[I will begin by telling you that I asked for her permission before writing this article, and my mother obliged.]My mother came to the United States in 1966, via the Cuban Adjustment Act.  She, my father, my Asturian nanny (today 81 and more ornery than ever) and I arrived in the dead of the night at the west terminal of Miami International Airport, among the last of those fortunate enough to benefit from the generosity of the Freedom Flights the U.S. provided to those of us fleeing Castro. My father died shortly after we arrived in the U.S., and over these past 42 years, Margarita and I have worked to push our lives forward, acutely aware of how blessed we were to be received in America.  As soon as the requisite time had passed, my mother took the U.S. citizenship examination and soon …

Tempted as I am to rant and rave over this latest stunning fiasco just revealed about ANOTHER failure in our national immigration security…I will spare you.  I went to the Holocaust museum today and I am drained.  But here is a brief chronology of events from the point of view of this former State Department FSO who's been pushing for biometric IDs for the last two decades:1988- As a first tour Visa Officer in Juarez, Mexico, my boss "volunteers" me, the fraud officer, to spend a few Saturday mornings training El Paso border agents on the recognition of fraudulent entry documents.  What sounds like a real drag turns out to be quite interesting.  After the third Saturday I have a roomful of border cops who understand the concept of biometrics and agree t…

Well, just when I thought the extraordinary missteps and bungled results of the Bush administration's catastrophic failure to grasp even the basic fundamentals of migratory policy were near their end, he did it again:  amidst much pomp and circumstance in the Rose Garden yesterday, and utterly oblivious to the consequences of his actions, the President announced the following : "I'm pleased to stand with the representativesof seven countries — the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,Lithuania, Slovakia, and South Korea — that have met the requirements tobe admitted to the United States Visa Waiver Program. Soon the citizens ofthese nations will be able to travel to the United States for business ortourism without a visa." [Emphasis supplied]You would think t…

The Fed's GAO office just released a statistical study of how political asylum applicants in the U.S. fare in their filings.  The results are simply more proof of what we already know…that the U.S. immigration is so hopelessly, pathetically, completely broken that the next President needs to make its reform one of his first initiatives in office…no matter HOW little mainstream Americans seem to care.  If we care about justice, we need to fix this and fix this NOW.Before I point out the stats, I need to explain something to those of you who are not up to speed on the reality of political asylum applications.  You've probably heard the long-unresolved argument between those who distinguish between "political" refugees — i.e., protected by asylum laws -…

Once again, the xenophobes are proven wrong: despite the hysteria, illegal immigration to the U.S. is the direct result of U.S. labor shortages, and when the jobs stop coming…so do the illegal migrants.The Associated Press reported today that, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington think tank, the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has slowed significantly the past few years, falling below the number of those entering the country legally.  The report estimates there were 11.9 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. as of March. That would be a decline of 500,000 from the center's estimate a year ago.  Speculation by most experts is that this is due to the nation's struggling economy and stepped up enforcement of immigration laws.  …

I sat there, stunned, as George W. Bush gave the nation a nutshell explanation of basic economic theory, reading his Teleprompter quite well and not stumbling as he usually does.  Still, what he was saying would have been more clearly stated to the American people via a simple "We in a HEAP o' trouble, people…"  The current mess is the result not only of the fat cats on Wall Street but of the lies told by the millions of home purchasers in their greedy desire to buy more home than they could possibly afford by agreeing to ridiculous mortgages they almost all understood at the time of purchase, but have conveniently "forgotten" in the aftermath of their greed.  Between the ambulance chasers and now the "what do you MEAN the mortgage is adjustab…

With the election just weeks away, the economy reeling, and the future looking anything but bright, the rhetoric regarding employment verification has cooled a bit of late.  But one thing remains clear: E-Verify, love it or hate it, seems to be solidly established as the federal government's solution for the foreseeable future.  How E-Verify plays out reveals the very complex nature of the subject matter, and opinions are anything but what you'd expect them to be.  Take FAIR, the Federation for Immigration Reform, one of the more rabid critics of the government's immigration policies.  Given the error rates cited by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and FAIR's historical distrust of the USG, one would expect its position on E-Verify to be negative.  …

Well, I must say that it was a bit flattering to come back to a handful of messages asking why I've been silent for the past six weeks.  The answer: I was wrapping up business in various other countries and was out of the U.S. for almost two months…but I'm back and so is the blog.We are working on updating the i9advantage E-Verify status map and you'll have it soon.  In the meantime, please remember: if you know of new municipal or state laws enacted which affect the hiring practices of employers, WRITE ME AND TELL ME!…

The Associated Press reported on August 28 that Martin De La Rosa-Loera, a supervisor at the Agri-Processors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, has pled guilty to “aiding and abetting the harboring of illegal immigrants”.  The charges stem from a massive immigration raid on the company in May of this year.  He faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. WHAT THIS MEANS:  The guilty plea specfies that he – a supervisor at a plant – was violating federal law by “knowing and recklessly disregarding the fact that” workers were illegally in the country [Emphasis added.]IMHO, this plea – accepted by the defendant – establishes a new level of risk to ALL levels of corporate management, not just HR and Legal departments.  Given all of the mas…