A much-anticipated White House meeting on immigration reform was postponed from today, after being postponed from June 8. But a group of religious leaders are sticking with their plan for a prayer vigil this afternoon, in a church near the White House, to call for a humane approach to immigration.

Some of the prayers will be coming from New York, where a new network plans to add its voice to the discussion. The New York State Interfaith Network for Immigration Reform includes Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and other faith groups. It began meeting in February, prompted by signs that the Obama administration was serious about overhauling the immigration system this year.

“We can’t do too much to underscore the moral perspective, from a faith perspective, on immigration and the need for reform,” said Annie Rawlings, a co-chair of the network and Associate Executive Presbyter, Presbytery of New York City. Among the organizations signing onto the effort are the American Jewish Committee, Catholic Charities, Rockland Jews for Justice, the Sikh Coalition and the Hudson Valley Community Coalition.

Whether an immigration bill truly has a prayer in Congress this year remains anyone’s guess. The administration has raised a lot of hopes, but this second cancellation could be a reality check. Rawlings said the interfaith network would continue to “lift up the faith voice.”

“Faith communities often have a clear window onto the human story that is immigration,” she said.

At Lyndhurst’s Hudson River Fest June 7 I saw a presentation about the Mannahatta Project, examining what Manhattan’s ecology was like when Henry Hudson showed up in 1609.

The island’s habitat of 400 years ago is now the subject of a web site, a school curriculum, a museum exhibit and a book. Author Eric W. Sanderson was at Lyndhurst’s Hudson River Fest for one of the many Quadricentennial events this month.

So how do you research a place that’s been paved and blasted and buried for four centuries? Sanderson, an expert on animal habitats, described using a British topography map from the Revolutionary War to begin charting Manhattan’s long-buried hills and streams. He stood atop rocks in Central Park to begin gauging the elevations drawn on the map. Computer modeling helped flesh out the picture of soils, wildlife, vegetation and other elements. And the research is ongoing.

The Lenape Indians probably had settlements around the freshwater pond where Foley Square now stands, he said. The Lenape spoke Algonquin and were known as the ancient ones, or forbears, of that group. To illustrate what various parts of Manhattan looked like, he showed photos of Marshlands Conservancy in Rye and Cranberry Lake Preserve in White Plains.

The historical narrative continues with an exhibit and celebration Saturday Sunday June 21 at the Hudson River Museum — “Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture.” Journal News writer Georgette Gouveia has this story about the display.

The Dutch presence helped set the tone for New York as an immigrant gateway, according to historians. Below is a story I wrote about a presentation on the subject by historian Kenneth Jackson.

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Locally, the horrifying crash in Brewster is unleashing a wave of rage over illegal immigration. Police identified the drunken-driving suspect as an illegal immigrant who worked on a local horse farm. Apparently the horse farms are yet another industry that relies on undocumented labor, as we reported in The Journal News on Sunday.

The reader forums on our web site are boiling with comments about illegal immigrants, their employers, Hispanics and “Mayan savages” and as the NYT’s Peter Applebome noted, an offer to “feed this piece of garbage into a wood chipper alive.”

In speaking with people around town last week, I also heard residents arguing that this tragedy was about drunk driving, not illegal immigration. Bart Campbell said Brewster does face problems that stem from immigration and day labor. But as for the tragedy, he said,

You have a tendency to think, ‘It’s a Guatemalan problem.’ … It’s an alcohol problem. It’s a combined thing. But you know, guys like you and me, they get drunk and kill people too.

I think lot of these people should be able to get (green) cards easier. Not easy, but easier. It is so expensive and so difficult to be legal that they just can’t do it.

An email went around demanding action from Congressman John Hall on immigration, though it didn’t specify what kind of action. The writer declined to talk specifics with me. The email said,

Our town has been taken over.  Would you let your children walk through the town of Brewster?  Would you yourself walk through?  Would you shop there?  None of us would and there in lies the problem.  This is OUR town.  WE pay the taxes and carry the burden of our community.  Now we have to bury two of our own.

I contacted Hall’s office, which issued the statement below. He expresses support for immigration reform and further security measures, but does not go out of his way to mention a legalization program.

Illegal immigration is a serious problem facing America. I believe Congress must act now to pass strong, comprehensive immigration reform. A country is fundamentally defined by its borders and securing our borders to stem the flow of illegal immigration should be a top national priority. To help secure America’s borders I have voted to provide funding for 3,000 new border patrol agents, $1.6 billion to build fences along the U.S. – Mexico border, $150 million to state governments to improve their identification cards to make it more difficult for illegal aliens to use fake documents, and to fully fund the training of immigration enforcement officers. I also strongly support expanding the E-Verify program which confirms the legal status of new workers. I’m supporting an amendment to require all federal contractors who work with the Department of Homeland Security to use the E-Verify program – it is nonsensical that they don’t already. America’s immigration policy is a complex issue, but its crystal clear that it must be reformed, those here illegally who are caught breaking the law need to be deported, and that businesses hiring illegals should be punished. I do not support amnesty. Those who broke the law to get here don’t deserve to cut in line in front of those who have been patiently working with the system to immigrate to our country legally.

The White House “summit” on immigration was postponed a second time, and the new date is June 25, reports blogger and immigration attorney Greg Siskind.

Republican Congressman Brian Bilbray is already charging that key GOP leaders are going to be left out, reports The Hill. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, head of the Judiciary’s immigration subcommittee, is one lawmaker expected to have a prime seat. Schumer hailed improvements in border security last month in his call for a new push for reform legislation.

The New York Immigration Coalition has this to say about the work being held up in Albany while state senators argue about who’s in charge. From executive director Chung-Wha Hong:

Too much is on the line to allow raw politics to derail long-overdue policy reforms. Prior to the chaos, Albany was set to take up several bills that are tremendously important to our state’s immigrant communities—legislation that would improve working conditions for farm workers and domestic workers, preserve rent-regulated housing, and improve New York City’s school governance system. 

The bills include the Farm Workers Fair Labor Practices Act (S.2247, Onorato) which would give farm laborers the right to overtime pay and other protections. Also of concern to the coalition is the Repeal Vacancy Decontrol (S.2237, Stewart-Cousins); Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (S.2311, Savino), and the Better Schools Act, reforming mayoral control (S.5576, Parker/Savino/Perkins) and NYC Tax Proposals.

For a discussion about the bill on domestic workers, listen to today’s segment on the Brian Lehrer Show.

U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement has filed a detainer on the suspect in a drunken driving accident that killed a woman and her daughter, a second grader, as they walked to a dance lesson yesterday evening. A press conference is scheduled to begin shortly.

The driver, identified this morning by a Putnam County corrections official as Zacariah Conses-Garcia, 35, was taken into custody at the scene in Brewster. He was arraigned on a felony charge of first-degree vehicluar manslaughter. ICE placed a hold on the suspect as an illegal immigrant. For today’s Journal News coverage click here.

Here are some images from the rally for the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform in White Plains on Saturday. Robert Marchant’s Journal News story is here. American flags were the symbol of the day, designed to send a message that immigrants want to be fully integrated into the United States. Note the photo on one of the signs below, showing President Obama during his campaign.

(Photos: Stuart Bayer/The Journal News)

I spoke to a couple farmers this week about a bill that would grant New York farm workers the right to standard overtime pay. Currently farm workers are excluded from that labor protection.

Inevitably another issue came up — the labor shortage. Wayne Outhouse, of Outhouse Orchards in Croton Falls, said labor shortages were one reason for the downsizing of his operation over the years. He said the United States needed to give immigrant farm workers a chance to come legally or gain legal status.

“I always said, I can’t understand what’s making it so complicated to do figure out, to do something that’s so easy,” he said.

“You have to control it to a certain degree too, you can’t just let it run rampant,” he said. “I mean, what’s working now? Nothing’s working now. And to do that crazy idea of putting the fence up along the border isn’t going to work. You might as well … give all that money for that fence to give free health care to everybody.”

Pragmatic, bottom-line-oriented sentiments like his were the main theme sounded by pollsters who released a survey on attitudes toward immigration reform this week. Pollster Pete Brodnitz and Democratic strategist Celinda Lake said their research shows that the American public wants a solution to illegal immigration, and that mass deportations are not seen as an answer. Eighty-six percent of respondents favored what was described as an effort to secure the border, crack down on employers and “require illegal immigrants to register for legal immigration status, pay back taxes, and learn English in order to be eligible for U.S. citizenship.” (Note the word “require.”)

Lake, describing the sentiments emerging in focus groups, said Americans look favorably on a legalization bill because it would make all immigrants taxpayers. And people believe the timing is better now that the influx of immigrants is seen as slowing.

“If anything the economic climate has actually improved the environment for immigration reform, at least as far as the public is concerned,” she said in a conference call.

The Croton Falls farmer, meanwhile, was not terribly optimistic about his line of work.

“It gets to a point sometimes it doesn’t pay to grow things. If you can’t make money at it, what’s the sense of doing it?” he said. “I told all my kids to be schoolteachers.”

(Photo: Matthew Brown/The Journal News)

The critiques over Judge Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court range far and wide, but one that’s gaining attention came from the Center for Immigration Studies’ Mark Krikorian. “Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor,” he wrote in a National Review Online post, “is unnatural in English.”

Not to make a federal case out of this, but to me, English pronunciation is quite a puzzle in general, and I’m not sure what’s natural and what’s not. I majored in English in Canada, and encountered a lot of different spellings and pronunciations up there.

Perhaps the pronunciation issue is overshadowing a major milestone that’s posing a challenge. Sotomayor (soh-toh-my-YOR’) would be the first four-syllable surname on the Supreme Court, based on what I see in this list. There was a Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar who might have had something to say about this, but that was a long time ago under President Cleveland.

Krikorian (kri-KOR’-ee-uhn) said he’s all for individualism, but that “one of the areas where conformity is appropriate is how your new countrymen say your name, since that’s not something the rest of us can just ignore, unlike what church you go to or what you eat for lunch.”

OK but what if the United States takes over a Spanish-speaking island in the Caribbean and the people there have Spanish names already? Just asking.

(Photo: AP)

Here’s a roundup of recent policy proposals and changes in the immigration system. The Obama administration had promised to restart the policy discussion, and advocacy groups are gladly taking up the invitation.

The White House immigration “summit” with members of Congress, scheduled for Monday, is being put off until June 17, Dow Jones reports. The president returns from his overseas trip late Sunday.

Meanwhile, hundreds of organizations around the country are taking part in the launch of a Reform Immigration for America campaign, with its own summit under way in D.C.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is proposing to allow for sponsorship of same-sex partners in the family-based immigration process. Rep. Mike Honda of California is proposing a similar measure. The bills are already creating a divide with advocates from religious communities.

Cuba has agreed to talk with U.S. officials about immigration, though no major changes are expected.

A new survey finds strong support for comprehensive reform, and among the reasons is that more illegal immigrants would become taxpayers. Half of respondents said the aspect of illegal immigration that concerns them the most is the use of services without paying taxes. The details are posted here.

The Obama administration reversed an order limiting the ability to fight a deportation case based on a claim of shoddy legal representation. It is expected to delay again a rule requiring federal contractors to use E-Verify. A lawsuit is challenging the rule.