Democrats face a politically tricky choice over whether to pursue a compromise with Republicans on immigration reform that was recently floated by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

The Republican presidential contenders are willing to grant illegal immigrants legal status if they came to the country at a young age and served in the military.

It’s a tough election-year call for Democrats for several reasons.

Immigration reform has been a winning issue for them as staunch GOP opposition has driven Hispanic voters to support Democratic candidates in recent cycles.

Hispanic voters helped Democrats win tough Senate races in Colorado and Nevada in 2010. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) bolstered his standing among Hispanic voters by claiming immigration reform as one of his highest priorities.

During his State of the Union address last month, President Obama called for Congress to resurrect the DREAM Act, even though lawmakers say there is virtually no chance of it passing the GOP-controlled House.

Striking a compromise would allow Republicans to earn some points with Hispanic voters and lessen pressure on Republican lawmakers to support more comprehensive immigration reform.

Walking away from possible common ground, however, could leave Democrats open to criticism that they missed a chance to make incremental progress.

At a debate in Florida last week, Romney and Gingrich said they could support a scaled-down version of the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act, which Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to pass the last several years, would grant legal status to illegal immigrants who crossed the border at a young age if they meet certain conditions. The legislation, which has previously gotten a few Republican votes, has been criticized by many in the GOP for granting “amnesty.”

Romney and Gingrich, the two front-runners for the 2012 GOP nomination, say they could support it only if it were scaled back.

“I wouldn’t sign the DREAM Act as it currently exists, but I would sign the DREAM Act if it were focused on military service,” Romney said.

That clarification came soon after Romney had vowed to veto the DREAM Act, triggering criticism from prominent Hispanic Republicans. During the presidential debates, Romney hammered Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) for signing into law a version of the DREAM Act in the Lone Star State.

Gingrich and Romney would lop off part of the DREAM Act that would grant legal residency to alien minors who came to the country at age 15 or younger, live in the country for at least five years and complete at least two years of higher education.

Some Democrats are unsure whether they will embrace the Gingrich-Romney approach.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act.

“If you are willing to accept that military service is the kind of bona fide that credentials a young person to take advantage of college benefits, I’d want to explore what other kinds of service might also qualify with them before I wrote off drawing the line there. I’ll do a bit more exploring but it’s a good start,” Whitehouse added.

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), a leading Democratic voice on immigration reform, said he would prefer to pass the DREAM Act in its entirety, but would not rule out a compromise.

“My belief is we should try to pass the whole DREAM Act. As for what compromise might come about, that’s down the road,” said Schumer.

Other Democrats reject out of hand the GOP proposal to rewrite the DREAM Act.

“I don’t support that,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the lead Senate sponsor of the DREAM Act. “That will literally mean that those who came to this country at an innocent situation early in life have only one way to become legal, and that’s to join the military. I want men and women to join the military out of a sense of duty and patriotism, rather than to feel they are desperate and have no other place to turn.”

The day after the GOP presidential debate in Tampa, Fla., Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) introduced the Adjusted Residency for Military Service (ARMS) Act, which followed the outlines set by Romney and Gingrich.

Rivera said he first talked to Gingrich about the bill in November.

He said Democrats should support it because it’s the only immigration reform proposal that has a chance of passing Congress this year.

“Any Democrats who take a reasonable approach to immigration reform understand the realities we’re facing in the 112th Congress. If we want to do something to help young people in this Congress, this is the only option,” said Rivera, who has endorsed Gingrich.

“If Democrats want to take an all-or-nothing approach, there will be nothing. If someone is willing to die for America, we can give them a chance,” he said.

“I’m comfortable with that [the Romney-Gingrich position] and I think most Republicans are,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who backs Romney and is seen as a possible running mate.

Even if the Romney-Gingrich compromise passed the Senate, it’s unlikely it would pass the House because most Republicans in the lower chamber say the top priority on immigration is securing the borders.

Politically, the scenario of House GOP leaders breaking from their White House nominee would play well for Democrats just months before the election.

Meanwhile, immigration experts say Pentagon officials have tightened their application processes in recent years.

Gregory Chen, the director of advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), said illegal immigrants are currently prohibited from serving in the military.

He said military recruiters now carefully check Social Security numbers to make sure inductees are legal residents, a precaution not always taken in the past.

Chen noted that non-citizens receive expedited processing for citizenship if they serve in the military. He also noted that legal residents can win citizenship posthumously if killed in the line of duty, which can benefit surviving relatives.

“AILA would generally support providing a path to legal status, but this bill is very small in the sense that it will enable very few people to qualify,” he said of Rivera’s legislation.

Chen estimated that the Gingrich-Romney plan would only affect 1,000 people a year.

Rivera disputed that assertion.

“It’s impossible to estimate,” he said.

THE immigration crisis that has roiled American politics for decades has faded into history. Illegal immigration is shrinking to a trickle, if that, and will likely never return to the peak levels of 2000. Just as important, immigrants who arrived in the 1990s and settled here are assimilating in remarkable and unexpected ways.

Taken together, these developments, and the demographic future they foreshadow, require bold changes in our approach to both legal and illegal immigration. Put simply, we must shift from an immigration policy, with its emphasis on keeping newcomers out, to an immigrant policy, with an emphasis on encouraging migrants and their children to integrate into our social fabric. “Show me your papers” should be replaced with “Welcome to English class.”

Restrictionists, including those driving much of the debate on the Republican primary trail, still talk as if nothing has changed. But the numbers are stark: the total number of immigrants, legal and illegal, arriving in the 2000s grew at half the rate of the 1990s, according to the Census Bureau.

The most startling evidence of the falloff is the effective disappearance of illegal border crossers from Mexico, with some experts estimating the net number of new Mexicans settling in the United States at zero. The size of the illegal-immigrant population peaked in 2007, with about 58 percent of it of Mexican origin, according to the Pew Hispanic Center; since 2008, that population has shrunk by roughly 200,000 a year. Illegal immigrants from Asia and other parts of the globe have similarly dwindled in numbers.

This new equilibrium is here to stay, in large part because Mexico’s birthrate is plunging. In 1970 a Mexican woman, on average, gave birth to 6.8 babies, and when they entered their 20s, millions journeyed north for work. Today the country’s birthrate — at 2.1 — is approaching that of the United States. That portends a shrinking pool of young adults to meet Mexico’s future labor needs, and less competition for jobs at home.

If the number of immigrants is declining, what about that other nativist bugbear, assimilation? There’s little doubt that immigrants’ potential as economic contributors turns on their ability to assimilate. Fortunately, recent studies by John Pitkin, Julie Park and me show that immigrant parents and children, especially Latinos, are making extraordinary strides in assimilating.

Today, barely a third of adult immigrants have a high-school diploma. But the children of Latino immigrants have always outperformed their parents in educational achievement. By 2030 we expect 80 percent of their children who arrived in the 1990s before age 10 to have completed high school and 18 percent to have a bachelor’s degree.

But it is immigrants’ success in becoming homeowners — often overlooked in immigration debates — that is the truest mark of their desire to adopt America as home. Consider Latinos. Among those in the wave of 1990s immigrants, just 20 percent owned a home in 2000. We expect that percentage to rise to 69 percent — and 74 percent for all immigrants — by 2030, well above the historical average for all Americans.

Who will be selling these homes to these immigrants? The 78 million native-born baby boomers looking to downsize as their children grow up and leave home. Fortunately for them, both immigrants and their children will be there to buy their homes, putting money into baby-boomer pockets and helping to shore up future housing prices.

Indeed, with millions of people retiring every week, America’s immigrants and their children are crucial to future economic growth: economists forecast labor-force growth to drop below 1 percent later this decade because of retiring baby boomers.

Immigrants’ extraordinary progress in assimilating would be faster if federal and state policies encouraged it. Unfortunately, they don’t. This year, the Department of Homeland Security plans to spend a measly $18 million — far less than a tenth of 1 percent of its budget — on helping immigrants assimilate. Meanwhile, states with large immigrant populations are cutting the budgets of community and state colleges, precisely where immigrant students predominantly enroll.

How do we change course and begin treating immigrants as a vast, untapped human resource? The answer goes to the heart of shifting from an immigration policy to an immigrant policy.

For starters, the billions of dollars spent on border enforcement should be gradually redirected to replenishing and boosting the education budget, particularly the Pell grant program for low-income students. Some money could be channeled to nonprofits like ImmigrationWorks and Welcoming America, which are at the forefront of helping migrants assimilate.

Second, the Departments of Labor, Commerce and Education need to play a greater role in immigration policy. Yes, as long as there remains a terrorist threat from abroad, the Department of Homeland Security should have an immigration component. But immigration policy is all about cultivating needed workers. That means helping immigrants and their children graduate from high school and college. It means that no migrant should have to stand in line for an English class. It means assistance in developing migrants’ job skills to better compete in an increasingly information- and knowledge-based economy.

Thanks to our huge foreign-born population (12 percent of the total), America can remain the world’s richest and most powerful nation for decades. Shaping an immigrant policy that focuses on developing the talents of our migrants and their children is the surest way to realize this goal.

Washington has spent years trying to force-feed green jobs, to little good effect. So here’s a better idea: Expand the number of green cards, as in the number of immigrant visas for foreign-born graduates of American universities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

This could even be bipartisan. President Obama this week praised the latest report from his jobs council that proposed more such visas. And this week Idaho Republican Raúl Labrador, a freshman of tea party provenance, introduced a bill in the House to do the same. The evidence is overwhelming that if we let these young people stay in America, rather than sending them home, they’ll end up building new companies and tens of thousands of new jobs.

Consider the immigrant record on technology start-ups, which is summarized in a 2009 Kauffman Foundation study, “Foreign-Born Entrepreneurs.” Vivek Wadhwa, a Duke University researcher, found that in 25% of “the U.S. science and technology companies founded from 1995 to 2005, the chief executive or lead technologist was foreign born.” In 2005 those firms produced $52 billion in revenue with 450,000 employees. In Silicon Valley alone, the percentage of immigrant-founded start-ups was 52%.

Mr. Wadhwa found that 74% of these entrepreneurs held advanced degrees, and three-quarters of those who had advanced degrees had concentrations in science, technology, engineering or math. “The vast majority of these company founders didn’t come to the United States as entrepreneurs—52% came to study, 40% came to work,” he writes. The study adds that in 2006 the inventors or co-inventors of more than 25% of U.S. patent applications were from foreign nationals residing in America.

None of this is news to American industry. “Innovation requires innovators,” Darla Whitaker, a Texas Instruments senior vice president, told a House subcommittee last week. Many of the graduates her company recruits are foreign born. The long wait for a green card, she said, is “frustrating for them, limits employer flexibility, and diminishes productivity.” Many of them pack up and go home.

Here’s another bureaucratic wrinkle: India and China have a disproportionate number of such science and engineering graduates, but U.S. law says that any one country can only tap 7% of the total green cards available. This has pushed many of the most attractive recruits to the back of the line. Yet Mr. Wadhwa reports that Indian immigrants founded 26% of immigrant-founded start-ups in Silicon Valley in 2005, which is more than the next four groups from Britain, China, Taiwan and Japan combined. The law’s country limit means that the green card wait can be nine years for many Indians.

Mr. Labrador’s bill would create a special green card category for science, technology, math and engineering master’s and Ph.D. grads who have a job offer. There would be no quota caps, and company recruits would be fast-tracked through the visa process.

Opponents claim these foreigners steal jobs from Americans, but unemployment is low in industries that recruit these highly skilled workers. Everyone wishes more Americans studied science, engineering or math, but not enough do. For example, 55% of U.S. master’s degrees and 63% of doctorates in electrical engineering go to foreign-born students. Mr. Labrador’s bill would collect a fee from employers who sponsor these foreign-born recruits that will go to scholarships for American students.

Meantime, the U.S. has to compete for talent. “We’re finding a lot of these graduates get job offers, but when they find out how long it will take them to get green cards they leave and go work in other countries where they become our competitors,” Mr. Labrador says. The global competition for human capital is as fierce as it is for financial capital, and the U.S. can’t afford to reject either one.

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.

When Fidel Castro seized his cattle ranches in 1966, Domingo Diaz fled to Atlanta, where he scraped together a living mopping floors as a janitor. Eventually he saved enough to buy a grocery store downtown, where he and his son, Julio, sold Cuban specialties. Over the next decade they added four more stores. It was a family affair: Julio’s son, Rene, learned math running the checkout counter, and at age 15 he learned to drive (and haggle) by going to the market to buy produce to stock the shelves.

Today Rene Diaz runs Diaz Foods, which generates $200 million in sales transporting mostly Hispanic food products to restaurants and grocery stores in 25 states. The Diaz family now includes 370 employees representing “every single Latin country,” crows Rene Diaz, 49. “At least ten couples have met here, gotten married and stayed at Diaz Foods. And I can’t even count how many family members work here.”

Minority entrepreneurs like Diaz are playing a bigger role in America’s growth story. In 2010 immigrants accounted for nearly 30% of new business owners, versus 13% in 1996, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Atlanta, with its sprawling suburbs and endless strip malls, is an especially active hive.

Since the 1980s Atlanta’s Hispanic population has swelled, drawn from recession-wracked places like Texas and California. The 1996 Summer Olympics brought more construction and service jobs to the city. In the last decade the city, where half the residents are African American, has attracted a host of Hispanic and Asian entrepreneurs, and now boasts the second-highest percentage of self-employed minorities among the top 52 metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million. That–combined with a growing population, increasing household incomes and affordable housing–puts Atlanta atop our list of best metro areas for minority entrepreneurs, cobbled together with help from economist-demographer Joel Kotkin, author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.

Diaz’s market is vast–and expanding. Between 2000 and 2009 disposable income among U.S. Hispanics grew at an 8% clip, to nearly $1 trillion, versus 4.7% growth in overall GDP. Better yet, “Hispanics tend to buy from Hispanics,” says Luz Urrutia, president of El Banco de Nuestra Comunidad in Atlanta. Diaz has spent $250,000 on software to track purchasing trends and fields a team of six analysts to research new products appealing to a variety of cultures.

Mexicans, for example, tend to be brand loyalists, says Diaz. That’s why he struck an exclusive deal with Jarritos, a Mexican soda company, in 2008, which helped shore up sales in the latest downturn. “We were able to land customers who weren’t buying from us before,” says Liliana Bejarano, Diaz Foods’ vice president of business intelligence. The company now stocks seven different nectars, three of them (Sonrisa, Jumex and Boing) for customers hailing from different parts of Mexico. Diaz also ships five kinds of black beans. “They’re the same black beans,” he says. “But Hispanics want their black beans.” (Colombians, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about labels. “If a Colombian company says they have the most famous rice, I’ll say: ‘What’s the price?’” quips Bejarano, who formerly worked for McKinsey in Colombia.)

Twenty years ago Diaz Foods had a tiny $25,000 line of credit. Each morning Diaz would call his local bank to find out how much his account was overdrawn and then ask his drivers to pick up money from customers and deposit cash somewhere along the route. Today that line is $11 million.

Diaz still lives on low-single-digit operating margins–an even tougher game when commodity prices spike. In the last few months gasoline jumped $1 to nearly $4 a gallon, adding $25,000 more to Diaz’s fuel bill every week. “We need to get more penetration into existing customers rather than knocking on doors of new ones,” he says.

More nettlesome, Georgia has become a battleground for immigration reform. One bill, put forth by Representative Matt Ramsey (R-Ga.), would force companies to use a federal database to confirm an employee’s eligibility and also would allow police officers to ask for proof of citizenship during traffic stops.

Diaz says all his workers are legit and that most endure background checks. “There might be someone here who has fake paperwork,” admits CFO Eric Newberg, “but we can’t do anything more than follow the laws.” For extra measure last year Diaz hired a firm to conduct an I-9 employee-eligibility audit, just the second such review in the company’s history.

Visit Diaz’s 250,000-square-foot warehouse just west of downtown Atlanta and the beaming owner can barely contain his pride. Latin American artwork adorns the walls. Diaz’s employees have health insurance, access to an onsite gym (with yoga and Zumba classes), a 401(k) plan with matching contributions and subsidized lunch spreads five days a week, including strip steaks, paella and plantains.

Diaz insists relatives don’t get special treatment at the company. Nor, he adds, does he intend to walk away from what his grandfather started anytime soon: “I don’t run it like a family business, but I always want it to be a privately held business with family values.”

Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said that the vital part of this mission of U.S. Department of Labor was to provide the workers with training opportunities, which would not only lead to new career options but also to a stronger economy. She also explained that the purpose of the government’s financial assistance was to provide the Oregonians with necessary re-employment and retraining services required to procure good jobs in promising regional industries.

This grant has been awarded to the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development and is to be managed by the Workforce Investment Council of Clackamas County. Through this grant affected workers will be provided access to dislocated worker services, such as skills assessment, basic skills training, individual career counseling, and occupational skills training.

The study conducted by the Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development suggest that there are job vacancies in several fields, including medicine, human resources, business administration, criminal justice, and hospitality fields.

Owing to the closure of the corporate offices, distribution center, and retail stores of Joe’s Sports, Outdoor, Auto/Truck and More on June 15, 2009 many workers went unemployed. In a measure to compensate these workers, of the $1,137,425 grant announced, $863,865 will be released initially.

Further release of the approved funds will be exercised when the state expresses future need of monetary assistance. The initially dispersed amount is sponsored by the resources from National Emergency Grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The existing Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) will be automatically extended after six months. With this automatic extension, the eligible Liberians will now be able to continue working and simultaneously file their applications for new EADs. The new EADs will cover twelve months of the DED extension.

The Deferred Enforced Departure was actually planned to end for the Liberian nationals on March 31, 2010. But certain foreign policy reasons determined by President Obama necessitate the continual of deferring for 18 months, the removal of any Liberian national, or a person without nationality who last resided in Liberia, or who is residing in the United States under a grant of DED as of March 31, 2010 from the United States.

The Liberians who do not have a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as on September 30, 2007 are not eligible for the Deferred Enforced Departure. USCIS grants a TPS to eligible foreign nationals from certain countries or part of countries where there has been a recent chaos or disaster. The DED is not applicable to even criminals or persons who have been barred to Temporary Protected Status. Additionally persons on whom the United States shows interest to remove are ineligible.

USCIS, besides the automatic extension of the employment authorization for those Liberian nationals who have been covered under the Deferred Enforced Departure, has further planned to issue a notice in the Federal Register which will contain instructions for the Liberian nationals to acquire employment authorization for the rest of the DED extension.

More than 285,000 retirees along with their dependants will be covered by the new health plan. In addition a few of the active employees will also benefit from this plan. With regard to the new health plan, Ford Motor Co. has planned to contribute over $13.2 billion towards VEBA.

Ford Motor Co. based in Dearborn, Mich., had filed request for an exemption with the U.S Department of Labor to let the VEBA plan, receive, and hold ford securities in excess of the amount permitted from an employer under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The ERISA sets standards for pension and health benefit plans in private industries. Under this law the U.S. DOL is authorized to grant exemptions in favor of the plan participants and beneficiaries as well.

With this exemption been granted under the DOL employee benefits, the Ford Motor Co. will now be permitted to go ahead with an agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW) to contribute $13.2 billion in two notes.

During the transition period, the health plans and VEBA can repay each other the benefit payments that are paid by mistake. If there are any securities wrongly paid to the plan, the Ford Motor Co. also have an option to claim it back. The exemption has appointed an independent fiduciary to represent the new health plan. The trust that holds the assets of plans set up by Chrysler and General Motors will hold the VEBA plan assets too. The VEBA trust has separate retiree accounts for each plan.