{"id":2080,"date":"2009-01-30T18:35:10","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T22:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedustininmansociety.com\/blog\/?p=2080"},"modified":"2009-01-30T18:35:58","modified_gmt":"2009-01-30T22:35:58","slug":"chattanooga-immigration-in-reverse-this-is-real-reporting-on-illegal-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/2009\/01\/30\/chattanooga-immigration-in-reverse-this-is-real-reporting-on-illegal-immigration\/","title":{"rendered":"ENFORCEMENT WORKS! Chattanooga Times: Immigration in reverse THIS IS REAL REPORTING ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chattanooga Times<\/em>
\n Perla Trevizo <\/p>\n

Chattanooga: Immigration in reverse<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 G\u00f3mez is seeing fewer people in his gym in Dalton, Ga. Not because folks aren\u2019t as interested in staying healthy, he says, but because they\u2019re interested in staying out of jail.<\/p>\n

New immigration laws in Georgia \u2014 among the toughest in the nation \u2014 are scaring families with illegal immigrants out of the state, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve known of at least 20 families that have left just because of these laws,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The fear and flight is not just in Georgia. Tougher immigration laws and more enforcement activity, combined with a slowing economy, are causing many immigrant families to pack their bags and head to other states or back to their native countries, area business owners and residents said.<\/p>\n

Advocates of stricter controls on illegal immigrants complain that some laws still aren\u2019t being fully enforced. But both sides of the immigration battle agree that undocumented workers are facing a variety of new hurdles.<\/p>\n

n Georgia\u2019s Security and Immigration Compliance Act, adopted in 2006 and implemented on July 1, 2007, requires verification of citizenship or legal alien status for any person to receive a government benefit in Georgia or to keep a new job by a public agency or state contractor.<\/p>\n

n Although Tennessee has no state immigration controls similar to Georgia, a growing number of employers in Tennessee and other states are voluntarily joining the federal E-Verify program to check the legal status of new workers. A handful of police agencies in Tennessee also are participating in another federal program to check the immigration status of people they arrest.<\/p>\n

n The federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency is checking more employers for illegal immigrant workers. In April, for instance, ICE arrested 100 workers at the Pilgrim\u2019s Pride poultry plant in Chattanooga. Since then, federal and local authorities have recently made several arrests of undocumented workers in area neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Mike Feely with the St. Andrews Center said the Hispanic community is definitely scared.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a heightened sense of awareness,\u201d he said. \u201cThis has happened and the world doesn\u2019t seem the same anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bernardo Olvera, who owns a photo studio in Dalton, said while some immigrants decide to stay and look for employment opportunities in Chattanooga and Ooltewah, a large percentage have left to other states such as Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know of a large percentage of people who have come to my studio to pick up some photos because they say they are leaving. I don\u2019t know if that was the original intention of the authorities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

deportations rise<\/p>\n

Across the South, the number of illegal immigrants deported from the United States has more than tripled in the past five years, rising more than five times as fast as the nation as a whole, according to Immigration and Custom Enforcement figures.<\/p>\n

Nationwide, the number of people deported from October through February of fiscal 2008 totaled 113,683, or nearly 45 percent more than the same period a year ago. By comparison in the same period, deportations from the Atlanta office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement jumped from 1,546 in 2005 to 5,186 this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe climate is certainly much different than in the past,\u201d said Robert Divine, an immigration lawyer in Chattanooga. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing more enforcement activity as the administration tries to demonstrate that the government has the will and ability to enforce the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The increased enforcement against illegal immigrants comes as unemployment in the region is at the highest level in more than 15 years in Georgia and at a 21-year high in Tennessee. Immigrants often are among the last hired and the first fired in an economic downturn, and the new restrictions are making it harder for illegal immigrants to find or keep their jobs, officials said.<\/p>\n

Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, said the general effects of Georgia\u2019s tougher immigration laws have been creating a lot of confusion and fear.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe word-of-mouth is spreading that Georgia is an unwelcoming place, and that\u2019s not necessarily something we want to portray our state as,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But state Sen. John Douglas, R-Social Circle, said the new laws he helped sponsor are having their desired effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re definitely seeing a downturn in the number of illegal immigrants in Georgia both because of the economy and some of these new rules,\u201d he said. \u201cGeorgia has certainly earned a reputation that it is less friendly to illegal immigration than other areas and that was our goal. We want illegal immigrants to know that this is not the place for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

georgia crackdown<\/p>\n

Sen. Douglas was a key sponsor of new immigration enforcement law adopted by Georgia lawmakers two years ago. The Georgia law requires state and local governments to verify the citizenship of any government contractor or recipient of government benefits administered by a state agency such as nonemergency health care. The new law also requires state law enforcement agencies to check the legal status of those charged with a felony or a DUI.<\/p>\n

SB 529: Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act<\/p>\n

Effective July 1, 2007<\/p>\n

* Requires that jail personnel check the legal status of those charged with a felony or DUI and notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement if the individual is not legally in the United States.<\/p>\n

* Requires that entities verify legal U.S. residence for local, state or federal benefits administered by a state agencies, with some exceptions such as prenatal and emergency care.<\/p>\n

* Requires that companies contracted with state agencies use the E-Verify program for newly hired employees to verify lawful employment in the country.<\/p>\n

* Specifies that undocumented employee compensation more than $600 a year may not be used as an allowable business expense.<\/p>\n

* Requires 6 percent state withholding tax for all nonresident aliens.<\/p>\n

* Authorizes the Department of Public Safety to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Justice concerning the enforcement of immigration laws.<\/p>\n

Source: Georgia\u2019s State Legislature<\/p>\n

287 (g)<\/p>\n

* Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides for the authorization of trained state and local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration law.<\/p>\n

* In Georgia, the Georgia Department of Public Safety and the Whitfield County Sheriff\u2019s Office are among the four entities that participate in the program.<\/p>\n

* In Tennessee, the Tennessee Department of Safety and the Davidson County Sheriff\u2019s Office in Nashville are part of the program.<\/p>\n

Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Web site<\/p>\n

E-Verify<\/p>\n

* A voluntary Internet-based program established to allow employers to electronically verify workers\u2019 employment eligibility with the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.<\/p>\n

* E-Verify allows participating employers to electronically compare employee information taken from the Form I-9 (the paper-based employment eligibility verification form used for all new hires) against more than 425 million records in Social Security Administration\u2019s database and more than 60 million records in Department of Homeland Security\u2019s immigration databases.<\/p>\n

* Results are returned within seconds.<\/p>\n

* Those employees whose work authorization cannot be instantly verified are given the opportunity to work with the Social Security Administration or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to confirm their work authorization.<\/p>\n

* Naturalized citizens who haven\u2019t updated their records with the Social Security Administration are the largest category of work-authorized persons who initially face a mismatch in E-Verify.<\/p>\n

* More than 66,000 employers, representing close to 259,000 worksites, currently are signed up to use the E-Verify program, and the number of registered employers is growing by more than 1,000 per week.<\/p>\n

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Web site<\/p>\n

Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program<\/p>\n

* An inter-governmental information sharing initiative to help benefit granting agency workers determine a non-citizen applicant\u2019s immigration status, ensuring that only entitled non-citizen applicants receive federal, state, or local public benefits and licenses.<\/p>\n

* A rate of $0.50 applies to each request submitted electronically, with an additional $0.50 charge if the case is referred for additional verification. A rate of $2 applies to each initial manual verification request submitted via the paper-based Form G-845, Document Verification Request.<\/p>\n

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Web site
\nA separate Georgia law that went into effect July 1 also requires legal status verification for those convicted of driving without a license or a revoked license. If the person is not legally in the country, officials must notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n

At the federal level, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is offering a new enforcement option to local police, a computer system \u2014 called 287(g) \u2014 that allows access to multiple databases to check the legal residency status of a person.<\/p>\n

The Tennessee Department of Public Safety, Nashville\u2019s Davidson County Sheriff\u2019s Department and four Georgia sheriff departments, including Whitfield County in Dalton, have trained officers on the federal verification system. They are among 59 enforcement agencies that have collectively trained nearly 800 local officers nationwide to enforce immigration laws. The $42 million training program this year, up from $15 million in fiscal 2007, has helped identify more than 62,000 people with possible immigration violations in the past two years, according to government figures.<\/p>\n

The Whitfield County Sheriff\u2019s Department started working with the system in May to screen those arrested on other charges who cannot provide proof of legal residence or U.S. citizenship. After a few months of operation, Whitfield Sheriff Scott Chitwood calls the situation a \u201cwin-win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to the program, Sheriff Chitwood said his department would call the ICE office in Atlanta to check on the status anyone arrested who couldn\u2019t provide documentation. Under the new federal program, deputies are sworn federal officers who can enforce immigration rules, Sheriff Chitwood said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur officers now have the ability to hold someone at the jail and basically start the deportation process,\u201d he said. \u201cSo what 287(g) has done is put six federal officers in the Whitfield County Sheriff\u2019s Department.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lt. Wesley Lynch, a supervising officer with 287(g) training at the Whitfield Jail, said he thinks that public awareness of the program has caused a \u201cdramatic decrease in our jail population and a noticeable decrease in the number of inmates arrested with no Social Security number.\u201d<\/p>\n

Legal fears and enforcement<\/p>\n

Critics of the 287(g) program argue that what was sold as a program to catch and deport criminal illegal immigrants has spiraled out of control and people are being deported for traffic violations in some communities such as Nashville.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamilies are deciding not to drive together in the same car because of fear no one will be able to take care of their children in case they are stopped,\u201d said Catalina Nieto, public awareness coordinator with the Tennessee Immigrants and Refugees Rights Coalition.<\/p>\n

She said that in Davidson County more than 80 percent of those processed under 287(g) were only charged with misdemeanors.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in our community are living in fear, which affects all of us because that means people not reporting crimes or being easy target of crimes,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

But proponents of tougher immigration enforcement contend that many local governments are not following all parts of the Georgia law more than two years after it was passed.<\/p>\n

Among Georgia\u2019s 159 counties, only Whitfield, Hall, Cobb and Gwinnett counties have police agencies participating in the federal 287(g) program, Mr. King said.<\/p>\n

Among 694 cities and counties in Georgia, only 10 were enrolled in June in the federal program that verifies the legal status of non U.S. citizens for benefits \u2014 known as the Systematic Alien Verification of Entitlement (SAVE) program, according to Department of Homeland Security figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe law clearly says that, before any public benefit may be offered to any legal alien living in Georgia, they must use the SAVE program,\u201d said D.A. King, an immigration control advocate who lives in Marietta, Ga. \u201cBut very few agencies are even signed up for the program two years after it was adopted and a year after these new rules went into effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Douglas, who said the Georgia law \u201coverall has been very positive,\u201d also wants better enforcement of the rules by Georgia cities and counties.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery few cities and counties have complied fully with Georgia law and I am preparing now a letter to the city and county associations in Georgia, reminding them that they need to get their members to come into compliance with the law or the Legislature may take more steps to make sure the law is enforced,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sen. Douglas said he may introduce new legislation if cities and counties don\u2019t comply with the current law.<\/p>\n

Immigration shift<\/p>\n

The Southeast has been a magnet for many immigrants in recent years.<\/p>\n

Between 2000 and 2006, the foreign-born population in Georgia changed from 577,273 to 859,590, a rise of 49 percent and representing 9.2 percent of the total population, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit Washington, D.C.-think tank that analyses the movement of people worldwide.<\/p>\n

In Tennessee, the foreign-born population increased from 159,004 to 236,516 between 2000 and 2006, a 48.7 percent increase and 3.9 percent of the state\u2019s total population.<\/p>\n

But over time, tougher immigration enforcement definitely slows down immigration growth, said University of Georgia demographer Dr. Douglas Bachtel.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce they lose their job, they have to move to other places, particularly if they are illegal, because they won\u2019t be able to get unemployment compensation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey might stay for a while because their friends and family will take care of them, but that can\u2019t last long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luis Arevalo and his wife, Rebeca Garcia, are among those illegal immigrants in the area debating whether it\u2019s better to stay in Dalton and hope things will get better or look elsewhere for opportunities.<\/p>\n

Ms. Garcia lost her job at a carpet factory five months ago when her bosses discovered she was in the country illegally. A month after that, she gave birth to her second son, Jefferson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been extremely hard finding another job because all the companies are being very cautious in verifying the documents of who they hire,\u201d the Guatemalan native said in Spanish.<\/p>\n

Ms. Garcia and her husband said they have talked about the possibility of returning to Guatemala or perhaps moving to a different state where immigration laws are not as tough. But Mr. Arevalo said he has built his life in Dalton and doesn\u2019t want to leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been here for seven years. I\u2019ve built friendships, a family, I don\u2019t want to go,\u201d the 25-year-old said in Spanish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chattanooga Times Perla Trevizo Chattanooga: Immigration in reverse Jos\u00e9 G\u00f3mez is seeing fewer people in his gym in Dalton, Ga. Not because folks aren\u2019t as interested in staying healthy, he says, but because they\u2019re interested in staying out of jail. New immigration laws in Georgia \u2014 among the toughest in the nation \u2014 are scaring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}