U.S. put Mexican human rights crusader into forced asylum

US ‘to cut immigrant detention’

Officials are hoping to cut the costs of detaining immigrants US officials are expected to announce plans that would allow illegal immigrants not considered a threat to be taken out of jails, reports say. The new policy would list immigrants according to the risk they may pose, the Wall Street Journal reports. Detainees who are not criminals could be kept in hotels and nursing homes, according to leaks of the plans. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to give details of the plans later. Her department is hoping to cut the costs of detaining immigrants, which stood at almost $2bn (£1.3bn) in 2008. It says alternatives like the hotels and nursing homes would cost about $14 a day, compared to about $100 a day for detention. Health needs Each year some 380,000 illegal immigrants are detained in US jails alongside regular prisoners, ahead of deportation. Of those held on 1 September, 51% were considered felons, and 11% of those had committed violent crimes, the New York Times reported. “Serious felons deserve to be in the prison model,” Ms Napolitano told the newspaper. “But there are others. There are women. There are children.” Proposals for using alternatives to prison detention are expected to be submitted to Congress in the coming weeks. The Wall Street Journal cited officials as saying the administration would ask the private sector for ideas, including for the construction of model facilities. The paper said the review would also tackle criticism of the medical treatment given to detainees, and suggest to improve access to basic services including telephones. The administration will propose a screening system to flag up special medical or mental health needs of detainees, the paper said. Broad immigration reform is one of President Barack Obama’s domestic priorities. Efforts by his predecessor, George W Bush, to reform US immigration laws collapsed in 2007. Source:BBC News

Iraqi refugees find U.S. life not what they expected

By Alexandra Zavis

On a pleasant afternoon in Amman, the genteel Jordanian capital, a petite Iraqi woman with carefully coiffed hair, heavy makeup and lots of gold jewelry sat in a classroom full of refugees heading to America, her face frozen in wide-eyed horror.

Her husband had disappeared in the war. Her request to settle in Jordan had been denied. Now an advisor from the International Organization for Migration was telling her no U.S. firm would recognize her law degree or her nearly two decades of experience.

In a month, the 51-year-old woman was due to leave for Portland, Ore. In the hushed room, she protested helplessly, “I am a lawyer. What else can I do?”

A few desks away, Anwer and Avan Shalchi, bound for Folsom, Calif., nervously took notes on how many bags they would be allowed to take on the plane (two apiece), how much cash they could bring into the United States ($10,000 duty free) and how much financial aid they could expect (only the first month’s rent would be guaranteed).

Avan, 32, wondered how they could reduce their lives to so little. Her husband, Anwer, 37, worried about how they would afford medical costs for their youngest daughter, born prematurely, and for his diabetes and high cholesterol.

They too had hoped to last out the war in Jordan. But Iraq’s neighbor was handing out few residence permits, and they hadn’t wanted to keep working illegally.

In the year of waiting for their applications to resettle in America to be processed, both families had run through most of their savings. They had assumed that the U.S. would take care of them. The two-day class, just weeks before their departure last fall, was the first they had heard of how hard it might be to pursue the American dream.

There would be more rude surprises after they arrived.

Under Saddam Hussein, the Shalchis had belonged to a privileged Baghdad elite. So too did the lawyer, who asked to be identified only as Shifa to protect relatives still in Iraq. Weekends were spent at clubs, where intellectual leaders and regime favorites would gossip around the pool and sip expensive whiskeys at the bar. Holidays were for touring the Middle East and Europe.

But privilege was no protection once the war started — quite the opposite. As lawlessness took over the capital, prominent families were hunted down by kidnappers and religious extremists.

Two of Shifa’s brothers were shot to death in the streets. In May 2005, gunmen in a speeding car seized her husband as he left for work at an electronics import firm. Shifa watched from a window. It was the last time she saw him.

To pay a $150,000 ransom, she sold the new home they had been building. But she did not get her husband back. She spent months scouring police stations, hospitals and morgues, studying hundreds of pictures of corpses, battered, burned and riddled with drill holes.

“I even went to the trash dump to see if his body was there,” she said.

Shifa and her daughter Ann, now 25, fled the country after receiving an envelope with a single bullet tucked inside. Bandits chased the car they hired to take them to Jordan.

Anwer’s mother, a respected doctor, was on her way home from work in July 2005 when masked gunmen pistol-whipped her and shoved her into a car. The only reason they didn’t kill her, they told her, was because she had treated their wives and children.

Anwer, who owned an Internet cafe and a luxury car parts business, borrowed money for the $30,000 ransom. To pay it back, he sold a car. While he was in court registering the ownership transfer, the kidnappers, who were watching him, called his cellphone.

“What are you doing there?” they demanded. “We will come after you.”

Within hours, the Shalchis too were speeding toward Jordan.

Six years of war have produced an estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees. Jordan and other neighboring countries have been overwhelmed. Refugee advocates have long pressed the United States to take in a greater share.

This year, the U.S. has pledged to admit 17,000 Iraqis, a huge increase over the 202 permitted in 2006.

Some refugees felt ambivalent about moving to America. “The country that occupied my country ruined everything, and now I am going to live there?” Shifa said. “It’s humiliating.”

The timing of their arrival hasn’t helped. Shifa, Ann and the Shalchis flew to the United States last September, as major financial institutions were crashing and jobs vanishing.

Still, the Shalchis have an advantage that most Iraqis lack: family in the country.

The Shalchis landed in New York on Sept. 11, when security was particularly intense. They sat on the floor in a holding area for five hours, before they were cleared to catch connecting flights.

But when the harrowing trip was over, Anwer’s aunt, a long-time California resident, was waiting at the Sacramento airport. She delivered them to the home she had found for them, a tidy apartment complex in a leafy part of Folsom.

Shifa and Ann arrived in Portland knowing no one. A local charity met them at the airport and found them an apartment in a poor, heavily immigrant neighborhood.

For refugees arriving in the U.S., the first few weeks are a whirlwind. They apply for Social Security numbers, food stamps and cash assistance; register for English classes; get health screenings; and start looking for a job. The government contracts with nonprofits including the New York-based International Rescue Committee, or IRC, to guide them through the process and toward independence.

But a recent IRC report suggests that the nearly 30-year-old system is failing new arrivals from Iraq by assuming that they quickly can become self-sufficient.

“It’s very much an up-by-your-bootstraps approach,” said Vice President Robert Carey. “I don’t disagree with that approach, but you need to give people an opportunity to get an adequate foothold.”

These days, the financial aid does not go far. Resettlement agencies receive State Department grants of $900 for each refugee, an amount that has gone up only $400 since 1975, according to the IRC. At least half of that is supposed to be used to procure and prepare an apartment — to pay the deposit and first month’s rent, buy furniture and food. The rest is meant to cover the services the agency provides in the first month, such as doctor appointments and registering children for school.

Some refugees qualify for a program funded by the Department of Health and Human Services and a matching grant from a private aid agency. That program provides four to six months of additional financial and other help to those looking for work. But the program has funds to assist only about 30% of resettled refugees, the report says.

Because Anwer and Avan have children, they can get the same help available to needy American families through CalWORKS and Medi-Cal. They were granted $850 a month — $130 less than the rent for their modest apartment.

The help is available for up to five years, but the amount will soon be reduced because of state budget cuts. Medi-Cal will no longer cover the parents’ dental and some other costs, a fact Avan discovered only after having two root canals. She will be on a mostly liquid diet until she can raise the money to replace the temporary fillings with crowns.

Refugees who do not qualify for any other help can apply for Refugee Cash Assistance and Refugee Medical Assistance. Shifa and Ann each were granted $350 a month plus medical coverage under this program. But the coverage lasts for only eight months. When the program was established in 1980, it was available for 36 months.

“People are being brought into the U.S. below the poverty level,” said the IRC’s Carey. “It’s hard to climb up when you are so far down.”

Each morning, Avan sets out a typical Iraqi breakfast of flatbread, cheese and pickles. Although she has been in the U.S. for months, her watch remains on Iraqi time.

“When I look at my clock, I remember my family,” she said in halting English. “I think about where they are going now, what are they doing.”

Money remains a nagging worry. Anwer pores over job listings and has applied at several neighborhood grocery stores. But because of the economy, overqualified Americans are lining up for every vacancy.

Until last fall, about 80% of refugees assisted by the IRC found jobs within six months. Now it’s less than 50%, according to the group, which last year resettled 9,209 refugees from around the world.

The Iraqis are some of the most educated and skilled refugees to come here, aid workers say. Used to a middle-class life, many hope to work as doctors, lawyers or accountants. But recertification is costly and time-consuming. So they are advised to at first pursue more typical refugee work as shop attendants and cleaners.

Hoping to improve their odds for a good job, Anwer and Avan attend nightly English classes.

There are days when Avan is ready to give up and go back home, but Anwer gently reminds her why they are here.

“He tells me all the time, ‘Just think, your children are in safety now, don’t think about money,’ ” Avan said.

The eldest, Mouna, a bubbly 5-year-old with pale skin and dark eyes, was born in a bomb shelter as U.S.-led troops closed in on Baghdad in March 2003. When she first arrived in Folsom, Mouna would cry herself to sleep because she did not know the words to speak to her new classmates. Now she chats with ease.

Two-year-old Lana, born two months early in Jordan, is finally getting therapy to overcome developmental delays.

When the difficulties seem overwhelming, they turn to Anwer’s aunt, who moved to the U.S. with her husband in the 1980s and recently retired from Intel Corp.

She has shown them how to find cheap furniture online, helped them navigate the welfare system and introduced them to a small network of Iraqis.

“If I have a problem . . . I just go to [her] home and I feel safe and relaxed, because she explains everything to me,” Avan said. “If I had no relatives here, what would I do?”

Earlier this year, when Mouna’s kindergarten class line-danced to country music in the school show, three generations of Shalchis gathered to watch her stomp and twirl in a straw cowboy hat.

On a chilly morning in Portland, Shifa and Ann cleared away the cups of hot, sugary tea with which they had steeled themselves for a hated chore: a trip to the grocery store.

Once they had glided through Baghdad’s best neighborhoods in a polished BMW, the air conditioner cranked up high. Now, hands stuffed in pockets, mother and daughter trudge past strip joints and used car lots advertising fire sales to catch two buses to the nearest supermarket. They pay with food stamps, then lug the bags home to the dingy apartment that smells of damp and mothballs.

There is only one bedroom. The walls are too thin to keep out neighbors’ quarrels. Once, they thought they heard a gunshot.

As a lawyer in Iraq, Shifa felt proud that she could help both her country and her daughter. Had they been able to stay, she feels sure she could have found Ann a good husband.

“Now I can’t help anyone,” she said, dabbing at tears with a Kleenex. “Not my country, my daughter or myself.”

At first, Shifa refused to interview at Target and Safeway.

“This was not our dream,” she told her caseworker at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, a Portland nonprofit. Instead, she used what remained of their savings to pay for English and computer classes at a community college.

She hoped she might find clerical work in a law office. Ann thought she could parlay her master’s degree in computer science into an information technology job.

Now, both women say they would take any job.

For the first time aid workers can remember, refugees are exhausting the available financial help without finding work. The State Department has announced plans to distribute $5 million in emergency housing assistance to refugees facing eviction. But only families that have been in the U.S. for 90 days or less will qualify.

Shifa and Ann received their last assistance checks in May. When the rent came due in June, Shifa reluctantly parted with a ring and two gold bracelets, among her last keepsakes from her husband. She got $2,000, enough for two more months. She has no idea how they will pay the August bills.

Shifa and Ann have talked about moving back to Jordan. But the prospect of returning with nothing terrifies them.

“Everything in my life was destroyed, even my dreams,” Ann said after mother and daughter labored over a meal that back home would have been cooked for them.

Shifa bowed her head over the table and sobbed.

Turning away, Ann continued: “I blame her. I’m sorry for that. . . . She always protect me. Why she can’t protect me this time?”

Source: LA Times

CWS to White House: ‘Reform U.S. immigration to protect families”

For Immediate Release

Editor’s Note: Interviews scheduled on request

August 20, 2009, Washington, D.C. – Family unity must be a cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy, Church World Service emphasized in a meeting at the White House today on the need for immigration reform.

In particular, CWS called for reforms that prioritize reunification of spouses and of children with their parents, increase the number of visas for family reunification, and reduce waiting times.  Family and work visas should not compete, and there should be no “point system.

Undocumented immigrants who complete a path to earned legal status should be able to bring family members to the United States, CWS said.

Church World Service was among the more than 100 immigrants’  rights, labor, business, and fellow faith organizations invited to the meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and other Homeland Security and Justice Department officials.  President Barack Obama also addressed the meeting.

CWS believes enforcement-only strategies will not fix America’s broken immigration system.  The global humanitarian agency is disappointed in the Administration’s continued reliance on such  flawed enforcement strategies as home invasion raids, unnecessary detention, and the 287(g) program, which empowers local and state law enforcement officers to also arrest immigrants for documentation violations, making immigrants fearful of reporting crime.

Such enforcement strategies are neither effective nor humane, and need to be overhauled, Church World Service asserts.  And for enforcement to be meaningful, it must be coupled with fair visa policies, especially for families and workers.

Church World Service will continue to press the Administration and Congress to enact immigration reforms that reunite separated families, ensure due process, protect workers from exploitation, end unnecessary detention, and provide a path to earned legal status for undocumented immigrants.  Such reforms are needed urgently, CWS emphasized.

CWS’s 35 member denominations and their local congregations, along with CWS-affiliated refugee and immigrant services offices across the country, come face-to-face every day with the brokenness of U.S. immigration policies and practices.  Their immigrant congregants and clients and U.S.-citizen spouses and children have suffered family separation, immigration home invasions and workplace raids, and anti-immigrant rhetoric in the media and in their communities.

Its first-hand experience working with immigrants and refugees motivates Church World Service to advocate for immigration reform that prioritizes family unity, ensures access to the application process for family and worker visas, provides alternatives to detention for asylum seekers and other immigrants who are of no danger to the United States, and allows undocumented immigrants to pursue a pathway to earned legal status and eventual citizenship. CWS and its constituents are committed to working with the Administration and Congress to enact these needed reforms.

Media Contacts:

Lesley Crosson, [email protected],
(212) 870-2676
Carol Fouke, [email protected], (212) 8702673

Human Rights First Welcomes Detention Reforms, Cautions that Additional Changes Are Needed

Press Release

Washington, DC –Human Rights First welcomed today’s announcement that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plan to immediately overhaul the nation’s flawed immigration detention system, but cautioned that these important efforts must include a reform of policies and processes governing decisions to detain, parole and release individuals from immigration detention.

“The immigration detention system is lacking in some crucial due process safeguards. Many asylum seekers have been detained – often for months and sometimes for years – after requesting this country’s protection from persecution,” said Eleanor Acer, Director of Human Rights First’s Refugee Protection Program. “This overhaul will not be effective without a thorough reform of the process for deciding who is detained after entering the U.S. and for how long.”

Human Rights First praised ICE’s commitment to creating a nationwide alternatives to detention program and commended the government’s decision to stop detaining families at the Hutto facility in Texas.  In addition, Human Rights First welcomed the U.S. government’s decision to move away from a “jail-oriented approach” to immigration detention, as well as ICE’s official recognition that immigration detention should be approached in a “civil” rather than “penal” manner.

In an April 2009 report, U.S. Detention of Asylum Seekers: Seeking Protection, Finding Prison,  Human Rights First found that the United States was detaining asylum seekers in “penal” facilities for months and sometimes years, often without basic safeguards like hearings to assess the need for continued detention.

In its report, Human Rights First recommended that DHS stop detaining asylum seekers in “penal” facilities, and create nationwide alternatives to detention. It also called for reform of the parole process for asylum seekers, and recommended that DHS work with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to provide all detained asylum seekers with access to custody hearings so that the need for their continued detention can be assessed by an immigration court.

“Noticeably absent from this list of reforms is any explicit commitment to injecting long overdue due process safeguards into the system,” Acer observed.  “Reforming the front end of the process would not only help the government to make smarter decisions about who to detain, but it would ultimately cut detention costs by limiting the detention of those individuals who do not present a risk to the community.”

Though Human Rights First welcomes the creation of a new Office of Detention Policy and Planning (ODPP) and offered its congratulations to Dr. Dora Schriro on her new position, it urged ODPP to reform release policies and work with DOJ to provide immigration court custody hearings to all asylum seekers in immigration detention. It also encouraged Congress to take action to ensure that these necessary reforms are implemented, including swift consideration of two bills introduced within the past week, the Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Act and the Protect Citizens and Residents from Unlawful Detention Act. Human Rights First praised the leadership of Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Daniel Akaka (D-HI), key sponsors of the two measures, and stated that these proposed bills will fill some of the voids that remain after today’s overhaul announcement by adding critical safeguards to the detention system that help ensure that asylum seekers and other vulnerable populations are not detained unnecessarily for lengthy periods of time. – Human Rights First

U.S. Often Greets Asylum Seekers with Prison, not Protection:Report

Human Rights First Calls on the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, and Congress, to Put Safeguards on Use of Detention and Improve Conditions.

Washington, DC – Since 2003, U.S. immigration authorities have spent more than $300 million to detain over 48,000 asylum seekers in U.S. prisons and prison-like facilities – in a system that lacks basic due process safeguards and is inconsistent with America’s longstanding commitment to protect those who flee from persecution, according to a report released today by a leading human rights organization.

“Refugees who seek protection in this country are greeted with handcuffs and prison uniforms, and they are treated like prisoners in correctional facilities,” said Eleanor Acer, the director of Human Rights First’s Refugee Protection Program. “New leadership at the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice should seize the opportunity to end this practice and implement some long overdue reforms, like ensuring that an asylum seeker can’t be detained for months or years without having an immigration court consider the need for continued detention.”

In its report, U.S. Detention of Asylum Seekers: Seeking Protection, Finding Prison,
Human Rights First also found:

• ICE has increased its use of penitentiary-like facilities by 62% in recent years – and asylum seekers, who are often brought in handcuffs and sometimes shackles to these facilities, are detained for months and sometimes years in actual jails or facilities that are operated like jails
• Some of the largest facilities are located far from legal representation and the immigration courts – at some of these facilities detained asylum seekers see U.S. immigration judges only on television sets, since their immigration court asylum hearings are often conducted by video.
• While it costs ICE about $95 a day to detain an asylum seeker, alternatives to detention cost between $10 and $14 a day, and releasing on parole an asylum seeker who satisfies the release criteria and poses no threat to the community has no daily cost.
• ICE release policies for asylum seekers have become more restrictive in recent years, and parole rates have dropped sharply – leaving some asylum seekers detained for months or years even though they met the release criteria and presented no risk to the public.

“We interviewed victims of political oppression, religious persecution, and ethnic violence from Burundi, Burma, Guinea, Iraq, Tibet and elsewhere. They were detained by ICE in U.S. prisons or prison-like conditions in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Texas, and Virginia, often for  months and sometimes years before they were granted asylum by the United States,” said Jessica Chicco, an attorney with Human Rights First.

Based on its findings, Human Rights First today made the following key recommendations to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress:

• Review of Detention: All asylum seekers should have the chance to have their continued detention reviewed by an immigration court, as other immigration detainees do.

• Penal Conditions:  The United States should stop using jails and facilities run like jails to detain asylum seekers.  Instead, asylum seekers who are no threat to the community should be released on parole or supervision; when asylum seekers are detained, they should be held at facilities that are not modeled on criminal correctional facilities, and where they are not handcuffed, are allowed to wear their own clothes and have freedom of movement within the facility.

• Remote Facilities: ICE should stop using jails and detention facilities located in remote areas that are far from legal representation resources, immigration courts, or an adequate pool of medical staff.

To read U.S. Detention of Asylum Seekers:  Seeking Protection, Finding Prison, including Human Rights First’s complete set of recommendations, detailed accounts of asylum seekers who have been detained in U.S. facilities, visit http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/pdf/090429-RP-hrf-asylum-detention-report.pdf.

To view an executive summary for this report, visit http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/pdf/090429-RP-hrf-asylum-detention-sum-doc.pdf.

To read the Department of Homeland Security’s letter to Human Rights First in response to a draft of this report, click http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/pdf/090430-RP-sign-rep-schriro-sovcik-hrw.pdf

13 are slain at a crowded US immigration services center

By Geraldine Baum and Anna Gorman|LA Times

For immigrants in chilly Binghamton, the doorway to America opens through the friendly building on Front Street. But Friday, the American Civic Assn. — a place crowded with recent arrivals taking English classes and citizenship exams — became a killing zone.

A gunman barricaded the back door of the immigration services center with a car, thwarting escape, then entered through the front door. Opening fire, he killed 13 people and seriously wounded four others before apparently committing suicide.

Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said the gunman gave no warning. “I don’t think there was any conversation,” he said.

As the gunman entered the building, he killed one receptionist and shot another in the stomach. She pretended to be dead, hiding under a table and waiting for a chance to call 911, while he moved down the hall. In a nearby room he opened fire on a group taking a citizenship class.

Police arrived less than two minutes after receiving the receptionist’s call at 10:31 a.m., Zikuski said. Amid the carnage, they found a body believed to be the shooter’s, along with two handguns, body armor, ammunition and a magazine. He apparently shot himself.

“We have no idea what the motive is,” Zikuski said, but added that the shooter was “no stranger to the Civic Assn.”

An anonymous law enforcement source told the Associated Press that the gunman had an identification card that said he was Jiverly Voong, 42. Authorities searched his home in nearby Johnson City on Friday and confiscated computer hard drives, a rifle case and luggage.

A second law enforcement official said the two handguns found with the body were registered to Jiverly Wong, another name the man used. He once lived in Southern California.

Paulus Lukas, human resources manager for Kikka Sushi in Inglewood, said Jiverly Wong worked for the company as a deliveryman for nearly seven years, until July 2007. Kikka Sushi is a caterer serving supermarkets and corporate and school cafeterias.

Wong was a good worker, Lukas said, but quiet. It was only in talking to co-workers Friday afternoon, Lukas said, that he learned Wong was Vietnamese.

When the staff at Kikka heard about the shootings, Lukas said, “we didn’t really think this person could do such a thing. He was really good at doing his job — we respected him for that. He’s never late, he’s always punctual. And when he finishes his job, he goes home. He doesn’t complain, he doesn’t argue with people. He gets along.”

The only blemish he could recall was that Wong sometimes drove the company van too fast. But after being reprimanded, Lukas said, he improved his driving.

He said that Wong earned $9 an hour by the end of his employment, and that he never formally quit but just failed to show up for work one day, leaving co-workers speculating about what might have happened. In early 2008, Lukas said, Wong called to ask that his W-2 forms be sent to an address in New York state.

Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan, who described Friday as “the most tragic day in Binghamton history,” said the gunman reportedly had been laid off from his job nearby at IBM. “I believe he was trying to get assistance [at the center] for obtaining employment,” Ryan said.

“The word was he lost his job and was pretty distraught. . . . If the story checks out, it’s obvious that he was very concerned about being unemployed and not dealing with it well.”

An IBM employee said Jiverly Wong did not work at IBM.

After the shooting, the SWAT team removed 37 people from the building, four of them critically injured; 26 of them had taken shelter in a boiler room. Many were immigrants who spoke little or no English.

As officers sought to determine who might be a shooter, they led some people from the building in flex cuffs, but they were ruled out as suspects, authorities said.

Binghamton is a town of about 46,000 people, located at the junction of two rivers some 140 miles northwest of Manhattan. Ryan described it as “a very proud city,” with 30 languages spoken at local schools and a long history of welcoming immigrants — from Europe in the past and from Asia more recently. About 1 person in 4 is nonwhite, according to a demographic estimate.

The city’s main street features old four-story brick buildings in the classic style of the industrial Northeast, with a sprinkling of ethnic restaurants and food marts and a nearby Martin Luther King memorial promenade. The Binghamton area is the birthplace of IBM, which has suffered job cuts in recent years.

“We really celebrate all the cultures here,” Ryan said. “Because there has always been a strong immigrant population here, I just think it’s been somewhat of a natural fit.”

New York Gov. David Paterson noted that Friday’s violence followed other mass gun slayings in the last month. He cited the case of a man who fatally shot 10 people in Alabama before killing himself, and the Oakland slayings of four police officers.

“When are we going to be able to curb the kind of violence that is so fraught and so rapid that we can’t even keep track of the incidents?” the governor said.

President Obama issued this statement: “Michelle and I were shocked and deeply saddened to learn about the act of senseless violence in Binghamton, N.Y., today. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims, their families and the people of Binghamton. We don’t yet know all the facts, but my administration is actively monitoring the situation and the vice president is in touch with Gov. Paterson and local officials to track developments.”

The shooting resonated with groups that work with immigrants in Los Angeles and around the nation.

“Everyone who works with the immigrant community is heartbroken,” said Judy London, directing attorney of the immigrant rights project at Public Counsel in Los Angeles. “Any time a tragedy happens in a workplace that is similar to yours, it hits close to home.”

Ali Noorani — executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy group in Washington, D.C. — said he urged people to resist using the shooting for political purposes in the immigration debate. Any workplace shooting is horrific, he said, but this was especially tragic because it occurred at a place that gives hope to newcomers to the country.

“This is truly an American tragedy in that these were people who were looking to become the newest of our American communities,” Noorani said. “So many people come to this country fleeing persecution or violence, and here they were studying to become citizens — only to become victims of violence.”

Ryan said a family center had been set up in Binghamton where people could find out about relatives.

“By process of elimination, families are probably starting to realize they lost a loved one,” he said.

The mayor called the American Civic Assn. “a mainstay of our community.” The group assists immigrants and refugees with resettlement, citizenship, family reunification, interpretation and translation. Many of its clients have fled war and conflict in other countries and have been working to build new lives in the U.S., according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a network of organizations serving immigrants and refugees.

The network said the Binghamton group was one of its partner agencies. The network issued a statement saying that it was “shocked and saddened by the shooting” and announcing that it had established a fund to help the community.

“Our hearts go out to the victims, their families and the Binghamton community,” the statement said. “We know the entire community of Binghamton will rally around the American Civic Assn., the people it serves and, in particular, the victims and their families.”

Every pew was filled Friday evening at a candlelight vigil for the victims at Redeemer Lutheran Church.

Among those in attendance was Greg Jenkins, a disaster coordinator for the Broome County Council of Churches, who said the area had a long history of welcoming immigrants — Asians, Italians, Poles, Bosnians.

The victims “were trying to do it the right way, becoming American citizens,” he said, shaking his head as he gripped a candle.

Kasim Kopuz, an imam who runs the mosque in Johnson City, said the missing included a 56-year-old Iraqi woman and a Pakistani woman in her 20s, both of whom attended English classes at the immigrant service center.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Obama’s aunt asylum case to be heard on Feb 04,2010

President Barack Obama’s aunt will remain in the US as an illegal immigrant until at least next year as she awaits a chance to make her case before an immigration judge in her attempt for asylum from her native Kenya.

Zeituni Onyango had an initial appearance in a US Immigration Court in Boston yesterday. At the brief hearing, a judge set her case to be heard on Feb 4, 2010.

Mrs Onyango, who is the half sister of the President’s late father, was ordered to be deported in 2004 but has continued to live in public housing in Boston.

Her claim to remain in the US is likely to centre on the argument that her safety would be in danger in Kenya, either because of political violence or her new found celebrity.

Mrs Onyango, 56, wore a curly red wig and said nothing as she was led away from court with federal protection. Her hearing was closed to the media at the request of her attorney.

Mr Obama has said he did not know his aunt was living in the US illegally. The White House has made clear the President is staying out of the case and believes the appropriate laws should be followed.

Nonetheless his aunt has put the President in a tough position both personally and politically. Mrs Onyango’s request is being reconsidered under a little-used provision in US immigration rules that allows denied asylum claims to be reheard if applicants can show that something has changed to make them eligible.

Kenya has been fractured by violence in recent years. In 2008, more than 1,000 people were killed following a disputed presidential poll, which saw a Luo candidate, Raila Odinga, declared the loser to President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, the largest tribe in Kenya.

Since Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963, periodic tensions have arisen among the Luos – Onyango’s tribe – and some of Kenya’s other tribes, including the Kikuyus. The United States however views Kenya as fairly stable.

Source:The Daily Telegraph(01/04/09)

Obama extends sanctions against targeted individuals by a year

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:

Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date.  In accordance with this provision, I have sent the enclosed notice to the Federal Register for publication, stating that the national emergency with respect to the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Zimbabwe and other persons to undermine Zimbabwe’s democratic processes or institutions is to continue in effect beyond March 6, 2009.

The crisis constituted by the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Zimbabwe and other persons to undermine Zimbabwe’s democratic processes or institutions has not been resolved.  These actions and policies pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.  For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to continue this national emergency and to maintain in force the sanctions to respond to this threat.

BARACK OBAMA

THE WHITE HOUSE,
March 3, 2009.

CONTINUATION OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY
WITH RESPECT TO ZIMBABWE

On March 6, 2003, by Executive Order 13288, the President declared a national emergency and blocked the property of persons undermining democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706).  He took this action to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States constituted by the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Zimbabwe and other persons to undermine Zimbabwe’s democratic processes or institutions.  These actions have contributed to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law in Zimbabwe, to politically motivated violence and intimidation, and to political and economic instability in the southern African region.

On November 22, 2005, the President issued Executive Order 13391 to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13288 by ordering the blocking of the property of additional persons undermining democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe.

On July 25, 2008, the President issued Executive Order 13469, which expanded the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13288 and ordered the blocking of the property of additional persons undermining democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe.

Because the actions and policies of these persons continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States, the national emergency declared on March 6, 2003, and the measures adopted on that date, on November 22, 2005, and on July 25, 2008, to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond March 6, 2009.

Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Zimbabwe and other persons to undermine Zimbabwe’s democratic processes or institutions.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

BARACK OBAMA

THE WHITE HOUSE,
March 3, 2009.