By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times

August 2, 2010

U.S. immigration officials are boosting efforts to protect immigrant crime victims with increased funding and greater outreach to publicize visa opportunities for those who assist law enforcement in prosecuting their perpetrators.

The stepped-up efforts helped the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services approve the maximum number of visa petitions for this category — 10,000 — for the first time since it began reviewing them in 2008.

The so-called U visa grants temporary legal status to those who suffer substantial physical or mental abuse in specified major crimes and help authorities pursue the cases; after three years, visa holders can apply for permanent residency.

One of the visa recipients this year is a Mexican immigrant in Los Angeles who was caught in the crossfire of a 2006 gang shooting while selling corn on the streets. He is paralyzed below the waist after a bullet lodged in his spinal cord, an injury that deprived his family of its major breadwinner and caused his two children to quit high school to work.

The victim was afraid of testifying against the perpetrators but did so because "it was the right thing to do," according to Rosa Rodriguez, a paralegal who worked on his case for Los Angeles attorney Jessica Dominguez.

One of his assailants has been convicted, and authorities are pursuing cases against the others.

"I feel relief that my children and I don't have to hide from Immigration anymore," the victim said in a statement. "I am very happy that we are able to stay in this country together."

Alejandro Mayorkas, the immigration agency chief who previously served as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said the U visa was a critical tool for law enforcement and crime victims.

"What is especially important about this is that it provides relief and assistance to individuals who are especially vulnerable," he said.

Mayorkas said the agency has boosted the number of staff members who process U visa requests from two in 2008 to 45 today. The agency has also increased training sessions and outreach about the visa; it has held four so far this year and two more scheduled.

The outreach includes presentations about the visa requirements and application steps to law enforcement, domestic violence shelters, community groups and others. Among other venues, agency officials have talked about the visa at national conferences of sheriffs and state legislators.

The agency has also created a specialized unit to handle the U visas and other crime-related visa petitions in the Vermont Service Center.

Some immigration hawks have questioned need for the visa, saying that crime victims should assist law enforcement regardless of immigration benefits. But Mayorkas said law enforcement officials back it as an important crime-fighting tool.

In reaching the annual cap this year, officials nearly doubled the number of U visa approvals from 6,000 in fiscal year 2009. The agency will resume issuing visas Oct. 1, the first day of its fiscal year.

Steven Espinoza, a Los Angeles attorney who represents several U visa applicants, said immigration officials have significantly improved their service with quicker processing times and better information about the visa so both sides understand the requirements.

He said the visa has made a huge difference in people's lives. One of his clients who received the visa this year is a Mexican woman whose then-boyfriend broke her nose, pulled out her hair and hit their baby during a drunken rampage. Thanks to her cooperation with law enforcement, the man was arrested and deported.

"At the end of the day, we want crime to go down," Espinosa said. "What better way to do that than to have victims come forward with information?"

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-crime-visa-20100802,0,7859835,print.story

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By Anna Gorman and Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times

August 1, 2010

Reporting from Phoenix

Arizona has made a name for itself as the state with the harshest policies against illegal immigration. But as few as six years ago, this border state was among the nation's most welcoming of illegal immigrants.

Back then, its two Republican U.S. senators and one of its congressmen were among the strongest advocates of legalizing millions of illegal residents in the country. Mexico was the state's largest trading partner, and the governor boasted of her warm relationships with counterparts across the border. Both political parties courted the Latino vote.

Now the state government is fighting an order by a federal judge who last week stayed key parts of a law, SB 1070, designed to drive illegal immigrants from Arizona.

How did things change so quickly?

"The perfect storm occurred," said Mesa Mayor Scott Smith. "There was a combination of demographic changes, the introduction of a criminal element that didn't used to be here and the drop in the economy, which has put everyone on edge."

Now just about every prominent Republican here, including Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain, backs SB 1070 and opposes legalization for illegal immigrants. Mexican governors refuse to set foot on Arizona soil. SB 1070 author Russell Pearce, a lawmaker formerly dismissed by many as an extremist, is poised to become president of the state Senate.

"The anger is palpable and measurable by candidates for office," said Stan Barnes, a former Republican state senator and veteran lobbyist. "Anyone who wants to hold elected office here will first be questioned on it."

The state captured the national spotlight in April, when Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed the law, which requires police to determine the status of anyone they lawfully stop and also suspect is an illegal immigrant. It also made it a state crime to lack immigration papers.

Brewer said it was necessary to protect residents against drug cartels that smuggle immigrants across Arizona's southern border. Civil rights groups alleged the law would lead to wide-scale racial profiling.

SB 1070 polls well in Arizona, winning approval ratings between 55% and 70%. It has garnered majority support in national polls too, and legislators in more than 20 states have vowed to introduce versions.

But SB 1070 wasn't Arizona's first legislative assault on illegal immigration. Since 2004, Arizona legislators have passed measures that restricted illegal immigrants from receiving in-state tuition, made English the official language and dissolved any business that repeatedly hired illegal immigrants.

At the same time, the Republican Party in Arizona has moved to the right on all sorts of issues. Susan Gerard, a former GOP state senator who also worked for former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, was one of more than a dozen Republican moderates in the Legislature at the start of the decade. Now, she said, there are none.

"The Republican Party in Arizona, and really throughout the country, has taken giant leaps to the right," Gerard said.

About 8% of Arizona's population is made up of illegal immigrants, nearly all from Mexico, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. (Thirty percent of state residents are Latino.) Though the growth of that population has slowed somewhat in the last few years, the center estimates that about 500,000 illegal immigrants live in the state, up from about 90,000 in 1990.

The population increased after the federal government stepped up enforcement along the California border, slowing illegal crossings with more agents and a massive fence. That pushed traffic east — to the mountains and deserts of Arizona.

The boom in construction in Arizona also brought illegal immigrants, changing the makeup of cities and creating unease among longtime residents.

Smith, the mayor of Mesa, said the mostly conservative residents in his city started to express frustration with the number of day laborers, with the amount of Spanish being spoken and with immigrants working jobs traditionally held by high school students at fast-food restaurants and elsewhere.

"You have whole neighborhoods that have transitioned into primarily Hispanic," Smith said. "Whether right or wrong, people saw things were changing."

There is also widespread fear of crime coming to the state from Mexico, especially as a drug war rages to the south. Arizona has actually become safer since illegal immigrants started streaming in in the late 1990s. Phoenix is one of the safest cities in the nation, and crime has not increased along the border either.

Still, there has been a series of unnerving incidents not reflected in the statistics — gun battles between drug cartels on the interstates, "drop houses" in Phoenix where traffickers hold undocumented migrants for ransom and, in March, the slaying of rancher Robert Krentz on his property in southern Arizona. Footprints from the scene led across the border to Mexico.

The smuggling-related incidents coincided with an economic decline that fueled anger among native-born Arizonans. "Historically, illegal immigration always comes up as an issue when the economy starts to tank," said Lisa Magana, a political science professor at Arizona State University.

But one factor influencing the state in profound ways was President Obama's decision to name Napolitano his secretary of Homeland Security.

Barnes, the Republican lobbyist, said the popular Democratic governor had "a dampening effect on activism on illegal immigration issues." But in January 2009, Brewer, who had been secretary of state, succeeded Napolitano.

"If Janet Napolitano were still governor, 1070 would not be law," Barnes said. "Because she's not governor and Jan Brewer is governor, 1070 is law, and now the earthquake is being felt nationwide and worldwide."

Indeed, Pearce, who could not be reached for comment, had pushed measures similar to SB 1070 as far back as 2004. Napolitano vetoed those efforts.

Another lawmaker's bills, designed to ban a Mexican American studies program in the Tucson school system, had also failed. But this year Brewer signed such a bill into law.

Pearce, meanwhile, is proposing more legislation — to prevent the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants from becoming citizens and checking the immigration status of parents of children in public schools.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-arizona-immigration-20100802,0,3670123,print.story

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By Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times

August 2, 2010

It can be lonely spending the summer in a mainly vacant college dormitory. But it's a worthwhile tradeoff for Daysi Espinoza, who's grateful to have a room at Cal State Fullerton to call home.

For Espinoza and hundreds of other former foster youths attending California's public universities, dorm rooms provide a much-needed stable residence. While classmates can retreat to childhood bedrooms and their families' embrace, these students are often on their own and want to stay in their dorms during vacations.

"It's definitely important," said Espinoza, 19, who lived in foster homes through most of middle school and high school. "Personally, having guaranteed housing has helped me so much."

State universities are paying much more attention these days to the academic, financial and housing needs of the relatively small group of former foster youths who are enrolled there. About 700 are enrolled at UC campuses and 1,200 in the Cal State system, plus several thousand at community colleges who might transfer to those four-year schools, estimates show.

More schools are allowing — and paying for — those students to live on campus year-round. A recently enacted state law, which is expected to have a major effect in the fall, requires that all Cal State and University of California schools give former foster youth priority for campus housing, even if dorm space is limited. Universities also must work toward providing housing without vacation interruptions.

The law aims to avert homelessness and couch-surfing among students who are emancipated from the system at 18 and no longer eligible to live in state-supported foster homes. While some former foster children can stay with relatives and friends during college vacations, "the vast majority of our youth have nowhere else to go," said Jenny Vinopal, who runs programs for former foster youths in the Cal State system and is an official with California College Pathways, an organization that seeks to boost college attendance among foster youth statewide.

The prospect of guaranteed housing will send an encouraging message to younger foster teens that "if I work hard in high school, I can get my college education and have a place to live," she said.

Some government-supported transitional housing is available for former foster children. But young people can only stay in those homes for two years and the locations are not always conducive to college life. Some private foundations and charities, including the YWCA in Santa Monica, provide housing for such students, but space is limited.

"The fact is that foster youth are, in effect, children of the state and we are not good parents once they are 18," said Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), who wrote the university housing law.

The track record of foster teenagers in higher education is grim. Only about 10% attend college and less than 3% earn a bachelor's degree, according to state statistics. Even though financial aid is available to cover their college expenses, many have erratic high school educations from being moved frequently among foster homes and can't meet four-year university requirements.

They can more easily enroll at two-year colleges, where they would also get housing priority under the new law. But only 11 of the state's 112 community colleges offer campus housing, and those schools are outside of big cities, officials report.

Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly Pomona, UCLA and UC San Diego are among several university campuses that already offer uninterrupted housing to students who were in foster care. Those accommodations sometimes came in response to lobbying from campus groups, known as Guardian or Renaissance Scholars, that were formed to help foster students graduate.

UCLA junior Renee Tate recalled her panic in freshman year when she realized she might not have anywhere to live during winter break. An orphan, she did not feel she could return to Palmdale where she had lived in foster placement under the supervision of an older sister. UCLA officials put her in contact with the Bruin Guardian Scholars and allowed her to stay in the dorms year-round.

Tate, a 20-year-old sociology major, said living on campus during vacations can be "so quiet that it sometimes creeped me out." But, she said, she's delighted to have the stability. "For right now, this is it, this is home" said Tate, who works on campus and takes summer classes.

Ex-foster students at all UC campuses will get housing priority starting this fall, according to Judy K. Sakaki, the UC system's vice president for student affairs. It may entail moving students to a single hall during vacations for efficiency and safety, or making different arrangements for meals. "This is a population that deserves our attention," Sakaki said. "They are just fantastic students who have overcome incredible odds."

At Cal State Fullerton, which has a housing shortage during the regular school year, Espinoza and a roommate are the only occupants this summer in a comfortable four-person suite with a kitchen and a view of the campus arboretum. She has a few suitcases of clothes, some books and posters, a bedside Bible and a laptop. "I don't buy a lot of things since you don't know where you are going to move to," she said.

When Espinoza was 10, she left her native El Salvador for California with her father, an American citizen. After about three years, she was placed in foster care. She lived in Arleta, her third placement, during high school and graduated with good grades. She'll soon start her sophomore year; most of her university costs are covered by financial aid and extra help from the Guardian Scholars.

A double-major in Radio-TV-Film and Spanish, Espinoza works in the housing office, takes world history classes this summer and dances with a salsa group. Her dorm room "just makes life a lot easier. Everything is so convenient," said Espinoza, a U.S. citizen who hopes for a career in Spanish-language media and dreams of one day bringing her mother to America.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-foster-20100802,0,7131971,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Immigrant Maids Flee Lives of Abuse in Kuwait

KUWAIT — With nowhere else to go, dozens of Nepalese maids who fled from their employers now sleep on the floor in the lobby of their embassy here, next to the visitors' chairs.

In the Philippines Embassy, more than 200 women are packed in a sweltering room, where they sleep on their luggage and pass the time singing along to Filipino crooners on television. So many runaways are sheltering in the Indonesian Embassy that some have left a packed basement and taken over a prayer room.

And in the coming weeks, when Ramadan starts, the number of maids seeking protection is expected to grow, perhaps by the hundreds, straining the capacity of the improvised shelters, embassy officials say. With Kuwaiti families staying up into the early hours of the morning, some maids say they cook more, work longer hours and sleep less.

Rosflor Armada, who is staying in the Philippines Embassy, said that last year during Ramadan, she cooked all day for the evening meal and was allowed to sleep only about two hours a night.

“They said, ‘You will work. You will work.' ” She said that she left after her employers demanded that she wash the windows at 3 a.m.

The existence of the shelters reflects a hard reality here: With few legal protections against employers who choose not to pay servants, who push them too hard, or who abuse them, sometimes there is nothing left to do but run. The laws that do exist tend to err on the side of protecting employers, who often pay more than $2,000 upfront to hire the maids from the agencies that bring the women here.

The problems in Kuwait , including a lack of legal protection, are hardly unusual or even regional; this summer, New York became the first state to grant workplace rights to domestic employees in an effort to prevent sexual harassment and other abuses. But human rights groups say the potential for mistreatment is acute in several countries in the Middle East, especially those with large numbers of migrant workers who rely on a sponsorship system that makes employers responsible for the welfare of their workers.

That system is particularly entrenched in Kuwait, where oil riches allow many families to have several servants, human rights advocates say. And conditions for some workers here are bad enough that the United States Department of State in a 2010 report singled out Kuwait, along with 12 other countries, for failing to do enough to prevent human trafficking.

The report noted that migrants enter Kuwait voluntarily, but “upon arrival some are subjected to conditions of forced labor by their sponsors and labor agents, including through such practices as nonpayment of wages, threats, physical or sexual abuse, and restrictions on movement, such as the withholding of passports.”

The informal shelters here are open secrets and touchy subjects.

Embassy officials are loath to talk about them and generally do not allow visitors, citing concerns about the privacy of the women and a reluctance to antagonize Kuwaiti officials, whose cooperation they need in order to repatriate many of the women. The government runs a shelter for about 50 women, but few domestic workers know about the place, according to their advocates.

Kuwaiti officials say that an overwhelming majority of the country's approximately 650,000 domestic workers are treated well and are considered part of the families that employ them. Some bristle at the notion that Ramadan is more taxing.

Mohammed al-Kandari, under secretary in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, said many maids received extra money from their employers during Ramadan.

“They get benefits. Their expenses and food is paid for, and they don't spend anything,” he said. “They send their salaries to their families. Some work here for 15, 20, 25 years.”

But even many of those who are not abused can lead lonely, Spartan lives with little time off. Some employers forbid the women to socialize with friends, and the women themselves are often loath to spend much money in their free time so they can save cash for the families they left behind in their home countries.

The perils faced by many domestic workers were brought into sharp focus in recent weeks, when the local news media reported that a Sri Lankan maid who fled to her embassy said she had been imprisoned by her Kuwaiti employers, without pay, for 13 years. The Sri Lankan ambassador, Sarath Dissanayake, refused a request to interview the woman and said hers was an isolated case.

Also last month, the news media reported that a Filipino maid was allegedly tortured and killed by her employers, who the media said ran over her body with a car in the desert in order to make her death look like an accident.

Human rights advocates say the problem of abuse persists because it is rarely punished. Domestic workers are told to report offenses to the police, but the advocates say some employers quickly file countercharges, accusing the maids of such offenses as stealing.

Lawmakers have been discussing new provisions to protect the workers, including a law that would require employers to deposit salaries directly in bank accounts, but they have yet to act.

Talk of building a large shelter has circulated for years.

For now, the women rely on their embassies for shelter, along with some Kuwaitis and expatriates who risk prosecution to house them.

In 2009, embassies in Kuwait received more than 10,000 complaints from domestic workers about unpaid wages, long working hours and physical, sexual and psychological abuse, according to Priyanka Motaparthy of Human Rights Watch , who wrote an as yet unpublished report on the conditions of domestic workers in Kuwait.

Workers who flee harsh work conditions face the risk they will be charged with immigration violations and imprisoned, or face prolonged detention or deportation, Ms. Motaparthy said.

Alida Ali, a 22-year-old from the Philippines, described a different kind of punishment. She begged her agency to move her from an abusive family, and when her employers found out, she said, they threw her out of a third-floor window, breaking her back.

Ms. Ali recently had a metal rod removed from her spine. She has been in the shelter in the Philippines Embassy — which considers her story credible — for 10 months while lawyers pursued a case against the employers. She lost the case, and now she just wants to go home.

Bibi Nasser al-Sabah, who runs an organization that advocates for domestic workers, said it would take more than awareness campaigns to change the behavior of employers and agencies.

“This does not work,” said Ms. al-Sabah, who is a granddaughter of Kuwait's emir. “People will not change. It has to be imposed, through proper laws and strict rules — by actions taken by the government.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/world/middleeast/02domestic.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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U.S. Envoy Holds Talks on North Korea Sanctions

SEOUL, South Korea — A senior United States envoy in charge of implementing sanctions vowed on Monday to ratchet up pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons , amid high tensions following the sinking of a South Korean warship that Washington and Seoul blame on the North.

Robert Einhorn, the State Department's special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control, met South Korean officials in Seoul on Monday after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton 's announcement last month that the United States would impose new financial penalties on the North.

Details were still being discussed, Mr. Einhorn said. In the past, Washington had blacklisted North Korean individuals and companies allegedly involved in arms trade and counterfeit dollars.

Referring to North Korea and Iran, Washington's two biggest concerns in nuclear proliferation, Mr. Einhorn said the aim was “to increase the pressures felt by these two governments so that they recognize it's in the best interest of their countries to meet their international obligations and forsake nuclear weapons.”

The new American penalties would focus mainly on a “more effective implementation” of the “existing” international sanctions regimes, including two United Nations Security Council resolutions adopted after the North's recent nuclear and long-range missile tests, said the South Korean deputy foreign minister Lee Yong-joon.

The resolutions target the export of arms and other illicit activities North Korea uses to fund its nuclear activities, and the acquisition of luxury items that its leader, Kim Jong-il , hands out to the elite of the Communist Party and the military.

Sanctions have so far brought mixed results. They squeezed the regime's meager purse of cash but also prompted it to lash out with missile and nuclear tests. Fear of instability in North Korea also has led China to intervene with emergency aid, thus taking the sting out of the United Nations measures.

Decades of isolation and trade embargoes from the West, as well as a famine in the mid-1990s, have had little impact on the regime's grip on power.

Amid talks of sanctions, there are growing signs that China is bolstering its economic relations with North Korea, with new bridges under construction across their common border. Beijing sent a government delegation to Pyongyang last week as the United States and South Korea conducted a joint military exercise in a show of power against the North.

Also last week, the North Korean foreign minister, Pak Ui-chun, arrived in Yangon, Myanmar, a suspected client of North Korean weapons and nuclear technology.

Mr. Einhorn said the United States would apply sanctions tailored for North Korea and Iran because they were “very different cases.” He said that sanctions that might work on one country would not necessarily on the other.

Mr. Einhorn was joined on his trip by Daniel Glaser, the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes. The two were scheduled to fly to Tokyo on Tuesday for talks with Japanese officials.

Tensions have risen sharply since a South Korean warship was broken in two and sank near the disputed sea border with the North on March 26. Forty-six sailors were killed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/world/asia/03korea.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Border Deployment Will Take Weeks

SAN DIEGO — No boots were seen tromping in the desert sand on Sunday. No commanders were heard barking out orders to their troops. The National Guard, which officials had announced would turn out en masse along the United States-Mexico border over the weekend for sentry duty, was nowhere to be found.

It turns out it will take weeks longer to select, screen and train the 1,200 National Guard troops the Obama administration had said would be deployed on Aug. 1 along the border from California to Texas.

Administration officials explained that the announced date was always a starting point, the beginning of the process of deployment and not the day camouflaged soldiers would begin amassing at the boundary line with their automatic weapons, high-powered binoculars and filled-up canteens. As a sign that things have gotten under way, Jack Harrison, a National Guard spokesman, said Sunday night that about 140 troops have begun working in recent weeks on the "command and control" of the mission.

“Full deployment will take place over succeeding weeks,” Janet Napolitano , the secretary of homeland security, said in an interview. “It won't be 100 percent showing up all of a sudden.”

Once they arrive in the weeks and months to come, the troops will do what the thousands deployed during the Bush administration did: aid Border Patrol agents but not carry out direct law enforcement functions, Gen. Craig McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon, said at a recent briefing. Instead of capturing migrants and traffickers, the troops will serve as lookouts, assess intelligence and carry out other support roles, General McKinley said. They will join several hundred National Guard troops already there helping to stop drug trafficking.

Having the additional boots at the border — divvied up in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas — will free up the federal law enforcement officials who are focused on drugs and illegal immigration , Ms. Napolitano said. The yearlong supplemental staffing will give the administration time to hire additional civilian personnel, she said.

Of course, there is a political dimension to the deployment, which comes as the Obama administration faces fierce criticism, particularly in Arizona, for not doing enough to seal off the borders from illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

“It's for show,” said Tony Payan, a political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who studies the border. “It's the kind of climate we live in today, using war lingo, military jargon, using the National Guard, it seems like we're being more effective, being serious. It sounds impressive, but it's just 1,200 people.”

Doris Meissner, a fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and an immigration commissioner in the Clinton administration, said the number of border guards, no matter how high or which agency they belonged to, would never truly solve the problem of illegal immigration.

“During my time, 10,000 Border Patrol agents was considered the magic number,” she said. “Then it became 20,000. If it grew to 25,000 or 35,000 or even 50,000, that would be marginally better, no doubt. But illegal immigration is an economic issue. It's a market phenomenon. Legislation that deals with the problem as a whole is the only real solution.”

Jay Ahern, former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection , said he was not surprised that Aug. 1 came without any visible troops.

“You don't just turn a switch and have this happen overnight,” said Mr. Ahern, who was involved in Operation Jump Start, President George W. Bush's deployment of thousands of National Guard troops to the border from 2006 to 2008. “And these are not going to be people visible at our points of entry. They will be in remote areas and in support roles.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/us/02guard.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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A School District That Takes the Isolation Out of Autism

MADISON, Wis. — Garner Moss has autism and when he was finishing fifth grade, his classmates made a video about him, so the new students he would meet in the bigger middle school would know what to expect. His friend Sef Vankan summed up Garner this way: “He puts a little twist in our lives we don't usually have without him.”

People with autism are often socially isolated, but the Madison public schools are nationally known for including children with disabilities in regular classes. Now, as a high school junior, Garner, 17, has added his little twist to many lives.

He likes to memorize plane, train and bus routes, and in middle school during a citywide scavenger hunt, he was so good that classmates nicknamed him “GPS-man.” He is not one of the fastest on the high school cross-country team, but he runs like no other. “Garner enjoys running with other kids, as opposed to past them,” said Casey Hopp, his coach.

Garner's on the swim team, too, and gets rides to practice with a teammate, Michael Salerno. On cold mornings, no one wants to be first in the water, so Garner thinks it's a riot to splash everyone with a colossal cannonball. “They get angry,” the coach, Paul Eckerle, said. “Then they see it's Garner, and he gets away with it. And that's how practice begins.”

On his smartphone, Garner loves watching YouTube videos of elevators (“That's an Otis; it has an annoying fan.”) When John Stec, a swim teammate, met him two years ago, he assumed Garner wouldn't talk much. “But as soon as you say stuff, he says stuff back to you,” John said. “He knew everyone's name on the team even before he talked to us.”

This is why Garner's parents, Beth and Duncan Moss, moved to Madison from Tennessee several years ago. In Tennessee, his parents said, they were constantly battling to have Garner included in regular programs, going through four mediation disputes.

“After third grade there, I told my husband, Garner would go nowhere in life and the family would fall apart,” Ms. Moss said. “We had to leave.” At the time, Ms. Moss, who stopped working as a teacher when Garner was born, was attending autism conferences. “I kept hearing about Madison,” she said.

Families with children with autism and developmental disabilities move from all over the country for the Madison schools. Kristi Jacobsen, whose son Jonathan has autism, moved from Omaha several years ago. She and her three children live here full time, while her husband, who has a financial business in Omaha, commutes back and forth.

“It's a sacrifice,” Ms. Jacobsen said. “But Jonathan's made such progress. They give him every opportunity to be part of the community.”

Lisa Pugh's family moved from Wichita, Kan., for their daughter Erika, 11. A year and half ago Ms. Pugh took a job in Washington, but last month the family returned because, Ms. Pugh said, they missed Madison's schools.

Build it and they will come. Nationally, about 12 percent of students are identified as disabled, but in Madison 17.5 percent are, according to John Harper, who oversees special education. Mr. Harper said that 88 percent of elementary students with disabilities were fully included in classes, along with 81 percent of middle school students and 63 percent of high school students. Most of the rest have a mix of general and special education classes; fewer than 5 percent are separate.

David Riley of the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative said Madison was one of the “big three” leaders in successfully implementing inclusion, along with the schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., and Clark County, Nev.

While it costs Madison $23,000 to educate a child with autism (to pay for extra support staff members) versus $12,000 for a typical child, Colleen Capper, a University of Wisconsin professor, said inclusion was cheaper than segregating students.

For years this liberal university city's seven-member school board — which includes Ms. Moss, Garner's mother — has been unanimous in supporting inclusion. “This is not a board that separates our children; it's a board that believes every child should be educated,” said Marjorie Passman, a member.

Madison is changing, however: an influx of poor children, a migration of wealthier families to the suburbs. Parents of the gifted recently petitioned for more honors classes, and Ms. Passman thinks they're needed.

One parent, Laurie Frost, said: “I am not convinced that even the most masterful teacher — and we have many of them here in Madison — can teach effectively to the full range of ability and need we currently have in our public schools. Not at the same time in the same classroom.”

Budget cuts this year, with more expected next, could undermine the fine balance. “The danger,” Ms. Passman said, “is it becomes us versus them. And that's not good for anybody.”

Ms. Moss hopes not. Garner used to run away and collapse on the floor in despair if he had to change rooms. The schools, she said, have patience with him. In elementary grades his teachers learned to tell when he was about to explode from pent-up energy, and let him leave to ride an exercise bike. In sixth grade, he had his first class without an aide, band.

In ninth, when he went out for cross country, he'd get lost during practice, so the district hired a college student to run with him until he learned his way.

He has always been in general education classes, but usually with an extra teacher or aide. This year, he will be on his own in most classes, including English, chemistry and personal finance. He's a familiar figure, striding home from school with his swim bag, backpack and alto sax.

His development has always been uneven. He rides the bus downtown to his father's law office, but can't tie his track shoes; at meets his teammates tie them. Summer days start with cross-country practice at 8. (In summer, running and swimming are with club teams made up of his high school classmates.)

One day when his mother went to pick him up after practice, he'd run the 1.7 miles home. He rested up and watched a tape from the previous night's Milwaukee Brewers game.

“When they get a hit, they sprint,” Garner said.

“Yes, they do,” his mother said.

“Do you have to jog when you hit a home run?” he asked.

“Fireworks go off and everyone's clapping,” she said.

He wants to be a train engineer.

He and his mother drove downtown to meet Mr. Moss for lunch. Garner wanted “something and fries.” He knew the building where they ate was built in 1936 and the route of every bus that passed.

When his mother stopped at a University of Wisconsin building, Garner was excited to see an elevator. “A Schindler,” he said. “That's the original call button. Hydraulic. From the 1970s. I'm going to ride it up to 5, Mom.” As the doors closed, he could be heard narrating his own elevator video that he was recording on his phone.

His mother had forgotten which garage she parked in, but Garner knew and remembered the car was in Section N.

Swim practice was at 3. “Any new video, Garner?” a friend asked. And of course, there was fresh footage of the Schindler.

Later, when asked what Garner might become, Ms. Moss said: “He'd be most happy working around mass transit, airports, trains, bus stations. He'll need to be on his feet, not sitting. He likes to be around people, not isolated.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02winerip.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Ratify the Treaty

OPINION

The New Start treaty, the first arms control agreement signed with the Russians in nearly a decade, calls for modest nuclear reductions, from 2,200 deployed warheads to 1,550. It will make the world safer, guaranteeing each country continued insight into the other's strategic arsenals, with data exchanges and regular inspections.

The treaty has been endorsed by nearly every luminary in the Democratic and Republican foreign policy establishments — including Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker, Sam Nunn, William Perry and James Schlesinger — as well as all three heads of the nation's nuclear laboratories and seven former commanders of the nuclear forces.

That should make Senate ratification certain. But some Republican members — including Jon Kyl, James Inhofe and Jim DeMint — are still balking. Cold war habits and specious arguments die hard.

The critics' biggest objection is that the treaty will somehow constrain American efforts to build missile defenses. They point to a line in the nonbinding preamble about the “interrelationship” between offensive and defensive strategic arms and a provision in the treaty that bans the use of missile silos or submarine launch tubes to house missile defense interceptors. Never mind that American commanders have no interest in using either that way.

We are no big fans of national missile defense — the technology has yet to show that it can work. But the Obama administration is moving ahead with a limited program. And Defense Secretary Robert Gates has testified that the New Start treaty will impose “no limits on us.”

Critics also charge that the Russians can't be trusted, pointing to a recent State Department report that acknowledged several unspecified compliance disputes related to the Start I treaty. But it also said Russia lived up to the treaty's “central limits.”

What the critics don't mention is that Start I expired last December. If the Senate fails to ratify New Start there will be no inspections and no data exchanged.

Finally, critics claim that the Obama administration isn't doing enough to “modernize” the weapons it retains. If we have any complaint, it is that President Obama has gone too far to appease the nuclear lab directors and Republican critics on this point. He has promised $80 billion over the next 10 years to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex and $100 billion to refurbish nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

At a time of huge deficits and two costly wars, that is far too much to spend. The United States already has a robust and costly program to ensure the safety and security of its existing nuclear weapons for years to come. President Obama certainly must continue to resist pressure to build an unnecessary new weapon.

The political motivation of the anti-Start crowd is all too clear. One leader is former Gov. Mitt Romney, a once and maybe future presidential candidate who is firing up potential supporters with a charge that the treaty could be Mr. Obama's “worst foreign policy mistake yet.”

John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has set a committee vote for Wednesday. He has made clear that he and Richard Lugar — the ranking member and the Senate's most respected expert on arms control issues — are still searching for enough Republican backing to get the required two-thirds vote.

Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States and Russia still have more than 20,000 nuclear weapons. That is absurd. The Senate needs to pass New Start now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02mon1.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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Tribal Law and Order

OPINION

The notion of only one federal patrolman available to police a 2.3 million-acre beat presents ludicrously impossible odds for law enforcement. Yet that was often the case on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North and South Dakota in 2008, when the rate of violent crime was more than eight times the national average and the police force totaled nine members.

The Sioux reservation is part of a centuries-old scandal in which the federal government has neglected its treaty obligation to ensure law enforcement on the homelands of Native Americans. Violent crime rates remain more than twice the national average across the reservations, with women heavily victimized by rape and domestic violence.

United States attorneys, juggling mixed dockets and inadequate policing, have declined to prosecute more than 50 percent of reservation murders and 70 percent of rapes and sexual assault, according to Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota.

The Tribal Law and Order Act, championed by Senator Dorgan and signed last week by President Obama, requires the Department of Justice to create a new unit to track and deal with declining prosecutions. It gives tribal police more authority — they can now be deputized to enforce federal laws. It also allows them to arrest non-Indian suspects, and tribal courts will be able to sentence criminals for up to three years, instead of the present one year. The law will have to be matched with strong budget support to increase the numbers of federal and tribal officers.

The possibilities of the new law were glimpsed at the Sioux reservation after an earlier experiment in which the understaffed patrol of the Bureau of Indian Affairs was increased to a more reasonable force of 38. There have since been hundreds of arrests in the sorts of cases that have long gone unprosecuted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02mon3.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

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Arlington's Broken Trust

OPINION

The nation's obligation to honor its war dead has been shockingly and painfully dishonored at Arlington National Cemetery. We are all familiar with Arlington's iconic images: green hills, simple white gravestones and solemn military guards accompanying the bodies of soldiers and sailors to their rest. Now there is another deeply troubling image: a cemetery defiled by unmarked and mismarked graves; funeral urns unearthed and contents discarded. That is a trauma the families of the fallen should never have to endure.

Senator Claire McCaskill, whose Homeland Security subcommittee has been looking into the scandal since it was detailed by the Army inspector general, says the number of mismarked graves may be as high as 6,600.

In a report in June, army investigators said the cemetery suffers from lax management. Because the Army and cemetery officials insisted on building their own computer system — as much as $8 million and a decade later it's still not working — officials have to rely on paper records to manage more than 330,000 burial sites and as many as 7,000 funerals a year.

Senator McCaskill said those problems were compounded by the lack of serious oversight by Army officials responsible for the cemetery's budget and, for the last decade, no reviews of contracts and no audits. In testimony before the subcommittee last week, John Metzler Jr., who was superintendent for 19 years at Arlington, took “full responsibility” but also blamed unnamed staff members who “did not perform” and inadequate funding. His deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, refused to answer most questions about his role in approving millions of dollars of mishandled contracts.

Mr. Metzler has been reprimanded and allowed to retire with full benefits. Mr. Higginbotham was placed on leave pending disciplinary review, before resigning; officials say he will also draw retirement benefits. That is not accountability.

Army Secretary John McHugh has named an executive director to oversee management at all the national cemeteries and a new outside advisory commission. He still must appoint a top-notch permanent superintendent for Arlington and resolve the computer problem. Arlington's families must never again have to wonder where their loved ones have been laid to rest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02mon4.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

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Disgusting but Not Illegal

OPINION

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who has become one of the First Amendment's most adamant defenders, led the Supreme Court earlier this year in refusing to create a new exception to the free speech clause. With only one dissent, the court struck down a law that banned depictions of animal cruelty. The House has come back with a replacement bill that is an improvement over its predecessor but still misses the constitutional point Justice Roberts made.

Historically, the Supreme Court has recognized only a small handful of exceptions to free speech. As Justice Roberts explained in his opinion in April, the court has long held that government can ban obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement and speech integral to criminal conduct, a category that includes child pornography. When Congress tried to add depiction of animal cruelty to this list, the court balked.

Justice Roberts said the court cannot create a new exception to free speech by simply balancing the value of the speech against its harm to society. The First Amendment “reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the Government outweigh the costs,” he wrote. “Our Constitution forecloses any attempt to revise that judgment simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it.”

Almost no one would say depictions of animals being crushed or mutilated are worthwhile. The concept is so repulsive that animal rights advocates persuaded a very busy House to pass a new bill outlawing them.

Unlike the first one, the new bill excludes videos of hunting, trapping or fishing, or of normal agricultural practices. It bans any images of actual conduct in which animals are intentionally crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated or impaled in a manner that would violate federal or state animal cruelty laws. Most important, it simply declares that all such images are obscene.

Obscenity, however, is limited in American law to certain prurient sexual content. Cruelty to animals does not fit that category, and Congress cannot simply create a new category of obscenity. A better analogy would have been to child pornography, in which the act of taking pictures of children is itself illegal. But Justice Roberts said animal cruelty is not in that category either.

The First Amendment is a remarkably fragile institution that does not need more exceptions carved from its meaning. But attempts to do that arise all the time. A California case coming before the court in the next term attempts to ban the sale of violent video games to minors, though there is no recognized exception to the First Amendment for violence, either. These games, and animal cruelty videos, may be repugnant to many, but America's legal tradition keeps them from being illegal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02mon2.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

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