, another adjudicator, Kelvin Owens, was convicted in 2005 of sexually assaulting a 45-year-old woman during her citizenship interview in the federal building, and sentenced to weekends in jail for six months. And a Miami agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement responsible for transporting a Haitian woman to detention is awaiting trial on charges that he took her to his home and raped her.
"Despite our best efforts there are always people ready to use their position for personal gain or personal pleasure," said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services. "Our responsibility is to ferret them out."
When the Queens woman came to The Times with her recording on Jan. 3, she was afraid of retaliation from the agent, and uncertain about making a criminal complaint, though she had an appointment the next day at the Queens district attorney's office.
She followed through, however, and Carmencita Gutierrez, an assistant district attorney, began monitoring phone calls between the agent and the young woman, a spokesman said. When Baichu arranged to meet the woman on March 11 at the Flagship Restaurant on Queens Boulevard, investigators were ready.
In the conversation recorded there, according to the criminal complaint, Baichu told her he expected her to do "just like the last time," and offered to take her to a garage or the bathroom of a friend's real estate business so she would be "more comfortable doing it" there.
Baichu was arrested as he emerged from the diner and headed to his car, wearing much gold and diamond jewelry, prosecutors said. Later released on $15,000 bail, Baichu referred calls for comment to his lawyer, Sally Attia, who said he did not have authority to grant or deny green card petitions without his supervisor's approval.
The young woman's ordeal is not over. Her husband overheard her speaking about it to a cousin about a month ago, and she had to tell him the whole story, she said.
"He was so mad at me, he left my house," she said, near tears. "I don't know if he's going to come back."
The green card has not come through. "I'm still hoping," she said.
Angelica Medaglia contributed reporting.
Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and host countries
WASHINGTON -- There is no simple way to reconcile two of America’s most complicated issues: the war in Iraq and immigration.
Over the last year, Congress added $150 million to refugee assistance, and increased the number of Special Immigrant Visas available to Iraqis who risked their lives to help the U.S.
But on Tuesday, Rep. Gary Ackerman, chairman of the House subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, called a hearing to express his concern over the sluggish pace at which the Bush administration is admitting refugees to the U.S.
During the last 17 months, 3,484 Iraqi refugees have been resettled, the New York Democrat said. More refugees have come to the U.S. in the last five months than in the previous 12, when just over 1,600 were processed.
The administration would have to triple the number of refugees processed each month in order to meet its goal of resettling 12,000 Iraqis this year.
“We’ve helped to create a mess,” Ackerman said. “At best we should help clean up our mess; we owe it to these people if nothing else.”
Lori Scialabba, the associate director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ refugee and asylum operations, predicted that increased efforts by Immigraton and the State Department will enable 12,000 Iraqis to enter the U.S. by Sept. 30 – the close of the 2008 fiscal year.
The average processing time for Iraqi immigration cases is “significantly less” than that for other refugee groups, who usually wait eight to ten months, Scialabba said. But processing times can stretch out due to the many steps involved, such as registration, background checks and interviews.
“How long does an interview take?” asked Rep. Ackerman.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, resident Ford relocated 160,000 refugees, Ackerman said. “Did he have some magic formula?”
James Foley, State Department coordinator for Iraqi refugee issues, said the government has been unable to deal with refugees inside Iraq, forcing displaced Iraqis to cross the border into countries such as Syria or Jordan before getting the attention of U.S. immigration officials.
Now that the security situation in Iraq has improved, Foley said, the State Department intends to scale up processing within the country.
But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said efforts to accelerate Iraqi refugee cases should not be augmented.
“The fact is that now is the time that we should be calling on refugees from Iraq to go home,” he said. Educated, pro-democracy Iraqis are needed in Iraq, Rohrabacher said, to help rebuild the country.
Rohrabacher said he was disappointed in the limited assistance from “oil rich” countries near Iraq, such as Saudi Arabia.
Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., agreed that some surrounding Arab countries have not made much effort to help displaced Iraqis, but said that they did not invade Iraq in the first place.
It’s the Pottery Barn rule, he said, “you break it, you own it.”
March 19th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Besides the special interest group(s) and people(s) that keep the extension from being approved there is a huge MISUNDERSTANDING REGARDING THE NATURE OF SEASONAL WORK. It is temporary with minimum wage and does not usually lead to a full-time position with benefits. Sometimes the physical, location and schedule demands also make it a poor fit for an American citizen. At best it is supplemental income for a family or individual. If it works for an individual/family that is great but seasonal work cannot be made into something it is not. Many college students take summer classes now or internship jobs in their field of study; they may not be available for the complete season; most college students are not attracted to cleaning hotels, washing laundry or dishes or some of the even more physically demanding jobs of lawn work, stable cleaning, cutting stone or clearing forests, etc.
March 19th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Kathy,
All due respect to Dr. Boustany, the small businessmen of South Louisiana, and you, but cheap labor from Mexico is a quick fix unsuitable for this situation. Small business owners would hire more Americans for seasonal work if they had the flexibility to do so. More Americans would be willing to work these unpleasant jobs if they were paid more money. It is much easier for a businessman to lobby his congressman to free up more H-2Bs than it is to find good help. That is a sad problem with our culture.
I guess, Kathy, that the only jobs college students can do is wait tables. If there were sufficient pressure on employers to raise wages, they would. There is nothing wrong with getting a little dirt under your fingernails at 18 years old. Generations upon generations of humanity has done this to earn a living.
Lastly, I must say I was with the open borders crowd until I visited and moved to Houston. A majority of the medicaid cases here (funded entirely by your tax dollars) are the children of illegal immigrants, most of which I’m willing to bet either took cash jobs after crossing or overstayed an H-2B. Roughly 10% of the population of Mexico now lives and works in the United States, and all of their children have the benefits of free education and health care, and a American sized sense of entitlement that American college students have today. If you think that cheap labor doesn’t have a price tag down the road, you are kidding yourself.
March 21st, 2008 at 8:44 pm
The H2B program works. It is not an immigration issue and should not be treated as one. As an American, I find it baffling and offensive that people who have given us years of working service-some of them have been coming and going for 10 years or more are now in their home countries with no options! When they come here, they don’t overstay. OR they didn’t overstay until we started changing the rules, without giving them any options. They don’t break our laws, they pay taxes, they have to be checked by a doctor before coming here, etc. Can the same be said for people here illegally? Why are they being punished by people who are not here legally, or have family not here legally. How can it be ok to hold hostage the HR1843 bill in congress? Where is the American Justice in that?
If we’re so worried about our borders, why don’t we tax all the money that gets sent via western union or money gram. It would probably build ten walls, pay the salaries of the border patrol and then some. Did you know it’s half the price to send money out of the US than within? Hmmm…makes you wonder…do we really want to do anything about the immigration issue?