While the Obama administration vowed to take on comprehensive immigration reform in 2009 and has now shifted its goal to legislation in 2010, several positive changes have recently begun to nudge the broken system towards increased fairness. On Wednesday, December 16, ICE assistant secretary John Morton stated that asylum seekers would no longer be detained indefinitely as long as they could prove their identity, that they were not a flight risk, and that they have a credible fear of persecution in their home country. (AILA Leadership Blog). Although this has been official policy since 1996, Morton’s statement in late 2009 intimated that asylum seekers would be evaluated as soon as they make their claims, rather than sitting in an ill-equipped, makeshift detention center, often with violent criminals serving sentences. Such a practice would begin to treat asylum seekers as we treat others in judicial proceedings – innocent until proven guilty. The administration also responded to the humanitarian crisis not simply by pledging financial aid and committing troops but by alleviating the immigration laws which were denying Haitians or even deporting them despite the catastrophic conditions of that island. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced on January 18 that the United States was extending humanitarian parole to Haitian orphans seeking care. The Department of State and Department of Homeland Security are working to get visas or paroles for these children, and once the unaccompanied minors arrive in the United States they will be in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. Some of the children will qualify for permanent immigration status, while others will just be granted a visa, but either way these children will get the care they need in time. In an area of legislation that often takes decades to move, it is refreshing to see the Obama administration react quickly to the urgent needs of Haitians. (DHS Fact Sheet).
In addition to the humanitarian parole for children, Haitian adults now qualify for temporary protected status (TPS) if they have resided in the United States since January 12, 2010, and maintained a continuous physical presence here. For all the individuals in removal hearings, for all those awaiting an immigration decision with bated breath, for all those wondering when they would be put on a plane and send back to a country with few to none working airports, this announcement also reinstills hope that this year may be the year when comprehensive immigration reform escapes partisan politics and actually gets implemented. (Christian Science Monitor). Hopefully comprehensive, rather than cumulative, immigration reform will finally pass in 2010.
After listing off his numerous legal options over the phone and across the plexiglass, Fidencio looks right at me and says, “Yo quiero salir. Quiero regresar.” I translate to the Minnesota Detention Project attorney that he simply wants to leave, to return home. She explains briefly that this will result in a ten-year bar to his re-entry, that it will be very difficult for him to get back in again. Fidencio shuffles his feet, chains jangle, and he crosses his arms across his orange County prison jumpsuit. “No importa, I just want to get out. I can’t stay another week at Ramsey. Every day I stay in here I cannot make money for my family. Just get me out ahora.”
And so another father and husband is deported back to Honduras, his family left here to continue living in the shadows or to return to a country with little opportunity. About 8,000 people in Minnesota are currently in deportation proceedings, and some 200 to 300 are housed in one of five county jails where Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) rents space. The Ramsey County Jail in St. Paul typically houses 50-75 detainees, most of whom do not have any criminal conviction and are merely suspected of illegal entry. They share residence with indicted murderers, rapists, burglars, and drug addicts. Since most county jails are designed for one-night stays, few have outdoor yards and, as a result, detainees rarely see the light of day. At Ramsey County, detainees are incarcerated an average of 100 days. Most immigrants, by the time their day in Immigration Court finally arrives, will argue their case pro se before the Court and simply beg the judge to deport them back to their country of citizenship. [Aslanian, Sasha. MPR]
The number of immigrants detained each night in the United States is roughly 32,000. Many of that number have not been convicted or even charged with a crime but are, according to ICE, a flight risk. Immigrants represent the few civil court defendants incarcerated in such a way. Despite the obvious flight risk of certain delinquent fathers awaiting judgment on child support or traffic offenders awaiting their day in court, few other civil defendants are held in jail at all, let alone for months on end. Although anklet transponders are used by parole officers in oyhrt areas of law, ICE has so far rarely used such minimal safeguards for supposedly “innocent until proven guilty” immigrants, opting instead to pay $80/night for a total of $1.8 million/year. [Aslanian, Sasha. MPR].
Anklet Transponder
Nationally, the housing and transfer system is so haphazard that some detainees are moved to a new detention facility without ever being served a notice detailing why they are being held. From 1999 to 2008 some 1.4 million detainee transfers occurred, often moving longtime residents of New York and LA to remote jails in Texas or Louisiana, far away from friends, legal counsel, or evidence for their immigration case. These detainee transfders typically send immigrants to the Fifth Circuit, the most hostile jurisdiction toward immigrants and the worst ration of immigration lawyers to detainees. [Bernstein, Nina. “Immigration Detention System Lapses Detailed. NYTimes].
This week, Rep. Gutierrez from Illinois introduced the first of a new wave of comprehensive immigration reform bills, this one entitled C.I.R. A.S.A.P. As Congress wraps up healthcare debates and begin to take up the issue Obama shelved until 2010, any comphrensive bill must seek to alleviate and remedy the current system of criminal detention of civil immigrant cases.
Wednesday night at Obama’s speech, several shameful acts occurred. Rep. Louie Gohmert from Texas wore a sign around his neck reading, “What Bill?”, as the President spoke on healthcare reform just a day after his speech to America’s schoolchildren raised protests from certain school districts as well. As Obama finished stating that his health plan would not insure undocumented immigrants, Rep. Joe Wilson from South Carolina shouted, “You lie” in one of the most overtly disrespectful acts of uncivil discourse seen in political discourse. While many politicains rightfully spoke out against Wilson’s sad outburst, they all centered on the disrespect it directed at the Executive office. [CNN.com]
There was “no place for it in that setting or any other and he should apologize immediately.” – John McCain on Larry King Live
“It was crude and disrespectful. I think the person who said it will pay a price.” – Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin
“I was always taught that the first sign of a good education is good manners. I think that what we saw tonight was really bad manners. And having a spirited debate is one thing, exercising bad manners is another. That was beyond the pale — and I would hope that he would publicly apologize on that same floor to the president of the United States for that insult.” -House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-South Carolina –
While it is certainly a sad day in our nation’s history when civil discourse devolves to hateful, warrantless vocal fussilades, it is even sadder when the more than 12 million undocumented immigrants Obama was talking about go completely ignored. Wilson has defended his nativist stance by stating that he has been an immigration attorney and that he is all for “legal immigration,” yet his xenophobic comments exhibit a powerful antagonism toward our nation’s immigrant community. The current plans being discussed would require “resident aliens” under tax law to buy health insurance, though it would not provide federal subsidies to undocumented immigrants. It is bewildering to try to decipher Wilson’s vehemence. Was his “You Lie!” comment directed at the fact that immigrants would be paying into a healthcare system largely targeted at providing healthcare to our nation’s aging, largely native-born population? Is Wilson frustrated that immigrants, legal or otherwise, pay their taxes and therefore have been supporting Social Security for years while never receiving an M.D. dime for it?
Surely everyone watching Wednesday night’s charged speech felt a repulsion at watching a civil debate turn into a heckler’s vaudeville act. The saddest thing, however, is that nativism once more got publicity on national television.
A young man in Arizona was convicted last week of littering and sentenced to probation and 300 hours of picking up trash. His petty misdemeanor – littering on national wildlife lands, also known as leaving water bottles for immigrants passing through the most lethal section of the borderlands. [New York Times]
This latest border incident highlights the sad paradox of our nation’s current border enforcement. Through lawsuits like this which target humanitarian aid to rerouted immigrants and the lack of apprehended drug runners and human traffickers, the modern motto of la policia de la frontera seems to be that if we can’t catch the few criminals crossing the border then at least we can nab a lot of others. Although the California Border Patrol just nixed its long-running quota system which incentivized agents to catch as many border-crossers as possible rather than focusing on the dangerous criminals, this philosophy still holds credence.
A similar lawsuit a few years ago involved another humanitarian aid being sued for illegally transporting an immigrant in critical condition to the local hospital. Until comprehensive immigration reform is passed (an act which Obama has now hinted might be delayed until next year), these acts of compassion for will be criminalized and more and more border-crossers will die as they turn to more desperate measures. The ever-lengthening serpentine border wall grows by the month, only serving to channel immigrants to the Scylla and Charybdis of human traffickers or Arizona’s arid desert.
There is more than a little irony in the fact that Walt Staton was sentenced with community service for his past service to the human community. Until comprehensive immigration reform is seriously discussed, littering will continue to trump human lives.
While the Obama administration did nominate the first Latino Supreme Court Justice [who was just confirmed today], they have been repulsing a lot of their immigrant and Latino advocates for helped them win the election last November. According to an article by Julia Preston in the New York Times, the administration’s decision to not only keep but also expand controversial Bush-era immigration enforcement measures has propelled several immigrant groups to begin a national movement to make them make good on campaign promises.
The Obama administration has initiated employee audits at more than 600 employers nationwide, expanded the E-Verify program, increased criminal prosecutions for immigrant violations [up over 30% since this time last year, according to a study by Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse], created a program that runs immigrant checks on everyone who enters a local jail in some cities, and extended the 287(g) program made infamous by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Secretary Janet Napolitano, formerly governor of Arizona, stated that she wouldn’t call of immigration raids entirely, though they have subsided since Postville, Iowa, little more than a year ago. Napolitano said, “We will continue to enforce the law and to look for effective ways to do it.”
The problem lies in the fact that some of these programs are not “effective ways to do it.” Immigrant and business advocates have sued to stop E-Verify because of its woeful inaccuracies. While the program touts a .3% error rate for the 137,000 employers now enrolled. With 6.4 million queries, however, a .3% error rate still means that over 19,000 legal immigrants or citizens have received false denials so far in 2009.
Additionally, the seriously flawed 287(g) program that deputizes local police agencies to carry out federal legislation encourages civil rights violations, racial screening, and vigilante justice. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, the self-titled “toughest sheriff in America,” is currently under investigation for his long laundry list of civil rights abuses, from parading prisoners through the streets in shackles, making prisoners wear pink underwear, feeding them green bologna, and racially profiling Latinos for “random” traffic stops.
While President Obama stated that immigration reform would be passed within the year, Napolitano’s actions with the Department of Homeland Security have been anything but. Perhaps it is political jiujutsu, designed to convince certain political affiliations that this administration will be hard on those who break the law and will not allow another 12 million undocumented immigrants to enter the country again. However, by not only maintaining but actually revamping failed immigration enforcement mechanisms, the administration is sending a very mixed message about what that “immigration reform” will resemble.
6 people sat around a dinner table in Oronoco township last night discussing the assets of immigrants. The dialogue was part of the Table Talk series funded by VOICES [Valuing Our Immigrants’ Contributions to Economic Success] and the Rochester Diversity Council. Rather than delving into the political or the emotionally charged aspects of immigration debate, this discussion centered on the assets immigrants bring to our community. “Community” was widely defined, as we had participants from Winona, Austin, and Rochester.
Table Talk in Oronoco
Throughout the two-and-a-half hours, we discussed the many seen and unseen ways in which immigrants add value to our community. We discussed how immigrants’ work ethic has enabled many American businesses to stay here in the U.S. rather than outsource. We discussed how immigrants bring a world perspective to any community, how international events and comity are much more real when one knows people from that region. We discussed how immigrants are forcing the United States to adapt and succeed in a globalized economy. Immigrants also bring globalization to the U.S. in the many different foods, languages, and customs they carry with them.
During the discussion, there were some probing questions about whether these assets actually had negative counterparts to them. One participant inquired whether immigrants are a drain on our economy, in that they use welfare, social services, and healthcare. The group addressed this idea, coming to the conclusion that immigrants, and particularly the undocumented immigrants at whom this question was directed, live in the shadows and are the last people to try to use public benefits. Additionally, since immigration doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it is overly simplistic and intellectually dishonest to conclude that immigrants strain or drain the economy without looking at the money they put back into the community through sales, purchases, work product, taxes, and tithes to the church.
Even in a small group of this size, the personal experiences of each individual with immigrants were extensive. From social service work with a Sudanese family to a clothing shelf geared to Latinos, from migrant farmworker legal issues to Vietnamese co-workers in a commercial cleaning agency, from ESL students and international college students to the previous VOICES for a where Somali and Hmong communities voiced their ideas about their contribution and integration in Rochester’s community – it was easy to see the multitudinous ways in which we had all been influenced and impacted by immigrants. And while it is a sweeping generalization to even use the word “immigrant,” most of us who had interacted with immigrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, and migrants all knew what amazing people they were and how much we had to learn from them. [For more information, read article by Christina Killion-Valdez in the Rochester Post-Bulletin]
Meeting with Dr. “Steven” Ordog, the Hungarian Deputy Minister of Immigration, it was fascinating to hear him speak about his country’s reformation of their border patrol, their struggle with integration, and his hopes to make asylum issues more of an important subject in public discourse. [CAT Report]
When Hungary joined the E.U. in 2004, they began the process of dissembling their elite border patrol and transitioning this role to the regular police. In Hungary, as with many eastern European countries, the Border Patrol had been the crème de la crème, outfitted with the best technology, public acclaim, and pay. With their new permeable border, Hungary changed its border enforcement to the regular police, much to the dismay of those who had appreciated their power in these much sought-after positions. [For more information, visit: http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/eu_members/hungary/index_en.htm]
As Dr. Ordog spoke of the problems with the Border Patrols’ treatment of some Somalis and other minorities, it was hauntingly close to home. In his country, these “protectors of the border” were trained to use whatever force necessary and sometimes abused this power, particularly against asylum-seekers. In Hungary, once asylum-seekers report their asylum claim to the office of immigration, they are protected until the resolution of that claim. Some members of the Hungarian Border Patrol, however, would patrol the grounds outside this office, picking up asylum-seekers mere meters away from the front door of safety. The Border Patrol praised such action for a time, as it considerably boosted their number of apprehensions and public image.
In the United States, the reverse is true creating similarly perverse incentives. If an asylum-seeker shows up at a border crossing or a port of entry and asks for asylum, that individual is whisked away to a detention center until their asylum petition is either granted or denied. This creates the incentive for asylum-seekers to enter the U.S. and keep their asylum petition secret until they have done the requisite research.
Dr. Ordog also spoke about Hungary’s struggle to integrate the Somali and Iraqi refugees in his country. Traditionally, these resettled refugees have viewed Hungary as a gateway country en route to Scandinavia or other European economies. As a result, integration services were minimal because these migrants were expected to leave soon.
Ordog worries that insufficient integration mechanisms for the growing number who have decided to stay could spell trouble for Hungary’s future. Hungary is still largely a native-born, white population, and minorities will undoubtedly struggle to get jobs, learn Hungarian, and find housing. Racial discrimination is rampant and not explicitly illegal. House showings can turn into racial profiling, and job interviews might turn into status quo screenings. Although the current number of immigrants to Hungary is scant, Ordog worries that they are ill-prepared for any increase in immigration
As Dr. Ordog spoke, the themes of integration, nativism, and fear of outsiders all rang loud and clear. Though America certainly deals with more immigrants annually, it is similarly confronted with the quality of its welcome.
Having spent much of this past semester writing and researching my Legal Writing brief at the University of Minnesota Law School, I became intimately acquainted with the aggravated identity theft statute 18 USC 1028A. Today, almost a year since it was used to deport nearly 400 Latino immigrants after the ICE raid in Postville, the Supreme Court issued its decision on Flores-Figueroa vs. United States. Justice Breyer authored the opinion which explained that for aggravated identity theft, the defendant must have known they were misappropriating an actual person’s identity. All too often in the past, 1028A was used as a catch-all statute to compound the sentences of unwitting immigrants who were given papers and had no knowledge that their Social Security numbers belonged to a real person.[Stout, David. “Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Identity-Theft Case”]
In Postville, for example, local sources state that the management of Agriprocessors actively provided such false documents for the immigrant workers from Central America. Within a week of that raid in May of 2008, chained groups of immigrants were brought before a judge holding court in a trailer. They were told that they had stolen people’s Social Security numbers [a word few of them knew], and that they should accept the government’s offer of 6 months and then deportation. Most took the deal, though they understood little English and even less about the complex American immigration system.[Stout, David. “Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Identity-Theft Case”]
Ignacio Flores-Figueroa was a Mexican immigrant working in an Illinois steel facility. Unbeknownst to him, the papers he had procured bore the name and number of an actual person. When he was caught, Ignacio pled guilty to the immigration charges but refused to accept the aggravating sentence of identity theft. While the 8th Circuit upheld the conviction, the Supreme Court’s decision today means that Ignacio will serve less time before he is deported. However, this case, argued by Stanford University Law Professor Kevin Russell, will hopefully change, if not eliminate, ICE employer raids in the future. [Stout, David. “Supreme Court Rules Against Government in Identity-Theft Case”] While real identity thieves will still be subject to the compounding sentencing of 1028A, vulnerable immigrants will no longer be forced to spend extra time in prison before returning to their families. As Postville prepares for its first anniversary march of last year’s ICE raid, one can only think Flores-Figueroa came a year too late.
Yesterday, a Pulitzer Prize went to a team of largely unknown reporters Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin of the East Valley Tribune based in Mesa, AZ. The prize was for their unflinching coverage of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s local immigration law enforcement under 287(g), its “successes” and its hefty costs for Maricopa County and the nation. Their reporting uncovered the fact that Arpaio’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants sacrificed his unit’s response to emergency calls, contributed to an overtime pay increase which forced the department to close several other sites around the county, and uselessly focused on low-level immigrants who had merely broken a border-crossing law rather than felony or human smuggling charges. Additionally, the five-piece set of articles entitled “Reasonable Doubt” highlighted the racial profiling inherent in Arpaio’s 287(g) campaign. The most common pretext for arresting undocumented immigrants were traffic violations, ranging from speeding (and in some cases “poking” along too slowly), obscured license plates, “unsafe” lane changes, and broken lights.
The key findings of the East Valley Tribune’s report were:
“Deputies are failing to meet the county’s standard for response times on life-threatening emergencies. In 2006 and 2007, patrol cars arrived late two-thirds of the time on more than 6,000 of the most serious calls for service.
MCSO’s arrest rate has plunged the past two years even as the number of criminal investigations has soared.
The sheriff’s “saturation” patrols and “crime suppression/anti-illegal immigration” sweeps in Hispanic neighborhoods are done without any evidence of criminal activity, violating federal regulations intended to prevent racial profiling.
Rampant overtime spending on immigration operations drove the agency into financial crisis and forced it to close facilities across the county. Although MCSO officials have said state and federal grants covered all the expense, illegal immigration arrests actually are costing county taxpayers millions of dollars.
Despite the money and manpower expended, the sheriff’s office has arrested only low-level participants in human smuggling rings: drop house guards, drivers and the immigrants they ferry.
Deputies regularly make traffic stops based only on their suspicion that illegal immigrants are inside vehicles. They figure out probable cause after deciding whom to pull over. (“Reasonable Doubt”)
This Pulitzer is priceless, in that Gabrielson and Giblin reported on the extent to which immigrants are human beings and “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” As the Department of Justice and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano look into Arpaio’s doings and the general concept of 287(g) [the program which charges local law enforcement officials with enforcing federal laws], this Pulitzer and the ideas it has spurred will undoubtedly play a part in ending these tactics of discrimination and terror.
In another victory for the civil rights of immigrants and anyone yearning for comprehensive immigration reform, last week saw the rival labor federations AFL-CIO and Change to Win go public with a cooperative immigration reform statement. The new accord advocates legalization of some of the nation’s 12 million undocumented individuals and the near abolition of the ad hoc temporary guest-worker programs. Instead, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Change to Win President Joe Hansen have proposed a national commission charged with determining the number of temporary and permanent visas which should be offered annually based on the current American labor markets. Surely, the current temp worker program needs significant overhaul (along with the rest of America’s immigration legislation), in that immigrants sponsored through these programs cannot change jobs, are tied to one employer, and can be refused future labor opportunities for criticizing their sponsoring employer. (Preston, Julia and Steven Greenhouse. “Immigration Accord by Labor Boosts Obama Effort.”)
As I work with migrant farmworkers in Rochester, Plainview, and Owatonna, Minnesota, this summer, I am heartened that these two rival labor federations are articulately and bipartisanly advocating for comprehensive immigration reform in year which the Obama administration promises will see some immigration legislation. Between this unlikely labor collaborative and the expert reporting from Pulitzer Prize winners Gabrielson and Giblin, hopefully compassionate and comprehensive immigration reform got one day closer to realization.
* To protest Arpaio’s tactics and 287(g), please fill out this petition.
Yesterday, April 18, was National Citizenship Day. This yearly event is sponsored by the Minnesota/Dakotas Chapter of AILA (American Immigration Lawyer’s Association). Though there are few immigration attorneys in my home of Rochester, MN, three years ago Rochester was the first city to host Citizenship Day. The veterans of this event recounted to me the lines on that day in 2007, how they snaked out the door of the Hawthorne Education Center and down the street. Over a hundred people went through the naturalization process that day, with a steady line of people from 9:30 to 4:00.
That year was special, because in 2007 the rates for N-400 forms (the forms for Legal Permanent Residents to naturalize into Citizens) jumped from under $300 to their current price of $675. While the Citizenship Day charges a meager $20 processing fee for the immigrants to complete their forms and snap a passport photo, this hike in fees was and still is prohibitive for many individuals, so in 2007 whole families rushed to naturalize en masse.
This year about 50 immigrants came through Hawthorne Education Center. Many of them were shocked at the $675 government processing fee, but they still wanted to pursue citizenship so they could vote, or bring a loved on to the United States faster (6-8 months, rather than 8-10 years), or get a government job, or travel frequently out of the United States. (Odrcic, Davorin. “When a Lawful Permanent Resident Should Consider Naturalizing: The Benefits to U.S. Citizenship“) It was delightful to work in the Form Preparation room, where I had the unique opportunity to speak with so many immigrants from countries as diverse as Laos, Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Mexico, and Colombia. They came by themselves, clutching all their forms in one hand, or they came as a family, proud to be taking this final step to full participation in American civics. Little children, themselves citizens, proudly watched their parents filling out the forms to finally be able to vote (so many were frustrated they couldn’t participate in 2008’s electoral process). Some high-school children came in to fill out the forms for their parents who were at work this Saturday. Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Somali, and Hmong were all spoken in this tiny room. It hit me that this is America, this is citizenship.
Throughout the day, I had the privilege to work alongside many volunteers, including several local attorneys such as Chris Wendt and JoMarie Morris, paralegal students from Winona State University, and nuns from Assisi Heights. It was refreshing to see such a diverse group interacting with immigrants and the complicated American immigration system. Whatever their first preconceptions, by the end of the day everyone was impressed by just how complicated the naturalization process was and how prohibitively expensive it was going to be for these families. The Assisi Sisters were amazing and uniquely equipped for legal work, simply because of their profound gift for listening. I saw several tears throughout the day as immigrants told their stories and as families realized it might be a few more years before they could become citizens. It meant so much to the immigrants and volunteers when Mayor Brede visited and made a public proclamation in support of Citizenship Day. Whereas so many immigrants are made to live in the shadows of society, how freeing and empowering it must for these individuals to finally be filling out that final form and here, with the blessing of the local mayor.
Throughout Minnesota this same process was underway all day. AILA Citizenship Day has now spread to St. Paul, Bloomington, Fargo, and St. Cloud. Though I cannot speak for the rest of the sites, in Rochester the food was amazing. Local businesses like Daube’s Bakery and Great Harvest Bread Co. baked breads and doughnuts for breakfast, while local Somali and Iraqi refugee families cooked up some delicious ethnic foods. It was an honor to have the chance to work with Mary Alessio, the head of Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement here in the Winona diocese, and I look forward to Citizenship Day next year.
A highlight of the day was speaking with Graciela, who had gained citizenship through this process last year and was now back as a volunteer translator. She was overjoyed to be a citizen, and she felt it was her duty to help others do the same. Similarly, the Sisters of Assisi were amazed by all the bureaucracy immigrants needed to undergo just to gain something we had all been granted simply through happenstance of where we were born. At the end of this Citizenship Day, everyone emerged with a greater appreciation of what it means to be a citizen.
The administration also responded to the humanitarian crisis not simply by pledging financial aid and committing troops but by alleviating the immigration laws which were denying Haitians or even deporting them despite the catastrophic conditions of that island. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced on January 18 that the United States was extending humanitarian parole to Haitian orphans seeking care. The Department of State and Department of Homeland Security are working to get visas or paroles for these children, and once the unaccompanied minors arrive in the United States they will be in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. Some of the children will qualify for permanent immigration status, while others will just be granted a visa, but either way these children will get the care they need in time. In an area of legislation that often takes decades to move, it is refreshing to see the Obama administration react quickly to the urgent needs of Haitians. (DHS Fact Sheet).
Smart Borders 