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International Migration News - Volume #8 | |
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INS: Asylum, Border, SanctionsAsylum. The INS in December 2000 announced draft regulations that will make it easier for victims of domestic violence to obtain asylum. Applicants for asylum must prove that they face persecution or fear of persecution if they return to their countries of citizenship arising from at least one of five categories--race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Under the new regulations, battered women can be considered members of a "social group" suffering persecution; homosexuals may already be considered members of a persecuted social group. In 1995, the INS issued guidelines on offering asylum when applicants claim gender-related persecution and in 1996, the Board of Immigration Appeals approved an asylum petition by a young woman who said she could not go home because she faced female genital mutilation in her native Togo. However, in 1999, the BIA did not grant asylum to a Guatemalan woman who said she was battered by her husband for 10 years, and fled to the US because the police in Guatemala would not protect her. The new INS regulations would overturn the this 1999 BIA decision. About 1,000 of the 42,000 asylum claims filed in FY99 were filed by foreign women saying they were members of a particular social group, including victims of domestic violence. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britain already provide some protection to battered women filing gender-based claims for asylum. The Washington Post reported that a Ghanaian hotel worker named Regina Norman Danson won asylum in the US in 1997 as Adelaide Abankwah, allegedly a "queen mother" of her tribe who faced genital mutilation at home. After being turned down by an immigration judge and the BIA, several New York area politicians intervened, and she eventually won asylum after a "Free Adelaide" campaign was launched that involved Hillary Rodham Clinton urging the INS to review her case. In July 1999, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the BIA and granted the woman asylum. However, the New York INS office investigated, learned that the real Adelaide Abankwah is an Ghanaian living in Maryland whose passport was stolen in 1996, and is seeking to revoke Danson's immigrant status. The US has 240 immigration judges. One judge who married an unauthorized Colombian woman in Dallas has been barred from hearing marriage or deportation cases until his wife becomes a legal resident. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (www.usccr.gov/) will undertake an evaluation of the US asylum and detention system, saying "This nation's immigration policies and the way that they are implemented have obvious civil rights implications involving race, national origin and religious discrimination issues." Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry said "Unfortunately, asylum seekers have not only suffered under an oppressive regime in their native countries, but they may also be subjected to racial, ethnic, religious and gender bias upon their arrival in America." Newsweek reported on "the new slaves" in the US, estimating that one million foreigners are living and working in slave-like conditions in the US; about six million slaves were imported to what became the US between 1502 and 1808. Most "new slaves" are immigrants, and many are employed by immigrants, including professionals in Washington DC and New York City. Border. There were several reports released in Fall 2000 that highlighted the deaths of migrants along the US-Mexican border and the increase in such deaths as migrants take more risks to elude a stronger border patrol. Some of the critics of stepped-up border control efforts are beginning to aid migrants by guiding them past Border Patrol checkpoints, actions reminiscent of the "sanctuary movement" of the 1980s when churches and individuals sheltered Central Americans that the US government did not consider refugees. Along the US-Mexican border in Arizona, some ranchers began to detain migrants who crossed their property, which helped to prompt the countermovement of assistance for migrants. A Tucson-based coalition of 11 churches, Humane Borders, plans to install as many as 800 water stations along 200 miles of desert-jugs of water, food and clothing. Some persons willing to help migrants display bumper stickers with a North Star logo that shows water pouring from the Big Dipper, indicating to migrants that a person is willing to give aid. One of the leaders of Humane Borders is Reverend John Fife, pastor of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, the first pastor to declare his church a sanctuary for Central Americans in 1982. Fife was later convicted on federal charges for his activities. Sanctions. In 1999, the INS in Omaha subpoenaed records from 111 meatpacking plants in Nebraska, compared employee I-9 information against Social Security Administration and INS records, and told employers to ask employees who appeared to be unauthorized to clear up discrepancies in their records before the INS came to the plant to interview them. During the plant visits, the INS interviewed only workers already identified as potentially unauthorized. This INS worksite inspection system, termed Operation Vanguard, was attacked by meatpackers, farmers and Hispanic groups. The Nebraska governor appointed a task force to study the effects of immigration enforcement on the livestock slaughtering and manufacturing industries as well as the effect of immigration on Nebraska's education, housing and the justice systems. The task force issued 14 recommendations in October 2000, including a recommendation against a resumption of Vanguard and advocating an amnesty for unauthorized foreigners in the state. Operation Vanguard remained on hold in Nebraska and Iowa in summer and fall 2000, waiting for INS headquarters to grant permission to continue and expand the practice of subpoenaing employers' data provided by newly hired employees on I-9 forms and checking the data against Social Security Administration and INS databases. INS District Director Jerry Heinauer said: "It's unfortunate that we're unable to go to a second and third phase of Vanguard - which would have had us going back to the plants on a couple of occasions." On December 6, the INS arrested a vice president and five office workers at Nebraska Beef, as well as 212 of the 1,600 production workers, charging the managers with conspiring to smuggle illegal migrants into the US. The INS said that a recruiter for Nebraska Beef offered workers in El Paso, Texas $8-an-hour jobs, two free weeks of housing and a $100 cash advance; the recruiter also sold workers fraudulent Social Security numbers. The INS raid was widely condemned by Hispanic groups, with some complaining that the raid "split families and disrupted the community just before a presidential visit and Christmas." A local church organized donations for the families of those who had family members arrested in the raid. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is trying to organize workers at Nebraska Beef, and said that the raid hampered its organizing efforts: "You can't have an entire industry preying on an immigrant work force, then turn around and punish the workers, especially when the industry encourages workers to cross borders for employment in packing operations." Employers have used the INS to deter organizing in the past. In October 1999, just before negotiations for a first collective bargaining agreement were to begin, the general manager of the Holiday Inn Express in downtown Minneapolis called the INS to check on the legal status of 16 workers and eight housekeepers were apprehended. In January 2000, the Holiday Inn made a $72,000 settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of nine workers, awarding each $1,000 in compensatory damages and $7,000 in back pay, the first settlement under the new EEOC policy that extends protection against discrimination to all workers in the US, including unauthorized workers. The INS gave the workers involved two years to remain in the US "to arrange their affairs before returning to their home countries." The manager of Construction Personnel Inc. in Baton Rouge was arrested in December 2000 for hiring illegal aliens to remove asbestos from old buildings. Other company officials have pleaded guilty of recruiting unauthorized migrants and then supplying them to asbestos-abatement contractors after they were provided with false work authorization documents as well as false training and health certifications. Smuggling. The President's International Crime Control Strategy in December 2000 announced the establishment of a Migrant Smuggling and Trafficking in Persons Coordination Center to deal with the estimated 700,000 to two million women and children trafficked globally each year. The Center is expected to help the US to achieve its three major goals to reduce migrant smuggling and trafficking: (1) prevent and deter smuggling and trafficking activity; (2) investigate and prosecute the criminals involved in this activity; and (3) protect and assist victims. The CIA released a report that predicted that immigration will increase and be more difficult to manage: "Legal and illegal migrants now account for more than 15 percent of the population in more than 50 countries. These numbers will grow substantially and will increase social and political tension and perhaps alter national identities even as they contribute to demographic and economic dynamism." The US deported 181,572 foreigners, including 69,093 foreigners convicted of US crimes, in 2000, up from 180,008 in 1999. The INS got its budget for FY01 in December--$3.1 billion from the government, and $1.6 billion in fees, for a total $4.8 billion. About $2.6 billion will be spent on enforcement.
Ken Ellingwood, "Clergy and
others trying to prevent migrant deaths emulate tactics of 1980s
sanctuary movement," Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2000. | |
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