News & Events

Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Immigration Identity Theft Case

In a 9-0 decision, the justices say the crime is limited to those who knew they had stolen another person’s Social Security number. The decision limits efforts to prosecute illegal workers.
By David G. Savage – LA Times
9:20 AM PDT, May 4, 2009
Reporting Form Washington — The Supreme Court today took away one tool for prosecuting and deporting workers who are in this country illegally, ruling that the crime of identity theft is limited to those who knew they had stolen another person’s Social Security number.

The 9-0 decision overturns part of an Illinois man’s conviction for using false documents.

The court agreed he could be imprisoned for using an ID card he knew was false, but it also said he could not be charged with a felony of “aggravated identity theft” because he did not know he was using someone’s Social Security number.

Last year, immigration officials in the Bush administration had rounded up hundreds of illegal workers at several plants and charged them with “aggravated identity theft.”

Facing such a serious charge, many agreed to plead guilty and be deported.

The lesser charge of using false documents is not a felony and does not trigger an automatic deportation.

In today’s opinion in Flores-Figueroa vs. United States, the court cited the words of the identity theft law. It refers to a person who “knowingly” uses the means of identification “of another person.”

During the oral argument in the case, the justices were told that about half of all the possible combinations of nine-digit Social Security numbers have been used at some time.

Ignacio Flores-Figueroa, a citizen of Mexico, said he had bought a set of false documents in Chicago and used them to work at a steel plant in East Moline, Ill. His employer later reported him to immigration authorities. He was charged with entering the country illegally, using false documents and aggravated identity theft. Only the latter charge was at issue in the Supreme Court.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said that in most cases of identity theft, the defendant sets out to steal someone’s identity so to take money from their accounts. In this case, the illegal immigrant wanted to use a false Social Security number as though it was his, but he did not know or care whether it was a real person’s number.

A Shift on Immigration

New York Times
May 3, 2009
Editorial

Last week, immigration enforcement policy shifted a little. The administration issued guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement that place a new emphasis on prosecuting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

That is a good idea, and a break from the Bush administration method — mass raids to net immigrant workers while leaving their bosses alone. The raids were tuned to the theatrics of the poisoned immigration debate, using heavy weapons, dogs and helicopters to spread the illusion that something was getting fixed.

But as policy, they were worse than useless. They netted about 6,000 undocumented immigrants, out of 12 million, and 135 employers or supervisors. They destroyed families, tearing parents and grandparents from children, many of them citizens. The fear they caused went viral in immigrant communities, driving workers further into the arms of abusive employers while bringing us no closer to a working immigration system.

So the new guidelines are smarter than cruel idiocy, but raids are still not a solution. They keep the country trying to arrest, prosecute and deport its way toward a working immigration system. Enforcement alone will never get us there. Workplace raids, no matter how sensibly or tactfully redesigned, will never fix immigration by themselves. Indeed, they make things worse.

Raids do not uphold or reinforce workers’ rights, a non sequitur in the world of off-the-books labor, where employers erode conditions for Americans by hiring workers at deplorable conditions and pay. They do not fix long backlogs in legal immigration, lines that extend years or decades, forcing people who want to follow the rules to make an agonizing choice between intolerable separations from their families or lawbreaking.

They do not protect illegal immigrants from the arbitrary cruelties of the detention and deportation system, in which due process is limited and detainees face unacceptable risk of sickness, injury and death in prison.

And the new enforcement regime, like the old, might lead employers to purge their payrolls of people they merely suspect are here illegally, to avoid the hassle and expense of a raid. When raids are coupled with electronic hiring-verification schemes like E-Verify, which the government has been inching toward, the likelihood of mass firings becomes greater. Without a path to earned legalization, undocumented workers who lose their jobs will have nowhere to go — except to endure ever-lower wages and worse abuse from bottom-feeding employers. The cycle of illegality will not have been broken.

The administration has promised to tackle comprehensive immigration reform this year. President Obama has consistently said the right things, defending a path to assimilation and citizenship for illegal immigrants rather than the futility of mass expulsion.

The decision to adjust the policy on raids seems sensibly motivated. But we agree with immigration and labor experts like Professor Jennifer Gordon of Fordham Law School, who sees the new guidelines as a smarter version of a bad idea. Far better, she says, for the government to redouble enforcement of laws like the minimum wage, the right to organize, and health and safety protections. This would reduce the incentive to hire the undocumented, and raise standards for all workers. It would not end up devastating immigrant families, as raids do. In times like these, that would be a step toward immigration reform that all workers could support.

We Need an Immigration Stimulus

A recession is exactly when we want innovative outsiders.

By L. GORDON CROVITZ

At the dawn of the Industrial Age, in 1719, the British Parliament passed a law banning craftsmen from emigrating to France or other rival countries. The law also targeted anyone who tried to entice skilled British workers to share technological information with foreigners.

“At that time the chief concern was the loss of iron founders and watchmakers,” Gavin Weightman writes in his new book, “The Industrial Revolutionaries.” Spies from around the world tried to uncover the secrets of British engineering, but “were often reduced to lurking around local inns, hoping to engage knowledgeable workmen in conversation and induce them to cross the Channel for some splendid reward.”

This attempted protectionism of ideas was doomed by easier travel and communication. The precursor to the London Times complained in 1785 that a Briton who set up a textile plant in France had “entailed more ruin and mischief on this kingdom than perhaps even the loss of America.”

Which brings us to our own era, and the debate on immigration reform beginning this week with congressional hearings that include an appearance by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. President Barack Obama says he wants to address the issue by the end of the year.

It usually pays to be skeptical about immigration reform, given the alliance between nativists and labor unions for tighter borders. Still, an economic downturn is the right time to move on immigration, one of the few policy tools that could clearly boost growth.

The pace of lower-skilled migration has slowed due to higher unemployment. This could make it less contentious to ease the path to legalization for the 12 million undocumented workers and their families in the U.S. It’s also a good time to ask why we turn away skilled workers, including the ones earning 60% of the advanced degrees in engineering at U.S. universities. It is worth pointing out the demographic shortfall: Immigrants are a smaller proportion of the U.S. population than in periods such as the late 1890s and 1910s, when immigrants gave the economy a jolt of growth.

Immigrants have had a disproportionate role in innovation and technology. Companies founded by immigrants include Yahoo, eBay and Google. Half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants, up from 25% a decade ago. Some 40% of patents in the U.S. are awarded to immigrants. A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation found that immigrants are 50% likelier to start businesses than natives. Immigrant-founded technology firms employ 450,000 workers in the U.S. And according to the National Venture Capital Association, immigrants have started one quarter of all U.S. venture-backed firms.

Banks getting federal bailouts are saddled with new hurdles to get visas for skilled workers. The wait for H-1B visas for skilled people from countries such as China and India is now more than five years, with only 65,000 visas granted annually among 600,000 applications. But countries such as Canada and Singapore actively recruit technologists and scientists. As Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has suggested, instead of sending the half million higher-education students from overseas home when they graduate, we should “staple a green card to their diplomas.”

Economic recovery and immigration are closely linked, as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg also understands. Last month he launched a business-plan competition targeting business and engineering students overseas with winners getting cash and introductions to venture capitalists in the city. “Unfortunately, as we’re moving to open our doors even wider to the world, Congress is moving in the opposite direction,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

There’s a strong case that we need both more skilled and unskilled immigrants. In “The Venturesome Economy,” Columbia business professor Amar Bhidé showed that wherever technology is developed, it’s the creative application of innovation that builds great businesses. The Web was conceived in a lab in Switzerland, but it matured in Silicon Valley. Mr. Bhidé argues that immigrants at all levels, including as “venturesome consumers,” are an important reason the U.S. retains a strong lead in innovation, even as the lead in advanced technology and science has eroded.

At a time when our financial-capital markets are still reeling from the credit bust, the human-capital market remains open for business. Fewer workers will be lured to the U.S. during a recession, but the ones who come will speed recovery. There are costs to immigration, especially in border states with generous welfare programs, but the overall benefit is akin to the advantages of free trade in goods and services.

In contrast to the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when manufacturing secrets drove competitive advantage, today’s information technologies thrive as innovators share new ideas and make businesses out of them. Much of this activity is being done by foreigners who want to become economically successful Americans. This makes more open immigration one of the few stimulus packages Washington can deliver with confidence that it would help.

Source: The Wall Street Journal OPINION: INFORMATION AGE APRIL 27, 2009

No Automatic Car Searches

BIG WIN FROM THE US SUPREMES; NO AUTOMATIC CAR SEARCHES

Wow, big win from the US Supremes. Justices Scalia and Thomas are the crucial votes in favor, Justices Breyer and Kennedy dissent. Remember New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981)? Once the police arrest a defendant. in a car, they can search the car automatically. The theory was that the defendant might be able to grab a weapon from inside the car even though the defendant was arrested, handcuffed, and in a police car. The Supremes say that’s not what they were saying in Belton. The Supremes say that the law now “authorizes police to search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search.”

Again, “Police may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only if the arrestee is within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest.” So the mere fact of an arrest in or near a car doesn’t give the police the right to search the interior of the car. Exceptions? Plenty. They can still search for evidence of the crime for which they arrested the defendant. Justice Scalia warns the police against the sham of claiming that they haven’t really arrested the defendant. They also don’t discuss inventory searches at all. This ruling affects a ton of cases and compels reversal of a slew of bad California cases.

Case: Arizona v. Gant; 2009 DJ DAR; DJ, 4/ /09; US Supremes

Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-542.ZS.html

AILF Lauds Senator Schumer for Beginning Immigration Reform Discussion

AILF Lauds Senator Schumer for Beginning Immigration Reform Discussion
Hearings to Discuss Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009

April 28, 2009

Washington, D.C.On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship will hold a hearing “Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009: Can We Do It and How?” to examine common sense solutions to the immigration system. The following is a statement from Benjamin Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Law Foundation in Washington, DC.

“The American Immigration Law Foundation applauds Chairman Schumer for commencing hearings on immigration reform. For far too long, our state and local governments have been plagued by an out-of-date and broken federal immigration system. Now more than ever, Congress must take the necessary steps to reform our immigration system in a way that honors our laws, rewards honesty and hard work, and fosters economic prosperity.

The upcoming hearing marks a new day in the conversation on immigration. Rather than dwell on the problems of our broken system, we will hear a discussion that focuses on solutions. While the substantive and political challenges are significant, Chairman Schumer and the entire subcommittee are to be commended for tackling those problems in a pragmatic and forthright manner. This is a discussion that must take place throughout the country because resolution of our immigration crisis will require all sectors of American society to work together to create an immigration system that works for our nation.

We eagerly await the testimony from the esteemed panelists, many of whom will be discussing the moral, legal, and economic imperatives for reform. These hearings will provide an important opportunity to hear what the current political and economic environment means for immigration reform. Among the issues likely to be discussed:

Economic Imperative for Immigration Reform: How can immigration reform become a tool for economic recovery? Legalizing undocumented workers would improve wages and working conditions for all workers, and increase tax revenues for cash-strapped federal, state, and local governments. Moreover, comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to legalization for undocumented workers would pay for itself over time through increased tax revenue. Newly legalized workers would be able to move into higher-paying jobs, pay more in taxes, and spend more on goods and services-all of which would increase the already-substantial economic benefits of immigration for the nation.

Smart-Enforcement Imperative for Immigration Reform: What type of effective enforcement can we pursue that allows local police and immigration agents to focus on dangerous criminals and doesn’t disrupt families and communities? Since 1993, the annual budget of the U.S. Border Patrol has more than quintupled to roughly $1.9 billion. Meanwhile, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has tripled to approximately 12 million and border violence has reached a fever pitch.

Moral Imperative for Immigration Reform: How can we advance humane and effective solutions that are in line with our best values, not our worst instincts? Of the nearly 12 million people now residing in the United States without legal status, about a third have lived here for more than a decade.  Approximately 1.5 million are children, and another 4 million native-born, U.S.-citizen children have at least one undocumented parent.  The Bush administration pursued aggressive enforcement tactics ranging from large-scale, indiscriminate workplace and residential raids to expansive enforcement agreements with state and local police departments, resulting in demonstrable harm to numerous communities.”

For more background see these Immigration Policy Center (IPC) publications: