December 23, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Refugees
Recent beatings of South Asian refugees have prompted Denver police to hand out cellphones to newcomers from abroad. On Dec. 11, a group of men beat and robbed teenage refugees from Bhutan in east Denver, following them from an RTD bus, according to police. Six were beaten, one requiring emergency-room treatment. The attack spread fear among refugees from Bhutan, Burma and elsewhere — who are concentrated in low-rent apartments and have been victims of previous robberies. The hope is that the emergency-only phones, which require no payments, will help refugees reach paramedics and police to prevent future trouble and give a sense of security.
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November 5, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Human Rights, Immigrants, Refugees
A Denver center that offered counseling and legal help to asylum-seeking immigrants who said they had been tortured in their home countries has closed after losing its federal grant. Now hundreds in Colorado — among the 50,000 who seek asylum in the U.S. each year — must look elsewhere for help. Torture-survivor programs in Atlanta, Jersey City, Chicago, San Diego and Detroit also have had federal funding cut and are struggling to stay open.
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June 1, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants
More Colorado employers use national system to verify status of new hires
Colorado employers are increasingly trying to weed out illegal workers. The latest data show the number voluntarily using the national electronic system for verifying immigration status has more than doubled in two years — from 2,065 in May 2007 to 4,690 today. Yet there are 155,000 employers in Colorado, and most get by simply by asking new hires for an ID, keeping a copy and signing a statement saying they checked. As Congress and President Barack Obama move toward immigration reform, the gap in Colorado between employers that use e-verify and those that don’t is replicated nationwide. About 125,700 out of 7 million U.S. employers are signed up. They check about 6 million, or one-tenth, of the nation’s new hires a year. Immigration experts have long argued that a consistent system for checking worker status is essential to prevent illegal immigration. Congress has appropriated $274 million and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has spent $183 million developing e-verify, which lets employers type in a name and Social Security number to find out whether a new hire is eligible for work. No federal law mandates use of the system, and only Arizona has a law requiring its use. The acting head of USCIS, which manages e-verify, touts the system as nearly capable of handling checks by all 7 million employers nationwide to verify the status of 60 million new hires a year.
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May 18, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants
An elections clerk told Hong Skains she could vote. Now the Chinese woman married to a U.S. citizen may be deported.
A Chinese newlywed who proudly declared as she applied for citizenship that she had voted for George W. Bush is now facing deportation as a result of her admission. A Fremont County elections clerk signed up Hong Skains, 37, to vote in the 2004 elections in what officials now acknowledge was a misunderstanding. But the federal law barring non-citizens from voting makes no allowance for misunderstandings. Now, unless an immigration judge rules otherwise, Skains’ art education at the University of Colorado is jeopardized, and her husband, Doug Skains, 73, would have to move to China to avoid separation.
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April 19, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
Immigration enforcement yields new revenue during tight times.
Faced with a budget crunch that forced him to lay off deputies, El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa has tapped a new source of revenue: illegal immigrants. Maketa has started leasing space in his jail to house an average of 150 immigrants a night for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He also sent 17 jail deputies for training in immigration procedures so they can initiate deportations without waiting for federal agents. ICE pays $62.40 a night for each detained immigrant, plus mileage for transport in sheriff’s vans. The arrangement pumped $3.6 million into El Paso County over the past year and now provides 10 percent of the jail’s budget. “I feel like we’re truly contributing to (solving) a national problem,” said Maketa, one of 67 law enforcement agency chiefs nationwide who have had deputies authorized to enforce federal immigration laws.
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April 1, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Refugees
A blind immigrant wins his five-year battle to become a citizen.
A five-year fight for citizenship ended with a closed, five-minute swearing-in ceremony Tuesday for Palestinian refugee Zuhair Mahd. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials, known for routinely conducting mass swearing-in ceremonies of new citizens in downtown Denver, excluded the media for the brief presentation of a certificate of naturalization to Mahd. Some of Mahd’s family and friends attended. “It’s over,” Mahd, 35, said on the windy steps outside the USCIS building, waving a U.S. flag. “Someone asked me, ‘Why do you even want to be a citizen after all this?’ In my mind, this is a country with good people that get up every morning to do the right thing — just to be good people. I wanted to be part of that.”
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November 23, 2008 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
With its faltering economy, the U.S. is no longer the land of opportunity it once was for Mexican immigrants.
The tightening economy may be driving once-hopeful immigrants home. This report presents evidence of a gradual exodus: Workers line up at Mexico’s consulate for permits that let them haul U.S.-purchased possessions tax-free. Car dealers catering to immigrants say cash-only business is brisk as workers hunt for affordable pickups, 1998 or newer to comply with Mexico’s laws. Bank data show that the amount of money Mexican workers send home is falling. Mexico-bound buses at Denver’s bus deport are filling up more swiftly than usual. Interviews indicate growing numbers of immigrants uprooted by economic hard times are recalculating whether to go or stay. Violence in Mexico complicates decision-making. Any exodus would add to what recent surveys in both the U.S . and Mexico show to be sharply reduced migration into the United States. Colorado’s population of 5 million includes 243,000 Mexico-born residents — many of them with U.S.-born children — and another 37,000 immigrants from elsewhere in Latin America. Latinos, half of them immigrants, make up 14 percent of the nation’s workforce.
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March 25, 2008 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Globalization, Immigrants, Migration
Edwin Lara’s circuitous final journey began in Denver’s Funeraria Latina, then went by air to his home country of El Salvador, and finally he was driven on a road past a volcanic lake — nearly a month after he died — to the village where he was born.
“He always wanted to go back,” his sister, Cecelia, said at a visitation. “It was his dream to save money and then be with his children in El Salvador.”
Journeys such as this are increasingly common as the families of immigrants in Colorado, and throughout the United States, arrange for deceased loved ones to be transported back home. It’s a reverse migration of sorts that requires a new body-shipping dimension in the multibillion-dollar business of caring for the dead.
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February 7, 2008 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Globalization, Immigrants, Migration
Familiar sport comforts growing community of African immigrants
Angolan immigrant Zacarias Paulo perched at the edge of the booth at Le Baobab restaurant, eyes fixed on a big-screen Hitachi as he watched Angola’s Black Antelopes pound Egypt’s Pharaohs in African Cup of Nations soccer.
The Africans come from nations across the continent and, though fewer in number than their counterparts from Mexico, are multiplying rapidly and sinking roots. Census data obtained last week indicated about 16,585 African immigrants reside in the area, which is double the number in 2000.
Their latest oasis opened off a once-blighted bit of East Colfax Avenue is the crimson-walled Le Baobab restaurant in Aurora, run by Congolese refugees Clarisse and Sylvin Mberry.
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January 13, 2008 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration, Security
Officials want to cut the long wait caused by a surge in immigrants’ applications.
Mushrooming numbers of immigrants in Denver and other cities are pushing to become U.S. citizens, and their deluge of applications is forcing the government to fix its overloaded processing system.
Undaunted by a $200 application- fee hike and encouraged by political activists, more than 1.4 million immigrants applied for citizenship last year, nearly double the number in 2006 and among the highest totals on record, federal officials said Friday. At least 10,892 in Denver sought citizenship — apparently a local record, the latest federal data show.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials who process applications estimated their turnaround time has nearly tripled in recent years to 16 to 18 months. Nearly 1 million applications are pending, almost twice the number pending a year ago, data show. The government has promised to recruit and hire 1,500 new adjudicators to handle the massive backlog — using money from the fee hike from $475 to $675 that kicked in last July. Officials acknowledged that, despite receiving 1.4 million applications last year, the number of new citizens approved decreased — by 6 percent to 659,237 compared with 702,663 in fiscal year 2006.
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For 20 years, journalist Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. A staff writer for 