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Friday, November 7, 2008
Julie Myers, head of immigration agency, resigns
Julie Myers, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has resigned, the Department of Homeland Security announced this week.
ICE has been at the center of a political storm over its stepped up workplace immigration raids across the country.
The Department of Homeland Security announced that Myers will depart on Nov. 15.
In a statement, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said that Myers “has been a major force in transforming ICE into a 21st century law enforcement agency.”
He also praised Myers’ leadership of “efforts to identify and charge criminal aliens incarcerated in our nation’s prisons and jails, modernize the removal process and provide enhanced oversight for detention operations.”
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Obama’s aunt will fight deportation
Barack Obama’s aunt, who has been living in the United States illegally, wants to fight a deportation order and stay in the country, the AP reported.
According to the story, Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, has been staying with relatives in Cleveland after fleeing her public housing apartment in Boston.
Cleveland attorney Margaret Wong told AP that she is exploring legal options and may file a motion to re-open Onyango’s case.
Read more here.
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Feds preparing for “comprehensive immigration reform”
The acting director of U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS), said this week that the agency has made great strides in clearing backlogs of citizenship applications.
The improvements will help the agency show that it can handle new legalization efforts if Congress and the upcoming Obama administration tackle the issue next year, federal officials said.
“Comprehensive immigration reform is obviously a goal that we believe is unfinished business,” said Jonathan “Jock” Scharfen, acting director of USCIS.
Scharfen was referring to a sweeping immigration bill that failed last year which would have given illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and created a guest worker program.
President-elect Barack Obama favors such a measure.
USCIS reported that it has completed more than 1.1 million naturalization applications this year, a 50 percent increase from 2007.
The agency has also interviewed more than 100,000 refugee applicants and completed more than 47,000 asylum applications this year.
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Obama scores big with Latino voters
The 2008 presidential election put to bed at least one perpetual political myth — that Latinos won’t vote for a black candidate.
President-elect Barack Obama scored big with Hispanic voters — capturing 66 percent of the vote. Among younger Hispanics, the number was 76 percent.
Latinos were instrumental in delivering key states to Obama including Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. They also gave him a boost in some surprising places such as Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Obama and his rival, GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona, spent millions on Spanish-language ads to influence Hispanics, including many naturalized citizen voting for the first time.
Last year, a record 1.4 million people applied for naturalization and more than 480,000 followed this year.
Read more here.
