At a time when the prospects for immigration overhaul seem most dim, supporters have unleashed a secret weapon: a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders.

Normally on the opposite side of political issues backed by the Obama White House, these leaders are aligning with the president to support an overhaul that would include some path to legalization for illegal immigrants already here. They are preaching from pulpits, conducting conference calls with pastors and testifying in Washington — as they did last Wednesday.  Click here to continue reading the full article from The New York Times.

 

For region's Latinos, enough is enough

  By DAN IRIZARRY 
First published in print: Sunday, July 18, 2010

 

The first half of 2010 should go down in the annals of the Capital Region's Hispanic community as a time of deep outrage. Our growing population has been tossed about by ill winds, left bereft of help and bemoaning great setbacks.

When night falls, police officers blanket some eight odd blocks of Brownsville, Brooklyn. Squad cars with flashing lights cruise along the main avenues: Livonia to Powell to Sutter to Rockaway. And again.

Stories of hardship are easy to find among community college students, and the class of 2010 at Queensborough, in Queens, is no different.

The United States acquired the islands of Puerto Rico in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. In 1950, Congress enacted legislation (P.L. 81-600) authorizing Puerto Rico to hold a constitutional convention and in 1952, the people of Puerto Rico ratified a constitution establishing a republican form of government for the islands. After being approved by Congress and the President in July 1952 and thus given force under federal law (P.L. 82-447), the new constitution went into effect on July 25, 1952.

Nearly 25 years after Batson v. Kentucky, racial exclusion in jury selection is still common, according to a study of practices in southern states released Wednesday.

Nearly 25 years after Batson v. Kentucky, racial exclusion in jury selection is still common, according to a study of practices in southern states released Wednesday.

MUNICIPAL DISTRICT — Police arrested more than 50 people protesting Arizona's controversial new immigration law after they blocked traffic on lower Broadway in front of 26 Federal Plaza on Tuesday.

 Dozens were arrested in Lower Manhattan Tuesday during the third and largest rally for immigration reform. 

USA Environmental Inc. is in line for additional Department of Defense funding to clean up sites in Puerto Rico and the North Pacific Ocean.

USA Environmental Inc. is in line for additional Department of Defense funding to clean up sites in Puerto Rico and the North Pacific Ocean.

The company was awarded an $18 million modification to a previously awarded contract for munitions response and incidental environmental remediation at sites that potentially contain munitions and explosives of concern, a release from the Department of Defense said. The total cumulative value of the contract is now $68 million.

That contract calls for USA Environmental to provide surface and subsurface munitions clearance on roads and beaches in Vieques, Puerto Rico. The company also will provide vegetative and operational range clearance on Farallon de Medinilla in the Marianas Islands in the North Pacific. The work is expected to be completed by December 2011.

A second contract calls for USA Environmental to provide similar work at the former Vieques Naval Training Range. That work is expected to be completed by August 2011. The original contract was modified by $14 million, and the total cumulative task order value is now $25.5 million, the release said.

USA Environmental Inc., headquartered in Oldsmar, is among the largest defense contractors in the Tampa Bay area. The company, founded in 1998, has completed more than $400 million worth of munitions and explosives of concern work.

Read more: USA Environmental gets more DOD funding - Tampa Bay Business Journal

The injustice toward the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico must end. Vieques is a small island off the south east coast of Puerto Rico that was used as a bombing range by the U.S. Navy from World War II until 2003. The munitions used in and around Vieques contained toxins that have affected the health of the residents. Yet in 2003, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) issued a report that said that the levels posed no health risk. The conclusions in this report strain credibility, are inconsistent, and demand a thorough reexamination.

The White House’s Old Executive Office Building provided a weathered backdrop today for a second session held by the President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status. It was an appropriate setting for the decades-old status issue being investigated by the task force dating back to the presidential commission’s founding in late 2000 through an executive order signed by President Bill Clinton.

www.prba.net/images/FE/chain267siteType8/site227/client/Statement on Vieques.pdfOn May 25, 2010 President Obama's Task Force on Puerto Rico held a hearing in Washington, DC to discuss the issue of Puerto Rico's status along with Puerto Rico's economic development, security, community issues and Vieques.

LOS ANGELES — Republican lawmakers and candidates are increasingly divided over illegal immigration — torn between the need to attract Latino support, especially at the ballot box, and rallying party members who support tougher action.

It’s about 2,500 miles from this green, rural town in the rolling hills near Vermont to the Mexican border at Nogales, but that hasn’t stopped Jackson from making a bid to be New York’s small version of Arizona in the immigration wars.

Yet another press release slamming the new immigration law signed by the Arizona governor will not be enough for a handful of New York legislators. In two weeks, a group of Latino Assembly members, led by National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators president Felix Ortz, will travel to Arizona to join with others in rallying against the law. In addition to Ortiz, Assembly members José Rivera, Naomi Rivera, Adam Clayton Powell, Carmen Arroyo and Peter Rivera will make the trip.

Public furor is mounting across the nation over Arizona's new "show me your papers or go to jail" immigration law. One Hispanic congressman, Raul Grijalva (D-Tucson) is urging tourists and national conventions to boycott his state. Another, our own Jose Serrano (D-Bronx), wants baseball owners to yank the All-Star Game from Phoenix next year.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Arizona lawmakers passed a controversial immigration bill on Monday requiring police in the state that borders Mexico to determine if people are in the United States illegally, a measure critics say is open to racial profiling.

In its 7-to-0 ruling, the New York Court of Appeals said that an all-persons-present warrant used by the police in Syracuse during a drug raid at an apartment in 2006 did not give them enough evidence to strip-search a man who was in the home. The court ordered the dismissal of drug possession charges that the man, Robert Mothersell, had been facing.

In a decision that one justice called "a major upheaval in Sixth Amendment law," the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that lawyers have a constitutional obligation to advise clients of the collateral deportation consequences of a guilty plea in a criminal case.

Both the Bronx District Attorney's Office and the Office of Court Administration filed briefs in the New York Court of Appeals yesterday arguing that the 2004 merger of all criminal cases in the Bronx into a single court was well within the broad authority of the court system's top administrators.

It is a fairly unglamorous and lightly regulated task: serving legal papers to people who have been sued. Debt collection agencies and lawyers often farm out the work to private companies, which deliver the papers in person or by mail. They are known, in legal parlance, as process servers.

In July 2002, the city ordered 20,900 disposable gowns for use in the city jails. This was supposed to be the start of a cheap solution to a big problem. For years, men and women arrested on even minor charges had been ordered to strip naked and bend over when taken to jail, despite a ruling by a federal appeals court in 1986 that such routine searches of body cavities were illegal. In 2001, the city paid $43 million to settle a class-action lawsuit.

Rejecting the views of 33 states, the federal government and the student loan industry, the Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled in favor of a loan delinquent who used the bankruptcy laws to restructure his debt.

According to Paul Simon, there may be 50 ways to leave your lover.1 In the world of politics, the options are decidedly fewer for ousting an objectionable elected official. Now that a committee of the New York State Senate has recommended to the full body that it consider expelling Senator Hiram Monserrate, it is worth previewing some of the legal issues that might be raised over the next few months in connection with Mr. Monserrate’s future in the Senate.

It was 1977 and Miguel Rodriguez had just busted a pane of glass in the Statue of Liberty's crown and hung out a Puerto Rican flag during a nine-hour siege staged by associates of the FALN terrorist group.

WASHINGTON (By U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez) March 17, 2010 — Three years ago, when I met with Senator Barack Obama in his Chicago office and we contemplated his possible run for the presidency, I was enthusiastic.

On July 1, all Puerto Rican birth certificates will become invalid. U.S. officials say a big percentage of fraudulent applications for U.S. passports or social benefits use Puerto Rican birth certificates.

On Thu., March 11, the Puerto Rican Bar Association (PRBA) and the Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage (AJHH) co-hosted its annual Judiciary Night to honor and celebrate 13 newly elected or appointed Latino judges at the Appellate Division, First Department Courthouse in Midtown Manhattan.

In rejecting the bulk of New York's content-based restrictions on attorney advertising, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Friday that a ban on the use of nicknames like "Heavy Hitters" or client testimonials about pending cases violates the First Amendment.

Buffalo City Court Judge Betty Calvo-Torres is seeking the nomination to one of three vacant New York State Supreme Court seats. In November 2010, voters within the 8th Judicial District will have the opportunity to elect 3 new Supreme Court Justices as a result of the mandatory retirement of Justices Wolfgang, Martoche and Drury.

Talk is cheap. That's what immigrants and their supporters - fed up with empty promises about reform - are ready to tell to President Obama on March 21. Carrying signs reading "Friends make good on their promises," thousands will rally in the nation's capital to demand immigration reform. "One year and three months into the Obama administration, who would've ever imagined that tens of thousands of immigrants would march on Washington

Today, President Obama nominated Raymond Lohier, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Kate O’Malley to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Lohier currently serves as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; O’Malley currently serves as a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Organizers of the New York Puerto Rican Day Parade, one of the largest U.S. outdoor events, said they are ending a 30-year relationship with the makers of Captain Morgan Rum citing Diageo PLC's plans to move distillation of the drink from Puerto Rico.

We've written before about how Susan Blount, the general counsel of the insurance giant Prudential Financial, took a hard line this year on the hourly rates it would pay its outside law firms. Now Blount and Prudential are part of another initiative that will change the way the company does business with firms. Prudential and about a dozen other companies, including DuPont and Microsoft, pledged Thursday to spend $30 million in 2010 on minority- and women-owned law firms.

The Legal Aid Society insisted yesterday that the court system lacks legal authority to seek a stay of a decision that the Office of Court Administration argues could jeopardize hundreds of thousands of criminal convictions in the Bronx.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- A White House task force on Puerto Rico's ties with the United States heard from islanders across the political spectrum Wednesday at a hearing that tapped into deep emotions surrounding a decades-old debate.

Large U.S. law firms became less diverse last year. That's the key finding to emerge from the latest version of our annual Diversity Scorecard, which counts attorneys of color in the U.S. offices of some 200 big firms. In each of the previous nine years that we've compiled the Scorecard, the percentage of minority attorneys at all participating firms increased, rising from less than 10 percent in 2000 to 13.9 percent in 2008. In 2009, for the first time, that proportion dipped, to 13.4 percent.

March 2, 2010, Alexandria, Va.— The 111,693 consumer bankruptcies filed in February represented a 14 percent increase nationwide over the 98,344 filings recorded in February 2009, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI), relying on data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center (NBKRC). NBKRC’s data also showed that the February 2010 consumer filings represented a 9 percent increase over the 102,254 consumer filings recorded in January 2010. Chapter 13 filings constituted 27 percent of all consumer cases in February, representing a 3 percent decrease from January.

Personal bankruptcy filings were back on the upswing in February after dipping the prior month. There were 111,693 consumer bankruptcy filings last month, up 9% from January, the American Bankruptcy Institute said Tuesday based on data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center. The increase comes after filings fell 10% in January.

Justice Rolando T. Acosta (See Profile) this afternoon temporarily stayed Tuesday's ruling by the Appellate Division, First Department, that held unconstitutional the 2004 merger of all criminal cases in the Bronx into a single court. Justice Acosta, of the First Department, stayed enforcement of the 4-1 ruling in People v. Correa, 51080C/05, "in any respect" until the parties submit additional papers to him at noon on March 3. The issue of the continuation of the stay will be addressed at a conference Justice Acosta scheduled at 2:15 p.m. on March 3.

The denial of a raise to state judges for more than a decade violates the state Constitution, the state Court of Appeals ruled in a 5-1 opinion this morning. However, the majority declined to order any specific remedy, saying only that it expects "appropriate and expeditious legislative consideration" of its decision.

With client relationships like this, who needs enemies? The legal, regulatory and publicity battle between Arbitron and some of the clients for its Portable People Meter radio ratings has taken a turn for the even-worse.

The percentage of African-American and Mexican-American students enrolled at U.S. law schools declined in the last 15 years, even though students in both groups improved their grades and LSAT scores, a new study finds.

WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court took up a race discrimination case on Monday brought by black firefighters from Chicago, the justices were alert to the precedential shadows cast by two of their recent decisions.

The Supreme Court returns from its midterm break Monday morning, one controversial decision behind it and the potential for more ahead.

The New York Police Department says its “stop-and-frisk” program — under which officers investigating crimes, or working to prevent crimes, briefly detain or pat down people on the streets — has played a pivotal role in driving down crime levels to record lows.

The NYPD stopped and questioned more people in 2009 than in any year since the department began reporting the data, it was revealed Tuesday. A total of 575,304 people were stopped and questioned in 2009 - an 8% increase over the previous high of 531,159 in 2008, the NYPD said Tuesday.

Responding to pleas from immigration judges and lawyers who say the nation’s immigration courts are faltering under a crushing caseload, the American Bar Association called Monday for Congress to scrap the current system and create a new, independent court for immigration cases.

The Puerto Rican Bar Association (PRBA) is proud to announce its co-sponsorship of the Joint Minority Bar Judicial Internship Program (JMB JIP). Since the program’s creation in 2004 by the PRBA, the Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage (AJHH) and Mayer Brown, numerous students have been placed with distinguished judges at the federal, state and local levels.

In her first opinion as a visiting judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has ruled that a conviction in Puerto Rico is a valid predicate for a charge of illegally possessing a gun as a felon.

The New York City Bar is now seeking nominations for the Fifth Annual Diversity Champion Award. For more information, please click here.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the City of New York to remedy years of discriminatory hiring in the Fire Department by giving hundreds of black and Latino applicants jobs, along with years of retroactive pay, and offering thousands of others some damages.

Eighteen of the 20 justices of the Appellate Division, First Department, have signed a letter condemning as "insulting" recent comments by New York City Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo questioning the efficiency and accountability of state judges.

The Puerto Rican Bar Association presented a course on the Laws of Inheritance of New York and Puerto Rico at the Intercontinental Hotel, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on November 7, 2009. The first of its kind, the PRBA worked in conjunction with the Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico -- an entity akin to a bar association with 14,000 members – to present attendees with an overview of an area of law that affects the lives of many residents of New York and Puerto Rico.

In a letter to President Obama, PRBA President, Roberto Ramirez, highlighted the reasons why Edgardo Ramos, a long-time member of the PRBA and former member of the Board, is the most qualified candidate to occupy the office of United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut.

Governor David A. Paterson announced the appointments of Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels and Justice Nelson S. Román to fill two new seats in the Appellate Division, First Judicial Department. “Justice Manzanet-Daniels and Justice Román are accomplished, respected jurists with an impressive range of judicial and legal experience and a solid record of community service,” said Governor Paterson. “They will be a tremendous addition to the First Department.”

On Thursday, October 22, 2009, the Board, members and friends of the Puerto Rican Bar Association were treated with a celebration for one of the PRBA's most recognizable members, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Sonia Sotomayor.

For the third year in a row the PRBA took the lead in organizing team "Lawyers for the Cure" in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. The PRBA raised $6,000.00 along with its partners - the Asian American Bar of New York, the Bronx Black Bar Association and the Bronx Women's Bar Association.

THE PRBA Endorses the Statement of Principles for the Equal Treatment in Healthcare Reform for Puerto Rico.

The President of the Puerto Rican Bar Association Roberto Ramirez testifies at the NYS Senate Hearing on the nomination process for Judges to the New York Court of Appeals