Legal immigrants for seasonal work are being denied

The New York Times reported today that seasonal businesses are caught between a rock and hard place, as the government reduced the number of H-2B work visas. The reduction comes because the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and others are blocking legislation that allows an expansion of H-2B visas in hopes of forcing an immigration policy overhaul. The affected businesses don't hire those who are illegally in the country, but the cutback leaves them shorthanded in their legal employees which means a scaling down of services and operating hours.

This will be an even harder blow for the farmers in the area who already are suffering from understaffing of legal seasonal workers.

Mexico has illegal immigration issues, too

Not that it has a direct link to our stories, exactly, but I just saw on Yahoo! News today a report on Mexico's problems with illegal immigrants. Mexico is coming under fire for the way it is treating its illegals. It might be interesting to compare Mexican policy and practice with the U.S. policy and practice. Also, there is the idea that Mexico's illegal immigrants from Central America could make their way, in turn, to the U.S.
Here's the link to the story:
http://news.yahoo.com/page/mexico_immigrants
(I hope it works!)

Article I saw

Hey, just saw this interesting article about undocumented students.

http://dailybruin.com/news/2008/feb/20/struggling-noncitizen-status/

Interactive graphic

I just sent this idea to professor Glass, but I figured I'd share it with everyone else too. The following was included in the e-mail I sent him:

My team's story is about migrant workers who are too scared to leave the farms because they don't want to be picked up by immigration control. The idea we came up with was to create an interactive map of the surrounding counties and point out the locations where undocumented workers have been picked up by immigration control. By clicking on each location, the user can get a brief description of the incident and hopefully photos. I already have my reporters gathering the necessary data for the graphic.

Also, I'm having my reporters blog about their reporting experiences on blogspot. I'm not sure if they have set up their account yet, but I think it would be a good external link to run with the story. It'll be a great opportunity to put in more content we can't fit in the Web site or print edition, and give the reporters an outlet to put a more personal touch on their research.

On Thursday I pitched this idea to my graphics team member, Jeff, and he sounded very confident he could do it. He said he has experience doing interactive graphics such as this.

What do you guys think?

Multimedia ideas?

So what great ideas did you come up with for the Web in your initial meeting last night? Feel free to post them here so others can see what you're thinking.

Also, if you're interested in doing an Flash-based info graphics, please let me know.

1 in 7

Check out this story from the NY Times. It says by 2020 1 in 7 people in the U.S. will be foreign born. The data comes from the Pew Research Center.

Citizenship Test

Hey All,

So I know this is going to sound hokey, but I figured since some of our stories are probably going to deal with U.S. citizenship and the naturalization process, I thought I'd pass this along...
I just received a Facebook application invite to take the U.S. Citizenship Test; thought it might be an easy way to get hold of the questions that the folks at the naturalization ceremonies had to get right in order to become citizens. I know this isn't the only avenue to access that particular info, but if you want it, it's there.
I'll hold on to the invite and if anybody wants to access the test, I'll send you the invite as well.

-Brent