Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/339581
MANUELBALCECENETA—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, speaks about immigration reform on Monday in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. ByJimKuhnhenn The Associated Press WASHINGTON In the face of an unyielding Congress, President Barack Obama said Monday he will no lon- ger wait for Republicans to act on immigration and will move on his own to make policy changes in what has been a top second-term pri- ority of his presidency. Obama said he will refo- cus immigration enforce- ment onto a Mexican bor- der that has seen a tide of children crossing illegally from Central America. That means putting resources into deporting people who are the most recent bor- der-crossers or individuals who pose a threat to public safety and national security. "I take executive action only when we have a seri- ous problem, a serious is- sue, and Congress chooses to do nothing," Obama said. "And in this situation, the failure of House Republi- cans to pass a darn bill is bad for our security, it's bad for our economy and it's bad for our future." Obama said he decided to bypass Congress af- ter House speaker John Boehner informed him last week that the House would not vote on an immigration overhaul this year. A con- gressional leadership aide said Obama and Boehner spoke privately before an event last week at the white House honoring U.S. golfers who won last year's Presi- dents Cup, Obama said there are enough Republicans and Democrats in the House to pass an immigration bill to- day,andsayshewouldsignit. But Obama said he's waited for more than a year to give Boehner space to act. Obama said the thou- sands of unaccompanied children showing up on the border underscore the need to drop the politics and act on immigration. Obama's decision effec- tively declares that a broad based change in immigra- tion policy is dead for the year, and perhaps for the re- mainder of his administra- tion. Changing immigration laws and providing a path to citizenship for about 11 million immigrants in the country illegally has been one Obama's top priorities as he sought to conclude his presidency with major sec- ond-term victory. Obama's ability to under- take changes on his own is limited. He is instructing Home- land Security Department Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to present him with executive actions he can take without congressional approval by the end of the summer. Obama: I'll act on immigration myself WASHINGTON By Sam Hananel The Associated Press WASHINGTON The Su- preme Court dealt a blow to public sector unions Mon- day, ruling that thousands of home health care work- ers in Illinois cannot be re- quired to pay fees that help cover a union's costs of col- lective bargaining. In a 5-4 split along ide- ological lines, the jus- tices said the practice vio- lates the First Amendment rights of nonmembers who disagree with the positions that unions take. The ruling is a setback for labor unions that have bolstered their ranks and their bank accounts in Il- linois and other states by signing up hundreds of thousands of in-home care workers. It could lead to an exodus of members who will have little incen- tive to pay dues if nonmem- bers don't have to share the burden of union costs. But the narrow ruling was limited to "partial-pub- lic employees" and stopped short of overturning de- cades of practice that has generally allowed public sector unions of teachers, firefighters and other gov- ernment workers to pass through their representa- tion costs to nonmembers. Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said home care workers "are different from full-fledged public employees" be- cause they work primar- ily for their disabled or el- derly customers and do not have most of the rights and benefits of state employees. The ruling does not affect private sector workers. The case involves about 26,000 Illinois workers who provide home care for disabled people and are paid with Medicaid funds administered by the state. In 2003, the state passed a measure deeming the workers state employees eligible for collective bar- gaining. A majority of the work- ers then selected the Ser- vice Employees Interna- tional Union to negotiate with the state to increase wages, improve health ben- efits and set up training pro- grams. Those workers who chose not to join the union had to pay proportional "fair share" fees to cover col- lective bargaining and other administration costs. A group of workers led by Pamela Harris, a home health aide who cares for her disabled son at home, filed a lawsuit arguing the fees violate the First Amendment. Backed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the workers said it wasn't fair to make someone pay fees to a group that takes positions the fee-payer dis- agrees with. The workers argue they are not different from typ- ical government employees because they work in peo- ple's homes, not on govern- ment property, and are not supervised by other state employees. And they say the union is not merely seeking higher wages, but making a political push for expansion of Medicaid pay- ments. The workers had urged the justices to go even far- ther and overturn a 1977 Supreme Court decision which held that public em- ployees who choose not to join a union can still be re- quired to pay representa- tion fees, as long as those fees don't go toward politi- cal purposes. Alito said the court was not overturning that case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which is con- fined "to full-fledged state employees." But he said that extending Abood to include "partial-public em- ployees, quasi-public em- ployees, or simply private employees would invite problems." About half of the states require these fair-share fees. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent for the four liberal justices. Ka- gan said the majority's de- cision to leave the older case in place is "cause for satisfaction, though hardly applause." Kagan agreed with the state's arguments that home care workers should be treated the same as other public workers be- cause Illinois sets their salaries, resolves disputes over pay, conducts per- formance reviews and en- forces the terms of employ- ment contracts. "Our decisions have long afforded government enti- ties broad latitude to man- age their workforces, even when that affects speech they could not regulate in other contexts," Kagan said. SCOTUS Court: Public union can't make nonmembers pay STACY THACKER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Michael Grice, 57, speaks during a news conference held by Service Employee Illinois Union Healthcare on Monday in Chicago. Grice is quadriplegic and has had a personal care assistant for more than 20years. By Christopher Sherman The Associated Press EDINBURG, TEXAS When authorities found the body of an 11-year-old boy in South Texas, a phone num- ber for his brother in Chi- cago was scribbled on the inside of his belt buckle. The boy, wearing "Angry Birds" jeans, black leather boots and a white rosary around his neck, had come from his home country of Guatemala and apparently got lost in the Texas brush, just a few miles from the border with Mexico and less than a mile from the near- est home. While hundreds of immi- grants die crossing the bor- der each year, the discovery of Gilberto Francisco Ra- mos Juarez's decomposed body in the Rio Grande Val- ley earlier this month high- lights the perils unaccom- panied children face as the U.S. government searches for ways to deal with re- cord numbers of children crossing into the country illegally. "Down here finding a de- composed body ... we come across them quite often," Hidalgo County Sheriff Ed- die Guerra said Monday, adding that this was the first child immigrant his of- fice has found since he be- came sheriff in April. "It's a very dangerous journey." Separately Monday, Pres- ident Barack Obama an- nounced that he will no longer wait for Republi- cans to act on immigration and will move on his own to make policy changes in what has been a top second- term priority of his presi- dency. Obama said he de- cided to bypass Congress after House Speaker John Boehner informed him last week that the House would not vote on an immigration overhaul this year. More than 52,000 unac- companied children have been apprehended enter- ing the U.S. illegally since October, creating what Obama has called an "ur- gent humanitarian situa- tion." Most are from Central America and the vast ma- jority have crossed into the Rio Grande Valley in south- ernmost Texas. The surge in unaccompa- nied child immigrants has overwhelmed the Border Patrol here. The children by law must be turned over to the U.S. Health and Hu- man Services Department within 72 hours of their ar- rest, but their numbers have made that difficult. Many of the children sim- ply turn themselves in to the first law enforcement person they see, so Guerra said it was unusual to find a child in this more remote area — near La Joya, about 20 miles west of McAllen. The boy's body was found June 15. Investigators were able to reach the boy's brother in Chicago with the phone number on the child's belt buckle. It's not uncommon for immigrants to put rel- atives' phone numbers on their clothing because scraps of paper can get lost or wet during their journey. The boy's brother gave authorities his father's phone number in Guate- mala. With the help of the Guatemalan consulate, the father gave a sworn state- ment identifying the boy's clothing, including "Angry Birds" jeans, his boots and rosary. The cause of death has not been determined, but authorities suspect heat stroke, Guerra said. An au- topsy did not find signs of trauma and the patholo- gist estimated the body had been there for about two weeks. Until the family confirmed his age, authori- ties thought he was an older teenager. The boy's family in Hue- huetenango, Chiantla, Gua- temala, had last heard from him about 25 days before his body was found. At that time, he was in Reynosa, Mexico, waiting to cross the border. His father told au- thorities the boy was trav- eling with a coyote. Dr. Lori Baker, an an- thropologist at Baylor Uni- versity has spent years ex- huming immigrant graves along the border and try- ing to identify them. Ear- lier this month, she spent two weeks exhuming 52 graves at cemetery in Fal- furrias, about an hour north of the border. She made a similar excavation last year. Baker said she recalled exhuming an in- fant, a 2-year-old, a 6-year- old and a pre-teen. MIGRANTS Boy's death in Texas draws attention to the perils of immigration THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD, MIGUEL ROBERTS — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference on Saturday in Brownsville, Texas. N EWS D AILY REDBLUFF TEHAMACOUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 PHONE: (530)527-2151 FAX: (530) 527-5774 545 Diamond Avenue • P.O. Box 220 • Red Bluff, CA 96080 Support our classrooms, keep kids reading. 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