Looking ahead to the new year ahead of us, these next two weeks I want to look at important developments affecting Latin America that are worth keeping a close eye on in 2012. The first is the changing nature of immigration.

The flow of immigrants from Latin America to the United States, a constant and often accelerating trend of the last three decades, slowed in 2011. The most prominent was the change from Mexico. New arrivals fell off a cliff, with apprehensions at the border hitting their lowest levels in seventeen years. The drop is so great that Doug Massey, head of the Mexican Migration Project (a long term survey of Mexican emigration at Princeton University), claims that for the first time in sixty years, Mexican migration to the United States has hit a net zero.

Though Mexico is the single largest source of migrants to the United States, providing roughly a third of all newcomers, they weren’t the only change. Anecdotal evidence at least suggests that many Brazilian migrants – which once numbered around one million – started heading home as well. Unemployment fell to all time lows, and numerous articles pointed out the labor scarcities both for high and low skilled workers.

There are many reasons behind these trends, some general, some country specific. Many point to the Obama administration’s rather tough immigration policy as one reason for the decline. A record-breaking 400,000 immigrants were deported last year, and immigration prosecutions increased almost eighty percent along the U.S-Mexico border in the last four years. For Mexico, others speculate that the rise of organized crime and violence along the border may deter some from contemplating the journey (though studies, such as that done by Jezmin Fuentes et al., suggest this may be less of a deterrent than many claim).

An important factor is the weak U.S. economy. With unemployment rates hovering at just over eight percent, there are fewer jobs for natives and migrants alike. This has occurred at a time when many of their home countries are growing steadily – at a decent 4 percent regional average clip, and much more in particular countries and economic strongholds. Better job opportunities in the region broadly — but particularly in Brazil — encouraged many to return home, and kept others from leaving at all.

Looking ahead, a U.S. economic recovery would recreate the pull north for Latin Americans seeking to improve their lot. If the Chinese economy stumbles this too could slow returns, or push more migrants north (especially from Brazil, which counts China as its largest trading partner). Meanwhile, flows from Central America are likely to continue as long as economic opportunities there remain scarce. The real question is Mexico. There, demographics have already shifted, with fewer Mexicans coming of age and entering the work force each year. As a result, the Mexican immigration boom of the 1990s and early 2000s is unlikely to be repeated ever again.

The reeling housing market has come to this: To shore it up, two Senators are preparing to introduce a bipartisan bill Thursday that would give residence visas to foreigners who spend at least $500,000 to buy houses in the U.S.

The provision is part of a larger package of immigration measures, co-authored by Sens. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah), designed to spur more foreign investment in the U.S.

Foreigners have accounted for a growing share of home purchases in South Florida, Southern California, Arizona and other hard-hit markets. Chinese and Canadian buyers, among others, are taking advantage not only of big declines in U.S. home prices and reduced competition from Americans but also of favorable foreign exchange rates.

To fuel this demand, the proposed measure would offer visas to any foreigner making a cash investment of at least $500,000 on residential real-estate—a single-family house, condo or townhouse. Applicants can spend the entire amount on one house or spend as little as $250,000 on a residence and invest the rest in other residential real estate, which can be rented out.

The measure would complement existing visa programs that allow foreigners to enter the U.S. if they invest in new businesses that create jobs. Backers believe the initiative would help soak up an excess supply of inventory when many would-be American home buyers are holding back because they’re concerned about their jobs or because they would have to take a big loss to sell their current house.

“This is a way to create more demand without costing the federal government a nickel,” Sen. Schumer said in an interview.

International buyers accounted for around $82 billion in U.S. residential real-estate sales for the year ending in March, up from $66 billion during the previous year period, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. Foreign buyers accounted for at least 5.5% of all home sales in Miami and 4.3% of Phoenix home sales during the month of July, according to MDA DataQuick.

Foreigners immigrating to the U.S. with the new visa wouldn’t be able to work here unless they obtained a regular work visa through the normal process. They’d be allowed to bring a spouse and any children under the age of 18 but they wouldn’t be able to stay in the country legally on the new visa once they sold their properties.

The provision would create visas that are separate from current programs so as to not displace anyone waiting for other visas. There would be no cap on the home-buyer visa program.

Over the past year, Canadians accounted for one quarter of foreign home buyers, and buyers from China, Mexico, Great Britain, and India accounted for another quarter, according to the National Association of Realtors. For buyers from some countries, restrictive immigration rules are “a deterrent to purchase here, for sure,” says Sally Daley, a real-estate agent in Vero Beach, Fla. She estimates that around one-third of her sales this year have gone to foreigners, an all-time high.

“Without them, we would be stagnant,” says Ms. Daley. “They’re hiring contractors, buying furniture, and they’re also helping the market correct by getting inventory whittled down.”

In March, Harry Morrison, a Canadian from Lakefield, Ontario, bought a four-bedroom vacation home in a gated community in Vero Beach. “House prices were going down, and the exchange rate was quite favorable,” said Mr. Morrison, who first bought a home there from Ms. Daley four years ago.

While a special visa would allow Canadian buyers like Mr. Morrison to spend more time in the U.S., he said he isn’t sure “what other benefit a visa would give me.”

The idea has some high-profile supporters, including Warren Buffett, who this summer floated the idea of encouraging more “rich immigrants” to buy homes. “If you wanted to change your immigration policy so that you let 500,000 families in but they have to have a significant net worth and everything, you’d solve things very quickly,” Mr. Buffett said in an August interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose.

The measure could also help turn around buyer psychology, said mortgage-bond pioneer Lewis Ranieri. He said the program represented “triage” for a housing market that needs more fixes, even modest ones.

But other industry executives greeted the proposal with skepticism. Foreign buyers “don’t need an incentive” to buy homes, said Richard Smith, chief executive of Realogy Corp., which owns the Coldwell Banker and Century 21 real-estate brands. “We have a lot of Americans who are willing to buy. We just have to fix the economy.”

The measure may have a more targeted effect in exclusive markets like San Marino, Calif., that have become popular with foreigners. Easier immigration rules could be “tremendous” because of the difficulty many Chinese buyers have in obtaining visas, says Maggie Navarro, a local real-estate agent.

Ms. Navarro recently sold a home for $1.67 million, around 8% above the asking price, to a Chinese national who works in the mining industry. She says nearly every listing she’s put on the market in San Marino “has had at least one full price cash offer from a buyer from mainland China.”

Corrections & Amplifications
Harry Morrison bought a four-bedroom vacation home in Vero Beach in March. He first bought a home there four years ago from Sally Daley, a local real-estate agent. An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Ms. Daley sold the four-bedroom home to Mr. Morrison in March.

The fight for the Republican presidential nomination has produced a spectacle that seems truly odd. Although illegal immigration has in recent years been drying up—according to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, it has fallen to 300,000 in 2009 from 850,000 in 2000, while Princeton’s Douglas Massey says that “[f]or the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero”—the issue remains bitterly contentious in the GOP race.

During a debate in Orlando last month, Texas Gov. Rick Perry defended his state’s policy of charging undocumented aliens the same tuition at state-run colleges and universities as ordinary citizens—a policy that commanded bipartisan support in the Texas legislature when he signed it into law in 2001. Mitt Romney, Herman Cain and the other GOP presidential candidates practically hissed Mr. Perry off the stage, and after the debate much of the tea party joined plenty of regular Republicans in denouncing the man.

If illegal immigration is down, why do Republicans still care so much about it? Permit a Californian to attempt an answer.

Since 1986, when President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, the undocumented population of California has risen to around 2.6 million from around one million. This influx has done just what you would have expected: It has affected every aspect of life in the Golden State.

In California’s public schools, the proportion of children in kindergarten through third grade for whom English represents a second language now stands at almost two out of five. In agricultural regions, entire towns have turned over—with a little zig-zagging, you could hike from town to town for much of the 450-mile length of the Central Valley without hearing any language but Spanish.

Consider one neighborhood in Redwood City, a town on the San Francisco peninsula. Known locally as Little Mexico, the neighborhood, which centers on the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Middlefield Road, looks and feels so pervasively south-of-the-border that if you were led there blindfolded you would think you were in Tijuana or Mexicali.

I assumed when I moved to California almost two decades ago that Little Mexico, which then comprised perhaps a dozen blocks, would gradually shrink or atrophy, like North Beach, the Italian neighborhood in San Francisco, or Little Italy in Manhattan. Instead, Little Mexico has roughly tripled in size. Just miles from the headquarters of Apple, Google, HP and Oracle, the engine of assimilation has been humming ineluctably along—in reverse.

Yes, I know. The economic benefits California has derived from immigration, including illegal immigration, have proven enormous. Some studies even suggest that, taking into account the economic growth their labor has made possible, and the sales taxes and other imposts they have paid, undocumented aliens have contributed more to government coffers than they have drawn down.

And even after the American economy finally recovers, falling poverty and birth rates in Mexico suggest that illegal immigration may return only as a small stream—perhaps even a trickle—and not a flood. Over the next decade or so, many of the aliens now in the Golden State will perhaps go home to a modernizing Mexico while Californians come to accept—or at least become resigned to—those who remain, acquiescing in measures that would grant them legal residency and eventually citizenship.

Yet even if a single alien were never again to enter California, and even if half those now in the Golden State illegally were suddenly to return home while the other half magically became citizens, the federal government would still have permitted millions to enter the state in violation of the law. This raises fundamental questions about our constitutional order. How can the federal government fail for years on end to perform a duty as basic as policing the border?

Strangely, in Tuesday evening’s “economic” debate in Hanover, N.H., immigration, legal or otherwise, was never mentioned. Indeed, Messrs. Romney and Cain have demonstrated less interest in illegal immigration itself than in using the issue to attack Mr. Perry. Mr. Romney, whose jobs plan includes no fewer than 59 points, has said of illegal immigration, “Of course we build a fence,” as if that were all there were to it. If the other GOP candidates wish to place themselves to the right of Mr. Perry on this issue, fine. But Republicans would have more faith in their ability to secure the border if they demonstrated that they had given the matter some thought.

Mr. Perry should stop sounding so defensive. He has opposed illegal immigration as stoutly as anyone, but, alone among the candidates, he has dealt with the reality of life on the border. Since his state has the good sense to provide only modest welfare benefits, he should explain, Texans understand that immigrants come to Texas to work, not to collect handouts. And they see no contradiction between calling on the federal government to enforce the law and making the best of the situation Washington has imposed on them, helping undocumented aliens, once in the state, to acquire skills and an education.

A quarter-century after Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, his example remains instructive. Reagan supported one provision of the 1986 act, an amnesty for the three million undocumented aliens then in the country, only because he believed that other provisions, which fortified border enforcement and required employers to verify the legal status of their workers, would end illegal immigration. “Future generations . . . will be thankful,” the president said, “for our efforts to humanely regain control of our borders and thereby preserve one of the most sacred possessions of our people: American citizenship.”

Thankful? Americans instead feel angry—and, for all his big-hearted openness toward immigrants, I believe Reagan would have shared their anger, recognizing the failure of the federal government to “regain control of our borders” as a profound breach of faith. That breach of faith, he would have insisted, must now be repaired.

Washington –  President Barack Obama said that while he can lessen some of the injustices in the current U.S. immigration system, real progress requires changing the law.

His obligation as president is to enforce the existing law, Obama said in a White House roundtable with correspondents from Efe and other Spanish-language media outlets.

Recent changes in deportation policy that prioritize expelling undocumented immigrants who committed crimes are not sufficient, according to the president, who said the problem cannot be resolved through “administrative” measures.

Amending the policy on deportations will not achieve the path to citizenship for undocumented migrants “that I believe must be part of the solution,” he told the journalists.

Obama said his administration will continue to press for comprehensive immigration reform, one of his 2008 campaign promises.

His failure so far to deliver on that promise is one of the factors that have sparked a drastic drop in support for the Democratic president among Hispanic voters, which according to the latest surveys stands at 48 percent, compared with 67 percent in 2008.

The president, however, told the media roundtable that Latino voters will not punish him in 2012 for his not being able to persuade Republicans in Congress to do the right thing on immigration.

Turning to the economy, Obama said the jobs bill he sent to Congress on Monday will have an “enormous impact” on the Hispanic community.

Part of the program, $15 billion, will go to investment in infrastructure, something that will benefit Latino workers with their strong presence in construction.

And the more than 1 million Hispanics without jobs could see their unemployment benefits prolonged, the president said.

Obama believes that the measure has the right mix of tax cuts and investment to provide an immediate stimulus to the economy, in which joblessness is around 9.1 percent.

One of the groups hit hardest by the recession are young Hispanics, with an unemployment rate of 19.3 percent.

To try and reduce that percentage, the White House will help the states create summer job programs for low-income Latino youths in 2012.

The president also discussed a demand from Congress that his administration hand over all records relating to the possible involvement of three former and current White House staff members with the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking sting.

The White House Office of Legal Counsel is reviewing the congressional request, Obama said.

He said he did not learn about Fast and Furious until the operation went badly wrong and that White House officials were told only that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was planning an operation aimed at reducing the smuggling of guns to Mexico, where more than 40,000 have died in drug-related violence.

The controversial 2009-2010 undercover operation saw ATF agents allow some 2,000 weapons purchased by straw buyers at U.S. gun shops to be smuggled into Mexico.

The idea was to trace them to powerful drug traffickers in Mexico, but once Fast and Furious got underway ATF agents realized they had no dependable way to keep track of the guns, which eventually began appearing at crime scenes on both sides of the border.

The operation has caused tension between the United States and Mexico and is the object of separate investigations by the Justice Department and Congress.

Obama said that the operation does not represent the policy of the administration and stressed his interest in collaborating as closely as possible with Mexico to deal with the scourge of drug trafficking.

Worries over ease of terrorists’ entry into U.S. means legislation remains elusive

Marisa Schultz/ The Detroit News

The week before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush welcomed Mexican President Vicente Fox to the White House for his first state dinner of upscale Tex-Mex.

Fox proclaimed the two countries could reach an immigration agreement by year’s end. And Bush, bucking some in his Republican Party, entertained ideas of granting legal status for some Mexican immigrants.

The news of high-level immigration talks thrilled Veronica T. Thronson, who worked in New York for an immigrant advocacy group. Their midtown office was abuzz with excitement that reform was finally going to happen in 2001. They pushed out press releases heralding the progress.

“Then Sept. 11 happened,” said Thronson, who now heads Michigan State University College of Law’s Immigration Law Clinic. “We knew that immigrants were going to be blamed somehow. That day it happened.”

Shortly after it was discovered that 9/11 hijackers entered the country with legally issued visas, the conversation around immigration became inextricably linked with terrorism. The anti-foreigner movement that took shape and the preoccupation with protecting the United States effectively knocked immigration reform off the national agenda. Ten years later, comprehensive legislation to alter how and when foreigners can become citizens has remained elusive.

Even a small part of immigration reform, known as the DREAM Act, has failed to pass Congress every time it’s been introduced in the past decade. It would allow undocumented students a pathway to citizenship through two years of college or military service.

After the initial horror of the terrorist attacks dissipated, the country was rocked by a prolonged recession in which millions of legal citizens were jobless. The downturn coincided with the spread of immigrant populations.

Historically, immigrants primarily settled in six states, including New York, California and Texas, said Ann Chih Lin, associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. But during the boom years of the 1990s, big influxes spread to states throughout the country. That set the stage for difficulties as some Americans became preoccupied with security, feared outsiders and had a grassroots anti-immigrant sentiment, Lin said.

“You can overlook a lot of foreigners when the economy is going well,” Lin said. “The bad economy stranded them in places that didn’t have the infrastructure to help resolve some of these problems.”

Assisting illegal immigrants hasn’t been a political priority in Washington, and the focus instead has been on border security, deportations and ensuring people don’t come to the United States to do harm. Though he supports the DREAM Act and immigration reform, President Barack Obama has ramped up deportations and deployed more security personnel to the southern border than ever before.

David Koelsch, professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, views the shift in attitude since 9/11 as a “net positive.” Prior to the attacks, immigration was a “sleeping giant” with laws not being enforced and people not associating the influx of foreigners with security.

Afterward, the Department of Homeland Security was set up. There’s better coordination among federal agencies, and local authorities are working with federal agencies to facilitate deportations following jail sentences, said Koelsch, who directs the Immigration Law Clinic at the college.

Lin and Thronson believe major immigration reform would have had a good chance of passing during the Bush administration had it not been for 9/11. Koelsch believes that’s an oversimplification. All three want comprehensive immigration reform, but their visions for solutions vary.

Meantime, the inability of Congress to pass an immigration package has spurred state and local politicians to pass their own laws, such as Arizona’s legislation giving police broad powers to detain those suspected of being undocumented, as well as legislation in New Mexico and elsewhere to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

Even in Michigan — with among the lowest percentages of undocumented residents, according to the Pew Hispanic Center — a package of bills is pending in the Legislature that would crack down on undocumented immigrants who live and work here. One bill is similar to Arizona’s divisive law.

As Thronson supervises her students, she looks back a decade ago to the progress in the making. “We were so close,” she said. “We were so close.”

The following editorial appeared in the Sacramento Bee on Monday, Aug. 22:

It’s not amnesty, back-door or otherwise. It’s just a little more sanity in our broken immigration system.

The Obama administration has announced that it will suspend deportation proceedings against thousands of illegal immigrants who aren’t a danger to public safety, including those who came to America as young children and have graduated from high school and gone on to college or into the military.

Other “low-priority” cases likely to benefit under the new policy are veterans and spouses of veterans, caregivers for a seriously ill relative or for a person with a mental or physical disability and those with family members who are citizens.

It only makes sense to target limited manpower and resources to deporting those who are violent criminals and drug smugglers, or who pose a national security threat.

This is not a blanket policy; immigration officials will review, case by case, nearly 300,000 people now in the deportation pipeline to distinguish those who may qualify for relief from those who should be expelled as soon as possible. It also doesn’t automatically grant citizenship, though many could eventually apply for legal status.

Predictably, zealous activists against illegal immigration, along with elected officials in their thrall, are railing against this change. They are still not facing the reality that if they got their way, we would have to figure out how to find and deport more than 10 million people.

With this new policy, President Barack Obama is doing administratively much of what Congress hasn’t had the courage and common sense to do legislatively by passing the DREAM Act, a bill to give relief to college students who are illegal immigrants.

“Young people who arrived here at an early age and either serve in the military or are in good academic standing should not be removed from the country and separated from their families,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who urged Obama to make the change, said in a statement. “Instead, they should be allowed to reach their full potential as productive American citizens.” She has introduced 14 private bills in the past two sessions of Congress to block deportations of such students their only recourse until now.

This new policy is a necessary step that upholds our tradition as an immigrant nation, but it is not a long-term solution. We still have to get serious about comprehensive reform to create a system that is fair and sensible.

In its quest to spur job growth and jump-start the economy, Washington is reaching out to foreign entrepreneurs.

Alejandro Mayorkas, chief of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, on Tuesday will unveil several initiatives designed to attract and retain foreign entrepreneurs, particularly in the high-tech sector, who wish to launch start-up companies in the U.S.

Among the initiatives is a plan to make it easier for some foreigners to qualify for legal permanent residence, or green cards, if they can demonstrate their work will be in the U.S. national interest. The changes will also include a way for entrepreneurs to obtain work visas without a job offer from an established company.

Mr. Mayorkas also plans to announce that his agency will be training its examiners on how visa-eligibility requirements apply to entrepreneurs.

“In this economy, it certainly is in the interest of this nation to welcome foreign talent,” Mr. Mayorkas said in an interview.

The changes come as increasing numbers of software entrepreneurs have been taking their start-ups to other countries, often after completing advanced degrees in the U.S., because of the difficulty in securing temporary work visas and permanent residency here.

Vivek Wadhwa, a visiting scholar at the University at California, Berkeley, who studies immigrant entrepreneurs, estimates the new measures could yield “tens of thousands of start-ups and hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

The measures won’t require congressional approval because they don’t constitute changes in current immigration law. Instead, clarifications will be issued for existing visa categories with the objective of enabling more entrepreneurs to gain entry into the U.S. and of bringing more speed and efficiency to the visa-application process.

“The Obama administration is getting the immigration system engaged in creating jobs,” said Steve Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell University Law School. “They are trying to facilitate the ability of entrepreneurs to get temporary work visas and green cards when the economy is in the doldrums.”

Generally, immigrant entrepreneurs must have a specific job offer to qualify for an employment-based immigrant visa or green card, such as in the category for individuals with exceptional ability in the arts, sciences and business.

As part of the new initiatives, foreign entrepreneurs will be eligible for a so-called EB-2 immigrant visa without a specific job offer, as long as they demonstrate that their business endeavors will be in the U.S. national interest.

The government is also seeking to bolster use by foreign entrepreneurs of H-1Bs, which are temporary work visas for foreign workers in a specialty occupation.

The H-1B program has been a mainstay of software companies and other businesses that seek foreign nationals to fill certain jobs, and an employer-employee relationship has generally been a prerequisite for qualifying.

As part of the new measures, a sole entrepreneur can qualify for an H-1B if the individual’s employment is decided by a corporate board or shareholders of the start-up company.

Mr. Mayorkas will also unveil enhancements to the EB-5 investor program, which enables foreign investors and their families to qualify for green cards if they invest at least $500,000 in a U.S. project that generates at least 10 jobs.

His agency is also seeking to speed up the approval process by hiring additional adjudicators to evaluate applications and enabling petitioners to make their case before an expert panel should their application require further evidence or be denied.

The moves come as demand for H-1B visas has fallen. As of July 22, USCIS had received approximately 21,600 H-1B petitions out of 65,000 available for the 2012 fiscal year. The agency had received approximately 26,000 such applications for the same period last year.

Several factors are at play, including higher fees for the visas and increasingly better opportunities in countries such as India that entice their skilled workers to return home rather than stay in the U.S.

While completing his Master’s degree in computer science at the University of Southern California in 2008, Anuj Agarwal launched a company called Nachofoto.com, a start-up that makes a product used by search engines and digital-media companies. Unable to get a U.S. visa for himself and expecting his workers would have the same trouble, Mr. Agarwal moved the company to India.

“After realizing we had visa barriers to the U.S., we opened another company here,” Mr. Agarwal said in an interview from Mumbai.

Norberto Guimaraes of Portugal said he had to leave the U.S. in May 2010 after his student visa expired and his H-1B petition was denied because he lacked an employer to sponsor him, even though he was the founder and chief executive of his start-up.

“I had to sell the start-up that I had created while doing my M.B.A. at U.C. Berkeley together with another M.B.A. colleague,” he said.

Mr. Guimaraes was able to return to the U.S. this year, sponsored for a work visa by another company.

The Obama administration intensified a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants, notifying another 1,000 companies in all 50 states Wednesday the government plans to inspect their hiring records.

Businesses across the U.S. that rely on low-skilled labor are working to stave off Immigration and Customs Enforcement audits, which can lead to the loss of large numbers of employees, reduced productivity and legal expenses.

Wednesday’s surge in so-called silent raids drew criticism from both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and immigrant advocates.

It brought to 2,338 the number of companies audited by ICE in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 and topped the prior year’s record of 2,196. The audits, affecting such businesses as garment makers, produce growers and fast-food chains, result in the firing of every illegal immigrant found on a company’s payroll.

For employers, the audits can lead to both civil and criminal penalties. The possibilities range from fines and being barred from competing for government contracts to criminal charges of knowingly employing illegal workers, evading taxes and engaging in identity theft.

Employers of all sizes were notified they must hand over I-9 employment-eligibility forms, which contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth and statements by employees of their citizenship status. ICE didn’t identify the businesses because of “the ongoing, law-enforcement-sensitive nature of the inspections,” said a spokeswoman, Gillian Christensen.

Officials of ICE, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, said the audited companies operate in areas defined as “critical infrastructure and key resources,” including food production, information technology, financial services and construction. Affected businesses could include cargo handlers, caterers of food for the military and builders of dams and highways, said immigration lawyers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the past has refrained from making public comments about the audits. But on Wednesday, Randy Johnson, a senior vice president, said: “We are concerned the audits are being based more on a fishing expedition than firm facts.”

He added, “Because these audits can cost millions of dollars in lost productivity and attorneys’ fees, the government should move carefully and only when based on solid foundation that there is in fact illegal behavior.” ICE doesn’t reveal its criteria for deciding who gets audited.

The U.S. is home to about 11 million illegal immigrants; two-thirds participate in the labor force, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. They typically use a made-up Social Security Number or the identity of a legal U.S. resident or citizen.

Entire sectors have come to rely on illegal workers. Clothing maker American Apparel laid off more than a quarter of its factory workers, or 1,500 employees, after an audit in 2009. It later blamed the audit for a loss of productivity that brought it to the brink of bankruptcy.

Chipotle Mexican Grill, which owns and operates nearly 1,100 outlets, has let go hundreds of workers since an audit that began last year in Minnesota and stretched to Virginia and Washington, D.C. Restaurant analysts expect the company’s financial results to be affected as it seeks to hire and train new workers.

Illegal immigrants are the backbone of some sectors of U.S. agriculture. “Given the fact that, admittedly, 70% to 80% of our work force is improperly documented, ICE audits can eliminate that percentage of our productive capacity. You cannot stay in business,” said Tom Nassif, president of Western Growers, an association of fruit and vegetable growers and packers in California and Arizona.

Many employers say they don’t have the ability to police their work forces. They say they also fear discrimination lawsuits, which some have faced, for demanding additional documents from workers they suspect are in the U.S. illegally.

In the past, ICE agents have initiated audits in one region, and companies in the same business were unlikely to face inspection elsewhere. But “businesses can no longer assume an audit is isolated in one location. It’s spreading nationwide,” said Julie Myers, ICE chief during the Bush administration, who advises companies on immigration.

She said some companies are trying to do “proactive I-9 inspections” to ensure their work force is legal.

Larger employers have been increasingly targeted since the establishment earlier this year of an ICE audit office outside Washington.

Enforcement activity during the Bush administration focused on high-profile raids in which thousands of illegal immigrants were arrested and placed in deportation proceedings. Relatively few companies and their executives were prosecuted.

In contrast, the Obama administration has made employers the center of its enforcement strategy because jobs are the magnet for illegal immigration, officials say.

The strategy has been interpreted as an attempt by the president, who favors an overhaul of immigration laws, to show hard-liners he is cracking down on illegal immigration.

It draws flak from more than one part of the political spectrum. Advocates for immigrants say it forces workers to leave well-paying jobs with benefits for lower-paying positions in the underground economy.

“I-9 audits do not diminish the unauthorized work force. Instead, they disrupt operations and expand the cash economy, as workers find jobs with bad-actor employers who exploit them,” said Eliseo Medina, International Secretary-Treasurer of the Service Employees International Union.

Peter Schey, an attorney for American Apparel, called it “a senseless policy in the name of making a down payment on comprehensive immigration policy.”

Foes of illegal immigration, such as House Judiciary chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas), say the audits are ineffectual because they don’t result in deportations and enable dismissed illegal workers to find other jobs and displace Americans.

Rep. Smith introduced legislation this week to make mandatory the use of E-Verify, an electronic database run by the government, which checks the work-eligibility of hires.

Wendy Madden, a business immigration attorney in Montgomery, Ala., said several of her clients, in utilities and food production, had received notices of inspection from ICE, and were surprised because they have been participating in E-Verify. “The fact you participate in E-Verify doesn’t mean you won’t be audited,” she said.

HOUSTON: In an effort to stop scams that charge immigrants for bogus services, US immigration officials in Texas had sued two notaries public in Edinburg, accusing them of offering fraudulent immigration services.

The officials are stepping up efforts to prosecute con artists and educate immigrants about the schemes, according to an executive summary of the initiative released today by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The effort is starting in seven cities, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta , Baltimore, Detroit, Fresno, California, and San Antonio, Texas and will expand nationwide, according to the summary.

The scammers “target people who are among the most vulnerable,” said Edith Ramirez, a Democrat, one of the five members of the Federal Trade Commission, in a statement.

Criminals lure victims by increasingly using the internet as well as word of mouth, fliers and paid advertisements on the radio or newspapers, the summary said.

The Obama administration held a news conference today in Washington attended by officials from the citizenship and immigration services agency, the FTC, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Justice Department.

Often the scams involve someone posing as a licensed attorney charging immigrants to file for benefits for which they are ineligible or to furnish forms that the government provides for free, according to the summary.

A common scam in Spanish-speaking communities takes advantage of immigrants’ confusion with the word “notario,” the government said.

Republican lawmakers on Thursday signaled a willingness to tackle immigration reform measures, specifically those relating to skilled worker visas.

Led by Virginia’s Bob Goodlatte, the House Republican Technology Working Group released its list of top technology concerns relating to economic growth in the U.S.

Under the banner of “Ensuring American Access to the Best Workers,” the group said it would “examine current visa and immigration laws to make sure we attract and retain the best and brightest minds from around the world.”

In addition to skilled workers, the group announced that it would also focus on access to network spectrum, cyber security issues, intellectual property protections, fair trade agreements, tax code and regulation reform.

While the GOP has historically championed free trade, tax reform and decreased regulation, the group’s embrace of immigration — however limited — was hailed by reform groups as a step forward.

Rebecca Peters, the director and counsel for legislative affairs at the American Council on International Personnel, told Huff Post that the GOP agenda was “very encouraging.” Her business advocacy group sees the recent bipartisan political movement — including the president’s immigration speech in El Paso, Texas, last month and the 2010 Republican plan for job creation — as evidence that reform might be on the horizon.

Compete America Executive Director Scott Corley, whose advocacy group focuses on immigration concerns for skilled workers, said in a statement, “We applaud the House Republican Technology Working Group for emphasizing the link between access to top talent and U.S. job creation. We encourage the growing list of supporters on both sides of the aisle to turn their talk into action.”

This Republican embrace of high-skilled immigrants partially reflects a stronger relationship between the GOP and the tech world. Both sides have dispatched emissaries in recent months: Tech companies, including Google, have ramped up their lobbying efforts in Washington, while Republican congress members have lately sought an audience with high tech denizens.

Retaining skilled workers and reforming intellectual property protections are both issues of concern to tech leaders and Republican leaders are taking notice.

“A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk to employers and employees out in Silicon Valley,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). “They are on the frontlines of our country’s efforts to create new jobs, and they are concerned about the policies they are seeing coming out of Washington.”

Boehner has been well-compensated for the increased attention he’s paid to the tech world. In his visit to Northern California last month, he was estimated to have raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars at a Silicon Valley fundraiser in the home of HP executive Michael Holsten. Among those he met with were representatives from interest groups representing some of the Valley’s brightest lights, including Apple, Netflix and eBay.