Texas Immigration Lawyer & Attorney : Kraft & Associates Law Firm : Visas, Green Card, Citizenship, Deportation : Dallas, Texas

U.S. House and Senate negotiators agreed this week to spend $1.2 billion to install fences and vehicle barriers along hundreds of miles of the Mexican border. This provision was slipped into a spending plan for the Department of Homeland Security.

The House and Senate are still arguing and negotiating over other bills relating to immigration matters, but no one expects real immigration reform to pass before the Congress adjourns September 30, 2006, to begin full-time campaigning for the November elections.

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Yet another story about the effect on growers of the current uncertainty about immigration laws appeared in the New York Times recently. The focus of this article was the fruit growers of California. Here are a few excerpts:

Stepped-up border enforcement kept many illegal Mexican migrant workers out of California this year, farmers and labor contractors said, putting new strains on the state's shrinking seasonal farm labor force.

Labor shortages have also been reported by apple growers in Washington and upstate New York. Growers have gone from frustrated to furious with Congress, which has all but given up on passing legislation this year to create an agricultural guest-worker program.

Last week, 300 growers representing every major agricultural state rallied on the front lawn of the Capitol carrying baskets of fruit to express their ire.

This year's shortages are compounding a flight from the fields by Mexican workers already in the United States. As it has become harder to get into this country, many illegal immigrants have been reluctant to return to Mexico in the off-season. Remaining here year-round, they have gravitated toward more stable jobs.

"When you're having to pay housing costs, it's very difficult to survive and wait for the next agricultural season to come around," said Jack King, head of national affairs for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

California farms employ at least 450,000 people at the peak of the harvest, with farm workers progressing from one crop to the next, stringing together as much as seven months of work. Growers estimate the state fell short this harvest season by 70,000 workers. Joe Bautista, a labor contractor from Stockton who brings crews to Lake County, said about one-third of his regular workers stayed home in Mexico this year, while others were caught by the Border Patrol trying to enter the United States.

As they sum up this season's losses, estimated to be at least $10 million for California pear farmers alone, growers in the state mainly blame Republican lawmakers in Washington for stalling immigration legislation that would have addressed the shortage by authorizing a guest-worker program for agriculture. Many growers, a dependably Republican group, said they felt betrayed.

"After a while, you get done being sad and start being really angry," said Toni Scully, a lifelong Republican whose family owns a pear-packing operation in Lake County. "The Republicans have given us a lot of lip service, and our crops are hanging on the trees rotting."

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Bruce Schneier, of Counterpane Security, has written a disturbing column in the Dallas Morning News about the dangerous technology additions to new passports. His opinion is that the radio-frequency identification chips to be installed in new passports will make travelers more susceptible to identity theft.

These RFID chips store an electronic copy of passport information, including your name and photo. The potential problem is that RFID reader machines can scan this information without touching the passport -- the passport merely has to be within a short distance of the reader. This means  a crook could set up a reader at a hotel, bank, or any other place you show your passport. The crook could then read your passport information and use that for illicit purposes.

While the U.S. State Department has taken certain security measures to guard against such ID theft, Schneier's biggest concern is that passports issued with the new RFID chip will have a normal lifetime of ten years. Surely by ten years from now, crooks will have come up with new and improved ways to steal your passport information from the RFID chip.

The column concludes with this warning:

The Colorado passport office is already issuing RFID passports, and the State Department expects all U.S. passport offices to be doing so by the end of the year. Many other countries are in the process of changing over. So get a passport before it's too late.

With your new passport you can wait another 10 years for an RFID passport, when the technology will be more mature, when we will have a better understanding of the security risks and when there will be other technologies we can use to cut the risks. You don't want to be a guinea pig on this one.

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As reported in a Rocky Mountain News article, Colorado's new tougher immigration enforcement law may have unexpected costs. Several state agencies have put in requests for a combined $2.5 million in budget increases in order to properly implement the new law. Supporters of the bill had said the agencies would be able to handle any increased workload within their original budgets. Excerpts from the article:

The Colorado legislature passed the measure during a special session in July, a law some say imposes the toughest immigration rules in the nation.

House Bill 1023 went into effect Aug. 1 and establishes strict identification rules that require tens of thousands of Coloradans to prove to local and state agencies they're in the country legally before they can obtain most government benefits.

Several agencies said Monday they are still working to identify the programs that fall under the law's umbrella as well as 15 other measures passed this summer and last spring that overlap and present their own set of challenges.

The Department of Revenue, for example, has fielded numerous complaints of longer wait times at DMV offices as clerks verify the legal immigration status of people applying for licenses and identification cards.

Also, more than 1,700 people have been caught attempting to use fake documents to get a driver's license or ID card in just the first month of the new law.

Meanwhile, Colorado's 64 counties are in charge of administering welfare benefits such as food stamps and Medicaid to more than 100,000 residents. And, many county human services departments have had to hire additional workers to verify the legal status of people applying for benefits, said Liz McDonough, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Human Services.

"We're getting into the more difficult areas of the legislation to determine certain aspects of what services are in or out," she said. "You can predict some of the costs and certain things, but as more things and more situations come to light, we'll have to determine the needs accordingly."

State officials said it will likely take months before they clearly understand the costs and scope of the new immigration laws. "It's important to remember that we're two months out from the special session. It's relatively soon," Sobanet said. "If it turns out that people were getting benefits they shouldn't have been, then we may see a reduction in costs. But that remains to be seen."

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The Houston Chronicle has an interesting article about the failure of all Latino immigrants to learn the English language. The point of the article, as all of us who regularly deal with Hispanic clients understand, is that this failure to learn is not due to laziness or a conscious decision not to learn English. It's because English is not easy to learn -- especially by adults with full-time jobs and families to raise. Here are some excerpts from the article:

In the Edin Espino family, late of Guatemala and now living in one of southwest Houston's sprawling, immigrant-filled apartment complexes, the best English is spoken by 4 1/2 -year-old preschooler Edin Jr.

The senior Espino, 27, understands enough to get by at his two jobs, one in a grocery store produce section and another at a nearby restaurant, but he can't hold a conversation. His wife, Clara, 33, understands the occasional word. Three-year-old German and Aida, 16 months, perk up when they hear "bye-bye" and other commonly used terms. But after six years in the U.S. living in one of the city's urban barrios, Spanish is the dominant language spoken inside and outside their home.

"I want to learn English. I know it would help me get ahead. But I have to work 65 hours a week to raise my children and pay my bills. That has to come first before anything," says Espino.

Fewer than half of the Houston residents who speak one of the city's top three non-English languages consider themselves fluent in English, according to recent census figures. The languages, unsurprisingly, are Spanish, Vietnamese and Chinese.

The percentages are about the same nationwide for the same three languages.

"Many immigrants don't speak English, but it's not because they are lazy or don't want to learn it or want to make everyone else speak Spanish or Vietnamese. They just have other priorities like providing for their basic needs," says Nelson Reyes, executive director of the Gulfton Area Neighborhood Organization.

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In an Associated Press story widely reported in newspapers and on Web sites, Stillmore Georgia is described as a near ghost town after the loss of much of its immigrant population.

The town of about 1,000 people was practically depopulated when federal agents swept up more than 120 illegal immigrants and sent them to immigration court in Atlanta. As the AP article stated, "The sweep has had the unintended effect of illustrating how vital the illegal immigrants were to the local economy." Here are other excerpts from the story:

In August, the federal government reported that Georgia had the fastest-growing illegal-immigrant population in the country. The number more than doubled from an estimated 220,000 in 2000 to 470,000 last year. This year, Georgia lawmakers passed some of the nation's toughest measures targeting illegal immigrants, and Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue last week promised a statewide crackdown on document fraud.

At Sucursal Salina No. 2, a store stocked with Mexican fruit sodas and snacks, cashier Alberto Gonzalez said the owner may shutter the place. By midday, Gonzalez had only six customers. Normally, he would see about 100.

The B&S convenience store, owned by Keith and Regan Slater, the mayor's son and grandson, lost about 80 percent of its business.

"These people come over here to make a better way of life, not to blow us up," complained Keith Slater, who keeps a portrait of Ronald Reagan on the wall. "I'm a die-hard Republican, but I think we missed the boat with this one."

Since the mid-1990s, Stillmore has grown dependent on the paychecks of Mexican workers, who originally came for seasonal farm labor, picking the area's famous Vidalia onions. Many then took year-round jobs at the Crider plant, with a work force of about 900.

Crider president David Purtle said federal agents began inspecting the company's employment records in May. They found 700 suspected illegal immigrants, and supervisors handed out letters over the summer ordering the 700 to prove they came to the United States legally or be fired. About 100 kept their jobs.

The poultry plant has limped along with half its normal work force. Crider increased its starting wages by $1 an hour to help recruit workers.

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According to a story in the Rocky Mountain News, Colorado farmers are running short of workers and face potential losses of millions of dollars this growing season because of new state laws scaring off immigrant laborers. Excerpts from the article:

Colorado farmers, ranchers, dairies, packing plants and green industries, such as sod growers and nursery owners, are especially concerned about a law that goes into effect Jan. 1.

That law, approved during the special legislative session on immigration in July, requires employers to verify Social Security numbers and save proof that workers are legal.

The state will perform random audits and employers face a $5,000 fine for the first violation and up to $25,000 for the second offense.

Gov. Bill Owens, who convened the special session in which the new law was passed, said a labor shortage isn't an excuse to break the law, according to spokesman Dan Hopkins.

"It's been devastating," said Andy Grant, of Grant Family Farms near Wellington, the state's largest organic grower. "Farm workers in America are afraid to travel to Colorado."

Seasonal and migrant workers make up about half the state's agricultural labor force, said Jimmie Dean of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, which represents 18,000 family farms in Colorado.

Jared Koch of the Colorado Farm Bureau, which has 28,000 members, said the new immigration laws could chew a $59.9 million hole in the state's agricultural production in each of the next three years.

An American Farm Bureau Federation's study, using federal statistics, estimated that 50 percent to 75 percent of the nation's agricultural labor force have "questionable" documents, said Austin Perez, the federation's director of congressional relations.

The figure may be higher in Colorado, said Dawn Thilmany, a professor of agricultural economics at Colorado State University.

"Most estimates say 85 to 90 percent of the agricultural labor force are illegal in some way, either undocumented or have illegal documents," said Thilmany.

"The political scene is changing," said Luis Indacochea, another supervisor at Grant Family Farms. "Word is getting to the people in the farmworker community that people without documents can no longer find work. You mix that with the rumors that go around, and you end up with a bad situation. I do believe word has gotten out that Colorado is a hostile place."

While most producers say they check documents, no one knows how many workers are legal or illegal.

"Everyone presents themselves as legal. We already check their documents," said Bruce Talbott, of Talbott Farms in Palisade.

Farm worker wages have traditionally been low, but growers say they've gone up without attracting new workers.

Frank Eckhardt grows sugar beets, onions, feed corn and alfalfa near Greeley. He said he usually pays workers $7 to $7.50 an hour, but offered $10 an hour this year and couldn't find enough help.

"We and a lot of farmers have lost up to 50 percent of our production because we didn't have workers," said Grant, who grew vegetables on 2,000 acres last year, but will harvest only 500 acres this year.

Farmers across the state echoed Grant and pushed for a new federal guest worker program, which could provide enough qualified help.

"We need a way to get workers that are legal and dependable," said Mackie O'Neal, of O'Neal Produce, which ships cantaloupes and onions from the Arkansas Valley near Rocky Ford.

Under the current federal guest worker program, agriculture producers apply for temporary visas, known as H2As, but the wait for help can last up to a year and many requests go unfilled.

"You don't know if you are going to get all the workers you need or not," said Sharon Harris, executive director of the Colorado Greenhouse and Nursery Association, which also relies on seasonal workers.

Congress adjourned without passing a better guest worker program.

"The H2A program is so expensive and so difficult. We've watched Washington

$5,000 Fine for first offense for employing an illegal immigrant

$16 billion: annual farm revenue in Colorado

$59.9 million: Estimated potential losses because of labor shortages

50% to 75%: Estimated share of the work force with questionable documentation.Sources: American Farm Bureau Federation, Colorado Department Of Agriculture

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As reported in today's Dallas Morning News, the organizers of the much-anticipated MegaVoto drive hoped to register 1000 new voters in Dallas County, but only got 40 to sign up.

The organizers aren't giving up though -- they're going to concentrate their efforts on Latinos who are already registered to vote, and encourage them to go to the polls in greater numbers than in the past.

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According to a story by the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, the town of Hazelton, Pennsylvania has granted tentative approval to revisions to its controversial Illegal Immigration Relief Act in an attempt to help the law survive legal challenges.

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Hispanic Magazine, in the August 2006 issue, named Dallas as the fourth best U.S. City for Hispanics. The magazine mentioned the fact that more than 1/3 of the residents of Dallas are Hispanic, and the Latino Cultural Center calls Dallas home, as do many Hispanic, Mexican, and Spanish arts programs.

The magazine article said "...several organizations such as the area's Hispanic chamber, Hispanic Bar Association, DFW Hispanic Bankers, a society for Hispanic engineers, the DFW Minority Business Development Council and others make for an excellent support system for Latino professionals."

To satisfy your curiosity, the top three U.S. cities were Miami, San Antonio, and Albuquerque.

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"Border War," a documentary by David Bossie, that is aimed to wake up the national conscience premiered last week in Burbank, California, and will be released on DVD in October. It is based on Mr. Bossie's vision of undocumented immigrants being delinquents who ruin our American dream by taking advantage of it, and rob the jobs other Americans can occupy.  David Bossie is president of the ultraconservative organization Citizens United, which has the purpose of reaffirming traditional American values.

However, as an article in the Washington Post points out:

Bossie was fired as an investigator for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee after overseeing the release of recordings of Hillary Rodham Clinton's phone conversations with Whitewater figure Webster L. Hubbell. The tapes were edited to create the impression that Clinton was involved in billing irregularities at the Arkansas law firm where she and Hubbell worked.

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Slate Magazine today has a great Nick Anderson cartoon about Congress' unwillingness to take any action on immigration reform. Of course, by the time you read this, it may not be the cartoon of the day, but if you'll search back a bit you'll find it.

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An article in the Mercury News details an Associated Press study showing that the large immigration rallies last Spring have not resulted in increased voter registration among Hispanics. Excerpts from the article:

Protest organizers -- principally unions, Latino advocacy groups and the Catholic Church -- acknowledge that it has been hard to translate street activism into voting clout, though they insist they can reach their goal of 1 million new voters by 2008.

``I was anticipating a huge jump in registration. I didn't see it,'' said Jess Cervantes, a veteran California political operative whose company analyzes Latino voting trends. ``When you have an emotional response, it takes time to evolve.''

It is impossible to count exactly how many new registrants were inspired by the new movement, because counties typically do not ask for race or ethnicity.

New registrations were up this year compared with last year, but they were well below the numbers in 2004, and the increase is not surprising at a time Democrats and Republicans are struggling for control of Congress. Even without that factor, the numbers do not indicate the watershed awakening advocates had envisioned.

Latino voters are a pivotal voting bloc, especially with their numbers projected to continue to grow. But they have long voted in numbers far below their share of the population, in part because many are under 18 or not U.S. citizens. A study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that while Latinos accounted for half the nation's population growth between the 2000 and 2004 elections, they represented only one-tenth of the increase in votes cast.

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I wish I was able to draw. I would love to be an editorial cartoonist. Michael Ramirez has encapsulated the position of the House of Representatives perfectly in this wonderful cartoon.

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The Dallas Morning News columnist with the wonderful name of Macarena Hernandez recently interviewed Irving, Texas mayor Herbert Gears about the increasingly large immigrant population of that Dallas suburb. Mr. Gears says we need more civil conversations about immigration. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

And if there is a city that knows about immigration - legal or not - it's Irving, which is home to one of the largest North Texas concentrations of foreign-born residents, primarily Latino and Asian. In fact, nearly 70 percent of public elementary schoolchildren are Latinos.

"Given current demographics, we'll have this diversity forever," he tells me. "It is never going to be reversed."

And since that's the case, he says, then let's embrace it.

Irving, now a majority-minority city, began its transition about 20 years ago when white families fled to other suburbs and Spanish-speaking immigrants began moving in. Coping with the changes hasn't been easy, Mr. Gears says, but it had to be accomplished. The way he sees it, what some would call the "Mexicanization" of the United States is really a part of the cultural fusion that has historically linked our state to its southern neighbor.

"You want to build a 100-foot-wall along the border, build it," Mr. Gears tells me. "And you can inspect anyone else who comes through from head to toe. But that's a completely different issue from what you do with the people already here."

Too often, Mr. Gears says, the debate centers around the short-term costs of illegal immigration. People forget or ignore that even undocumented workers pay their share of taxes and boost their local economies. But perhaps immigrants' biggest contribution to their new home is their children.

Considering native-born fertility rates are down and those 65 years and older are expected to make up nearly a quarter of this country's population by 2030, Mr. Gears believes this infusion of young energy is a blessing for cities like his. In the long run, it's these younger Americans who will be paying for the pensions of future retirees.

Whether here legally or not, immigrants are "giving birth to new Americans," he says, "and that's what allows America to continue to be strong."

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A report issued today by the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgetown states that Hispanic buying power and African-American buying power are each expected to total $800 billion this year. Asian buying power is expected to be about $427 billion.

According to the report, California accounts for 27% of Hispanic buying power, and Texas accounts for about 18%.

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