Chertoff May Void Judge's Order to Halt Border Fence

AzStarNet.com reports:

The nation's top security official may use his power to unilaterally trump a federal court order halting construction of a fence on a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is weighing whether to invoke a section of federal law that allows him to exempt border construction projects from any law, his press aide, Russ Knocke, told Capitol Media Services. That includes requirements for studies on environmental impacts of federally funded projects.

The move would not be unprecedented: Chertoff used the power at least twice since it was granted.

In 2005 he decided to build fencing near San Diego without conducting environmental studies. And in January he issued a waiver from all laws for a project along the edge of the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in Southwestern Arizona.

The possibility of Chertoff again exempting his agency from environmental laws comes days after a federal judge in Washington stopped construction of a nearly two-mile stretch of fence at the foot of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area southeast of Tucson. The conservation area, designated by Congress in 1988, is described on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Web site as ecologically "one of the most important riparian areas in the United States."

The restraining order gives two environmental groups time to convince Judge Ellen Huvelle that plans for vehicle barriers in the river's floodway and washes leading into it will cause erosion and sedimentation that will harm the environment and affect species dependent on the river.

Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club also contend the BLM, which controls the area, did not seek public input on the project in performing an environmental assessment that took just three weeks. They contend the BLM should have prepared a more formal environmental impact statement.

Chertoff, however, can make the lawsuit, and judge's ruling, disappear simply by declaring the project exempt from the law the groups used to sue.

Knocke said Chertoff believes the lawsuit is without merit, saying the BLM's assessment concluded the project would not harm the area.

"We care about the border environment as much as anyone," Knocke said. "But when weighing a lizard in the balance with human lives, this border infrastructure project is the obvious choice."

Attorneys for Chertoff also argue that environmental damage from illegal border crossers is greater than anything that would occur from the barriers.

Nothing short of congressional action could stop Chertoff from exempting the San Pedro project from the environmental laws if he decides to do so.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., whose district includes the river, does not support repeal of Chertoff's power.

"Border security has to be a top concern in a state like this," said C.J. Karamargin, Giffords' press aide. He said the congresswoman believes federal officials "should have the tools they need to do the job."

Bob Dreher, vice president for conservation law for Defenders of Wildlife, said what might stop Chertoff from exempting the project from federal laws is, "They have to do, I think, the politically costly thing of publicly saying, 'We're above the law.' " He said that might be what kept Chertoff from waiving environmental laws for a similar border project in Texas.

While Giffords is unwilling to repeal the law, she is willing to apply pressure.

She is one of five members of Congress who wrote Chertoff last week asking him to delay further work on the project, prepare a full environmental impact statement and conduct public hearings, something not done before construction began late last month.

"Our communities support safe and secure borders and simply ask for adequate time to share their concerns with their government, as they have a right to do," reads the letter signed by Giffords as well as Rep. Raúl Grijalva, also a Tucson Democrat. Three members of the Texas congressional delegation also signed that letter.

In his January decision dealing with the Goldwater bombing range, a military training ground, Chertoff declared that the high number of people entering the country illegally through that stretch of the desert create an immediate need to build not just fencing but also vehicle barriers, towers, sensors and cameras.

That, he said, justified exemptions from the National Environmental Policy Act — the law being used by the two environmental groups to sue over the San Pedro project — as well as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Wilderness Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Wildlife Refuge Systems Administration Act.

Chertoff also exempted the project from another law, which requires his agency to follow certain administrative procedures.

"Be Careful What You Wish For"

The Bush administration is quietly relaxing visa regulations because farmworkers are in critically short supply.



The Los Angeles Times reports:

With a nationwide farmworker shortage threatening to leave unharvested fruits and vegetables rotting in fields, the Bush administration has begun quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers that restrict how foreign laborers can legally be brought into the country.

The effort, urgently underway at the departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor, is meant to rescue farm owners caught in a vise between a complex process to hire legal guest workers and stepped-up enforcement that has reduced the number of illegal planters, pickers and middle managers crossing the border.

"It is important for the farm sector to have access to labor to stay competitive," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "As the southern border has tightened, some producers have a more difficult time finding a workforce, and that is a factor of what is going on today."

The push to speedily rewrite the regulations is also the Bush administration's attempt to step into a breach left when Congress did not pass an immigration overhaul in June that might have helped American farms. Almost three-quarters of farmworkers are thought to be illegal immigrants.

On all sides of the farm industry, the administration's behind-the-scenes initiative to revamp H-2A farmworker visas is fraught with anxiety. Advocates for immigrants fear the changes will come at the expense of worker protections because the administration has received and is reportedly acting on extensive input from farm lobbyists. And farmers in areas such as the San Joaquin Valley, which is experiencing a 20% labor shortfall, worry the administration's changes will not happen soon enough for the 2008 growing season.

"It's like a ticking time bomb that's going to go off," said Luawanna Hallstrom, chief operating officer of Harry Singh & Sons, a third-generation family farm in Oceanside that grows tomatoes. "I'm looking at my fellow farmers and saying, 'Oh my God, what's going on?' "

Officials at the three federal agencies are scrutinizing the regulations to see whether they can adjust the farmworker program, an unwieldy system used by less than 2% of American farms to bring in foreign workers. They are considering a series of changes, including lengthening the time workers can stay, expanding the types of work they can do, simplifying how their applications are processed, and redefining terms such as "temporary."

Administration sources said they were moving aggressively. They declined to discuss details of the proposals.

The agencies are also working on possible changes to a separate visa program, H-2B, which brings in seasonal workers for resorts, clam-shucking operations and horse stables, among other businesses.

The administration has pursued the project discreetly. The issue of immigration has generated friction between President Bush and the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has strongly opposed many of the initiatives that Bush has pursued.

The changes to the H-2A visa program comprise one of more than two dozen initiatives the administration announced in August. Most of the initiatives dealt with increased enforcement, the most prominent being a measure that would force employers to either fire workers for whom they've received "no match" notification (indicating their W-2 data don't match Social Security Administration records) or face punitive action from the Department of Homeland Security. When Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the enforcement push, he also acknowledged the problems that agriculture reported.

"Even putting aside no-match letters, just our increased work at the border was actually causing a drop in the number of workers coming across," Chertoff said.

David James, an assistant secretary of Labor, said Bush asked his department, which has jurisdiction over most H-2A rules, to review the entire program. The agency "is now in the process of identifying ways the program can be improved to provide farmers with an orderly and timely flow of legal workers while protecting the rights of both U.S. workers and foreign temporary workers," James said.

The current program, managed by all three agencies, is famously dysfunctional.

Farmers have to apply for workers about a month in advance, but the agencies often fail to coordinate their response in time for the harvest, which farmers can't always predict. At Hallstrom's farm, where tidy rows of tomato plants run almost to the ocean's edge, half of the 1,000 workers are in the H-2A program. (Nationally, about 60,000 H-2A applications a year are usually filed, compared with more than 3 million farm jobs to be filled. There is no cap on the number of H-2A workers allowed into the U.S.)

She remembers submitting an emergency request for H-2A workers one year and getting the visas 60 days later. She said the laborers spent two weeks pulling rotten fruit off the vines, and the farm lost $2.5 million. "Devastating," Hallstrom said.

Growers also complain about paying for workers' housing, transportation, visas and other fees. Harry Yates, a North Carolina Christmas-tree grower, estimates that his labor costs for H-2A workers are $14 an hour, compared with a competitor whose illegal laborers cost about $7.50 an hour. Like other farmers, Yates said using the H-2A program was an invitation to lawsuits from worker advocates and frequent government investigations.

"I understand why so many growers are afraid to use this program. It is too expensive, too complicated, too slow and too likely to land you in court," Yates said.

Some advocates for workers fiercely dispute this. They say farmers just want to keep wages low.

"The employers want to be free of government oversight, legal-services representation for the guest workers, and other efforts to enforce the modest H-2A worker protections," said Bruce Goldstein, executive director of the advocacy group Farmworker Justice, which is affiliated with the nonprofit National Council of La Raza.

Industry lobbyists have sent the Bush administration a set of detailed suggestions for overhauling the H-2A program through administrative changes, which could take weeks to put in place, and through changes in the regulations, a process that takes months.

Some of the suggestions under consideration include changing the procedures farmers must use to try to hire U.S. citizens first. Currently farmers have to advertise the jobs, then submit applications to Labor and Homeland Security to bring in foreign workers. Growers would prefer to move to a system in which they pledged that they had done all they could to recruit U.S. workers, but no longer had to submit an application to Labor.

Other changes under consideration would simplify the detailed H-2A housing requirements, extend the definition of "temporary" beyond 10 months, and expand the definition of "agricultural" workers to include such industries as meatpacking and poultry processing.

The reasons for opposing Bush's and Democrats' legislation for overhauling immigration laws are wide-ranging. Democrats' constituents oppose it on the grounds that illegal immigrants drive down Americans' wages. Conservatives' opposition is racial bias, cloaked in patriotic fervor and 'war on terror'-fears. Conservatives are about to get a taste of what liberals have been swallowing for the last six years: Bush's sheer dogged determination to get what he wants, by any means. In this instance, it's 'backdoor amnesty.'

Before George W. Bush leaves office, he will have legalized, legitimized and made legal every last illegal immigrant in the U.S. He will have called the bluff of the xenophobes who hid behind the 'rule of law' and 'threats to national security' arguments. And once again, it's the American worker who gets the shaft and is left holding the bag. An empty bag.

Shouldn't Americans Be Running America's Political Parties?

California State GOP Goes Outside The U.S. To Hire Top Aide

For the San Francisco Chronicle, Carla Marinucci reports:

The California Republican Party has decided no American is qualified to take one of its most crucial positions -- state deputy political director -- and has hired a Canadian for the job through a coveted H-1B visa, a program favored by Silicon Valley tech firms that is under fire for displacing skilled American workers.

Christopher Matthews, 35, a Canadian citizen, has worked for the state GOP as a campaign consultant since 2004. But he recently was hired as full-time deputy political director, with responsibility for handling campaign operations and information technology for the country's largest state Republican Party operation, California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring confirmed in a telephone interview this week.

In the nation's most populous state -- which has produced a roster of nationally known veteran political consultants -- "it's insulting but also embarrassing ... to bring people from the outside who don't know the difference between Lodi and Lancaster ... and who can't even vote," said Karen Hanretty, a political commentator and former state GOP party spokeswoman.

U.S. Department of Labor records show the state Republican Party applied for an H-1B visa to fill the job of "political consultant" and was granted a visa labor certification in March 2007. The three-year H-1B visa does not become valid until Oct. 1, 2007, government records show.

Party officials said Matthews has been working in the interim under a "TN" visa -- a renewable one-year special visa for Canadian and Mexican professional workers created under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Matthews was hired by Michael Kamburowski, an Australian citizen who was hired this year as the state GOP's chief operations officer. But neither new official has experience in managing a political campaign in the nation's most populous state -- and as foreign citizens, neither is eligible to vote.

Kamburowski, a former real estate agent who sold property in the Dominican Republic, is a permanent U.S. resident in the process of obtaining American citizenship and does not require a specialized work visa, state GOP officials said.

With just months until the state's Feb. 5 primary and Republicans facing a roster of formidable challenges in California -- a key political fundraising state -- some party insiders are shaking their heads at the hirings.

"There are talented Republicans in California, and the message that (party chair) Ron Nehring is sending is that there's no talent pool here," Hanretty said.

The state party and its 58 county operations face several challenges, Hanretty said, including "redistricting on the ballot, uncertain legislative races ahead of us ... and a number of Republican congressmen who are under federal investigation and are going to be challenged by Democrats."

"Who will help these candidates?" she asked. "A couple of foreign transplants who don't know the political landscape and don't know the history of the complicated politics in California?"

Nehring defended his choices by saying Matthews and Kamburowski are highly qualified political professionals who will be an asset to the party -- and dramatize the GOP ideal of welcoming immigrants.

"Chris (Matthews) was inspired by the recall and by the governor to come to California in 2003 and volunteer for the Republican Party of San Diego," said Nehring, who chaired the San Diego party's organization from 2001 to 2007.

Nehring, a conservative Republican, became state chairman earlier this year, replacing Palo Alto attorney Duf Sundheim.

Nehring said he met Matthews while overseeing a campaign school in Calgary, Alberta, "and when the recall started, Chris said he wanted to come down and be part of it."

Matthews spent a month as a volunteer and in 2004 began work as a paid consultant to the San Diego County Republican Central Committee, party officials said.

As deputy political director, Matthews will be responsible for political campaigning and technology issues because "he has a successful track record of working with the party for the last three years," Nehring said. "He's developed an incredible body of knowledge in those areas. ... He's one of the strongest campaigners I've ever met."

Nehring said he has been inspired that Matthews "has wanted to move to America and become an American citizen ... and we embrace that."

"Our job at the California GOP is to build the most effective campaign organization. ... And the fact that we have two people on staff who want to become Americans ... is a great story that is at the heart of what the Republican Party is all about."

But the party nationally has fought efforts to increase immigration, calling during the recent debate in Congress for much tighter border security and resisting efforts to providing a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants now in the country.

The hiring of two immigrants at top Republican Party posts has handed ammunition to critics who note that many Republicans have spoken critically about the impacts of waves of Mexican immigrants.

"The hypocrisy is disgusting," said longtime Democratic Party activist Gloria Nieto, policy director at San Jose-based Services Immigration Rights and Education Network, or SIREN, an immigrant advocacy nonprofit organization.

Nieto argued that the party has painted Latinos "as the brown menace. ... But it's perfectly OK to hire people from outside the country? What does it say about the Republican Party that they import their hired guns?"

State campaign finance records show that Matthews earned almost $19,000 for work as a campaign consultant in 2005 with the San Diego GOP but has earned little in other years.

While the hiring of Matthews under the H-1B visa for "specialized workers" is legal, it appears to skirt the intention of the program -- which calls for most employers to make a good-faith effort to hire Americans first, according to U.S. Department of Labor regulations.

The H-1B program -- currently limited to 65,000 workers -- is aimed at providing workers for jobs that presumably cannot be filled by American workers, and prospective employers must publicly advertise or post notice of their intentions to hire under such visas, labor guidelines state.

A bill proposed by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would require that all employers seeking such visas be required to pledge they have made such an effort and that the visa holder does not displace an American worker.

The H-1B program's greatest advocates are Silicon Valley technology firms, which have pushed for more visas so they can hire computer specialists from overseas.

Jon Fleischman, Southern California GOP vice chair, said he was not aware of the hiring of Matthews -- but added that hirings are routinely made without consulting party officers. He said he doesn't consider it a problem to hire foreigners if they are the most qualified job applicants.

Nehring and one of his new hires also are connected to one of the nation's most conservative activist groups, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform.

Kamburowski was chair of the group's Reagan Legacy project, an effort to name landmarks in all 50 states after the deceased president.

Nehring was a senior consultant to Americans for Tax Reform and has listed Norquist as a client of his own consulting group. State GOP officials insist Matthews has never had any connection -- professional or volunteer -- with Norquist or his organization.

Conservatives Aren't The Only Ones Against The Immigration Bill

ThinkProgress.org tells half the story:

MSNBC goes all conservative for seven hours.
“During the seven hours of the June 11 edition of MSNBC Live (9 a.m.-4 p.m. ET), 15 segments aired about immigration or the Senate immigration bill, none of which featured a Democratic or progressive commentator. Indeed, in nine of the 15 segments, the anchor interviewed a conservative anti-immigration activist who had opposed the bill — including six separate solo interviews with MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan.”

MSNBC also had no liberal or progressive Democrat opposed to the immigration bill, of which there are many:

MSNBC misrepresents, by omission, the fact that liberals and progressives also aren't in support of this immigration bill, albeit for different reasons than conservatives. This is one of the rare issues that unite liberals and conservatives although it would be hard to find anyone on either side who realizes it. Bush's trip to Congress yesterday, his first in five years, was an attempt to make sure we never do.

For conservatives, the deal-breakers in the bill are 'amnesty', xenophobia in general and towards Mexicans in specific, and free-floating fear of Al Qaeda sneaking over the border to set off dirty bombs in our shopping malls.

For liberals, it's all about economics (jobs with real living wages for Americans), failed U.S. foreign aid and trade policies, and a U.S. that doesn't have to wage war to keep Americans safe and secure.

Bush's trip to the Hill was to resurrect the bill with assurances to conservatives about their reservations. Just enough assurances to get enough votes on board to pass it. National ID cards for both citizens and immigrants as a requirement for employment for everyone, and/or actually appropriating the money to build that fence on the U.S. southern border, whatever it takes.

My Questions About The Virginia Tech Shooting

Map of School Violence

I suspect that after all of the information about Cho Seung Hui is gathered and examined, we will have learned nothing new about why some young men turn to extreme violence or how earlier intervention might have prevented the random deaths of innocents at Virginia Tech.

Cho's profile will wind up looking like the profiles of all the other mass murderers in modern history. It will come as no surprise to most liberals, whose policies on everything from health care and education to immigration, worker protections, corporate and gun regulation, would go a long way in preventing horrific killing fields such as what we saw on Monday in Virginia.

Republican dogma will prevail and nothing will change. Why? Because 32 people killed and a dozen or so wounded does not justify making the changes necessary, spending the money, for preventing similar sieges in the future. Because they're not the right 32 + 12.

That's the truth of capitalist America.

Until Americans realize the connection between our public policies ("money is motive, profit is king") and the violence committed by our government in our names, violence will continue to be a part of our lives. Beyond the massacre on Monday, in every facet of our society. American policies and our lifestyle will go on producing more Cho Seung Huis, like Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, George Jo Hennard, James Huberty, James Rupert, Mark Barton, Kip Kinkel, and dozens of others, too young to have had their names published outside of the juvenile court system.

Culled from a Washington Post report:

Cho, of Centreville, Va., the son of immigrants who run a dry cleaning business, and the brother of a State Department contractor who graduated from Princeton, was described by those who encountered him over the years as at times angry, menacing, disturbed and so depressed that he seemed near tears.

Cho graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly in 2003. He turned 23 on Jan. 18 and had lived as a legal permanent resident since entering the United States through Detroit on Sept. 2, 1992, when he was 8 years old, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Cho held a green card through his parents, and he renewed it Oct. 27, 2003, according to Homeland Security. He listed his residence as Centreville.

Cho's sister, Sun Cho, graduated from Princeton University with a degree in economics in 2004 after she completed summer internships with the State Department in Washington and Bangkok.

A State Department spokesman said Sun Cho currently works as a contractor specializing in personnel matters.

I'd like to know how his parents, South Korean nationals, got into the U.S.

They are described by the Washington Post as "running a dry cleaning business," which could mean that they own the business. Having money might explain how they entered the U.S. (financially solvent, wouldn't be a burden, etc.), but one could infer from 'running a business' that they managed it and/or worked it for others. If that's the case, I'd like to know if the United States was experiencing a shortage of dry cleaning workers fifteen years ago when the Cho family entered the U.S.? After fifteen years in the U.S., presumably with roots in the community and children who have gone through the American school system (and one child working for the U.S. government), why aren't they U.S. citizens?

And about their daughter: What is a State Department 'contractor' in "personnel matters"? She is not a W-2 employee of the State Department; she is an independent contractor. What does she do for the State Department, with a degree in economics, "specializing in personnel matters"?

Does she take care of 'personnel problems'?

Which Came First, Poverty or Crime?

Kevin Drum writes:

IMMIGRATION: NOT THE SOURCE OF ALL OUR PROBLEMS AFTER ALL....Some new data on the immigration front:

A study released Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants who arrived in the state between 1990 and 2004 increased wages for native workers by an average 4%.

UC Davis economist Giovanni Peri, who conducted the study, said the benefits were shared by all native-born workers, from high school dropouts to college graduates....

Another study released Monday by the Washington-based Immigration Policy Center showed that immigrant men ages 18 to 39 had an incarceration rate five times lower than native-born citizens in every ethnic group examined. Among men of Mexican descent, for instance, 0.7% of those foreign-born were incarcerated compared to 5.9% of native-born, according to the study, co-written by UC Irvine sociologist Ruben G. Rumbaut.

So are these studies legit? I can't say for sure, but the objections offered up by the immigration hawks at the Center for Immigration Studies were so transparently lame that it suggests they don't actually have any credible criticisms of the methodology. They just don't like the results. But perhaps they'll be able to come up with something better after they've cogitated on the matter for while.

Does anybody here live in an area that could use more people?

Is your neighborhood under-populated? Are there not enough cracker-box, particle-board subdivisions mushrooming up in your open space? Could your roads use more traffic? How about noise? Do you need more car alarms, more subwoofer base response from your neighbors' stereos, perhaps a few more basketball hoops in your neighbors' driveways? Are you not standing on line long enough at the supermarket checkout?

How long did it take you to get your current job? What kind of competition were you up against? If you lost your job, how long would it take you to get another?

In IT, Democrats are all too happy to work with Republicans on making it easier for people like Bill Gates to import workers to compete with you. Let's talk turkey - to replace you. Come to think of it, most Democrats in Congress are happy to work with Republicans on legislation like that for any industry. As long as that industry makes substantial contributions to their campaign war chests.

The immigrants coming to the U.S. come here for economic opportunity, opportunity that is fast disappearing for Americans who are already here. If the economic outlook evened out worldwide, like if the IMF's and World Bank's policies were more "citizen friendly," nobody would leave their homeland. If we remain on this current path, there will come a day when we (and our children, grandchildren) will have to leave the U.S. to find work if we and they want to do something other than service jobs for low wages.

American citizens are, again, not dealing with any of the real problems facing us. We're letting politicians and corporations control the subjects of debate. We're going into another election cycle talking about issues like a security policy that will make us more insecure. When are we going to stop reacting, talking on their terms, and start discussing alternatives that will deliver real change, real security and equity for us all?