WPEC-TV — West Palm Beach, Florida

Two ‘willing workers’ plead guilty to illegally re-entering the U. S.

On November 14, defendant Enrique Espino-Hernandez, a Mexican national, pled guilty to illegally re-entering Florida after being deported. He faces five years in prison. — According to documents filed with the court, on July 30, an ICE Agent found that Espino-Hernandez, who was incarcerated in the PBC Jail, had been previously removed and deported from the United States.

HERE

Cherokee Tribune
November 19, 2008

Public provides input on illegal alien ordinance

By Ashley Fuller

Illegal immigration could be one of the first issues the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners will tackle in the new year.

The board at a public hearing Monday night on its newly proposed ordinance to prevent renting residential space or hiring illegal immigrants heard from more people in favor of the measure than against.

In December of 2006, the board voted to make it illegal to rent or lease property to illegal immigrants.

A lawsuit was filed against the county by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the law firms Troutman Sanders LLP and Hernan, Taylor & Lee. An injunction was placed on the county by a U.S. District Court judge to prevent enforcement, and the lawsuit was stayed but still is pending.

The board now is considering a new ordinance, which includes a revised version of the rental and lease portion of the original proposal, and was expanded to cover employment.

Commission Chairman Buzz Ahrens said the board would “take under advisement” the comments made during the hearing. The board voted to not bring the issue back up any sooner than its meeting on Jan. 20.

Fourteen people spoke in favor of the ordinance.

D.A. King of Marietta, president of the Dustin Inman Society, which is dedicated to educating the public on the consequences of illegal immigration, encouraged its passage.

“I hope it is not only passed, but it is enforced,” he said, adding that illegal immigrants move out of communities where similar laws are enforced.

Billy Inman of southwest Cherokee, whose son, Dustin, the organization’s namesake, was killed in an accident caused by an illegal immigrant, also spoke at the hearing, calling the ordinance “a good start.”

Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City who is working with the county on the ordinance, said it should withstand a legal challenge. He said there is only one U.S. Supreme Court decision and one Court of Appeals decision on the issue, both of which support the ordinance.

Six people spoke against the ordinance, the majority of whom were from organizations that filed the original lawsuit.

Attorneys for MALDEF said passage of the new ordinance would violate the injunction currently in place.

“The two ordinances make the same activity illegal,” Elise Shore, regional counsel for MALDEF, said. “The two ordinances have the same effect of discouraging landlords from renting to a particular group.”

Opponents also brought up economic concerns. Debbie Seagraves of Woodstock, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, said the employer provisions in the ordinance could have an effect on the local economy.

“Businesses may choose to relocate out of Cherokee County,” she said.

While none of the speakers said a lawsuit would be filed if the ordinance is passed, they did use the idea in their arguments.

Azadeh Shahshahani, national security/immigrant rights project director for the ACLU of Georgia, said the ordinance would cause the county to spend as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend it in court.

The revised ordinance requires everyone who wants to rent or lease residential property to submit an occupancy license application to the county business license division for a $5 fee.

The application must include the occupant’s country of citizenship and a signed declaration the applicant is a lawful citizen or an identification number assigned by the federal government that establishes their lawful presence in the country. If an applicant does not have a number, they are to declare that on the application.

The county government then will check with the federal government to see if the occupant is a lawful resident. If the federal government reports the status of the occupant as not lawfully in the country, a deficiency notice is sent to the occupant, who has 60 days to correct the government’s records or provide information establishing their legal residency. If, after 60 days, the occupant’s immigration status has not changed, a revocation notice is sent to the occupant and the lessor.

If a landlord violates the ordinance, his or her business license will be suspended.

The ordinance also makes it illegal to hire illegal aliens.

If the county government receives a valid complaint, it will request identity information from the business regarding any individual alleged to be an illegal alien. The county will send the information to the federal government.

The county will suspend the license of any business that fails to correct a violation within 15 days of notification if the federal government confirms the employee is not in the country legally. The suspension will end after the business has shown that the violation has ended. Subsequent violations will result in a 30-day business license suspension.

The employment section of the ordinance does not apply to the hiring of an independent contractor by a business or the hiring of casual labor for domestic tasks.

The ordinance only applies to unincorporated Cherokee County, although leaders of local cities said they would consider similar measures if there was public interest.

here

County Proposes (Illegal) Immigrant Renter Measure
WXIA TV Atlanta

Monday, November 17, 2008

CANTON, Ga. — One Metro county is trying again to crack down on illegal immigrants living and working in the area.

Cherokee County is proposing that every renter get a permit. Anyone not from this country could be investigated and if they’re not legal, kicked out of their apartment. Also, businesses could lose their licenses if they hire illegal immigrants.

As Cherokee County commissioners consider a new ordinance to crack down on illegal immigrants working and living in the area, Billy and Cathy Inman sat solemnly in the back row. Many say it is their story that prompted these very discussions.

“I lost my son to an illegal alien on Father’s Day 2000,” said Billy Inman.

It was a statement that brought the room to dead silence.

“We sat at a red light in Ellijay,” Billy said. “He plowed into us, sat in the road. My son and the family dog died at the scene. ”

Kathy Inman has been in a wheel chair ever since. A picture of her son is on the back of it, next to a bigger picture of the man who police say caused the accident and later walked away from the hospital never to be seen again.

For Meg Rogers, who heads up the Cherokee Violence Center, the proposed ordinance is too broad, and will end up sending the wrong message.

“It’s difficult to help victims of domestic violence who do not have status, because they’re afraid to ask for help,” Rogers said.

An issue that landed Cherokee County with a court injunction the first time — and maybe again. But some — like the Inmans — say it’s worth it.

“I just wish you’d open your eyes,” Billy Inman said. “Because some day it could happen to anyone in this room.”

Representatives of the Mexican-American Legal and Defense Fund also took to the podium Monday night. They say the proposed ordinance is unconstitutional. They took the county to court over the first proposed ordinance two years ago — and it’s still tied up there. They said they’re prepared to fight against this one as well.

HERE

Cherokee puts off vote on renter law targeting illegal immigrantsBy NANCY BADERTSCHER

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Monday, November 17, 2008

The Cherokee County Commission decided Monday night to wait until at least mid-January to consider passing an ordinance that would require all renters to pay a $5 fee and subject themselves to verification that they are in the country legally.

The ordinance, Cherokee’s second attempt in three years to crack down on illegal immigrants, also would give the county the power to suspend the business licenses of companies that hire undocumented workers.

Buzz Ahrens, chairman of the commission, said the board would take the time to further review the ordinance, and to digest feedback it received Monday night at a public hearing.

Some residents said the ordinance that could send a bad message to businesses that might consider locating in Cherokee County and subject the county to a costly legal fight. Others said the ordinance is overdue and voiced frustrations about what illegal immigrants are doing to their neighborhoods and to taxpayer-funded government services.

Billy Inman of Woodstock made an emotional plea for passage of the ordinance, recounting for the commission the struggles that he and his wife have gone through since a wreck in 2000 that killed their son. He blamed it on an illegal immigrant.

“Something has got to be done, and this is a good start,” Inman said.

The ordinance could supersede one that was passed in 2006, but was never enforced after civil rights groups filed suit.

The new ordinance, like the earlier one, targets illegal immigrants who rent houses and apartments and live in extended stay motels. It would require each renter to pay a $5 licensing fee and provide information on their country of citizenship. The county could then investigate their legal status and go after both them and their landlord, if the renters are proven to be illegal citizens.

The provision on businesses is new and would require businesses to verify the legal status of their employees. Companies found to be employing illegal immigrants could have their business licenses suspended.

Debbie Seagraves, a lifelong Cherokee County resident, told commissioners she’s “very concerned and dismayed that we’re considering another questionable and scattershot ordinance.”

She said she believes the ordinance could discourage business recruits and “add insult to injury” by requiring a $5 fee from renters, some of whom may have lost their homes because of the economic downturn.

The commission also heard differing legal opinions on whether the ordinance could withstand a court challenge.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said they think the county commissioners would be violating an injunction in a lawsuit over the earlier ordinance if they adopt the new ordinance.

“The two ordinances have the same effect of discouraging landlords from renting to a particular group,” said Elise Shore, with MALDEF.

Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law who is assisting the county, said he believes the ordinance would withstand legal challenge and would help reduce the county’s problems with illegal immigrants.

“When the incentives are stronger for people to obey the law, people actually do obey the law … and they self-deport,” Kobach said.

HERE

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Economic crisis, illegal immigration crackdown spurs exodus

Pompano Beach — Every morning, Vanderlei stands for five hours outside a Brazilian bakery waiting for construction work. It’s slim pickings these days. Just last week, he went four days without one offer. — During the real estate boom, Vanderlei, and nearly 100 other Brazilian day laborers like him, could count on contractors picking them up for work on a daily basis.

It’s a big sacrifice to be here and not be making any money,” said Vanderlei, whose full name is not being used because of his undocumented status. “The first time I came here it was good, now it’s tragic.”
Vanderlei is giving up. He plans to return to Brazil in December. HERE

Like all illegal immigrants, Lorenzo Jimenez knew the knock on the door from immigration agents could come at any time.

[ Post your comments and rest of story HERE ]

VIDEO HERE…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV2NiY1irRA Part one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlOH_wTmcV0 Part two

( WSB TV – ATLANTA Nov 3 & 4 2008)

Still, he had enough faith in the American dream to buy a house, even though signing the papers meant raising the risk: He put his 2-year-old, American-born daughter’s name and Social Security number on the title.

And it worked, for a while. Jimenez and his family lived happily enough for several years alongside “regular” metro Atlanta citizens in Roswell.

Nicole Griffin’s mom lived a few doors away, and when Griffin visited, she said, her kids played with the Jimenez children. When Jimenez put his four-bedroom, two-bathroom home up for sale last spring, wanting more space, Griffin was immediately interested.

A contract was negotiated but when the sale appeared to go sour, Griffin raised a new issue: that she was a citizen and Jimenez wasn’t. She told local media, immigration officials, his boss and others that he was here illegally. She even put signs in the yard of the house exposing his residency status.

As a result, agents came knocking last month, and now Jimenez is fighting to keep from being deported. He also lost his job.

“I’m very sad and very worried,” said Jimenez, 32. “I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about my family. What’s going to happen? I don’t know.”

Griffin insists her intent was to buy the house, nothing else. The 28-year-old single mother of two maintains she was wronged first, so she acted to protect her interests. She has no regrets.

“At the end, do I feel bad the family got in trouble? No, not at all,” she said.

Those who enter the U.S. illegally often say they’re just striving for the same things that most American citizens want out of life — a good job, homeownership, maybe a chance to get a little bit ahead.

But the ambitions of citizens and noncitizens can collide and, as the painful entanglement between Jimenez and Griffin shows, both sides can wind up feeling like victims.

Daughter on title

Jimenez, who is Mexican, has been in the U.S. for about a decade. When he bought the house four years ago, the real estate agent handling the sale told him he could get a better interest rate using his daughter’s information on the closing documents than he could using the federal tax identification number he uses to pay income tax here.

Jimenez later filed papers to have his own name added to the title, and that’s how it stayed until Griffin spotted the “for sale” sign and $164,500 list price this spring.

With both sides enthusiastic about the sale, a deal was reached and the closing was set for May 15.

Griffin, a payroll clerk and first-time homebuyer, asked to postpone the closing until June 1 because she had problems locking in her interest rate. Jimenez agreed but asked that she move into the house as planned and pay rent until the closing.

Shortly after Griffin moved in, her attorney said there was a problem with the title on the house, namely that Jimenez’s young daughter’s name was on the title but her signature wasn’t on the sale documents.

Attorneys said some extra paperwork — establishing a conservatorship to watch out for the child’s interest, the first step in getting the title transferred solely to her father — would clear the title, and everyone agreed to postpone again.

Griffin didn’t pay the rent, however, claiming she was promised three months free since the delay was Jimenez’s fault. She has an e-mail from his real estate agent, Alina Carbonell, saying he’d made the offer.

Jimenez’s lawyer, Erik Meder, told her that offer was never firm and insisted she pay rent or vacate the house.

Locked in a letter war with Meder, Griffin escalated her actions. She contacted the FBI, the Roswell Police Department, local media, the state attorney general’s office and the governor’s office, among others. She asked her congressman, Rep. Tom Price, for help, saying she felt Jimenez and Meder had deceived her. Price’s office, in turn, contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Brendan Buck, a Price spokesman.

Cherokee to tackle illegal immigration
By NANCY BADERTSCHER

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sunday, November 16, 2008

The Cherokee County Commission is making another stab at cracking down on illegal immigrants with an ordinance that makes renters prove their citizenship and threatens to suspend the business licenses of companies with undocumented workers.

The commission tried something similar in 2006, with an ordinance on renting that put a bigger burden on landlords.

The first ordinance was immediately challenged in court and never enforced, and the same groups that objected to it will be in the audience Monday night when the new ordinance is presented to the public.

The latest ordinance would require prospective renters to pay a $5 fee for an occupancy license and provide personal information to the county, including their country of citizenship. The county then could check their immigration status and ultimately force them out by revoking their occupancy permit.

The second provision gives the county the right to suspend the business license of any company found to be employing undocumented workers. Exceptions are made for independent contractors.

Buzz Ahrens, chairman of the Cherokee County Commission, said the new ordinance is meant to send a strong message on a problem that the federal government has failed to address.

“Something needs to be done, and this is a bottom-up approach,” Ahrens said.

Elise Shore, regional counsel with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the groups that filed suit over the first ordinance believe the county is wrong to be pushing a new one.

“We believe it violates the injunction and certainly the spirit of the injunction,” Shore said. “It’s our position that it’s legally problematic.”

To avoid amassing large legal bills, the county in 2007 did not challenge the issuance of an injunction that barred enforcement of its “alien harboring” ordinance, pending the outcome of challenges to similar ordinances in other parts of the country.

Cherokee’s original ordinance required landlords to collect documentation from their tenants and, in the event of a complaint, turn that information over to the county marshal or the county’s business license department.

Landlords who were found to be renting to illegal immigrants ran the risk of having their business licenses suspended and of being forbidden to collect rent.

Ahrens said he expects the commission will “get a lot of flack” over the provision on renters and could end up modifying the ordinance so it deals only with businesses.

But he said county officials are convinced that illegal immigrants are costing locals jobs, adding to the burden on the county’s hospitals and government services and even playing a role in the gang problem.

County Manager Jerry Cooper said, at one point, more than 20 percent of the inmates in the county jail were illegal immigrants. “That’s a direct cost,” he said. “That’s a significant cost.”

In 2006, some people questioned how effective the ordinance would be since the majority of the county’s rental properties lie within cities, such as Canton and Woodstock, which are not controlled by county ordinances.

Ahrens said he hopes this time that the cities will consider adopting identical ordinances. “If we get the cities to join in, it will be fairly impactful,” he said.

The county hired Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, to assist in developing the language of the new ordinance, Aherns said.

Kobach has helped other communities design ordinances relating to the harboring of illegal immigrants.

Shore said ordinances that are almost identical to Cherokee County’s proposed ordinance have not withstood legal challenges.

HERE

New York Daily News

Open borders zealots plan tantrum to demand amnesty from Obama

On his first full day as President, Barack Obama will be greeted by salutes, good wishes – and throngs of protesters on the National Mall demanding immigration reform. — It will be a thunderous welcome, delivered mostly by Hispanic voters who – having provided a critical edge to Obama on Election Day in several key states – are looking for payback…

HERE

Associated Press

500K illegals defying deportation orders

Zeituni Onyango came to the United States seeking asylum from her native Kenya but was turned down and ordered to leave the country in 2004. — Four years later, she is still here. And her nephew is about to become president of the United States…

Fugitive aliens include people who, like Obama’s aunt, sought asylum in the United States but were rejected and ordered to leave the country. Others were caught entering or living in this country illegally, and failed to show at their deportation hearings.

Often, illegal immigrants who have been issued deportation notices are given a certain amount of time to get out of the country on their own. They are not forcibly put aboard a plane; these deportations essentially operate on the honor system. MORE HERE

There are many other people who have similar opinions on what the new president will try to do about adding 10 million legal workers to the U.S. workforce. Not to mention their dependents be added to U.S. welfare rolls.

Immigration Reform Unlikely with Obama
www.realclearpolitics.com
Written by Ruben Navarrette
Posted on 2008-11-12

We thank Gerardo E. (Jerry) Gonzalez at GALEO and his bossman Sam Zamarripa for posting this one.

November 12, 2008

By Ruben Navarrette

SAN DIEGO — In July, during an address to the annual meeting of the National Council of La Raza, Barack Obama promised to make comprehensive immigration reform “a top priority in my first year as president.”

Don’t hold your breath.

Just a few days before the election, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Obama to rank in order of priority five issues — tax cuts, health care, energy, education and immigration. Obama made up his own list, appropriately adding the economy as his No. 1 priority and dropping immigration altogether.

For Latinos who assume that helping to elect Obama president guarantees them another shot at comprehensive immigration reform, his selection of Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff is not a good sign. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s enforcer in the Democratic-controlled House, Emanuel was — in the last two years — a major stumbling block to achieving an immigration package. Capitol Hill newspapers reported shouting matches between Emanuel and members of the Democratic-controlled Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who tried unsuccessfully to pressure the leaders of their party to tackle the issue.

It’s not that Emanuel has anything against immigrants or immigration reform. It’s just politics. According to The Washington Post and other newspapers, Emanuel decided that the issue was a loser for Democrats and that it belonged on the back burner. He was protecting the Democratic majority in the House by covering members who might be vulnerable to ouster if they were seen in their home districts as going along with “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Once in the White House, I suspect Emanuel will channel those instincts toward protecting President Obama from a sticky debate.

The conventional thinking is that the issue has very little benefit for Democrats beyond scoring points with Latino voters, who will probably stay in their camp anyway. And it has a significant downside in that it makes some powerful enemies. Contrary to what you hear from the pundits, the Democrats’ major concern is not the nativists on the far right. Those who call into talk radio shows to complain about taco trucks or having to press “1 for English” never had much power to begin with. And they have even less now that their mean-spirited worldview has been repudiated by an election where much of the narrative was about embracing cultural diversity.

As has always been the case with the immigration issue, what Democrats worry about most is antagonizing their sponsors in organized labor. Bringing back the debate over comprehensive immigration reform means restarting the discussion of a new guest-worker plan — which John Sweeney at the AFL-CIO considers “a bad idea (that) harms all workers.”

READ THE REST ON GALEO SITE HERE