Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters today that she’s taking a look at immigration enforcement from a cost-effective point of view, and that she promises to target criminals with unlawful immigration status. Here’s the report from Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — If you’re a criminal and you’re not entitled to be in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants you out of the country.
Napolitano wants what she calls “criminal aliens” off American streets. She is looking at existing immigration enforcement programs to see if taxpayers are getting the most bang for their buck.
“That sounds very simple, but it’s historically not been done,” Napolitano said, speaking to reporters and senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials Thursday.
About 113,000 criminals who were in the U.S. illegally were deported last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. The agency estimates there are now as many as 450,000 criminals in federal, state and local detention centers who are in the country illegally.
Napolitano said she wants to improve data-sharing among local, state and federal facilities. So far, there are jails in 26 counties across the country with computer systems that can talk instantly with immigration systems.
The goal, Napolitano said, is for federal immigration officials to know whether an inmate is in the country illegally immediately after he is processed into a detention facility. After the criminal serves his or her sentence, immigration officials can be ready to deport that person right away.
ICE spokesman Richard Rocha said the agency plans to expand this connectivity to all state and local detention centers over the next four years.
Napolitano, whose job includes overseeing immigration laws, says she also will go after criminal fugitives who are in the country illegally.

Carmen Guevara, a Peruvian immigrant living in White Plains, tells me that she spends a lot of time trying to give people a better sense of modern-day culture in her home country, something beyond Macchu Picchu.

Saturday is her big chance, when she will present a benefit concert of Afro-Peruvian jazz. The Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Jazz Sextet, mixing contemporary jazz with its African roots, plays at 8 p.m. at the Slater Center in White Plains.

The concert is a benefit for a school in the area of Pisco, where an earthquake hit in 2007. An nonprofit called Quipunet built the school, and the local chapter is raising money to paint it.

A number of Jewish organizations are launching a campaign called “Progress by Pesach,” calling on President Obama to formally halt ICE raids and work on a broader solution to illegal immigration.

Pesach, or Passover, is part of the timetable because it’s “a time when we celebrate our freedom from bondage and remember when we were strangers in a strange land,” explains the web site, linked to that of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. The goal is to collect 10,000 petition signatures by April 8.

The campaign wants to mobilize support for another effort to overhaul the immigration laws, but the immediate push is for an executive order calling for an end to raids as a primary enforcement tool. They pointed to the costs of raids like the one at a kosher meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa.

Why the focus on this particular issue? Organizers said during a conference call that immigration reform could benefit Jews from the former Soviet Union, Argentina and elsewhere, but that their motive was much broader: the need for a comprehensive solution and for a response to hate speech that has crept into the debate. The Anti-Defamation League has studied extremist rhetoric on immigration and the use of the issue as a recruitment tool by white supremacist groups.

Immigration attorney Greg Siskind reports on his blog that the E-Verify rule for federal contractors is on hold until May 21. Contractors were scheduled to have to use the employee database by Jan. 15, then Feb. 20. Here’s a story in the Houston Business Journal, saying the Obama administration wanted time to review the rule. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suing over the program.

Here’s another reminder not to generalize about foreign-born residents of the United States: They are more likely than others to have a master’s degree. They are also, as a group, less likely to have a high school diploma.

The mixed picture on educational achievement comes from a new report from the Census Bureau. It says:

• About 11 percent of foreign-born residents have a master’s degree or higher. Ten percent of native-born Americans have that level of education.


• About 68 percent of the foreign-born have at least a high school education, compared with 88 percent of the native-born. (Figures are for adults 25 and older.)


• Immigrants in the Northeast have the highest percentage of bachelor’s degrees or better compared with other regions. Thirty-two percent have that level of education — the same as among U.S. born adults. In the west, the foreign-born were less likely than others to have a bachelor’s.


• Foreign-born Hispanics trailed in education levels compared to other groups, with 49 percent having completed at least high school. Among Asians, the same percentage had completed college-level studies.


• In New York State, 73 percent of the foreign-born have a high school education or better, compared with 88 percent of the native-born. About 29 percent of the foreign-born have a bachelor’s or more, compared with 33 percent of the native-born.

The report is titled “Educational Attainment in the United States: 2007.”

Hispanic lawmakers had planned a news conference in Albany today to call for the defeat of newly appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand when she runs for the office next year. A press release put out by Assemblyman Peter Rivera, a Democrat from the Bronx, said:

In New York, where as many as 1 of every 3 residents is an immigrant or a 2nd and 3rd generation born of immigrant parents, Gillibrand’s pandering to xenophobes has made her persona non-grata in communities across the state.

The group was planning to make the announcement before her swearing-in, and promised to “showcase her campaign literature as evidence of her scapegoating of even legal immigrants to win elected office.”

But the news conference was called off. Joe Spector, from Gannett News Service’s Albany bureau, reports that the leaders decided to wait and get more answers from Gillibrand.

Here is his report:

“It was our contention that she has a questionable immigration background, among other issues,” said Assemblyman Jose Peralta, D-Queens. “We wanted her to answer some questions.”

Peralta said the news advisory was the case of a misunderstanding among aides.
Still, the issue highlights one of the major problems Gillibrand, of the Albany area, will have to overcome to win election, particularly in minority communities where she is unknown. After her selection, the newspaper El Diario La Prensa had the headline “Anti Inmigrante” over a picture of her.
Gillibrand said Monday that she will serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee and will make immigration reform a top priority.
“My view has always been we need to right-size immigration,” she said. “We need to have the right number of visas to accommodate the right number of workers, particularly for this industry.”
A Marist College poll found that 46 percent of New York voters support Gillibrand’s appointment. Twenty-four percent said Gov. David Paterson made the wrong choice in selecting her, while 30 percent said they don’t know.
Gillibrand has more support from upstate voters (55 percent) than New York City (40 percent) and the New York City suburbs (36 percent).
Gov. Paterson praised Gillibrand’s first few days in office, saying that she has recognized where her positions stray from the state’s electorate.
“I think she’s indicated very clearly and seems to be very well received that she’s going to listen to people and in many respects reviewed some of the points of view she has,” Paterson said.
“I think that in the first week she’s demonstrated the kind of determination and hard work that I think will make her an outstanding senator.”

Kirsten Gillibrand spoke in more detail about her immigration stance in an interview with New York 1. The incoming senator makes clear that she wants to provide more ways for agricultural workers to come to the United States legally, and for family members of immigrants to get visas without such long delays. Her position is still very different from that of Sen. Chuck Schumer or Hillary Clinton, starting with her use of the touchy word “amnesty.”

“I think amnesty is the wrong approach,” she said. Gillibrand, who will be sworn in tomorrow, described two specific things she wanted to do: clear the backlogs for family-sponsored immigration down to one year or less; and offer five-year visas for agricultural workers that could eventually lead to U.S. citizenship. (This sounds like an entirely new kind of visa; the existing H-2A agricultural visas are strictly temporary, without a path to citizenship.) She objected to past proposals that would have workers return to their home country to renew a visa. Those workers would be unlikely to go home, she said, and would only create a new pool of illegal immigrants after two years.

She was not asked the big, dicey question of what should be done with regard to the estimated 12 million undocumented people in the United States. Certainly “amnesty” is out, and I take that as a rejection of any “earned legalization” — the idea, twice rejected in the Senate, of setting up a series of legal hoops for undocumented immigrants to jump through in return for legal status. (The word amnesty, suggesting an outright giveaway, has long been abandoned by politicians who favor a comprehensive overhaul.)

Anyway, her position clearly has supporters, despite the criticism from groups like the New York Immigration Coalition. Along with receiving comments on this blog, I just took a call from a woman in Ohio who saw our story yesterday in The Journal News. Any notion of granting legal status to illegal immigrants is unfair and wrong, and there’s no way around that, she said.

“There’s nothing good about illegals living in our communities. We’re suffering. We’re going without work,” she said. “In no way does illegal immigration benefit the average American.”

The Lunar New Year is being celebrated in Asia and the world over. Here are AP photos from a celebration in Rome …

Bali …

… and Canada.

A local celebration was scheduled for Jan. 17 at White Plains High School, and another is coming up at the Rockland Chinese School in Tappan.

If you are new to this tradition and would like to partake, see Judith Hausman’s article about the symbolism of food at the holiday and some recipes to try.

I wrote in The Journal News about how a local ESL class is using Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father” as an English learning tool. In Japan, Obama’s speeches are apparently being used for the same purpose.

The publisher of a paperback edition of the president’s speeches tells Reuters,

His speeches are so moving, and he also uses words such as “yes, we can,” “change” and “hope” that even Japanese people can memorize.

Rie Shibata, a Japanese woman who studies ESL in Port Chester, wrote this essay about what she has gained from reading Obama’s memoir. I spoke to Shibata for a story about her class. Keep in mind that she has lived in the United States for only a couple of years.

“What I’ve learned about Barack Obama from reading his book”

I read only 22 pages of his book, but learned a lot about him, his family
and the history.
One of the most impressive story is about the racism. It was not until I read about his parent’s marriage to know that interracial marriage was prohibited in many parts of the South even in 1960’s. I guess how hard for his grandparents to accept their daughter’s marriage at that time, but they were free from the racism. They were even to black people, and it was so unusual that they sometimes were criticized by other people. It was the reason why their daughter has no prejudice and be attracted by Obama’s father.

I also learned Obama’s father was a smart person who could defeat the border of the racism. The racism at that time must be much terrible than that of now, but he could get the scholarship to go to the University in Hawaii and also could pursue his Ph.D. at Harvard.

I can see how Obama loves his father and is proud of him very much even though they separated when Obama was two years old. However, he had a lot of struggles about his parents and his multiracial heritage. We are going to read about it from now, and I’m looking forward to knowing it.

(Photo: Stuart Bayer/The Journal News)

New York’s new senator brings a very different stance on immigration compared to Sen. Charles Schumer or her predecessor, Sen. Hillary Clinton. Here’s what Kirsten Gillibrand says on her congressional web page on immigration policy:

Our immigration system is broken and hard-working Americans often bear the brunt of the federal government’s failure to secure our borders and provide adequate protections for the American worker and the shrinking American Middle Class. I believe the first step to fixing our immigration system is to stop the flow of illegal immigration. This can be accomplished by securing the Southern border, enforcing the employment laws on the books and ensuring that our farmers and businesses have the adequate number of legal workers after they have exhausted their search for American workers. I am firmly against providing amnesty to illegal immigrants. In my first year in Congress, I passed legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives that would bar employers, who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, from receiving federal contracts.

In addition, I am a sponsor of the SAVE Act, which will hire 8,000 new Customs and Border Patrol agents, while utilizing new technology and fencing along the border. I have also sponsored the Legal Employee Verification Act, which would require all employers to verify, through the Social Security Administration, that their employees are legal. In addition, I support reforming and streamlining the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) so that the extraordinary casework backlog will be addressed within two years. This is especially important for the thousands of farmers in our district who need legal workers. I am confident that Congress can enact reform without providing amnesty to illegal immigrants. This is a national and economic security issue for our country and I am committed to fighting for the American worker.

The New York Immigration Coalition, a statewide group, is not pleased. Here is a comment from Executive Director Chung-Wha Hong:

Now that she will be representing a far broader and more diverse constituency, Senator-Designee Gillibrand must reconsider her positions on immigration.

During her tenure in the House, Representative Gillibrand took positions on immigration that are deeply troubling, to say the least. She sponsored legislation that sought to require local police officers to take on immigration enforcement duties, even though police chiefs have testified it would impair their ability to protect the public. She strongly supported throwing more resources toward ineffective border enforcement, but appeared to oppose any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Simply put, these are positions that put her at odds with the majority of New Yorkers, whose values reflect our state’s history of welcoming immigrants, as well as with President Barack Obama, who supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

At a time when Congress has a clear mandate to fix our broken immigration system, we don’t need rhetoric that divides us, pitting immigrant workers against native-born workers; we need solutions that bring us together and make America stronger. We hope that in her new position representing the state as a whole, Senator-Designee Gillibrand will be a strong advocate for just and humane immigration reform, devising a practical and realistic solution to bringing undocumented immigrants into the system and reforming our immigration system so that it is fairer to all.

Her predecessor, former Senator Hillary Clinton, understood that the status quo—with an estimated one million undocumented New Yorkers living in the shadows, in fear, and often subject to exploitation—is unacceptable. We call on Senator-Designee Gillibrand to form a strong partnership with immigrant communities and fight for fairer immigration policies, so that families need not endure endless separations, and so that immigrant workers who risk everything in order to make a better life for their families are recognized for their inherent dignity and for their contributions to the U.S. economy.