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A Swedish town with a large concentration of Iraqi immigrants played host on Thursday to a unique fair designed to provide information about the United States to prospective job seekers. Speaking to a packed audience of foreign immigrants, schoolchildren and journalists, Wood explained the drive behind the fair: "When I visited Södertälje back in April, I was impressed by the economic situation and the amount of refugees the town has taken in. “I was subsequently challenged by Lago to provide 1,000 new green cards. Obviously I couldn't achieve that, but I got his point." As a joint effort between the...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A suspected gang member accused of killing a father and two sons escaped prosecution in a weapons case earlier this year when the San Francisco district attorney's office concluded it didn't have enough evidence to connect him to a gun that a passenger in his car was carrying, authorities said Thursday. Edwin Ramos, 21, of El Sobrante, who police say is a member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang, was formally charged late Thursday with three counts of murder in the shooting deaths Sunday of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16....

The U.S. immigration service said yesterday that it will temporarily stop denying green cards to refugees and other legal immigrants tied to groups that sought to topple foreign dictatorships, placing their cases on hold while it determines more "logical, common-sense" rules for judging them. ...Most of the applications involve people linked to groups that U.S. immigration and counterterrorism laws have defined as "undesignated terrorist organizations" because they took armed action against a foreign government. The groups include U.S. allies that fought against former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Taliban government in Afghanistan, as well as Burma's military junta and...

EVERY WASHINGTON STATE RESIDENT THAT IS READING THIS Please email everyone on this list right now and ask them to support ESHB 3148. For all legal residents, green card holders etcetera, please contact or email everyone on the list and tell them you do not want to be discriminated against like I did. From Joe Waldon Under RCW 9.41.170, resident aliens residing in Washington must acquire an Alien Firearms License (AFL) before being allowed to possess a firearm. Washington is one of only a couple of states that still retain this holdover from “immigrant Jim Crow” days, despite the fact...

WASHINGTON -- In a major policy shift aimed at reducing a ballooning immigration backlog, the Homeland Security Department is preparing to grant permanent residency to tens of thousands of applicants before the FBI completes a required background check. Those eligible are immigrants whose fingerprints have cleared the FBI database of criminal convictions and arrests, but whose names have not yet cleared the FBI's criminal or intelligence files after six months of waiting. The immigrants who are granted permanent status, more commonly known as getting their green cards, will be expected eventually to clear the FBI's name check. If they don't,...

For years, the vast majority of politicians in the main parties have avoided having honest public conversation about the extent and consequences of immigration. The fear of appearing racist, or giving any ground to the arguments of the far right, has left most MPs and commentators in Pollyanna territory - extolling the economic and cultural benefits of immigration and glossing over problems. That has done the nation no favours, because the consequences of rapid social change have been scarcely studied, let alone addressed. And it has increased many people's distrust of the political universe, as the gulf between their own...

SAN JOSE, Calif. -The placards made clear this was not your typical immigrant rights march: “We played by the rules, now it’s your turn,” read one. “Legal immigrants keep America competitive,” read another. High-tech workers here on federal permits are speaking out - many for the first time - over rules that leave them in personal and professional limbo. After Congress failed to reform immigration laws for the second year in a row, hundreds of the largely India- and China-born workers protested this summer in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. They were frustrated that the divisive debate over illegal immigration...

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A Chinese woman living in Connecticut tried to buy military equipment commonly used to gauge the power of nuclear explosions and export it to her native country, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday. Qing Li, 39, was arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport on Sunday as she checked in for a China Air flight to Beijing, according to investigators for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A federal judge ordered the woman, who was living in Stamford, Conn., temporarily held in New York pending hearings in San Diego. Her attorney in New York, Paul Goldberger, did not...

As Newark cops yesterday continued hunting for three people suspected in a grisly schoolyard massacre there, residents said several of the men were part of a notorious street gang. It also emerged that one of the fugitives, Rodolfo Godinez, obtained a green card in 2001 and was allowed to stay in the United States despite later robbery and assault arrests, immigration authorities said yesterday.Godinez pleaded guilty to lesser charges. His fellow fugitives include his 16-year-old brother and another youth, both of whom attended Mount Vernon School, the scene of the Aug. 4 triple slaying. Recently, Godinez's brother and another youth...

Sodo landlord Henry Liebman, that area's largest single landowner, says he couldn't have amassed as much property and wealth without money from foreigners. Those investors use a little-known government program to gain citizenship in exchange for their money, with which Liebman is buying up industrial real estate. The EB-5 visa program, launched in 1990, grants foreigners conditional citizenship upon their investment of either $500,000 or $1 million in an American business venture. The smaller investment is sufficient if the venture is in a high-unemployment area, defined as one with 1.5 times the national average unemployment rate. Areas in which EB-5...

In the 10 years since he came to the United States from Ireland, Martin has made a steady living painting houses throughout the New Haven area. Still, he had no success in breaking through bureaucratic red tape to secure a green card, his license to permanent residency. But as he walked along Wall Street in New Haven with two of his friends one summer day in 2005, Martin felt his luck was about to change. Waiting for him just outside the gates of the Yale Law School was an attorney named Ralph, a guy Martin had heard about through friends...

BAY AREA Asians Frustrated, Angry Over Immigration Plan Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, May 24, 2007 San Francisco resident Francisco Villacrusis and his wife petitioned 13 years ago for their grown children to join them from the Philippines and keep them company in their final years. But if Congress passes immigration changes now being proposed, Villacrusis has little chance of realizing his dream because the immigration service canceled the paperwork when his wife died because she had filed it, and the changes would invalidate any new petitions for adult children or siblings filed after April 30, 2005. "I'm lonely....

New citizens make it official Tuesday The line snaked around the Alario Center lobby and out the door Tuesday morning. Excited chatter in Vietnamese, Spanish, and even some African dialects reverberated through the hallways. For some of the 300 green-card holders turned U.S. citizens who came through the Westwego events center, it was the final step in a decades-long process of becoming an American. While filling out the forms and waiting on background checks from the government, they studied in American schools, worked for American employers and raised families in American neighborhoods. But as the Star-Spangled Banner rang out in...

Either by chance or by design, a growing number of Venezuelans -- more than 2,000 since 2002 -- are marrying Cuban refugees on the fast track for green cards, and drawing scrutiny from U.S. immigration officials. The escalation coincides with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's increasing ties to Cuba's Fidel Castro, which have prompted thousands of Venezuelans to flee and then overstay their visas in the United States. In South Florida, attorneys say marriages between Cuban refugees and Venezuelan immigrants top the list of non-Cubans marrying Cubans, followed by Colombians and Mexicans.

I have blogged on this and other forums in the past about lobbying to request the U.S government to allow spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents (Green Card Holders) to come to the US while awaiting their immigration petition (I-130). I have repeatedly written to my lawmakers and to the media with little response.  About six months ago, a friend, Oliver, who was in the same predicament decided to do the unthinkable: relinquish his green card. He went back to his native land in Germany. This set me thinking of the idea: why not ask Americans who oppose...

Green light by September. Highly-skilled workers, especially from Third World, first to get card.From our correspondent STRASBOURG – The EU Commission has launched an initiative aimed at encouraging the arrival of highly-skilled migrants in Europe. The goal is to offer the kind of conditions that will attract the flow of “brains” from the Third World currently headed mainly towards the USA and Canada. The panel of experts convened by Commission Vice President Franco Frattini, in charge of Justice and Migration Policy, have come up with an admissions certificate dubbed “Blue card” that is meant to attract the proverbial “Indian engineer”....

Officials crack down on phony marriages By GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 20, 4:12 PM ET When a woman recently asked for a copy of her marriage license, the court clerk in suburban Atlanta's Gwinnett County had to break some unpleasant news: Her husband was listed as the groom in eight marriages in the county. The husband was later arrested in September on suspicion of bigamy, just days after another man was charged in the same county with similar offenses. Two weeks later, a woman from nearby Decatur was charged with marrying six men in less than two...

I am taking applying for documents for my wife, from the country she (a naturalized US citizen) was born in. One of the requested items is her green card. However, shouldn't she have turned it in when she was naturalized, or does one keep the green card even after naturalization? Thanks.

Tatiana Shaurova of Orchard Park has tried for more than four years to get the U.S. government to answer one question: Do I qualify for a green card? No answer has been given, so Shaurova's frustrated husband recently took the unusual step of buying advertising space in a downtown bus shelter to give some public exposure to her dilemma. "Department of Homeland Security failed us during Katrina. It failed us on immigration. Now it is failing me and my wife," reads the sign in a shelter across the street from the Homeland Security building at Delaware Avenue and Mohawk Street....

An estimated 75 percent of applicants for immigrant benefits - green cards, work visas, and a host of other documents - at a major federal processing center were not screened through the U.S. terrorism watch list over the past four years, the Daily Bulletin has learned. The error - on nearly 3 million applications dating to 2002 - was confirmed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officers at the National Benefits Center in Lee's Summit, Mo., near Kansas City. The center is one of several facilities across the country that process foreign applications for immigrant benefits. Numerous Department of...

An eerie quiet has descended over the past week on Fulton Street, a stretch of weather-beaten apartment buildings in eastern Linda Vista that is home to a large number of recent immigrants, some of them legal residents, others not. Some people have skipped work. Others have skipped doctor appointments. Children are walking to school more frequently by themselves, neighbors say, because their parents are afraid to accompany them outside. “Today the migra was here,� explained Jose Cardenas, 30, one of those here legally, on a gray afternoon this week when the sidewalks were empty and the street deserted save for...

The owner of a Kew Gardens Hills business office and her brother, a former immigration services employee, were among the 30 people charged with taking part in a sham marriage ring that generated hundreds of fraudulent green cards, officials said. An indictment unsealed Wednesday in Manhattan federal district court charged that a company named Help Preparers Professional Services, at 106-16 Jamaica Ave., was used as the focal point for a marriage scam that allowed immigrants to claim they were wedded to U.S. citizens in order to get coveted green cards.

See for example this thread (I know, shameless plug) first. An email from Senator Frist Desribes how the Senate Bill missed. George Bush gave the orders to open the borders Lets call him and tell him we're pissed!

Seven years ago, when I was visiting Germany, I met with an official who explained to me that the country had a foolproof solution to its economic woes. Watching the U.S. economy soar during the 1990s, the Germans had decided that they, too, needed to go the high-technology route. But how? In the late '90s, the answer seemed obvious: Indians. After all, Indian entrepreneurs accounted for one of every three Silicon Valley start-ups. So the German government decided that it would lure Indians to Germany just as America does: by offering green cards. Officials created something called the German Green...

Last week, Isabel* got married. Of course, her husband was there. But so was her husband's boyfriend. And her husband's boyfriend's wife. Confused yet? Isabel, an immigrant from Latin America, has been living in Miami for the last eight years. She went to school here and has started a promising career. And she has lots of friends -- jet-setting Europeans and American girls who count among the "beautiful people." When her visa ran out, one of those friends -- her very special friend David* -- agreed to marry her so that she could apply for a resident visa. For David,...

WASHINGTON - A key provision in the Senate's main immigration bill would create a "gold card" for the nation's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, allowing them to live and work legally in the United States -- but without offering them a clear path to citizenship. The legislation, which calls for dramatic increases in the number of legal immigrants, is meant to placate those who want illegal immigrants sent back to their home countries and those who want them to become legal, permanent residents. The problem is both sides oppose it. "It says, 'We want your labor. Yes we think you're...

Authorities to consider charges against man By Keith Mayer Reading Eagle A Reading shopkeeper on Friday fatally shot a knife-wielding man who had robbed him of an undetermined amount of money, city police said. Gregorio Zarzuela, 58, the owner of Gregory's Market, 12th and Green streets, ran out the front door, turned and fired once at the fleeing robber about 12:30 p.m., investigators said. Zarzuela killed the man, who fell face up onto the sidewalk on the west side of the street, authorities said. Officials had not determined the identity of the dead man; he was checked for identification, but...

About 100 members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, an illegal-immigration watchdog group, rallied outside the U.S. Capitol yesterday to protest President Bush's proposed guest-worker program and urge the government to send military troops to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. At one point, the group clashed with two Nazi demonstrators and about a dozen pro-immigration activists who came out to protest the Minuteman supporters.

Portland, OR: An Animal Liberation Front saboteur from Canada who emerged as a seminal figure in a wave of North American eco-sabotage nearly two decades ago was indicted Wednesday in Portland by a federal grand jury for allegedly carrying a phony green card. Darren Thurston was arrested last week in Northwest Portland with an Oregon woman suspected of taking part in a series of arson and vandalism in the Pacific Northwest dating to 1998. Thurston's entree into the case throws an international twist into the United States' most extensive eco-sabotage bust. Thurston and Chelsea Gerlach were arrested as they stepped...

"First we have to decide what the purpose of immigration is in this brave new world where both economies and terrorists are "globalized." Is it to maintain a young, dynamic population in the face of aging Baby Boomers, declining birth rates, and unsustainable Social Security obligations? Is it to take in the world's tired, poor, and oppressed such that America can remain the land of opportunity and fulfill its manifest destiny as a shining city upon a troubled hill? Is it to fill gaps in the labor market, whether they present a lack of software engineers or gardeners or nannies?"...

Immigration officials said yesterday that every application for a green card is subject to background checks, but union officials said managers' efforts to reduce a backlog of applicants mean adjudicators cut corners and could be letting in the wrong people. "The push to reduce the backlog has compromised the integrity of the system," said Kevin Tinker, an official with the National Homeland Security Council (NHSC), a part of the American Federation of Government Employees. "The average adjudicator is not sure whether the decision he's making is the right decision. He doesn't have the time." He said he knew of several...

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission), an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation...is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks...

Farinoosh Dalili's sentence for voluntary manslaughter has been reduced. Her daughter, 3, died as the Torrance woman attempted suicide. A judge Tuesday dismissed an involuntary manslaughter conviction for the Rancho Palos Verdes woman whose suicide attempt from a Torrance hotel balcony eight years ago resulted in the death of her 3-year-old daughter. Farinoosh Dalili wiped tears from her face following the brief hearing in which Torrance Superior Court Judge William R. Hollingsworth Jr. also granted her request to reduce her 365-day house arrest sentence by one day so she does not lose her green card. Under federal law, if a...

If it looks like a dog, smells like a dog and barks like a dog, it probably is a dog no matter how its owner tries to disguise it. Or, as Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo,, recently observed "There is a little more lipstick on this pig than there was before, but it's most certainly the same old pig." THe "pig" referred to by Tancredo is a bipartisan immigration reform bill introduced on May 12 by Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. The bill, if passed, would clear the way to allow many of the estimated...

Why Does Governor Napolitano Think Arizona Should have the Lowest Security Standards in the Nation? Governor Janet Napolitano made a big show of sending a “bill” to the federal government for the costs of illegal immigration, complete with tough talk and finger-pointing. However, by vetoing meaningful reform in her own backyard, she is turning a blind eye to fraud, identity theft and other crimes committed in Arizona by illegal immigrants. I sponsored Senate Bill 1511 -- “secure and verifiable identification” -- to establish a standard for identification used by state and local government as recommended by FBI testimony. The FBI...

As part of the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill, Congress voted to support legislation for the use of federal troops on the Mexican-American borders. The National Border Control Council and the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed the legislation mandating the stationing of U.S. troops on the Mexican-American border to support the U.S. Border Patrol. [SNIP] On a more personal note, Virginia Sen. George Allen said, "Legal immigration has been and is the lifeblood of our nation. My own mother followed the process and emigrated to the U.S. from Tunisia after World War II. I have the greatest respect for the ingenuity,...

This is a dynamite article, but unfortunately can't give you anything but the link under the FR rules because it's USA Today. http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050518/ts_usatoday/mexicansgotoarizformedicalhelp/nc:716

Feinstein targets agricultural workers. Senator plans to introduce an industry-specific bill, rather than a sweeping measure on immigration. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Tuesday that she ... plans to introduce her own measure to provide a path toward legalization only for longtime undocumented agriculture workers. Feinstein, D-Calif., said any new guest-worker program – even one requiring employees to eventually return to their home country – would be a "magnet for illegal immigration" and something she could not support. SNIP Under Feinstein's idea, which hasn't yet been finalized, longtime undocumented agricultural workers would get a "blue card," allowing them to continue to...

What is happening to Free Republic Mr. Robinson? The Bush Haters and Republican Haters are getting louder and more daring by the hour. These phony conservatives who claim the Conservatism purity are savagely attacking President Bush and the GOP as bad as the worst liberals. The Bash Bush feast is becoming a part of every thread. Everywhere you see Bush is a traitor, Bush wants to sell our sovereignty to Mexico, Bush is a liberal, Bush has no spine, Bush is destroying our economy, Bush is puppet in Vincent Fox hand, Bush is this Bush is that, everything wrong in...

The United States has no business accommodating a permanent underclass of illegal workers, whose ranks have grown to at least 6 million. Problem is, the reform plan with the most momentum in D.C. would make an untenable situation worse. The flawed AgJobs bill, first introduced in 2003, would cover no more than 10 percent of the illegal labor force. And it would grant those workers de facto amnesty, moving them ahead of legal immigrants who've obeyed the law in their quest to reach America. It would mock the orderly process of naturalization, when there are alternatives -- including other guest-worker...

FOREIGN workers seeking permanent residency will no longer have to wait several years under a new system implemented by the Department of Labor (DOL), streamlining the labor certification system, reducing the processing time to 45-60 days. Last December 27, DOL issued its final rule on the new labor certification system, “Program Electronic Review Management” or “Perm,” The new regulations take effect on Mar. 28, 2005, with the same DOL unit, Employment and Training Administration (ETA) implementing it. Under Perm, employers must file a new ETA Form 9089, which can be filed electronically. “The current process has been criticized as being...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Some TV shows offer an extreme makeover, others a bid for pop stardom. But the hottest reality show in the U.S. Hispanic market is offering the ultimate prize -- a potential green card to immigrants desperate to pursue the American dream. "Gana la Verde" ("Win the Green") has attracted big audiences and hundreds of contestants willing to eat burritos crammed with live worms, jump off high-speed trucks or wash sky-scraper windows in exchange for a year's legal help in speeding up their visa or green card cases. The show, run five times a week on small...

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Some TV shows offer an extreme makeover, others a bid for pop stardom. But the hottest reality show in the U.S. Hispanic market is offering the ultimate prize -- a potential green card to immigrants desperate to pursue the American dream

New state immigration chief touts enforcement TWIN FALLS -- Despite changes in the nation's immigration agency structure and shifts in personnel locally, immigration remains a tricky topic. "We can't just say, 'OK, you're from Mexico; come in and do all the work you want,'" said Robert Mather, the new officer in charge of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Boise. "There has to be some order to it." Mather reviewed immigration processes with members of the public at a lunch meeting on Monday. The Hispanic Professionals and Business Network organizations sponsored the event. Mather is still new to Idaho, having...

China pondering its own 'green card' system With more and more foreign faces showing up on Chinese streets, people are no longer curious about foreigners. Statistics show that by now the number of registered foreigners working in China's inland has exceeded 60,000, most of them are concentrated in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen; while the number of foreigners traveling to China amounts to 70-90 million persons/times annually. With China-world economic ties becoming increasingly close, more foreigners are likely to pure in. Then should China institute a "green card" system? This means issuing permanent residence permits...

<p>A West Orange man was convicted yesterday of bribing federal immigration workers to issue a fraudulent green card for an illegal immigrant who paid him $10,000.</p> <p>Jerome Audige, 73, became the fifth person convicted in a federal corruption probe of the immigration offices in Newark. He was found guilty of two counts of bribery and one count of document fraud for paying between $2,000 and $3,500 to a pair of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service employees who had the green card issued.</p>

THE US is moving its entire Green Card lottery process on-line, the State Department has announced. The new rules will end the long-standing practice of sending applications by mail to processing centres in the US. Under the new system, all applicants must fill out an electronic form and download a personal colour photograph onto the website. As with previous years, Britain has been excluded from the visa lottery, but Northern Ireland is not included in the ban. The State Department's new diversity lottery website www.dvlottery.state.gov will be open for registration between November 1 and December 30 for the next visa...

AHMEDABAD: An H1B visa without a job in the US! Sounds incredible? Not if you are in Gujarat, ready to take the risk and pay an astronomical sum to be on a foreign shore. Taking wings was perhaps never so easy before as a swarm of "consultants" out there are providing a populace hung up on immigrating a ticket to their El Dorado. As New York and London beckon, the murky world of fake passports and forged visas, false marriages and deals in lakhs, attract the youth. For this consultant sitting in his posh office on Gurukul Cross-roads, checks imposed...

Warning!One of my customers sent me this asking if it was legit! I have traced it to a scummy operation out of southern Florida advertised from Houston. It HAS been turned over to the FBI as a possible CREDIT CARD THEFT RING or IMMIGRATION FRAUD. They have a good firewall I can't break through ( Darn it! )Here's their info: Merchant Central, Inc.  222 S US Highway 1 Suite 1 Tequesta, Florida 33469 US Domain Name: GREENCARDPROCESSING.COM Administrative Contact: Domain Administrator dns@merchantcentral.com Merchant Central, Inc. 222 S US Highway 1 Suite 1 Tequesta, Florida 33469 US Phone: 015617483500  Fax: Subject:...

In a era when divorce and remarriage are commonplace, it might not be surprising for a city clerk to see some of the same names pop up on applications for marriage licenses from time to time. But it did strike the city clerk's office as highly unusual when it learned this year that one Manhattan woman had applied for 27 marriage licenses from 1984 to 2002 and that at least a dozen others had seemingly married in numbers that were highly suspicious.