immigration

SALEM — State lawmakers are considering a change to sentencing law that could help prevent the mandatory federal deportation of legal immigrants convicted of gross misdemeanors.

The proposal is in an amendment to Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum’s bill:[HB 2355] to discourage racial profiling.

The change would reduce the maximum sentence for a Class A misdemeanor from 365 days to 364 days. A 365-day sentence is one of several triggers for mandatory federal deportation of green card holders, refugees and other legal noncitizens. Other triggers are violent crimes and felonies, said Stephen Manning, a Portland immigration attorney.

The change would have no effect on illegal immigrants.

“This is an equity issue,” said state House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland. “People should not be torn from their families and their communities because of an arbitrary difference between state and federal sentencing law for low-level, nonviolent misdemeanors.”

If adopted, the law would make Oregon uniform with Washington state and California, which already made the change in the last several years.

It would serve to strengthen the three states’ governors’ efforts to create “a zone of inclusivity” along the West Coast, Manning said.

Gov. Kate Brown has been defiant in the face of President Donald Trump’s executive orders limiting immigration and banning refugees, which also have been halted by the courts.

In February, Brown issued her own executive order barring the use of state resources to enforce federal immigration policy. Rosenblum subsequently sought to join Washington’s lawsuit against the Trump administration’s immigration orders.

“Gov. Brown supports the amendment and looks forward to signing the racial profiling bill into law to better protect all Oregonians,” said Bryan Hockaday, the governor’s press secretary.

Kotek requested the sentencing change to be added to an amendment to a bill that requires police to collect data on race when they pull over drivers or pedestrians. The bill is meant to discourage racial profiling by law enforcement.

Kotek made the request after receiving feedback from community groups, law enforcement, immigration attorneys and others working on the racial profiling bill, said Lindsey O’Brien, a spokeswoman in the Speaker’s Office.

Felonies, certain violent crimes and 365-day or greater sentences for gross misdemeanors can trigger mandatory deportation under federal law. Class A misdemeanors in Oregon can range from falsifying information and writing a bad check to fourth-degree assault.

“Shifting to 364 days means our fellow Oregonians are not subject to that very drastic penalty,” Manning said.

As an immigration attorney, Manning said he sees legal immigrants deported for misdemeanor crimes all of the time.

“I couldn’t even count for you how many times,” he said. “It’s extremely painful and sad … and is a form of stigmatization against noncitizens.”

The House Judiciary Committee adopted the amendment and approved the overarching bill in March. No one addressed the significance of the sentencing change at that time.

Reps. Sal Esquivel of Medford, and Mike Nearman of Independence said they oppose the change because they see it as an attempt to circumvent federal law.

“To me that is a way to dodge the federal law,” said Esquivel, who is the son of a legal Mexican immigrant. “You’re on probation when you come here on a green card.”

The two Republican lawmakers co-sponsored legislation this session to outlaw sanctuary city designations and to make English the state’s official language.

Several Oregon cities, including Portland, have declared themselves sanctuary cities for immigrants, and the Trump administration has threatened to pull federal grants and other funding from those jurisdictions.

The bill is now before the Joint Committee on Ways and Means but won’t have another hearing until May, said Rep. Duane Stark, R-Grants Pass, chairman of the Subcommittee on Public Safety.

The Capital Bureau is a collaboration between EO Media Group and Pamplin Media Group.
  Read more about Legislation could prevent some deportations of legal immigrants

The BREAK THE CHAINS Campaign has begun.

This morning, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) announced that he will introduce legislation next week that would end ALL categories of Chain Migration -- and the Visa Lottery, too.

Chain Migration is the main reason that American workers have had to compete for wages and jobs with tens of millions of new immigrants who have been given lifetime work permits the last several decades.

40% IMMEDIATE REDUCTION IN ANNUAL IMMIGRATION

Sen. Cotton says his bill would reduce the number of lifetime work permits given to foreign citizens by around 40% the first year -- and by around 50% in the tenth year after passage.

Ending Chain Migration is the primary way the bill would achieve that goal.

For several decades, immigrants no longer have been limited to bringing in a spouse and minor children. Chain Migration categories allow each immigrant (once a citizen) to petition for adult brothers and sisters, for adult sons and daughters, and for parents. Each of them can in turn do the same along with bringing their own spouses who can start whole new chains in their own families, and so forth in a never-ending pattern.

Sen. Cotton would stop all of that Chain immigration which adds millions of workers each decade without any regard to their skills or how they would affect Americans competing in the same occupations.

By limiting family immigration to a spouse and minor children -- including overseas adoptions and marriages by U.S. citizens -- Sen. Cotton says the bill would . . .

" . . . restore historical levels of immigration in order to give working Americans a fair shot at wealth creation."

At around one million a year since 1990, overall annual legal immigration has been some THREE times higher than the historical average before then.

A RARE OPPORTUNITY

Sen. Cotton's bill will be the first since 1996 to challenge the Senate to eliminate future Chain Migration.

It was in 1996 that I started NumbersUSA with our Number One legislative goal being to end Chain Migration, as recommended by the bi-partisan federal commission chaired by the Civil Rights icon Barbara Jordan.

Sen. Cotton has boldly indicated today that he will assume the leadership to advance that vision of an immigration policy that first serves the interests of our national community's workers, especially its most vulnerable.

This year represents a rare opportunity. It is the first time in nearly a hundred years that there is a President in the White House who has declared his intention to reduce the overall numerical level of immigration.

THE PROBLEM BEING ADDRESSED

Sen. Cotton is titling his bill the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act.

Its initials spell RAISE. It's the RAISE bill. Sen. Cotton wants to give hard-pressed American workers a raise by allowing labor markets to begin to tighten.

Sen. Cotton described the problem his bill is attempting to address:

• For over a quarter century, the United States has accepted an average of 1 million immigrants annually--the equivalent of adding the entire state of Montana each year.
• When only 1 out of every 15 immigrants arrives in the United States on a skills-based visa, the majority of the remaining immigrants are either low-skill or unskilled.
• This generation-long influx of low-skilled labor has been a major factor in the downward pressure on the wages of working Americans, with the wages of recent immigrants hardest hit.
• Wages for Americans with only high school diplomas have declined by 2 percent since the late 1970s, and for those who didn't finish high school, they have declined by nearly 20 percent. This collapse in wages threatens to create a near permanent underclass for whom the American Dream is always just out of reach.

THE 'RAISE' SOLUTION

Sen. Cotton describes the key elements of his bill like this:

Eliminate Outdated Diversity Visa Lottery: The Lottery is plagued with fraud, it advances no economic or humanitarian interest, and it does not even deliver the diversity of its namesake. The RAISE Act would eliminate the 50,000 visas arbitrarily allocated to this lottery.

Place Responsible Limit on Permanent Residency for Refugees: The RAISE Act would limit refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with a 13-year average. (This is the same annual refugee cap in Pres. Trump's executive order. It is also the cap recommended in the 1980 Refugee Act, which is current law but which Presidents have routinely exceeded.)

Prioritize Immediate Family Households. The RAISE Act would retain immigration preferences for the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

Eliminated would be green card categories for foreign citizens who are:

• Adult parents of U.S. citizens
• Adult brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens
• Unmarried adult sons and daughters of U.S. citizens
• Married adult sons and daughters of U.S. citizens
• Unmarried adult sons and daughters of legal permanent residents

Create Temporary Visa for Parents in Need of Caretaking: For U.S. citizens who wish to bring elderly parents in need of care-taking to the United States, the RAISE Act creates a renewable temporary visa on the condition that the parents are not permitted to work, cannot access public benefits, and must be guaranteed support and health insurance by their sponsoring children.

Friends, the difference in this being a wonderful BILL and it being an incredibly helpful LAW is likely to be the degree to which the 8 million members of NumbersUSA's online grassroots army makes it clear to their Members of Congress and to Pres. Trump that this is a true priority.

ROY BECK, NUMBERSUSA FOUNDER & PRESIDENT

  Read more about Sen. Tom Cotton unveils the most important immigration bill for protecting American workers

Opponents of President Trump's executive orders concerning immigrants and refugees plan to rally at the Oregon State Capitol on Wednesday.

"We will demand that the Governor and the State Legislature take immediate actions to defend and protect immigrants and refugees in Oregon," said rally organizers from Voz Hispana, an immigrants rights organization. "Oregon will not become a cog in the Trump deportation machine."

Last Friday, President Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program for 120 days, banned all immigrants from seven Muslim countries — Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya — for 90 days, and ordered his administration to develop "extreme vetting" measures for immigrants from those countries to keep "radical Islamic terrorists" out of the United States, as reported by USA Today.

A protest against the orders was held at the Portland International Airport Sunday.

Steve and Cindy Spinnett went with signs reading, "Thank you, President Trump."

"We wanted to be an encouragement to President Trump for keeping his promises to the American people," Steve said.

At first, Steve said he and his wife ran into resistance from some protesters, but as they spoke to them, they found common ground.

"We told them they were sincere and we're glad to see them out there expressing their beliefs," he said. "We then warmed up to each other. We agreed that loving one another was more important than our disagreements politically."

Doug and Anya Holcomb, founders of Salem for Refugees, said they are going to continue to provide services for locals impacted by the actions.

"In the coming days, our focus will be on caring for the refugees who are already in Salem, advocating for the 65.3 million people across the globe who have been forced to flee their homes, educating our community about the global refugee crisis, and preparing our city to welcome the refugees who will be coming when resettlement begins again," the two activists said in a statement.

According to the Oregon Department of Human Services, more than 64,000 refugees have resettled in Oregon since 1975. Most of these refugees initially settle in the greater Portland metro area.

Currently, the most common refugee groups arriving in Oregon are from, Cuba, Burma, Bhutan, Iran, Iraq, and Somalia.

As for immigrants, Oregon is home to more than 391,000 immigrants, making about 10 percent of all Oregonians "foreign-born."

More than 11 million immigrants are estimated to be living in the United States illegally, according to the PEW Research Center and Migration Policy Institute.

By comparison, in 2014, around 47 percent, or 20 million, of all U.S. immigrants were naturalized U.S. citizens. The remaining 53 percent, or 22.4 million, included lawful permanent residents, unauthorized immigrants, and legal residents on temporary visas, such as students and temporary workers.

Jim Ludwick, communications director for Oregonians for Immigration Reform, said the organization saw the president's actions as a hopeful sign of Trump keeping his promises.

"We were hopeful that President Trump will come out and build the wall, and we think he will," he said.

Oregonians for Immigration Reform, Ludwick said, is not against all immigration; rather, it is in favor of stricter background checks and a lower volume of people brought in each year.

"We need to make sure the people who come in are the people they say they are," he said.

Aside from violent attacks, he said the country isn't able to sustain much more than 230,000 legal immigrants a year.

"We aren't able to sustain (the number of people now), environmentally, socially, financially or politically," he said.

He said multiple U.S. Presidents in the past, including Carter and Clinton, placed travel and immigration bans on certain areas.

"This is not a new thing — there are just new players," he said.

Contact Natalie Pate at npate@StatesmanJournal.com, 503-399-6745, or follow her on Twitter @Nataliempate and Facebook at www.Facebook.com/nataliepatejournalist

Rally at the Capitol

Voz Hispana, an immigrants rights organization, is a hosting rally on the front steps of the Oregon State Capitol.

• Where: Oregon State Capitol, 900 Court St NE
• When: Wednesday, Feb. 1 at 1 p.m.

"Welcoming Our New Neighbors" meeting

The “Welcoming Our New Neighbors” meetings discuss ways to assist incoming refugees in the Salem area. The events are organized by Catholic Charities, Salem for Refugees and the Salem Leadership Foundation, among others.

• Where: Salem Alliance Church, 555 Gaines St NE
• When: Monday, Feb. 6 at 12 p.m.

Event at Willamette Heritage Center

Toc Soneoulay-Gillespie, director of Refugee Resettlement for Catholic Charities of Oregon, will discuss both the state and national refugee programs and their challenges in 2017.

She will be joined by Doug and Anya Holcomb, co-directors of Salem for Refugees, and a representative of the refugee population, to explain the Salem-area program to members of the Salem City Club and the public on Feb. 3.

• Where: Willamette Heritage Center, 1313 Mill St SE
• When: Friday, Feb. 3 at 11:30 a.m.
• Cost: $15 per person Read more about Oregon activists react to Trump's executive orders

On Monday, December 19th Berlin was rocked by a deadly terror attack that killed 12 innocent victims and injured 48.  A December 21, 2016 CNN report, “Berlin attack: Police hunt Tunisian suspect after finding ID papers” named 24 year-old Tunisian, Anis Amri as the prime suspect who drove a stolen truck into pedestrians visiting a Berlin Christmas market.

Read the full article here. Read more about Berlin Terror Attack and Immigration Law Violations

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A man who was adopted from South Korea almost four decades ago by Americans has been deported to his native country, his attorney and a government official said Thursday.

Adam Crapser's supporters say he doesn't know the language or the culture of South Korea.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered Crapser deported because of criminal convictions, including assault and being a felon in possession of a weapon.

His Seattle attorney, Lori Walls, told The Associated Press in an email Thursday: "Adam got deported last night. I just heard from him."...

Crapser was brought to the United States when he was 3, but no one ever sought U.S. citizenship for him. He and his older sister were adopted by Americans, who later abandoned them. The siblings then were separated and sent to live in foster and group homes.

When Crapser was 12, he moved in with an abusive family. ...  Crapser himself later got into trouble with the law, which made him liable for deportation. He had come under the scrutiny of federal immigration authorities only after he applied for a Green Card.

Richeson said Crapser was arrested by ICE on Feb. 8 after serving a 60-day sentence for menacing...

The New York Times reported recently that his birth mother in South Korea, who had put her son up for adoption because she couldn't afford to keep him, was learning English so they could communicate when they were reunited. Read more about Adam Crapser deported: Man was adopted from South Korea at age 3

An Ethiopian immigrant who was working as a Certified Nursing Assistant in Portland, Oregon is behind bars, charged with rape, unlawful sexual penetration and other sexual contact with patients who were 87 and 94 years old.

Around a half dozen other alleged victims came forward after the September 14 arrest of Adeladilew A. Mekonen and he is likely to face “many more charges,” the Washington County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to Breitbart News...the 34-year-old suspect is currently facing 18 charges

Even more shocking: a lawsuit filed on behalf of the 87-year-old victim claims that many of the assaults could’ve been prevented had the hospital where the accused rapist worked acted after the 94-year-old victim told the hospital she had been raped back in June.

The lawsuit alleges that Providence St. Vincent Medical Center:

knew and had reason to know that Adeladilew Mekonen had abused and was likely to again sexually abuse ill and elderly female patients,...

As the 87-year-old woman’s attorney Greg Kafoury told Portland TV station KOIN: “When you get an accusation as serious as this, you’re really supposed to do something about it,...

It is unclear what happened in June after the lawsuit claims the 94-year-old woman told the hospital she had been raped but Providence St. Vincent gave KOIN 6 News this statement:

Providence has been working closely with law enforcement and prosecutors in this ongoing investigation. As additional patients contacted us, we worked with Washington County detectives to connect patients with investigators and conduct interviews. We played a direct part in helping detectives take action in these new cases. Providence is committed to the safety of our patients and their families. In all of our hospitals, we have a team of people working to review and investigate any patient concerns we receive. We work every day to earn the trust of our patients, just as we have been doing for 160 years.

The suspect’s neighbor, Jeff Reed, expressed dismay to news station KATU, telling the station he was shocked to hear the allegations after Mekonoen’s arrest. “I thought he was a very nice guy, family oriented,” said Reed, who lives across from Mekonen at an apartment complex in Southeast Portland.

Mekonen had been working at the hospital since May, just a month before the first rape was allegedly reported.

Breitbart News has confirmed with the Washington County authorities that the suspect, Adeladilew Mekonen, told a detective that he came to the United States from Ethiopia in 2011. Read more about More Victims in Portland after Ethiopian Charged with Rape of 87 and 94-year-old