St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, a Yonkers parish with a large Hispanic immigrant congregation, will hold its autumn benefit concert on Sunday, Sept. 21 at 3 p.m. The church’s five Spanish-language choirs will perform and tickets are $5. The concert will be held in the basement and food and beverages will be served. Call 914-963-0822.

During a tour this morning of the Yonkers Public Schools’ new Vive school at 75 Riverdale Ave. schools Superintendent Bernard Pierorazio explained that the Yonkers Pathways to Success, an adult education program based at Vive, has received support from the Mexican consulate. Pierorazio explained that the Mexican government has given the district books and other materials.
“The goal is to have Mexican nationals assimilate into the community,” Pierorazio said.
The district’s evening adult education programs begin on Sept. 17 at the Enrico Fermi school at 27 Poplar St. and at the PEARLS Hawthorne school at 350 Hawthorne Ave. The Fermi school will focus exclusively on English as a Second Language classes, while PEARLS will offer computing, English, GED, pre-GED classes and basic adult education. Day adult education begins in October at Vive. For more information or registration, call 914-376-8600.

Immigration tends to rank behind the economy, Iraq, health care and other top issues named by voters, Latino and otherwise. Still, it can be a strong motivator for Hispanics on whether or not to vote, Cecilia Muñoz of the National Council of La Raza said today. It can determine whether Latinos see a candidate as a good guy or a bad guy.

Muñoz made the comment during a conference call with reporters about Sen. John McCain’s new Spanish-language ad, which claims that Sen. Barack Obama got in the way of immigration reform last year. Muñoz said Hispanics watched the reform debate closely last year and will recall that it was the Republicans, and not the Democrats, who defeated the bill.

Both McCain and Obama have a record of supporting comprehensive immigration reform (meaning an overhaul that would include legalization for the undocumented). Frank Sharry of America’s Voice said today he’s become less optimistic that McCain would follow through with that position as president; that his “enforcement first” approach may ultimately mean “enforcement only.” After all, Sharry said, the current crackdown doesn’t seem to be selling hard-liners on the notion of legalization. Instead, hard liners are celebrating. He likened the strategy to “giving an alcoholic a drink and hoping they want to get sober tomorrow.”

In case you missed it, here is a copy of a story that ran in our paper on Saturday.

Mt. Vernon woman convicted in immigration fraud
BY TIMOTHY O’CONNOR • THE JOURNAL NEWS • SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

NEW YORK – A Mount Vernon woman faces up to 10 years in a federal prison after pleading guilty in an immigration fraud case.

Jennifer Rowe, 51, admitted she conspired to commit mail fraud and visa fraud. She pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Rowe was charged in September 2007 along with Pape Seck with defrauding illegal immigrants who paid up to $5,000 hoping to gain permanent residency and citizenship. While Rowe pleaded guilty yesterday, Seck remains a fugitive.

Reached at her home last night, Rowe said Seck was to blame.

“It wasn’t my fault that this happened,” she said. “It was because of this man who took off with these people’s money and left me in the wind.”

Federal prosecutors said Rowe and Seck duped the illegal immigrants into thinking they were eligible for amnesty under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1986. Rowe advertised in immigrant communities in the New York City area. The ads promised she could help immigrants obtain permanent residency. But the illegal immigrants were not eligible for the amnesty program.

Rowe and Seck took fees of $1,000 to $5,000 and the immigrants’ passports. They then submitted false application packages for amnesty to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency on behalf of the immigrants, federal authorities said. None of the applications were successful.

When Seck took off, the angry clients came after Rowe. She said that’s what led to her prosecution.

“These people are blaming me because they are furious,” she said, “because he ran away and I had given them my address, my telephone number.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who arrested Rowe said she told them that Seck called her about a month previously to tell her he had $100,000 and passports to return to her. But she said she never heard from him again.

Rowe is to be sentenced Jan. 6 by U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty.

“It’s something I never wanted to be,” she said, “this shame, this disgrace.”

The Republican “poison pill” claim is back, and I expect we’ll hear more of it. A new Spanish-language ad for John McCain claims that his opponent blocked immigration reform in Congress by voting for poison-pill amendments. The Miami Herald did a fact check and is calling for a 5-yard penalty against McCain-Palin. Here’s the ad:

Barack Obama did support some pro-labor measures that came up during the final debate over last year’s “grand bargain” in Congress. But pro-reform advocates like Christopher Dorval and Frank Sharry of America’s Voice agree that it wasn’t the labor amendments that killed the deal. It was the hard-line Republican opposition to legalizing undocumented immigrants.

In any case, it must be said that McCain has retreated somewhat from his pro-legalization stance, and that the Republican platform is flat-out opposed to a legalization measure. The immigration issue hasn’t won any real attention yet in the McCain-Obama contest, but we’ll be listening.

Update: From Frank Sharry comes this comment:

We are stunned.  A Spanish-language ad approved by Senator John McCain accuses Senator Obama and the Democrats of derailing immigration reform?  He knows better.  The whole political world knows better.  Comprehensive immigration reform was blocked not by Democrats but by Republicans.  A White House strategy designed to secure 25-30 Republican votes (of the 60 needed) ended up getting only 12 Republican votes.  The reason?  A number of Republican Senators were intimidated by the intense opposition to the bill fueled by anti-immigrant groups, hard line Republicans and right-wing talk radio and television. … Immigrants and Latinos are intelligent.  They know the difference between fact and fiction. This ad is more fiction than fact, and the McCain campaign should take this ad off the air.

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez expelled the U.S. Ambassador yesterday, giving him 72 hours to leave the country. The move was made to support Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, who also kicked out their U.S. Ambassador this week after claiming he instigated protests there.

With that said, the shakeup in Venezuela comes when a local politically-involved figure is heading to the South American nation next week. Darren Rigger, chairman of the Peekskill Democratic City Committee, was selected by the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL) to serve as a delegate to Venezuela for a 10-day political exchange program. Rigger will join six other people from across the country to learn about Venezuela’s political system and its relations with the U.S. Rigger had this to say:

I am honored to have been selected to participate in this ACYPL exchange to Venezuela. This will be an excellent opportunity for me to learn about the current political and social dynamics there and help the Venezuelan people better understand the United States.

Rigger heads to Venezuela on Sept. 19. He holds an International Diplomacy degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and works for Congressmen Charles Rangel and John Hall.

The central New York chapter of the Labor and Employment Research Association will hold a panel on Sept. 18 entitled Invisible and Invaluable: Undocumented Immigrants in the U.S. Kate Griffith, assistant professor of employment and labor law at Cornell University will speak about the topic. The event will take place at 5 p.m. with a light dinner at The Manufacturers Association offices at 1 Webster’s Landing, Syracuse, NY. Tickets are $22 for students, $25 for members and $29 for guests. For reservations contact Patricia Stoughtenger at 315-431-4040 or pstought@nysutmail.org

The National Council of La Raza announced today that it has revamped its “Can We Stop the Hate” web site. The site spotlights what the group considers objectionable speech in the immigration debate in the media.

Given that dozens of anti-immigrant talk show hots and organizations have descended on Capitol Hill this week, it is especially important that information on what these entities are really all about is readily available to those interested in combating intolerance,

wrote NCLR president Janet Murguia.
Murguia was referring to the lobbying days by groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which on Tuesday released a report on immigration and national security.
The Immigration Policy Center also released a news alert in response FAIR’s lobbying regarding illegal immigrants and crime.

For today’s Journal News I wrote about a deportation that was about as happy as a deportation can be. Andrew Berends, a documentary filmmaker, spent 10 days being interrogated and detained by the Nigerian security forces while working there. Under pressure from the U.S. State Department, Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer and others, the Nigerian government freed him yesterday and deported him back to the United States, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Berends grew up in Hastings and lives in Brooklyn. Click here for a photo just posted of him “back on U.S. soil.”

Nigerian authorities accused him of spying, but he is among many journalists to be harassed and detained in the oil-rich, conflict-ridden Niger Delta region. His departure yesterday was met with relief by CPJ and Reporters Without Borders. His friends and colleagues are tracking the developments here. A translator for Berends and a local businessman were also interrogated and are due to report back to the authorities.

The New York Times quoted Berends as saying, before he boarded the outbound plane: “It’s a travesty, because I love Nigeria.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, long a vocal advocate of immigration-reform measures, will speak out tomorrow against worksite raids.

“The humanitarian costs of these raids are immeasurable and unacceptable in a civilized society,” said Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, who heads the conference’s Committee on Migration.

A year ago, Bishop Gerald R. Barnes of San Bernardino, Calif., commented on Congress’ failure to pass a comprehensive immigration bill and the emergence of immigration-control measures at the state and local level. He wrote,

We reaffirm our view that enforcement-only measures at any jurisdictional level will further drive undocumented migrant workers into a hidden underclass and create more fear and suspicion in immigrant communities. Such measures also will not repair a system that is inadequate to meet the labor needs of our globalized economy.