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The federal government will formally instruct immigration agents to consider same-sex relationships the same way as heterosexual relationships in deciding whether a person should be deported.

The announcement by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano comes as welcome news to some Democrats in Congress, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who had voiced concerns already that informal instructions to do so could be ignored by immigration agents.

Napolitano said on Thursday she would issue the instruction in writing to immigration agents. The administration had only informally indicated same-sex relationships would be taken into account when making deportation decisions.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new law that will allow hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and vetoed another that would have restricted sheriffs from helping federal authorities detain undocumented Californians for potential deportation.

The driver’s license measure will allow illegal immigrants to drive legally in California if they qualify for a new federal work permit program. The Obama administration’s executive order known as Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) allows illegal immigrants who came to the United States before they were 16, and who are now 30 or younger and meet certain other criteria, to obtain work permits.

“Gov. Brown believes the federal government should pursue comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship,” said Brown spokesman Gil Duran. “President Obama has recognized the unique status of these students, and making them eligible to apply for driver’s licenses is an obvious next step.”

A while back we posted on Alabama’s immigration bill which would allow schools to check the immigration status of new students in its public schools. Part of Alabama’s immigration law that ordered public schools to check the citizenship of new students was ruled unconstitutional Monday by the federal appeals court that also said police in that state and Georgia could demand papers from criminal suspects they had detained.

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Alabama schools provision wrongly singled out children who were in the country illegally. Alabama was the only state that passed such a requirement; the 11th Circuit previously had blocked that part of the law from being enforced.

Judges said fear of the law “significantly deters undocumented children from enrolling in and attending school.”

The United States is favored to win the most medals of any country in the 2012 London Olympics, continuing a long tradition of dominance in the Summer Olympics. A survey of all the summer Olympics shows that the United States consistently finishes in the top three, and has the most first-place medal count finishes of any country in the world. Following 1896, when the United States finished second to Greece, Americans would dominate most of the 20th century, routinely doubling the medal count of the second place nation. With the exception of a few Olympics, when Germany, the Soviet Union, and most recently China, rose to prominence, the Summer Olympics have been a time for Americans to truthfully proclaim, “We’re number one!”
The real question is: What explains this tradition of American Olympic excellence over the years? Going strictly by population numbers, China and India should win the most medals since they have the largest populations in the world. Both China and India have over four times as many potential Olympians to choose from, which in theory should give them an advantage. China did win the most gold medals in 2008, but the United States won the overall medal count that year by ten. This year, the United States is projected to match China’s gold medal count, while also winning the overall medal count. In contrast, India only won three medals in 2008 and is not projected to win many more in 2012, proving that it takes much more than a large population to succeed in the Olympics.

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In new statements regarding Obama’s immigration policy, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended President Barack Obama’s decision to stop deporting many illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and letting them apply for work permits. “Our nation’s immigration laws must be enforced in a strong and sensible manner,” Napolitano said in prepared remarks submitted to the House Judiciary Committee. “But they are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case.”
Obama announced in June that he was easing immigration laws by executive order for many illegal immigrants brought to the country as children. Under the policy change, illegal immigrants would be eligible to avoid deportation if they can prove they are 30 years old or younger, have been in the United States at least five years, arrived before they turned 16, graduated from a U.S. high school or earned a GED or are currently in school and don’t have a criminal record. They can also apply for a work permit that will be good for two years, with no limit on how many times it can be renewed.

The policy change could affect more than a million illegal immigrants and partially achieves the goals of the so-called DREAM Act,the legislation that was to provide a pathway to citizenship for many young illegal immigrants.

Napolitano has said DHS has broad authority to use discretion when deciding which illegal immigrants to deport, and said Thursday that the recent Supreme Court decision striking down much of Arizona’s strict immigration law backs up that authority. “Indeed as the Supreme Court noted in its recent decision on the Arizona immigration law, `a special feature of the removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials,'” Napolitano said.

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The Pew Research Center survey and accompanying report says Asian-Americans now make up 5.8 percent of the nation’s population, up from less than 1 percent in 1965, when the modern immigration wave from Asia began.

Asians recently passed Hispanics as the largest group of new immigrants to the U.S. In 2010, 36 percent of new immigrants to the U.S. were Asian, up from 19 percent in 2000, according to Census figures.

The Pew report, titled “The Rise of Asian Americans,” finds that Asians are the highest-income and best-educated racial group in the U.S. Nearly half (49 percent) of Asian-American adults have a college degree, and they boast a median annual household income of $66,000 (versus the U.S. median of $49,800).

The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—more than half of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped—and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of multiple government data sets from both countries.

The standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and changing economic conditions in Mexico.

The report is based on the Center’s analysis of data from five different Mexican government sources and four U.S. government sources. The Mexican data come from the Mexican Decennial Censuses (Censos de Población y Vivienda), the Mexican Population Counts (Conteos de Población y Vivienda), the National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (Encuesta Nacional de la Dinámica Demográfica or ENADID), the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo or ENOE), and the Survey on Migration at the Northern Border of Mexico (Encuesta sobre Migración en la Frontera Norte de México or EMIF-Norte). The U.S. data come from the 2010 Census, the American Community Survey, the Current Population Survey and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Recently, the drug cartels have taken to placing ads in the newspaper to find drivers to transport drugs across the border into the U.S. Ads that say things like “Would you like to work in San Diego?” or “A company that is a leader in its field is looking for male employees.” may seem innocuous to the casual reader, but these job offers come with a major hitch: smuggling narcotics.

The scenario has become increasingly familiar to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa border crossings. Over the past year, more than three dozen drivers caught with drug loads claimed that they had answered want ads, and were simply complying with their new employer’s request that they drive a vehicle across the border.

“It’s all centered around employment,” said Lester Hayes, a group supervisor for ICE Homeland Security Investigations at the San Ysidro border crossing. “We see hard-working people that are just trying to provide for their families who get caught up in this game.”

Recently, the Washington Post published the story about a man accused of practicing law without a license. His story represents a serious issue that is faced in immigration law, namely how so many individuals are taken advantage of by “notarios” and others who advise on legal services without a license to practice law.

Luiz Ramirez, a paralegal in the Washington, D.C. area, dispensed free legal advice on a thrice-weekly radio show on WURA (920 AM) and pushed for the Dream Act in Spanish-language dailies. A Univision segment featured his work helping two women who said they had been forced to become sex slaves. Over the past year or so, the publicity brought him awards and helped send hundreds of clients to his McLean-based legal services firm. Lawyers say the carefully honed image hid one of the most sophisticated and lucrative legal shams they have seen in the Washington area aimed at the very people for whom he purported to advocate: Latino immigrants.

Ramirez is facing felony ­charges for allegedly telling clients that he was a lawyer, even though he is not licensed to practice law in the area. People who sought his help accuse him of taking thousands of dollars in fees for legal work he never performed. The case highlights a concern in the Washington area, where tens of thousands of recent immigrants, who are often vulnerable because of language and other barriers, rely on a relatively small number of professional services providers that market to them.

Ramirez insists that he never practiced law, stating that “My contract is very clear: I’m a paralegal…To make a complaint, these people will say I’m an attorney. . . . We did our work. We did what they requested.”
Some cash-strapped clients allege Ramirez failed to fill out visa paperwork or to represent them in bond matters and say they are now facing deportation. Others say they pulled together thousands of dollars to pay him for help in legal cases but got nothing in return.

Ramirez, an Oakton resident, is charged with five felony counts of obtaining money under false pretenses. The charges involve four clients in Fairfax County. Ramirez is scheduled to appear in court June 15.

He also faces a civil suit brought by another client in Fairfax and a handful of Virginia State Bar complaints. And a client filed a claim against him in the D.C. courts last year.

“Ramirez is one of the better marketers out there,” said Manuel Leiva, former president of the Hispanic Bar Association of Virginia and one of the lawyers who brought Ramirez’s case to authorities. “The reason people fell for this is because he had such a slick operation.” On the home page, Ramirez stands before an image of a waving American flag and offers a personal message, calling immigrants “those brave ones” with “the hope of freedom.” He concludes with a direct appeal: “Let’s give them a chance.”
One such story regarding the work he has done comes from Reyna Ordonez-Viera. Ordonez-Viera, who lives in the District and works as a janitor, said she turned to Ramirez after her husband was charged in a drug case last year.

Speaking Spanish, she said Ramirez led her to believe that he was a lawyer and assured her “everything would be fine.” She said she paid Ramirez to represent her husband, borrowing the $2,200 fee from a co-worker.

At the first hearing, Ordonez-Viera said, Ramirez introduced himself as a friend to her husband’s public defender and offered no legal assistance. Ordonez-Viera said that she demanded her money back and that Ramirez gave her a $600 check, which she said bounced. Ordonez-Viera filed a complaint in D.C. Superior Court and went back to Ramirez for a refund. When she confronted him on an elevator at his office, then in the District, she said he stopped the elevator and threatened to call police and tell them she was a drug trafficker.

“Nobody should believe him,” said Ordonez-Viera, whose husband is behind bars. Her complaint against Ramirez was dismissed because court papers could not be served to him, according to court records.

Ramirez disputes Ordonez­-Viera’s account, saying that he never told her he was a lawyer and that she was a client of a lawyer he previously worked for as a paralegal. He denies threatening her and said her money was eventually refunded.

Others said Ramirez had done good work for them. Diogenes Bustamante, a plumber from Alexandria, said Ramirez helped his wife’s mother get a visa to visit the United States and assisted family members with the green card process. “He did a great job for my family,” Bustamante said.

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