Thread: Obama's Transition Team Priorities & Leaders for Immig.

From the National Review Online:
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Obama's Transition Priorities [Byron York]

From Obama transition world:

Today, the Obama-Biden Transition Team announced leaders for a series of Policy Working Groups for the Presidential Transition.

The focus of the Policy Working Groups will be to develop the priority policy proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration. The Policy Working Groups will focus on the following areas: Economy, Education, Energy and Environment, Health Care, Immigration, National Security, and Technology, Innovation and Government Reform.

The list of Policy Working Group Leaders and their biographies are below:

Economic: Daniel K. Tarullo
Education: Linda Darling-Hammond
Energy and Environment: Carol M. Browner
Health Care: Senator Tom Daschle
Immigration: T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar
National Security: James B. Steinberg, Dr. Susan E. Rice
Technology, Innovation and Government Reform: Sonal Shah, Julius
Genachowski, Blair Levin

11/19 12:26 PM

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/? ... NjZDg0ZWI=

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If anyone has info on above two, please post. Otherwise, a quick Google search reveals this:

T. Alexander Aleinikoff:
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/f ... lty&ID=208

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar:
http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/15/

Looks like the Council on Foreign Relations likes Aleinikoff and quotes him, look at what he has to say.

Legalizing people who are already here. This could be done with some kind of amnesty or fast-track legalization program. Alexander Aleinikoff writes in the June 2005 issue of the U.S.-Mexico Policy Bulletin (PDF) that we should recognize there is already an integrated labor market between the United States and Mexico and regulate it for the benefit of both sides.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/9909/usm ... 26page%3D6


The Carnegie Endowment digs him as well...

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/public ... c&pageOn=8

Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices
Tuesday, April 03, 2001
Douglas B. Klusmeyer, Alexander Aleinikoff

We now know more about T. Alexander and Mariano than we do about the President-Elect.

Immigration: T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar

It figures, doesnt it? Gee, I wonder if Mariano-Florentino (Tino) and Cuellar are for amnesty? OBAMA IS ALREADY SCREWING UP THE COUNTRY AND HE IS NOT EVEN IN CHARGE YET!

butterbean wrote:

Gee, I wonder if Mariano-Florentino (Tino) and Cuellar are for amnesty?

The following would indicate that Cuellar does support amnesty for illegal aliens.

Publication Date: March 31, 2008
Source: National Journal
Author: James A. Barnes

Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, who heads up Barack Obama's Immigration Policy Advisory Committee, is quoted in a National Journal story about Sen. Obama's campaign advisors:

...Committee head Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, a law professor at Stanford University, said that the advisers' common thread is a belief that progress on immigration reform requires "a certain kind of dialogue" -- not a fight -- that includes Democrats, Republicans, and independents; is intellectually honest; and recognizes the need to work across government jurisdictions and policy areas. "I think a lot of us on this committee would like to make a difference," Cuéllar said.

...A veteran of President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign, Cuéllar, now 35, was a top Treasury Department official from 1997 to 1999. Cuéllar, who goes by "Tino," also advises Obama on criminal justice and national security issues, as well as on outreach to Latino voters.

Like Obama, he believes that comprehensive immigration reform must go beyond addressing border security and the status of the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants to confronting the current system's bureaucratic failings, providing job opportunities for American workers, promoting economic development in Latin America, and determining "how our immigration policy reflects our values and needs as Americans." Cuéllar, who joined the Obama campaign in April 2007, brings expertise on the regulatory side of immigration and international security, as well as what he calls a "passion" for refugee policy.

Full Story
Related Faculty
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar

http://www.law.stanford.edu/news/details/1790/

We've got some big fights coming up.

I just wish that rather than waiting to see what they do and reacting to it, our side could be on offense!!

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar is Professor and Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School. His work focuses on how organizations manage complex regulatory, migration, international security, and criminal justice problems. During the Clinton Administration he served at Treasury as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement, where he worked on countering domestic and international financial crime, improving border coordination, and enhancing anti-corruption measures. He has served on the boards of numerous organizations, including Asylum Access and the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. He has testified before Congress on immigration policy and separation of powers, and was appointed to the Silicon Valley Blue Ribbon Task Force on Aviation Security. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar
A veteran of President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign, Cuéllar, now 35, was a top Treasury Department official from 1997 to 1999. Cuéllar, who goes by "Tino," also advises Obama on criminal justice and national security issues, as well as on outreach to Latino voters.

Like Obama, he believes that comprehensive immigration reform must go beyond addressing border security and the status of the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants to confronting the current system's bureaucratic failings, providing job opportunities for American workers, promoting economic development in Latin America, and determining "how our immigration policy reflects our values and needs as Americans." Cuéllar, who joined the Obama campaign in April 2007, brings expertise on the regulatory side of immigration and international security, as well as what he calls a "passion" for refugee policy.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1994667/posts

This is not good

Here's a link to audio/video of a debate that Alexander Aleinikoff, Kris Kobach and others had about "Immigration, Amnesty, and the Rule of Law" on 11-16-2007:

http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/pub ... detail.asp

An article that T. Alexander Aleinikoff wrote eight years ago that sheds light on his mindset. Needless to day, he's a long-time supporter of mass amnesty (key portions highlighted at bottom of article):
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The American Prospect
Illegal Employers

T. Alexander Aleinikoff | December 4, 2000

Who would have guessed that one of the issues deadlocking federal budget negotiations would be how many undocumented aliens to legalize? Just four years ago, Congress enacted, and the president signed, the toughest anti-immigrant legislation in decades. But today, labor, business, and political elites are praising as "essential workers" the immigrants they used to call "illegal aliens."

The players are operating from different motives. Labor sees organizing potential in workplaces now dominated by immigrant workers. Business is interested in a stable work force in a time of labor shortages. And politicians have recognized the voting strength of immigrant and ethnic communities. This congeries of interests may be just enough to get a deal through a lame-duck Congress and administration.

Earlier this year, the AFL-CIO proposed ending sanctions against employers who hire undocumented alien workers and urged a general amnesty for the five million or more undocumented immigrants believed to be living in the United States. The demand for a repeal of employer sanctions was a remarkable turnabout. The AFL-CIO had been a staunch defender of the program since it was enacted in 1986. It now believes that the sanctions regime interferes with its effort to organize.

Here's why. Although the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has a standing policy that counsels against enforcement actions in the midst of labor disputes, agency officials at the local level have not always proceeded with caution. In several well-publicized cases, employers facing union organizing campaigns notified the INS when they suddenly "discovered" that some of their employees were not authorized to work in the United States. Last year at a Holiday Inn Express hotel in Minneapolis, just after the workers voted to join Local 17 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, a call by the employer to the INS resulted in the arrest of eight members of the union's negotiating committee.

The outcome of the Holiday Inn Express case illustrates just how ineffectual the current sanctions system really is. The employees made the courageous decision to file complaints with the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charging that the employer's action constituted illegal retaliation and that the hotel had discriminated against Mexican workers by paying them less and working them harder than it did Anglo workers. The hotel admitted no wrongdoing and settled the case for $72,000, to be split among the employees. (Because of the assistance the immigrants provided in enforcing federal labor laws, they were granted permission to remain in the United States for two years--time enough, according to the INS, "to arrange their affairs before returning to their home countries.") But the INS has taken no steps to sanction or fine the employer.

There is thus much to the AFL-CIO's claim that the law has spawned a "poorly constructed and ineffectively enforced system" that causes "discrimination and leaves unpunished unscrupulous employers who exploit undocumented workers." In its early years enforcing the law, the INS focused on educating employers about their new responsibilities to check documents. In the 1990s, the agency shifted its emphasis to removing undocumented workers found through "audits" of employer records. In some local offices, novel arrangements with employers permitted them to terminate undocumented employees over time while they recruited lawful replacement workers. The INS imposed a few spectacular fines on particularly egregious violators, but for the most part, the agency was satisfied when the employer fired the unauthorized immigrant--leaving the employee free to seek work elsewhere.

Last year the INS announced a new enforcement strategy that focuses primarily on removing aliens who have committed crimes in the United States and on disrupting immigrant-smuggling operations. Work site enforcement has been refashioned as part of a goal to "block and remove employers' access to undocumented workers." The fact that it has been placed last on the list of priorities has not been lost on the field offices. In fiscal year 1999, employer-sanction case completions dropped a whopping 59 percent. INS data for the first 11 months of fiscal year 2000 shows an additional drop of 31 percent in employer cases. (During that period, smuggling cases rose by 25 percent and fraud cases by 11 percent.) Arrests of undocumented workers at work sites fell from around 20,000 two years ago to 8,600 last year (with less than one-fifth of 1 percent of undocumented immigrants estimated to be residing in the United States).

In short, the chances of arrest for an undocumented worker--or a penalty for his or her employer--range from slim to none. The INS's then-top official for policy, Robert Bach, told Th New York Times last March that undocumented workers face little risk "unless the employer turns a worker in, and employers usually do that only to break a union or prevent a strike or that kind of stuff."

That, of course, is precisely the AFL-CIO's complaint. Employer sanctions have not kept undocumented immigrants out of the workplace, and unscrupulous employers rarely face penalties. Instead, the law has provided employers with a justification for firing workers engaged in union activity.

The AFL-CIO has long contended that workers with legal status are easier to organize and better able to assert their rights--hence its call for a massive new amnesty for undocumented workers. More surprising is that employer groups have begun to show support for legalization. The primary reason is the recognition that undocumented workers are a vital part of the American labor market.

Last year a number of employer associations--including the American Hotel and Motel Association, the American Meat Institute, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the American Nursery and Landscape Association, Associated Builders and Contractors, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--established the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (EWIC). According to the coalition's mission statement, "There simply are not enough people to meet the demands of our strong economy." In a letter to members of Congress, the coalition has declared that "the global workforce market should be more readily available to businesses in order to meet our workforce needs."

The asserted shortage of workers, at first glance, poses a conundrum. If the employer-sanction law has failed in deterring the hiring of undocumented workers, how can it be that (in the words of EWIC) "businesses are now finding themselves with no applicants of any kind for numerous job offerings"? The answer, in part, is the booming economy, as well as the job preferences of U.S. workers. Furthermore, the Social Security Administration has begun to inform employers of workers who have given Social Security numbers that don't match their names. Although these employers face little threat of penalties under the immigration law, they may feel obligated to let the employees go.

The demand for "essential workers" could be met by a temporary-worker program, a proposal that agricultural interests in Congress have been pressing for years. But most immigrant advocates in the United States oppose new temporary-worker programs--as has the Clinton administration. And rightly so. These programs give employers both flexibility and power; if an employer terminates a contract, the immigrant is legally required to leave the country. Because many temporary workers want to return to the United States in future years, they are unlikely to complain about working conditions or bring charges of unlawful retaliation against employers.

Business groups appear willing to support legalization efforts as an initial step--which would help stabilize the labor market--with the hope of gaining temporary-worker programs in the future. With both major parties wooing Hispanic voters and with a good economy giving political cover, the time is right for what would have seemed unthinkable only a few years ago: a legalization program for undocumented workers and their families in the United States.

The current controversy in Congress is about the shape that legalization should take. Republicans argue that any large-scale amnesty would reward lawbreakers and provide incentives for future illegal immigration. They have been willing to talk about limited initiatives, such as granting status to immigrants as of 1982 who missed the last legalization effort owing to invalid INS regulations. Democrats have pushed a broader program that would legalize immigrants who have resided in the United States since 1986 (the proposal is one part of the so-called Latino and Immigrant Fairness bill). This would be accomplished by an amendment to a provision in the immigration code--known as "registry"--that presently authorizes legal status for aliens without papers who entered the United States before 1972.

Another legalization strategy would be the adoption of a general statute of limitations: An undocumented immigrant would be able to apply for legal status if the INS hadn't deported him or her after a certain number of years. A statute of limitations would be, in effect, a "rolling" amnesty program. So long as the program excluded aliens with criminal convictions, it could be justified on the grounds that any alien who has lived in the United States for a lengthy period is probably an economically productive member of society and is unlikely to have been a burden (since undocumented aliens are ineligible for virtually all means-tested benefit programs).

A broad amnesty or statute of limitations may be more than the American people are willing to provide for undocumented immigrants today. There may be greater appeal in an essential-worker approach that would be crafted for industries with demonstrated labor shortages and a high percentage of immigrant workers. Undocumented workers who can show their prior participation in the industry labor force would be granted green cards, perhaps with the requirement that they stay in the industry for a one- or two-year period. (In one way, essential-worker legalization programs would be more generous than an amnesty because they could encompass more recently arrived workers.)

The best answer is a statute of limitations--set, perhaps, at 10 years. An alien who has resided that long in the United States, and who has not committed a criminal offense or been on the public dole, is likely to have been gainfully employed and to have established deep roots in a local community. Because these are the aliens least likely to be removed by the INS, there is little law enforcement justification for keeping them in a vulnerable, undocumented status.

The AFL-CIO's call for legalization is welcome, but the accompanying demand for an end to employer sanctions is dubious. Ending sanctions would raise a white flag in the effort to stem undocumented migration. It would have a disproportionate impact on undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America because it would limit enforcement to illegal border-crossing while giving a virtual pass to illegal immigrants (largely from Europe and Asia) who have arrived with valid tourist or other temporary visas but have overstayed.

Employer sanctions can and should be part of federal enforcement efforts that target employers who operate exploitative workplaces by violating immigration, labor, tax, antidiscrimination, and health-and-safety rules. Public attention has tended to focus on the issue of illegal aliens; it is time to direct attention instead to illegal employers, who gain a competitive advantage over legitimate businesses by ignoring rules that protect workers. To address labor's concern that the current legal approach has permitted employers to use the immigration laws against employees, federal law should be amended to provide whistle-blower protection for undocumented employees who report their employers' violations of law to the appropriate agencies.

A healthy economy and the end of the election cycle present an opportunity for a well-crafted immigrant legalization proposal. A large-scale legalization program, coupled with enforcement directed against illegal employers, would represent a remarkable change in fortune for the millions of undocumented workers who just a few years ago were the targets of the harshest immigration policies of the past half-century. ¤

T. Alexander Aleinikoff is the Executive Vice President of Law Center Affairs and Dean of the Georgetown University Law Center, where he also teaches.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?art ... _employers