DHS is cheerleading for those businesses that have signed up to use the E-Verify system for checking the immigration status of new hires. There are about 170,000 such employers across the country, and here are a few.

(I’ve tried to get local businesses to talk about E-Verify, to no avail. Is your company/agency using the system? I’m interested to hear about any experiences with the program.)

• American Council on International Personnel (ACIP)


• Cargill Meat Solutions


• Fragomen, Del Ray, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP


• General Dynamics


• H2A Complete LLC


• Hillsborough County


• Hilton Naples


• Immigration and Customs Solutions


• Jackson Lewis LLP


• Keystone Foods


• Marriott International, Inc.


• MASLabor


• North Carolina Growers Association


• Talent Tree, Inc.


• Tyson Foods


• Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.


• University of Utah


• Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Federal contractors were required to enroll in E-Verify, as of Sept. 8. There have been calls to make E-Verify mandatory for all employers. Former INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, who oversaw an early version of the program, has argued that an E-Verify expansion should be done as part of a larger immigration overhaul if it is to succeed.  That report is linked here.

Some context: The 170,000 participants come from a total of 7 million employers in the United States, notes AP.

Was it the Drop Dobbs campaign? An offer from Fox? Something else?

Dobbs’ on-air announcement that he’s leaving CNN is here. The CNN commentator has chosen to move in the direction of opinion and advocacy, reports the NY Times.

NYT’s David Leonhardt cautions that the point is not that Dobbs was controversial, but that he was untruthful. Media Matters is one of the organizations tracking his statements on immigration and other issues.

And here is The Onion’s (definitely untrue) take.

I recently listened to a 92-year-old Jewish refugee describe his escape from Nazi-controlled Austria, his odyssey to America and his decision to enlist in the U.S. Army. Jack Werner, who has lived in Westchester since 1945, is featured in a History Channel series that begins this Sunday, Nov. 15. It’s called “WWII in HD.”

I watched a preview and it was truly gripping. Watching the war in color is chilling, particularly when you’re seeing footage of Nazi soldiers. The era suddenly seems more recent and modern. Black-and-white somehow keeps the history at a safer distance. The NY Times wrote about the sources of the video.

Anyway, Werner appears early in the first episode. I wrote a story about him (click here) for The Journal News, but here I’ll post a transcript of his conversation with me. I spoke to him at his home in Mamaroneck.

Jack Werner: “To get out of Austria was either legal or illegal. And inasmuch as I could not obtain any legal exit, because no country wanted me, including the United States at that time, I decided it was time that I put myself in a position where I do my own immigration. So I packed my backpack, bade my parents farewell, went to the railroad station. It was in August of 1938. Hitler had taken over Austria in March of 1938. So during that time, what you did was go to consulates of any type and description, whether it was Bolivia, or Chile, or Hong Kong, you didn’t care, trying to find out whether they would accept any refugees, or then registering if there was an opportunity to go there.

“The United States had, as you know, a quota for each county. The Austrian country was fortunately merged with the German quota after Hitler took over, so we got advantage of a much larger number of people being allowed to come here. The quota was based on the immigration status of the United States in 1923 or 24, something like that; how many Germans were in this country … So I registered with the American consulate and that was it.

“I took my fate into my own hands, packed my rucksack one fine day and got on a train and traveled overnight from Vienna which is in the eastern part of Austria, to the Swiss border, which is in the western part of Austria. There I got off the train, took out my map, charted myself, how I could cross the mountains … and took a bus from that railroad station into a small valley that led up to the border. And the border was part of the Alps were called the Montfon, that was the name of the mountain. So I climbed up the mountain and was promptly arrested by the border guard.

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Big news for Port Chester today. The village now has an official solution to fix its voting rights violation —  and replace an election system  that discriminated against Hispanics.

U.S. District Judge Stephen C. Robinson this morning allowed Port Chester to go ahead with its chosen remedy, a system called cumulative voting. Speaking from the bench in White Plains, he told attorneys from the village and the Justice Department that he was obligated to favor Port Chester’s plan so long as it fixed the voting rights violation in accordance with the law.

This makes for a very interesting situation in Port Chester. The village board elections will look unlike any other in New York state. Cumulative voting will give voters six votes apiece, for six open seats. In a twist, voters will be able to “plump” their votes by putting all six toward the same candidate. This, Port Chester attorneys successfully argued, will allow Latinos to finally see the candidate of their choice make it onto the village board.

Let’s address one common misconception of the bat: This doesn’t technically mean that Hispanics should be able to elect a Hispanic trustee. It means that whichever candidate they rally behind will have a chance of being elected. Under the old system, the judge found, Latinos tended to band together for a certain candidate only to see that person defeated in the villagewide vote.

It will take a lot of work to teach voters the new system — and how to teach minority groups how to strategize under it. For this reason the judge declined to allow a March election, the usual time frame, offering June instead. This will be the first village trustee election in four years.

Anti-Latino hate crimes are prompting action around the New York area, including an  awareness campaign starting up in Rockland County. On Saturday, a vigil will mark the one-year anniversary of the stabbing death of Marcelo Lucero on Long Island. Today, one of seven teen-agers accused in the attack pleaded guilty.

Lucero’s family is collecting money for a memorial scholarship for students at Patchogue-Medford High School, according to a press release, and for the transport of a peace mural to Lucero’s home town of Gualaceo, Ecuador.

The Rockland Immigration Coalition, which marked its 10 anniversary last month, began an anti-hate crime task force in response to a string of incidents. Most recently, three teen-agerswere charged with hate crimes in the robbery of a Hispanic man in Spring Valley. Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugibe met with the coalition recently to explain what constitutes a hate crime in New York.

Gail Golden, co-chair of the coalition, says the task force wants to work with the education and law enforcement systems to promote awareness.