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Oklahoma News |
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 Immigration
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HUD Expands Multi-Lingual Website to Help Families Who are Limited English Proficient to Gain Access to HUD Programs
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HUD EXPANDS MULTI-LINGUAL WEBSITE TO HELP FAMILES WHO ARE LIMITED ENGLISH PROFICIENT TO GAIN ACCESS TO HUD PROGRAMSNew website offers translation of HUD Vital Documents for FreeWASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today unveiled an enhanced website to promote equal access to housing programs by providing important HUD documents in 12 different languages. HUD's expanded Limited English Proficiency (LEP) website features factsheets, housing brochures and other forms in Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Cambodian, Chinese, Farsi, French, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, in addition to English.
"When buying or renting a home, obtaining important housing information should not depend on how well people speak English," said John Trasviña, HUD's Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. "This website greatly expands HUD's ability to offer all families access to our programs and services, regardless of the language they speak."
The HUD site offers brochures on fair housing, model lease agreements, information about HUD's Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8), and a Resident Rights and Responsibilities brochure in various languages. These documents are free to the public.
The LEP website is in response to Executive Order 13166, which requires all federal, local and state agencies that receive federal funding to ensure that people with limited language skills have meaningful access to government programs and services.
"The importance of homeownership and fair housing means HUD must be a leader in this area. HUD will continue our efforts to serve all persons by translating additional vital documents and posting them on the website," said Trasviña.
FHEO and its partners in the Fair Housing Assistance Program investigate approximately 10,500 housing discrimination complaints annually. People who believe they are the victims of housing discrimination should contact HUD at 1 (800) 669-9777 (voice), (800) 927-9275 (TTY). Additional information is available.
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HUD is the nation's housing agency committed to sustaining homeownership; creating affordable housing opportunities for low-income Americans; and supporting the homeless, elderly, people with disabilities and people living with AIDS. The Department also promotes economic and community development and enforces the nation's fair housing laws. More information about HUD and its programs is available on the Internet at www.hud.gov and espanol.hud.gov.
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U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development - 06/30/2009 |
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Oklahoma Attorney General's Office Asked to Investigate Immigration Scam Inquiry
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BY MICHAEL MCNUTTPublished: March 31, 2009
The state attorney general's office is being asked to investigate allegations that people posing as immigration specialists are scamming victims out of thousands of dollars.AdvertisementClick Here!
The Governor's Advisory Council on Latin American and Hispanic Affairs took the action Monday after receiving complaints that two women in Oklahoma City bilked $185,000 out of at least 10 people.
One woman poses as a federal immigration official who notifies people there are problems with their immigration status and refers them to another woman under the guise that she will file legal papers to take care of the matter, council Chairman Giovanni Perry said.
"It's all false," she said.
Council member Nancy Galvan said she was told someone had turned over a complaint to the attorney general's office. The council members voted to write an official request to the attorney general's office.
Contacted later, Charlie Price, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said the office does not discuss matters that may be under investigation.
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The Oklahoman - 04/01/2009 |
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Judge Upholds Most of Oklahoma's ImmigrationLaw
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by Marie PriceThe Journal Record February 12, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY - A Tulsa County district judge upheld Wednesday all but one section of Oklahoma's immigration law, portions of which are also the object of litigation in federal court now on appeal to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General Sandy Rinehart said District Judge Jefferson Sellers struck one section of the law.
"The judge found that all of the provisions were constitutional, except for one specific provision that had to do with granting resident tuition for higher education," Rinehart said.
The stricken provision made changes in a statute allowing children of illegal immigrants to be treated as residents for purposes of tuition for state colleges and universities.
Rinehart said Sellers held that the section violated a provision of the Oklahoma Constitution prohibiting multiple-subject legislation.
The Tulsa County case was filed as a taxpayer lawsuit by plaintiff Michael Thomas.
Its challenges were state constitutional claims, unlike the federal issues addressed by the lawsuit now before the 10th Circuit, Rinehart said.
The state-level lawsuit argued that the law violated several sections of the state constitution by improperly using public money to establish a bureau of immigration and being an impermissible local or special law, among other contentions.
Much of the immigration statute, known as House Bill 1804, is already law. However, several provisions relating to businesses, such as those that contract with public agencies, were put on hold under the federal lawsuit.
Rinehart said Oklahoma will be bound by the ultimate decision of the 10th Circuit in the federal case. She said briefs have been filed, but no date has been set for oral argument.
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The Journal Record - 02/12/2009 |
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Obama Administration Postpones Employment Regulation
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February 3, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY - As requested by a national organization of immigration lawyers, the Obama administration has postponed for 60 days a new regulation changing the types of documents acceptable for employment eligibility verification.
Oklahoma City immigration attorney Doug Stump said Monday that the postponement until April 3 provides for a period of review and comment.Under the new I-9 regulation, which was scheduled to take effect this week, employers could no longer accept expired documents to verify employment authorization, among other changes."Now would be an opportunity for U.S. businesses to further educate the Obama administration about their concerns with the I-9 compliance program," Stump said.The written-comment period has been extended through March 4.|The text of the proposed regulation, USCIS-2008-0001, can be accessed at www.regulations.gov, where comments can also be made.Stump, secretary of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that in recent years the government put into play a three-pronged approach to ensure that U.S. employers assumed responsibility for immigration compliance: employment-eligibility compliance, the troubled E-Verify program and the Social Security mismatch letter program. Mismatch letters inform employers that some information reported for a particular worker does not match his or her records with the agency.E-Verify is a federal electronic program for employment verification, which Stump said had been scaled back to apply only to federal contractors. Its effect was postponed last week to May 21, by agreement of parties on both sides of a lawsuit challenging the program.A directive issued Friday by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said E-Verify has encountered criticism for false negatives - people authorized to work who receive non-confirmation notices from the system - and false positives, unauthorized aliens who receive confirmation because they have borrowed or stolen the identify of an authorized worker.Stump said the Social Security Administration has 17.8 million errors in its database, 70 percent of them belonging to records of U.S.-born citizens.He said the agency has acknowledged that once the full program comes into play, more than 70,000 U.S.-citizen workers will either be terminated by law or their employers must bar them from employment as a result of database errors."It appears as though the Obama administration is at least going to give it another look before attempting to implement the program," Stump said.
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The Journal Record - 02/04/2009 |
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Immigration Lawyers Ask for Delay of Regulations
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by Marie PriceThe Journal Record January 30, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY - A national immigration lawyer group asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Thursday to delay the effective date of new regulations regarding work-eligibility authorization forms.
Oklahoma City attorney Doug Stump, secretary of the 11,500-member American Immigration Lawyers Association, said potential problems with the new rule and form, scheduled to take effect next Tuesday, merit a delay.Stump said the organization believes implementation of the new regulations is inconsistent with an Obama administration memo directing a 60-day extension of regulations pending in the Federal Register at the end of the Bush administration."The Obama administration wants to go back and look at what type of impact each of these potential regulations may have on U.S. business and other sectors," Stump said. "We believe that U.S. employers, U.S. chambers of commerce and other entities have identified a large number of problems in this proposed interim final rule, as well as the new I-9 form."He said there are special classes of individuals in the U.S. that are authorized to work, some of whom fall into areas where the homeland security agency has not provided employers sufficient guidance on how to complete the new forms.Stump said some examples would be certain categories of temporary workers, select non-immigrant workers who receive an automatic grant of continued work authorization for 240 days pending an extension request, temporary protected-status aliens with automatic grants of renewed work authorization, and others."We think it would be inappropriate to implement the regulation at this time, if employers are going to have to turn around and follow a completely different set of rules if the Obama administration believes this rule to be ineffective," he said.Stump said some problems for employers would be amending both electronic and paper application systems, amending HR processes to announce the new forms, training HR staff on the new regulations and amending required notices, handouts, guidelines of acceptable documents for employment, and other issues."Just imagine the expense it will cost these employers, if 60 or 90 days from now, it's determined by the new administration that the rule is in fact flawed, and they have to perfect a more efficient rule," he said. "Millions of dollars would need to be spent by employers throughout the United States."Stump also said litigants on both sides of a federal lawsuit over the troubled E-Verify program for work eligibility status have agreed to postpone its application to May 21.He said the former administration wanted to employ the electronic program across the board, but ran into problems and scaled it back to federal contractors only."A series of lawsuits throughout the last year have been filed, trying to stay or prevent the implementation of this process, because there are numerous flaws in the E-Verify process," Stump said.The parties in one of those lawsuits agreed just this week to extend the effective date. They also asked the court to stay the legal proceedings to allow the new administration an opportunity to review the program."This delay provides that federal contractors and subcontractors won't be required to use E-Verify until May 21 of 2009," Stump said.The implementation date of the new electronic verification system has been rolled back repeatedly due to litigation-related issues, said Stump, adding that he would not be surprised to see it postponed again in the future.|"We want an effective system, but we want it to be a legitimate system," he said.
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The Journal Record - 01/30/2009 |
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Employers May Face New Immigration Rules
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by Marie PriceThe Journal Record January 22, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY - Employers may soon have to deal with a new Employment Eligibility Verification form and changes in a federal rule listing documents deemed acceptable to accompany the forms, although those Bush administration changes are now under review.
Shortly after his inauguration, President Barack Obama put a hold on pending regulations, subject to some exceptions, but proposed changes affecting businesses and workers are in the pipeline.A memo outlining the regulation freeze was issued by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
"It is important that President Obama's appointees and designees have the opportunity to review and approve any new or pending regulations," Emanuel told agency officials.He said officials should notify the federal budget director of any regulations they feel are critical, for possible consideration as exceptions to the hold.
Oklahoma City immigration attorney Doug Stump said Wednesday that the idea behind the new document regulations was largely to try to prevent fraud.
"Some of the documents that they were accepting, like expired passports and those types of documents with stamps in them, were causing the (U.S.) Citizenship and Immigration Service enforcement concerns, because of potential fraud," he said.
The form and regulation changes were scheduled to take effect Feb. 2.
Stump said backers of the changes thought they would make it easier for employers to comply with employment-verification requirements.
Stump said expansion of the federal E-Verify program was also in the works.
"They were wanting to really crack down on the number of individuals who were working in this country unlawfully," he said.
Stump said the idea was to tighten up requirements for the I-9 verification form and widen use of the electronic-verification system.
"That was going to set aside all these employers who have traditionally in the past relied upon an undocumented work force," he said. "It was going to preclude them from hiding behind certain loopholes in the law."
Stump said that both E-Verify and the system of Social Security "mis-match letters" have experienced problems.He said the proposed Social Security change relates to letters from the agency saying certain workers' names and Social Security numbers do not match.
Stump said the current system allows companies to give workers a reasonable time to obtain confirmation of their status from the Social Security Administration.
The proposed regulation limits the time an employer may allow, and requires termination of the worker.
"There are a fairly appreciable number of individuals who have been inappropriately identified in these mis-match letters," Stump said.
The government has acknowledged that some U.S. workers may be wrongfully terminated, he said.
He said the Bush administration wanted to push E-Verify to the point that basically all private- and public-sector employers would have to reply upon it.
"They've hit a lot of snags along the way," he said.Stump said the government put into place a requirement under which companies that contract with federal agencies would have to E-Verify their workers, as would their subcontractors.
"We now also understand that there might be a hold on that particular regulation, too," he said.
Oklahoma's own immigration law, which includes some employment-verification requirements, has been challenged in court.
Stump said most of the employment-related provisions have been stalled by a federal court, a decision now on appeal. Other sections relating to law enforcement and transportation of undocumented aliens and other concerns are in effect, he said.
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The Journal Record - 01/22/2009 |
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