Venezuelan Henry Velandia came to the United States almost a decade ago to dance. The 27-year-old salsa dancer met American Josh Vandiver five years ago. The New Jersey couple legally married in Connecticut less than a year ago.

In 2009, with the support of a sponsor and before his marriage, Velandia applied for a green card. But instead of obtaining legal residency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) started a deportation process.

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was signed into law in 1996. It protects the legal parameters surrounding the definition of marriage at the federal level, which recognizes the union as a man and a woman.

While President Barack Obama has repeatedly said the executive branch does not support DOMA, federal agencies continue to enforce it.

"Pursuant to the Attorney General's guidance, the Defense of Marriage Act remains in effect and the Executive Branch, including DHS, will continue to enforce it unless and until Congress repeals it or there a final judicial determination that it is unconstitutional," ICE said in a statement this week.

With the help of immigration lawyers Lavi Soloway and Noemi Masliah, the couple began an effort to halt the deportation. Soloway has said the federal agency should focus on deporting dangerous criminals instead of separating families. He asked for prosecutorial discretion.

Velandia has since appeared in several immigration hearings and, on May 6, was granted a temporary 7-month reprieve from deportation.

Soloway indicated that on June 9, Newark, New Jersey, chief counsel Jane Minichiello said ICE had "reconsidered the request and decided to move for Administrative Closure because this case was not an enforcement priority at this time."

It was not until June 29 that attorneys Soloway and Masliah actually received the judge's order terminating Velandia's removal proceedings.

"We are celebrating the future we just got now that my deportation was stopped," said Velandia. "We had this enormous burden over us that my husband of less than a year would be taken away from me and we'd be torn apart. Now we are celebrating that we get to be together indefinitely in this country," added Vandiver.

John Morton, director of ICE, recently reminded in a memo that officials use "prosecutorial discretion" in specific cases. ICE emphasizes that its priority is to focus on dangerous criminals.

This decision could set a precedent for thousands of gay couples.

A study from UCLA estimates that about 36,000 gay couples are made up of a U.S. citizen and a non-citizen. Some activist groups in favor of same sex marriage believe the number could be higher.

The decision does not grant Velandia legal permanent residence, but the couple says it buys them time to keep fighting for their cause and other same-sex couples.

"Couples who love each other should stay together," said Velandia.

The Filipino award-winning journalist gave the commencement address for the Dream University’s mock graduation held at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

Vargas said, "It’s time. For me. For you. For your mothers and fathers. Sisters and brothers. For every American citizen who is forced to fill in where the system fails. And for all Americans — everyone who believes that you should be able to earn your way to success in this country with hard work and determination, who believes that every generation should have more opportunity than the one before it. For every one of us who pledges allegiance to the flag. For every one of us who calls America home. It's time."

They are the Jose Vargases from different parts of the country--children of immigrants who were brought to the US when they were minors that ended up undocumented, not of their own fault, they say.

Many of them are under deportation proceedings.

A Dreamer from Texas said, "Two years ago I was pulled over for a broken taillight and as a consequence I'm being deported. I am an American."

Another Dreamer from Michigan said, "I hope that Dream Act passes and Obama stops deportations."

The Dreamers' message to President Obama: Education not deportation.

Vargas said, "We need to elevate the conversation in this country around immigration. We need to challenge the press, the mainstream press in America, Latin press, ethnic press, all kinds of press in the mainstream to make sure this issue is covered and talked about in a bigger and broader way."

And as the conversation becomes louder and wider in scope, more undocumented immigrants are coming out of the shadows. They are pushing for the passage of the Dream Act, the proposed law that would allow undocumented students to legalize their status.

But coming out in the open means risking deportation.

Even Vargas himself said he may not be spared from getting deported. He said he is mentally ready for the consequences of his actions.

"I think everyone here faces a risk, all of us. I personally am taking a risk but in the same way that everybody here is taking a risk, so it’s not just me who’s taking the risk," said Vargas.

Senator Richard Durbin (D-Il), whom the Dreamers call The Father of Dream Act, promised them that he will do everything he can to stay their deportations. He also told them that he will meet with the President to bring to his attention these deportation issues faced by the Dreamers.

Durbin said, "I come here today with a sense of humility, asking your forgiveness because for 10 years I have not finished the job I started. But I’m not going to quit. I'm going to make sure Dream Act becomes a law."

With Jose Vargas' compelling story combined with the story of thousands of other Jose Vargases in the US, Dream Act advocates said the future looks a little brighter for the undocumented youth.

For more stories, visit http://www.balitangamerica.tv

Statement by Lavi Soloway, attorney for Henry Velandia and Josh Vandiver, and founder of Stop The Deportations – The DOMA Project:

“This historic decision by the government to close deportation proceedings against Henry Velandia allows him to stay in the United States with his American husband, Josh Vandiver, without the fear that they will be torn apart. This unprecedented move will save Josh and Henry’s marriage and end the threat of deportation, while Josh continues to fight for his right to sponsor Henry for a green card based on their marriage and the fate of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is resolved by Congress or the Supreme Court.

SUMMARY

On June 29 Henry Velandia and Josh Vandiver received the news that the Newark Immigration Court had granted a Motion by the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Chief Counsel, Jane Minichiello, to administratively close deportation proceedings that had been first initiated in 2009.

The decision had been set in motion on June 9 when the ICE Chief Counsel reconsidered a request that had been originally filed by the couple’s lawyer, Lavi Soloway, in advance of a May 6 deportation hearing. In that request, Soloway urged the government to exercise prosecutorial discretion in Mr. Velandia’s case citing on his marriage to an American citizen; the impossibility and danger, as a gay binational couple, of relocating to Venezuela; the changing landscape of DOMA including the President’s decision to cease defending the law because he determined that it was unconstitutional; Mr. Velandia’s good moral character; and his strong ties to his Princeton, New Jersey community. Although the government rejected this request at the time, the Immigration Judge post-poned the hearing on May 6 until December, giving Mr. Velandia and Mr. Vandiver a 7 month reprieve from deportation.

In a brief telephone call three weeks ago, ICE Chief Counsel notified Mr. Soloway that the government had a change of heart. ICE had decided to grant Soloway’s request for Administrative Closure because “the case was not an enforcement priority at this time.” ICE Chief Counsel notified Immigration Judge Alberto Riefkohl who granted the government’s Motion to Administratively Close proceedings on June 13. The decision was received on June 29.

What does this mean?

For the first time ever, ICE has decided that it would no longer pursue the deportation of a spouse of a gay American citizen. It has done so in the midst of active deportation proceedings, responding to months of relentless, high profile advocacy that successfully argued that this loving, married couple should not be forced apart only because of DOMA. As a result, the case has been closed and Henry Velandia’s deportation proceedings have been removed from the court’s calendar. While the move does not grant Henry any lawful status, it does mean that the threat of deportation has been removed. This historic move caps a nearly year-long battle waged by Josh and Henry as part of the Stop The Deportations campaign.

BACKGROUND

Henry Velandia, 27, is a professional salsa dancer and dance teacher from Venezuela, and Joshua Vandiver is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Theory at Princeton University, originally from Colorado. The couple has been together for five years, and after the couple married last year in Connecticut, Josh filed a marriage-based green card petition for Henry. The petition was denied in January solely because of the Defense of Marriage Act. After the announcement by the White House that the administration would no longer defend DOMA in court because it believed the statute to be unconstitutional, Josh filed a second marriage-based green card petition for Henry. That petition is still pending with USCIS.

For the past year they have lead a high profile campaign leading the Stop The Deporations-DOMA Project efforts to stop the Henry’s deportation which would tear them apart, destroy their marriage and lead to Henry being barred from the United States for 10 years.

If Henry and Josh were an opposite-sex couple, there would be a clear path to resolve to this very predicament. Even in deportation proceedings, an American citizen can sponsor his or her foreign spouse for a “green card.” However, because of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government cannot recognize Henry and Josh’s same-sex marriage for immigration purposes. Consequently, Henry Velandia is denied access to the typical marriage-based green card process.

After months of advocacy, on May 6 Newark Immigration Judge Alberto Riefkohl adjourned Henry’s deportation case citing the couple’s marriage, the pending marriage-based petition that Josh filed for Henry, and considering recent legal developments involving DOMA a related deportation case.

Just a month later, on June 9, Newark’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Chief Counsel, Jane Minichiello, contacted Lavi Soloway, Henry and Josh’s lawyer, and founder of the Stop The Deportations- DOMA Project. ICE Chief Counsel informed Mr. Soloway that ICE had re-considered its position and had decided to seek Administrative Closure of the case against Henry by filing a Motion with the Immigration Judge. The Immigration Judge tentatively set a hearing date for July 6 to consider the Motion, but the process moved more swiftly than expected. ICE Chief Counsel filed the Motion on June 10 and the Immigration Judge granted it on June 13. The couple received the decision by mail on June 29. It read:

"A Motion to close the proceedings administratively has been filed in the above entitled matter. Upon due consideration, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Motion be granted. Joint Motion is made part of this order by reference. Parties are advised."

CONCLUSION - Tens of thousands of binational same-sex couples will celebrate this historic victory with Josh and Henry. It is the first concrete step taken by the administration to prevent a married gay couple from being torn apart by a “DOMA deportation.” Lesbian and gay binational couples who are fighting to stay together in this country; couples who are separated by cruel, discriminatory laws; and couples who have been forced into exile—can all rejoice at this milestone. It is one more step in a long battle toward full equality.

STOP THE DEPORTATIONS – THE DOMA PROJECT is a campaign which was co-founded by the couple’s attorney, Lavi Soloway in July 2010 along with his law partner, Noemi Masliah. For nearly two decades, Soloway has been the most prominent attorney and advocate on LGBT immigration law and policy in the United States. He has worked exclusively in this field since co-founding the non-profit organization, Immigration Equality, in 1993.

More information on the Stop The Deportations - DOMA Project can be found at www.stopthedeportations.com.

The Social Security Administration said Friday that inflation has been too low since the last increase in 2009 to warrant a raise for next year. The announcement marks only the second instance without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. This year was the first.

Gerald Beninga, CEO of Active Generations, a senior service provider in Sioux Falls, said he's heard many seniors voice concerns about Social Security.

Annual cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs, are set automatically each year by an inflation measure adopted by Congress in the 1970s. Friday's announcement was triggered by the Labor Department's release of inflation numbers for September. The report showed that consumer prices still are lower than they were two years ago, when the previous COLA was awarded.

The increase for 2009 was 5.8 percent, the largest in 27 years. It was triggered by a sharp but short-lived spike in gasoline prices to higher than $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008. When the price of gasoline later fell - to less than $2 a gallon - so did the overall inflation rate. Seniors, however, kept their increase in benefits.

Sioux Falls resident Lurlene Runyan said she feels fortunate to have a pension to support her along with her Social Security. She said things have gotten a little tougher for her, although she said she works hard to manage her money. Now, she said, she pays more money for insurance than she does for food.

"I don't dare go without insurance," Runyan said.

A little more than 58.7 million retirees, disabled Americans and surviving spouses and minor children of enrollees receive Social Security or Supplemental Security Income. Social Security was the primary source of income for 64 percent of retirees who received benefits in 2008.

The absence of inflation will be of small comfort to many older Americans whose savings and home values haven't recovered from the recession.

Ken Chalmers, a veteran from Montrose, said he's concerned about flatlining Social Security funds, adding that he feels the government should focus more on helping its own people rather than foreign countries.

"There are a lot of people that really struggle, and they have to decide between spending money on food or medicine," Chalmers said. "The government doesn't know what it's doing."

The Laotian said he needed $320,000 and the fake Doe then sent him an application form. The form was skimpy compared to those used here -- it asked nothing about collateral or credit, but it did ask, "Are you a trustworthy person?"

The terms of the $320,000 loan were included in the packet with the application form. The rate was 4 percent and the term 15 years, with a monthly payment (accurately calculated) of $2,367. The borrower reported a monthly income of $2,000, but in the e-mail exchanges between the Laotian and the fake Doe, income adequacy was never mentioned as a possible problem.

What did come out in these exchanges was a requirement that the Laotian pay an advance fee of $950. This was a legal requirement insisted on by the fake Doe's legal counsel, who had prepared the most elegant-looking loan agreement I have ever seen.

The deal began to unravel (and the real John Doe entered the picture) when the victim decided to see if he could find the website of the Doe Loan Investment Company, and instead found me. On hearing his story, I did a little online research and found, not surprisingly, that the fake John Doe resided in Nigeria, the scam capital of the world.

This was not a message the Laotian wanted to hear. His first impulse was to enlist my aid in persuading the fake John Doe to deliver the loan that had been promised him!

It took awhile for me to convince him that nobody will make a loan of $320,000 to someone with an income of $2,000 a month, no collateral and no credit record. Legitimate lenders, furthermore, receive their fees at the time the loan is closed, not in advance.

BBB CEO and President Steve Bernas said, "Ironically, the increases banks are instituting because of upcoming consumer protection laws are being used by scammers as an opportunity to steal consumer identity information and use it to commit fraud later on."

What's an example of a typical scam? A consumer receives a call from an organization promising lower credit rates and the caller claims to need personal information such as a social security number or a bank account number.

According to Bernas, "Consumers should never give personal or financial information on the telephone unless they initiate the call, and know and trust who they are talking to."

Galvin, who has cemented his reputation as a tough regulator through investigations into auction rate securities and market timing, has given the seven companies until Jan. 26 to reply.

American Express (AXP.N), Bank of America (BAC.N), Charles Schwab (SCHW.O), Citigroup (C.N), Citizens Bank, Fidelity Investments and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) all received three-page letters asking them to identify any changes they have made to rates since May 2009. The letters went to major broker dealers who issue their customers credit cards themselves or through an affiliated bank.

Specifically Galvin wants to know if fixed rate cards have been changed to variable interest rate cards and what rate increases may have been imposed on credit card holders.

A study by The Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent nonprofit, found the median interest rate advertised by most credit card companies in July 2009 was 13 to 23 percent higher than rates in December 2008.

"Increasing fees and hiking rates on credit cards before the federal law fully takes effect in February goes against the intent of the Congressional act," Galvin said in a statement.

"When the credit cards, and the abusive new practices being put in place, are tied to securities broker-dealers, there is a question whether they are acting under the high standards of commercial honor and the just and equitable principles of trade," Galvin wrote.

Next month new regulations are expected to take effect that would make it tougher for companies to adjust their credit card agreements.

Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

A Fidelity spokesman said the company will respond to the request. He noted, however, that the company does not issue credit cards directly.

Spokespeople at Citi, Bank of America, Citizens, Charles Schwab and AmEx were not immediately available for comment.

In addition, monthly statements will clearly indicate how long it would take for a consumer to pay off his balance making only minimum payments. But the new laws give wiggle room for rate hikes when it comes to so-called variable-rate cards, which offer interest rates based on a financial indicator, such as the prime rate, which rises and falls with the health of the U.S. economy.

Floors: Consumer groups had complained that banks were fiddling with credit card rates that were supposed to be beyond the banks' control by instituting minimum rates or "floors."

The Fed agreed with the groups, so the floors will go away Feb. 22.

A recent Pew Charitable Trusts study found that more than a third of the largest card issuers had instituted minimum interest rates. In December 2008, only 10% of banks had such a floor.

The industry considers these minimum interest rates a way of accounting for the inherent risk in credit card lending.

But consumer groups said that minimum interest rates conflict with the law's intention to allow these rates to rise and fall based on fluctuations in the prime rate.

Pick a rate: The Fed also agreed with consumer groups that banks shouldn't have the upper hand when it comes to picking which prime rate should apply to an interest rate.

Some banks had adopted a practice in which they got to choose the prime rate to be applied, picking a day with the highest rate during a long period, such as 90 days. That picking practice gives banks more opportunity to ensure that a higher interest rate is applied.

"Instead of picking an index on a specific day, they'd take the index and say, we want the maximum interest rate for the last three months," said Joshua Frank, a senior analyst for the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The new Fed rules prohibit card issuers from such picking, at least for existing balances on cards. If banks want to try such a move with future credit card purchases, the banks would first have to give consumers 45 days advance notice, which officials say makes the practice less likely.

Feddis said losing the ability to pick the prime rate isn't a big deal for most banks, and only garnered them about an extra 50 cents on a $2,000 balance.

Opt-in: Consumers also will not be automatically enrolled in credit card programs that offer the option to charge beyond credit limits.

Similar to overdraft protection for checking accounts, such programs often charge regular monthly fees that consumers may not notice. Starting on Feb. 22, card issuers will be required to ask consumers if they want such over-the-limit protection on their credit cards.

Consumer groups called the new opt-in rule an unexpected coup.

The move could ding banks, said Feddis of the American Bankers Association. They won't be able to charge an over-the-limit fee, even if they accidentally process and clear a charge for a cardholder who is beyond his credit limits, the Fed rule stated

The Fed issued 1,155 pages of rules Tuesday telling banks how to comply with new laws regulating credit cards that go into effect on Feb. 22. In a handful of cases, in which the law was unclear, federal regulators used their discretion to go a step further to protect consumers.

"I was pretty pleased with that," said Nick Bourke, co-author of the Pew Charitable Trusts credit card study. "These floors simply didn't meet the requirements of the law."

The Fed will also prevent banks from automatically enrolling consumers in over-the-limit programs that charge regular fees. The Fed will also make it more difficult for banks to exert control over interest rates based on changing indicators, such as the prime rate.

Banking industry experts agreed that the Fed tended to side with consumers in creating the new rules implementing credit card laws.

"This demonstrates the Fed is trying to anticipate moves and err on the side of consumers," said Nessa Feddis, vice president and senior counsel for the American Bankers Association.

The downturn that started in December 2007 delivered a body blow to U.S. workers. In two years, the economy shed 7.2 million jobs, pushing the jobless rate from 5% to 10%, according to the Labor Department. The severity of the recession is reshaping the labor market. Some lost jobs will come back. But some are gone forever, going the way of typewriter repairmen and streetcar operators.

Many of the jobs created by the booms in the housing and credit markets, for example, have likely been permanently erased by the subsequent bust.

"The tremendous amount of economic activity associated with housing, I can't see that coming back," says Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz. "That was a very unhealthy part of the economy."

Now that door, too, has shut. With 1.6 million jobs lost over the last two years, the construction sector has accounted for more than a fifth of the jobs lost since the recession began.

For more highly educated workers, finance may no longer offer as many high-paying jobs as it has in the past. Thomas Philippon, an economist at New York University's Stern School of Business, estimates that the financial sector's share of the economy was nearly 20% larger than it should have been. Since the start of the recession, the financial sector has lost 548,000 jobs, or 6.6% of its work force. Mr. Philippon's estimate suggests there will be further pressure on financial jobs.

In other areas of the labor market, the recession accelerated job losses that were probably coming anyway. In November, there were 36% fewer people working in record shops than two years earlier, according to the Labor Department. There were 23% fewer people working at directory and mailing list publishers, and 46% fewer at photofinishing establishments. Those are jobs that, with the advent of mp3 recordings, Google and digital photography, were likely disappearing anyway.

But as the recession hurt already ailing businesses, workers were forced into a sudden adjustment rather than the gradual one they would have otherwise faced. The recession also provided companies with an opportunity to cut jobs no longer as critical as they once were. That may be particularly true of the secretaries and mailroom clerks that advances in information technology have made less necessary. The ranks of people doing office and administrative work have fallen 10.1% since the recession began.

"Those are the production jobs of the information age, and they're being to a substantial extent automated," says Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor.

The permanent loss of many jobs may keep the labor market from fully recovering for a long time to come.

Prior to the 1990s, jobs rebounded quickly once recessions ended. Payrolls fell by nearly three million in the deep downturn that extended from July 1981 to November 1982. But by the start of 1983, the economy was creating jobs again, and by the end of 1983, the U.S. job count had exceeded its old peak.

That was because more of the job losses were essentially temporary, with manufacturers and the like letting workers go with the implicit expectation that they would be hiring them back once the worst was over.

But since the early 1990s, jobs have been slower to recover from recession. After the 2001 downturn ended, job losses continued for nearly two years. It wasn't until 2005 that the job count returned to its prerecession high.

Productivity-enhancing technology and competition from low-wage countries like China made more job losses permanent. And it took time for new jobs to be created and for workers to acquire the skills needed to do them. In the wake of a far deeper recession, creating new jobs and retraining workers to do them could take even longer.

It is anyone's guess what those jobs will be. The Labor Department has done little more than extrapolate from recent trends. It expects growth in areas like health care, which has been one of the few bright spots. Given the exigencies of an aging population, that seems a fair bet.

One could also make the case that the U.S. is shifting from a consumer nation to a nation of producers, and that will lead to a resurgence in technology and high-tech manufacturing jobs.

But Harvard's Mr. Katz warns that past experience suggests such conjecture is likely fruitless. "One thing we've learned is that when we attempt to forecast jobs 10 or 15 years out, we don't even get the categories right," he says.

Google Inc. will stop censoring its search results in China and may pull out of the country completely after discovering that computer hackers had tricked human-rights activists into exposing their e-mail accounts to outsiders.

The criticism had started to sway Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who openly expressed his misgivings about the company's presence in China.

But the tipping point didn't come until Google recently uncovered hacking attacks launched from within China. The apparent goals: breaking into the computers of at least 20 major U.S. companies and gathering personal information about dozens of human rights activists trying to shine a light on China's alleged abuses.

Google spokesman Matt Furman declined to say whether the company suspects the Chinese government may have had a hand in the attacks.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Google allegations "raise very serious concerns and questions" and the U.S. is seeking an explanation from the Chinese government.

Google officials also plan to talk to the Chinese government to determine if there is a way the company can still provide unfiltered search results in the country. If an agreement can't be worked out, Google is prepared to leave China four years after creating a search engine bearing China's Web suffix, ".cn" to put itself in a better position to profit from the world's most populous country.

"The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences," David Drummond, Google's top lawyer, wrote in a Tuesday blog posting.

A spokesman for the Chinese consulate in San Francisco had no immediate comment.

Abandoning China wouldn't put a big dent in Google's earnings, although it could crimp the company's growth as the country's Internet usage continues to rise. China's Internet audience already has soared from 10 million to nearly 340 million in the past decade.

Google, based in Mountain View, said its Chinese operations account for an "immaterial" amount of its roughly $22 billion in annual revenue. J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan had been expecting Google's China revenue to total about $600 million this year.

Although Google's search engine is the most popular worldwide, it's a distant second in China, where the homegrown Baidu.com processes more than 60 percent of all requests.

Free-speech and human rights groups are hoping Google's about-face will spur more companies to take a similar stand.

"Google has taken a bold and difficult step for Internet freedom in support of fundamental human rights," said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil-liberties group in Washington. "No company should be forced to operate under government threat to its core values or to the rights and safety of its users."

It's "an incredibly significant move," said Danny O'Brien, international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet rights group in San Francisco. "This changes the game because the question won't be 'How can we work in China?' but 'How can we create services that Chinese people can use, from outside of China?'"

Many Web sites based outside China, including Google's YouTube video site, are regularly blocked by the country's government.

Google's new stance on China was triggered by what it described as a sophisticated computer attack orchestrated from within the country. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., praised Google for disclosing chicanery that "raises serious national security concerns."

Without providing details, Google said it and at least 20 other major companies from the Internet, financial services, technology, media and chemical industries were targeted. The heist lifted some of Google's intellectual property but didn't get any information about the users of its services, the company said. Google has passed along what it knows so far to U.S. authorities and other affected companies.

It does not appear that any U.S. government agencies or Web sites were affected by the attack, according to two U.S. administration officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

The assault on Google appeared primarily aimed at breaking into the company's e-mail service, "Gmail," in an attempt to pry into the accounts of human right activists protesting the Chinese government's policies.

Only two e-mail accounts were infiltrated in these attacks, Google said, and the intruders were only able to see subject lines and the dates that the individual accounts were created. None of the content written within the body of the e-mails leaked out, Google said.

As part of its investigation into that incident, Google stumbled onto another scam that was more successful. Google said dozens of activists fighting the Chinese government's policies fell prey to ruses commonly known as "phishing" or malware. The victims live in the United States, Europe and China, Google said.

Phishing involves malicious e-mails urging the recipients to open an attachment or visit a link that they're conned into believing comes from a friend or legitimate company. Clicking on a phishing link of installs malware -- malicious software -- on to computers.

Once it's installed on a computer, malware can be used as a surveillance tool that can obtain passwords and unlock e-mail accounts.

Google's unfettered search results won't necessarily ensure more information will be made available to the average person in China because the government could still use its own filtering tools, said Clothilde Le Coz, Washington director for Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog group.

"The Chinese government is one of the most efficient in terms of censoring the Web," she said. The blocking technology has proven so effective that it's become known as the "Great Firewall of China."

President Barack Obama is trumpeting a new White House estimate that his top economist calls "stunning": His stimulus plan has already created or saved up to 2 million jobs. The analysis is part of the administration's quarterly report to Congress on the controversial $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts he signed weeks after taking office.

Republicans have denounced the stimulus plan as an expensive flop, pointing to a national unemployment rate stuck at 10 percent and December figures showing the economy shed 85,000 more jobs.

But the report from the President's Council of Economic Advisers said the economy is a lot better off than it would have been without the stimulus. Citing its own analysis plus a range of private sector summaries, the council estimated the annual growth rate last year would have been roughly 2 percentage points lower, and there would have been 1.5 million to 2 million fewer jobs.

"That's truly a stunning and important effect", Christina Romer, the council's chairwoman, said in a conference call with reporters. "It has done exactly what we have anticipated it would do."

The report also said over half the stimulus plan's cash and tax breaks have now been spent or otherwise committed. Critics warned the cash would arrive too late to do much good.

On Friday, when the December jobs report was issued, Obama acknowledged a setback.

"The road to recovery is never straight," he told reporters. "We have to work every single day to get our economy moving again."

The president's visit to the training facility in the Washington suburbs is part of a renewed focus on jobs ahead of his State of the Union speech.

While defending the stimulus plan and its impact, Obama has sought to build support for fresh job-creation measures, including tax breaks for hiring, additional public works spending and incentives for weatherizing homes -- the so-called Cash for Caulkers program.

Some of these are in the $75 billion Jobs for Main Street Act that the House has already passed. The Senate is expected to take it up soon.

Obama has also signaled he'd like the job-creation to focus on the burgeoning market for energy technologies that also fight global warming.

The Lanham center -- run by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the National Electrical Contractors Association -- teaches electricians how to install solar panels and retrofit buildings with energy-saving automation. There also are courses on wind and geothermal energy.

Last week, Obama announced $2.3 billion in tax credits to promote clean-energy jobs, paid for out of his stimulus plan. He also urged $5 billion in future spending on green manufacturing.

"Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future," he said.

The White House jobs analysis said the actual number of jobs saved or created by direct cash grants comes to 640,000. But it stressed the figures are only current through the end of September and do not include "multiplier" effects as the increased spending ripples through the economy.

However, the administration's method of counting jobs has been controversial, and starting with fourth-quarter figures, it's adopting a new one -- giving up trying to determine if a job has been created or saved, and reporting only that it's funded by the stimulus. The change was ordered quietly last month in a memo to federal agencies.

The new rules follow analyses by The Associated Press and others that uncovered flaws that overstated the actual job numbers by thousands.

The administration says the new counting method streamlines the process and responds to complaints from grant recipients that the reporting rules were too complex.

Romer, meanwhile, said the stimulus is well on its way to meeting Obama's stated goal of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs. "We are very much tracking what we anticipated," she said.

The companies will pay about $7.4 million to rehab up to 12,300 rental apartments, and will set up a $4.2 million fund for disabled renters and homeowners across the country who want to redo their own homes, bringing the total cost to about $14 million, the housing advocacy group said.

"The A.G. Spanos Companies are proud to reach this agreement," Spanos' son Michael Spanos said in a statement. "(We) share the same goal: ensuring that people with disabilities enjoy equal access to housing."

The federal Fair Housing Act requires construction companies to build dwellings that are accessible to people with disabilities, and the lawsuit, filed in 2007 by five advocacy groups, accused the Spanos firms of failing to live up to the law.

Housing activists came across the problem after sending out a team of undercover agents to Spanos complexes in Georgia, Florida and California to masquerade as potential homebuyers. The team found dozens of doorways too narrow to accomodate wheelchairs and other design flaws that blocked access to the disabled.

"Sometimes you would find the kitchens were too narrow, in others you would find it was the bathroom, or sometimes accessibility issues in the parking lot," said Shanna Smith, president of the Washington, D.C.-based group. "We were pretty stunned that this was still such an issue in the United States."

During the negotiations, Smith said Michael Spanos met personally with civil rights groups and housing advocates. His father, Alex, one of the largest contributors to the 2004 campaign of George W. Bush, has retired from that aspect of the family business, attorney Michael Gurev said.

The total number of units that need rehabbing will likely be lower than 12,300, as will the retrofit cost, in part because the Stockton-based Spanos companies will try to recuperate some of the money from architects and designers, Gurev said.

The settlement was approved late last year by a U.S. District Court judge in Oakland, and the first payments to cover attorneys' fees and damages arrived a few weeks ago.

More offers poured in. In his first week in the United States, Mr. Nakao got seven calls about jobs to fill the two days he wasn’t working. He was soon earning $1,000 a week. Then, two years ago, the global recession hit. Work got more strenuous, and the value of the dollar had fallen relative to Brazil’s real, slashing the value of the $400 a month he sent to his family in Brazil.

Instead, he was counting the days – just eight more at the time of this interview – until he followed the 20 members of his family who had already left the US in the last two years to go back home.

It’s a calculation that many of America’s newest residents are making. For some, the US remains the best place to make a living, despite its economic woes and tougher stance on immigration. For others, the lure of home has grown, especially when home has escaped the depths of the global recession. No one knows how many Indians, Chinese, or Brazilians have left in the past two years. The US gave up trying to track emigration in the late 1950s. But estimates and anecdotal evidence suggest that for Brazilians, at least, more are leaving than ever before.

The outflow is leaving its mark on places like downtown Framingham, Mass. The Boston suburb, founded in the 1600s by English settlers, began to acquire its Latin flair in the late 1990s when placards in Portuguese and the green, yellow, and blue of the Brazilian flag began popping up in once-vacant downtown storefronts. By mid-2005, one-quarter of Framingham’s residents was foreign-born, the vast majority of them Brazilian. An estimated 70 percent of the stores downtown are Brazilian-owned.

In the past two years, however, the number of Brazilians living here has dwindled. Local estimates vary widely – up to 40 percent have left, according to the owner of one prominent local flower shop.

“There’s [fewer] immigrants out on the streets,” says Gilberto Yoshida, president of Chang Express, which has been selling plane tickets to South America for 16 years. His company saw a “tremendous spike” in one-way tickets to Brazil sold last winter, which is when seasonal construction and outdoor work tend to dry up. What is clear is that almost no new immigrants are coming in.

“Zero. Zero. Zero. No one is coming from Brazil,” says Manuel Barilio, as he counts the handwritten entries in his spiral notebook where immigrants register to say they’re looking for work. Mr. Barilio, director of the Bom Samaritano social services center in Framingham, says he now gets at most a handful of entries each day.

The change is evident statewide. Massachusetts, once a top destination for Brazilian immigrants, along with Florida, New Jersey, and New York, used to receive about 50,000 a year during the boom years, says Fausto da Rocha, executive director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Allston, Mass. In the past two years, about 17,000 of the state’s approximately 200,000 Brazilians have gone back home, he estimates.

He expects up to 7,000 to decamp this year – and more in 2010 unless the US passes immigration reform that allows illegal immigrants to work in the US.
“The economy and immigration crackdown – that’s what pushed the Brazilians back,” Mr. da Rocha says. During the first half of the decade, Brazilians were the second-fastest-growing group of illegal immigrants to the US (behind Indians), according to Alan Marcus, a professor of
geography at Towson University in Maryland.

This isn’t the first time reverse migration has picked up during a time of economic change. In the 1990s, Irish immigrants returned home to participate in that country’s economic boom. A surge of Mexican immigrants left the US in the 1930s, and the number of Italians leaving then was far greater than those coming in, says Donna Gabbacia, who teaches immigration history at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. After peaking at 14 million in 1930, the number of foreign-born in the US dropped every decade through 1970 – initially because of the economy but also because of stringent immigration quotas, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a nonpartisan research organization in Washington.

“I think it’s perfectly possible [the foreign-born population] could shrink” again, Professor Gabbacia says, depending on the economy and changes to US immigration and refugee policies. It’s wrong to think “that once you get here, you stay here.”

The drop in immigrants has hurt some of Framingham’s businesses. In the first half of the decade, South Exchange in downtown Framingham handled an average of 10 money transfers a day. That’s dropped to fewer than four now. So in May, manager Renato Alves diversified into selling airline tickets.

“Tickets are more business to deal with because people are leaving,” he says. He says he’s already gotten some 200 calls about flights and sells three one-way tickets for every round trip one sold.

Down the street, an employee of Made in Brazil Express also says most of her company’s ticket sales have been one-way trips to Brazil.

“If [Brazilians] leave, if they’re passing through a difficult time, we also are going to be,” says Nubia Gaseta, president of a local business association. Her own company, which provides flowers for events and gifts, saw sales fall 30 percent two years ago and another 50 percent in the past year.

Brazilians don’t necessarily represent the vanguard of a larger migrant outflow. Other Latinos have not begun pulling up stakes by and large, points out Aaron Terrazas, an MPI policy analyst. One reason: Most of their home countries can’t match Brazil’s robust growth, which is drawing migrants back. (A typical estimate is that an immigrant can earn in one week in the US what he could earn in four in Brazil, says Maxine Margolis, a retired anthropologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. It would take some 10 weeks in Mexico.)

Comparisons with reverse migration during the De­pres­sion are overblown, says Mr. Terrazas. The key now is mobility. “We’re in this age where there’s so much movement,” he says. “It’s easier and cheaper.”

Nakao is proof of that. He didn’t know what he would do when he got back to Brazil. He might join his brothers, who had already returned and work as mechanics in Brasília. He might farm in the north.

Will he come to the US again? “I want to go back to stay,” he says. “But I don’t know how things will

"Our survey clearly shows that Mexicans are pretty unhappy with direction of their country," says Richard Wike, the associate director of the Global Attitudes Project that carried out the Pew study.

Their number one concern? Crime. Eighty-one percent of those surveyed say it is a "very big" problem, followed by economic issues (75 percent) and illegal drugs (73 percent). Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed, in face-to-face interviews that took place in late May and early June, say the country is on the wrong track – up ten percentage points from the year before – and 69 percent say the economy is in bad shape.

US census data, released Monday, reports a dip in the overall foreign-born population, from 12.6 percent of the population in 2007 at just over 38 million to 12.5 percent last year, when it stood at just under 38 million. Four of ten Pew respondents also said they know someone who left for the US but returned because they couldn't find a job.

Brazilian immigrants were the second-fastest growing illegal population in the US – until the recession hit, and many turned around