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Harsh summer temperatures ushered in an early pear harvest for Hood River Valley.

Fruit bearing trees were ready two weeks early, causing pickers to scramble and collect the crop starting in late July.

The Hood River News talked ramifications with growers around the upper and lower valley. The consensus: summer pears are looking good, if in some cases a little small. Laborers to pick the fruit also remains an issue.

Columbia Gorge Fruit Growers executive director Jean Godfrey said the pear harvest began last week, which is two weeks earlier than its usual mid-August start.

She’s hearing from growers (and the company represents 350 of them), that while the crop is “clean” — meaning low russeting — the overall fruit size is smaller than usual.

“I’m hearing that it looks good, but it’s a little smaller than we’d like,” Godfrey said. “That’s due to the weather; it’s been so hot and it stresses the trees. But the crop is about an average-size crop.”

Some growers are seeing full-bodied pears, however.

Bartletts are next for Parkdale grower Gordy Sato, who said the Starkrimson crop is coming in fast this week. All told, “the pears are beautiful,” he said, large and russet-free, referring to the reddish spotting and dimpling that can make most varieties of pears less marketable.

“Our pears are definitely sizing up, generally larger than the lower valley,” said Sato. “I know that some growers are seeing smaller sizes. They had cold weather at the wrong times, and then watering cutbacks, particularly in the Farmers Irrigation District,” he said.

Lower valley grower Craig McCurdy of McCurdy Farms, which grows primarily pears, said that location is key when it comes to fruit size and quality because the topography and soil change the farther south you go.

McCurdy’s farm taps into Farmers Irrigation, and he’s had to cut back on watering due to drought conditions, which affect size and quality. Also detrimental was a hail storm that hammered the lower valley in early May. It narrowly missed his trees, but it damaged others in the area.

His fruit size is good, but quality “might be a little off from what it was last year, just due to heat,” he said. “We’re getting a little sunburn and more yellowing to the fruit, especially on Anjous.”

Craig Mallon, Quality Control Manager at Duckwall Fruit, explained that pears have shrunk throughout much of the valley due to the “defense mechanism” of fruit trees in response to summer heat spells, which scorched into the triple digits.

This could hurt the value of the crop. Smaller pears means smaller profits, he said, as well as less space filled in each bin of fruit.

“The pear size will be smaller than the average year,” said Mallon. “The overall Bartlett crop might be down as much as 10 to 12 percent.”

Another issue local orchardists face is lack of staffing.

“Our main problem is finding pickers,” Sato said. Enrolling in U.S. Labor Department programs last year and this year has helped, but Sato said immigration rules and an aging harvest work force are main contributors to a general work force shortage in Oregon and California.

McCurdy said his farm is okay for the time being. However, “labor is going to become a bigger and bigger issue as we go along,” he said. “It’s not going to go away.” Many of his workers are second or third generation valley residents, and travel across the border between the United States and Mexico.

Increasingly, third generation residents are pursuing careers outside the Ag sector, said McCurdy.

“The third generation graduated from high school here, and most of my employees have kids in college,” McCurdy said. They’re shifting away from ag, he said, because they’ve grown up with it — as have his own children — and “they don’t want anything to do with it.”

At Duckwall Fruit, there’s no shortage of labor for the Bartlett harvest, said Mallon, but the issue could rear up for other varieties later this year.

“It doesn’t seem like an overabundance of staff,” said Mallon.

Godfrey said by the time Anjou picking comes around, there will be a shortage.
  Read more about Pear harvest sweeps in early

The federal government sued the Eugene, Oregon police department because it would not consider non-citizens for the job of police officer:

HUNTINGTON PARK (CBSLA.com) — Huntington Park is making history and not everyone is happy about it.

Councilman Johnny Pineda announced at Monday night’s city council meeting the appointment of two undocumented immigrants as commissioners, CBS2/KCAL9’s Kara Finnstrom reports.

“You are out of order!” one woman in the crowd yelled at the council members during the meeting.

Some critics say Pineda, who joined the council in March, specifically picked Medina and Zatarain because they worked on his campaign. Others say they don’t believe undocumented immigrants should serve the government this way.

“We’re sending the wrong message: you can be illegal and you can come and work for the city,” a woman told Finnstrom.

Pineda stresses that the two appointees would not be paid – federal law prohibits that – and that they will have no power to determine city policy.

Frank Medina will join the health and education commission and Julian Zatarain will be working with the parks and recreation commission. Both are young men who Pineda says have a long history of volunteering for the city and the undocumented community.

The 32-year-old councilman says he picked these two men, first and foremost, for their accomplishments and because he promised voters on the campaign trail he’d create opportunities for the city’s sizable undocumented immigrant demographic.

“We need to make sure that we bring everyone together to the table here in Huntington Park so that we can make sure we’re sharing the same vision,” said Pineda.

City Mayor Karina Macias threw her support behind the appointments.

The appointments won’t be official until processed by the council and Medina and Zatarain pass a LifeScan background check.

Pineda says the move is historic, and would make Huntington Park the first city to have undocumented immigrants on city commissions. Read more about Tempers Flare As Huntington Park Appoints Undocumented Immigrants To City Commissions

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — The Republican Party's presidential class called for aggressive steps to curb illegal immigration, seizing on a delicate political issue as more than a dozen White House hopefuls faced off in New Hampshire on Monday night for a pointed preview of the first full-fledged debate of the 2016 primary season...

The candidates focused their criticism at Democrats instead of each other.. They addressed several contentious issues, immigration topping a list that included abortion, climate change and foreign policy.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who may not qualify for the upcoming formal debate, called the flow of immigrants crossing the border illegally "a serious wound."

"You want to stanch the flow," he said as his Republican rivals watched from the front row of the crowded St. Anselm College auditorium. On those immigrants who have overstayed visas, Perry charged, "You go find 'em, you pick 'em up and you send 'em back where they're from."

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum went further, calling for a 25 percent reduction of low-skilled immigrants coming into the country legally.

"Everyone else is dancing around it. I'm going to stand for the American worker," Santorum declared...

Trump, who launched his presidential bid by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, declined to attend the New Hampshire event. He cited criticism from the local newspaper host, yet he is expected to play a prominent role in Thursday's formal debate, where only the GOP's top 10 candidates — as determined by national polls — will be allowed on stage.

Monday's event was broadcast live on C-SPAN and local television stations in Iowa and South Carolina — states that, along with New Hampshire, will host the first contests in the presidential primary calendar next February...

Just one woman was featured on stage Monday night: former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who is unlikely to qualify for Thursday's higher-profile debate.

Democrats are also eager to debate Republicans on immigration.

GOP leaders have acknowledged the need to improve the party's standing among the surging group of Hispanic voters. Yet while many Democrats favor a more forgiving policy that would allow immigrants in the country illegally a pathway to citizenship in many cases, many Republicans focus on border security.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, once a lead salesman for a comprehensive immigration overhaul, said Americans want the border fence completed and more border security agents before there's any discussion of what to do with those 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.

Others offered a softer tone on the divisive issue Monday night.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said "law-abiding, God-fearing" immigrants in the country illegally should be allowed to stay. Those who break the law, he said, "have to be deported or put in prison."

Bush said fixing the nation's immigration system is a key part of his plan to help the economy grow 4 percent each year. He also called for reducing legal immigration, particularly the number of people allowed to enter the country on family petitions...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called the move "a buzz saw to the nation's economy."

"I want to balance a sustainable environment with a sustainable economy," Walker said.

Several candidates involved Monday night won't make the cut for Thursday's debate...

Fiorina charged that Clinton has repeatedly lied during investigations into her use of a private email server and an attack on an American embassy in Libya while she was secretary of state.

"These go to the core of her character," Fiorina said.

"We have to have a nominee on our side who's going to throw every punch," she continued. "This is a fight.".. Read more about Illegal immigration top GOP talking point at New Hampshire presidential forum

A significant bipartisan majority of the 2013 Legislative Assembly voted to enact House Bill 2787, which became known as the “Tuition Equity Act.” It established in-state tuition eligibility for students who demonstrate the intent to become United States citizens and who met certain previous attendance requirements in schools both in Oregon and other U.S. states and territories.

The Legislative Fiscal Office’s report on the bill estimated that only 38 undocumented alien students would access the opportunity to pay in-state tuition to attend an Oregon university during the 2013-15 budget period, and that 80 students would participate during the 2015-17 biennium. The Act didn’t affect Oregon community colleges, because they do not have residency requirements.

Tuition Equity Act supporters argued it would cause minimal cost to Oregon taxpayers. They further implied they would neither ask for future eligibility expansion for in-state tuition nor request financial aid eligibility for undocumented alien students. I voted against HB 2787 — not least because I didn’t believe their words.

University and community college students who are neither United States citizens nor eligible non-citizens are ineligible for federal grant-in-aid programs. Undocumented aliens are prohibited from even filing a Free Application for Federal Student Aid. However, Oregon’s own taxpayer-funded grant-in-aid program for college students, the Oregon Opportunity Grant, is not constrained by federal law.

The Legislature’s Democratic majority enacted Senate Bill 932 this year, on party-line votes. It significantly enlarged the number of undocumented aliens who are eligible for in-state tuition. Further, the bill created new eligibility for Oregon undocumented alien university and community college students to receive Oregon-funded grant-in-aid and student loans.

I believe this bill will serve as a beacon for undocumented alien students to come to Oregon for what amounts to a free college education at the expense of Oregon taxpayers.

The Legislative Fiscal Office’s report on SB 932 estimates that as many as 1,000 undocumented alien students may receive Opportunity Grants the first year, and that as many as 4,000 may be participating within four years. At only $1,000 per term, the cost could reach $12 million per year. The fiscal report doesn’t appear to contemplate my predicted in-migration of students.

Not only does SB 932 make undocumented alien students eligible for Oregon taxpayer-paid tuition and expenses, it likely gives them preference over documented resident citizens. According to the bill’s fiscal report, grants and loans for unauthorized immigrants “may be skewed towards an expected family contribution rate of zero or close to zero, which would give this population a higher priority for grant awards.”

The Democratic majority further amended the existing program by enacting House Bill 2407. It ensures that the state will make grants to students with the highest financial need and, where possible, prioritize funding for students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. That priority will be based upon an “equity lens” established through Oregon Education Investment Board rulemaking. The “equity lens” appears to be focused on contributing financial aid to low-income undocumented alien students.

Democrats further amended the statute to include “foundations of community colleges” that distribute money to community colleges in the program.

Another bill, House Bill 3063, was created specifically to increase the number of under-served, low-income and first-generation college-bound students who enroll in community college and make progress toward a degree or certificate. This, too, appears to be focused on impoverished, first-generation and perhaps undocumented immigrants. It appropriates $3 million in general fund dollars to that program.

Many legislators who voted for the Tuition Equity Act in 2013 rightly feel betrayed. Assurances that their votes would not open the floodgates for undocumented alien students to attend Oregon colleges and universities with taxpayer-funded Opportunity Grants were insincere. Egregiously, some legislators contend they’re unable to remember making those assurances. So much for an open and transparent legislative process.

Doug Whitsett, R-Klamath Falls, represents District 28 in the Oregon Senate. Read more about Changes to tuition act prove doubters right

The overwhelming majority of immigration to the United States is the result of our visa policies. Each year, millions of visas are issued...

The lion’s share of these visas are for lesser-skilled and lower-paid workers and their dependents... added directly to the same labor pool occupied by current unemployed jobseekers.

...most will be able to draw a wide range of taxpayer-funded benefits, and corporations will be allowed to directly substitute these workers for Americans. Improved border security would have no effect on the continued arrival of these foreign workers, refugees, and permanent immigrants—because they are all invited here by the federal government.

The most significant of all immigration documents issued by the U.S. is, by far, the “green card.”...

Under current federal policy, the U.S. issues green cards to approximately 1 million new Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs) every single year....

These ongoing visa issuances are the result of federal law, and their number can be adjusted at any time.

...there is virtually no national discussion or media coverage over how many visas we issue, to whom we issue them and on what basis, or how the issuance of these visas to individuals living in foreign countries impacts the interests of people already living in this country.

If Congress does not pass legislation to reduce the number of green cards issued each year, the U.S. will legally add 10 million or more new permanent immigrants over the next 10 years—a bloc of new permanent residents larger than populations of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina combined.

This has substantial economic implications.

The post-World War II boom decades of the 1950s and 1960s averaged together less than 3 million green cards per decade—or about 285,000 annually. Due to lower immigration rates, the total foreign-born population in the United States dropped from about 10.8 million in 1945 to 9.7 million in 1960 and 9.6 million in 1970.  

These lower mid-century immigration levels were the product of a federal policy change: after the last period of large-scale immigration that had begun in roughly 1880, immigration rates were lowered to reduce admissions. The foreign-born share of the U.S. population fell for six consecutive decades, from 1910 through 1960.

Legislation enacted in 1965, among other factors, substantially increased low-skilled immigration. Since 1970, the foreign-born population in the United States has increased more than four-fold—to a record 42.1 million today...

Georgetown and Hebrew University economics professor Eric Gould has observed that “the last four decades have witnessed a dramatic change in the wage and employment structure in the United States… The overall evidence suggests that the manufacturing and immigration trends have hollowed-out the overall demand for middle-skilled workers in all sectors, while increasing the supply of workers in lower skilled jobs. Both phenomena are producing downward pressure on the relative wages of workers at the low end of the income distribution.”

During the low-immigration period from 1948-1973, real median compensation for U.S. workers increased more than 90 percent. By contrast, real average hourly wages were lower in 2014 than they were in 1973...

President Coolidge articulated how a slowing of immigration would benefit both U.S.-born and immigrant-workers: “We want to keep wages and living conditions good for everyone who is now here or who may come here. As a nation, our first duty must be to those who are already our inhabitants, whether native or immigrants. To them we owe an especial and a weighty obligation.”

It is worth observing that the 10 million grants of new permanent residency under current law is not an estimate of total immigration. In fact, the increased distribution of legal immigrant visas tend to correlate with increased flows of immigration illegally: the former helps provide networks and pull factors for the latter...

Yet the immigration “reform” considered by Congress most recently—the 2013 Senate “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration bill—would have tripled the number of green cards issued over the next 10 years...

Polling from Gallup and Fox shows that Americans want lawmakers to reduce, not increase, immigration rates...

Please take the time to read the FULL article - it's worth the time!
  Read more about USA to Issue More Green Cards Than Populations of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina Combined

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials will begin visiting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) beneficiaries who received the illegal three-year work permits and have not yet returned them.

“USCIS officials will soon begin to visit the listed address of certain individuals who have not yet returned an invalid three-year employment authorization document (EAD) for the purpose of retrieving these EADs,” the agency explained in a statement. “USCIS has already attempted, or is in the process of attempting, to notify all recipients by mail and phone that the three-year EADs are no longer valid and must be immediately returned.”

According to the agency, officials will not be questioning people at the addresses they visit but rather retrieving the three-year work authorizations.

“Individuals who received these three-year EADs are not being penalized for requesting DACA, they are merely being reissued the correct two-year cards,” the agency added.

USCIS warns that those who do not return their three-year permits will find their DACA status terminated.

Judge Andrew Hanen — the judge presiding over 26 states’ legal challenge of executive amnesty, who issued the initial injunction — has said he will order top Obama immigration officials into court to explain the injunction violations if the agency has not recouped all the erroneously issued three-year work permits to the court’s satisfaction by July 31.

Hanen issued the injunction, halting Obama’s executive amnesty programs — expanded DACA and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) — in February. Prior to his injunction and after the Obama administration was issuing three-year work permits to DACA recipients, a part of the expanded executive amnesty DACA program.

...both sides have acknowledged that those post-injunction permits are illegal and must be recouped.

USCIS says about 2,100 three-year permits were issued post-injunction and another 500 were issued before the injunction but due to mail and address issues were mailed again after the injunction. All 2,600 are considered invalid. USCIS notes that the move does not apply to those three-year permits issued in advance of the injunction.

“This action does not apply to the approximately 108,000 three-year EADs that were approved and mailed by USCIS on or before the February 16, 2015, injunction date and that have never been returned or reissued by USCIS,” reads a USCIS fact sheet.

According to amnesty groups briefed on the matter, federal officials are slated to begin home visits Thursday in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston. The groups say that there are about 1,000 outstanding three-year permits. Read more about Feds. Visiting Illegals’ Homes To Seize Erroneously Issued Amnesty Docs

A California employer is facing lawsuit and a lot condemnation from a group of employees for a rule they have enforced that others think is discriminatory. But the job site doesn’t care, they’re sticking to it and those who don’t like it can find work elsewhere.

Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa has deemed their facility English-speaking only, and anyone caught communicating in Spanish, will be terminated if they incur multiple offenses. After all, this is America, and Americans don’t move to other countries and expect that their employer allow them to speak English to native customers or clients who can’t understand a word of what they’re saying.

The policy is clear and simple, stating that “English is considered to be the official language of the state of California and should be spoken while doing the work of the state unless otherwise indicated by the needs of clients or their families.” But a group of long-time employees of the center say the rule shouldn’t have to apply to them, since they don’t interact with clients directly, citing the California’s Department of Fair Employment Act to back up their complaint via an attorney to fight their battle for them — in English.

The Act states that an “employer can’t prohibit the use of any language in the workplace unless he or she can prove that it is justified by business necessity,” according to the disgruntled group’s attorney, Joseph Scully.

In this particular case, the individuals allegedly discriminated against...all food service workers with the exception of one who is a custodian in the building. ...alleged in their lawsuit that the employer eavesdrops on their private conversations...

The workers whined that the rule makes them feel like second-class employees...

It’s ridiculous for foreign citizens to come to our country and make demands that cater to their non-desire to learn our language...

One can’t have the advantages of living in this great nation and benefiting from our job availability, financial stability, and freedom, while forcing that rules are changed or worked around to suit them.

SALEM — State grants could go to college students who were brought to the United States as children but lack immigration papers under a bill that cleared the Oregon Senate on Thursday.

The 17-11 vote, largely along party lines, moved Senate Bill 932 to the House.

Sen. Michael Dembrow, a Democrat from Portland and the bill’s chief sponsor, said that based on estimates, ...350 of them were likely to get them.

Given that lawmakers have boosted funds in the next two-year budget cycle to make grants available to 13,000 more students, Dembrow said the 350 would be a small share.

“They are exactly the kind of kids we should be investing in,” Dembrow said. “Most of these kids have lived here all of these years and they deserve a shot.”

But Dembrow, a community college instructor, acknowledged that his sponsorship of the bill is a shift from two years ago, when as chairman of a House committee, he was floor manager of the bill that allowed in-state tuition rates for undocumented students.

Dembrow said then that the 2013 bill, which became law, did not open the way for state aid to these students — unlike SB 932.

Jim Ludwick of McMinnville, spokesman and former president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, made a pointed comment about Dembrow’s 2013 remarks in written testimony filed for a June 15 budget subcommittee hearing.

“I remember nudging the person next to me and saying wait two years,” Ludwick wrote. “Here we are just two years later and the same advocates now want to do just that.”...

...If the House passes SB 932, Oregon would join California, Washington and some other states that allow state aid.
  Read more about Undocumented student grant measure clears Senate