Family of Utah soccer referee who died holds vigil

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The family of a Utah soccer referee who died after being punched by a teenager player called on soccer players worldwide to respect referees to prevent the same thing happening to somebody else.

Family and friends of 46-year-old Ricardo Portillo gathered at his house Sunday for a vigil. They wore white shirts and held signs that said, "In Loving memory of Ricky." A picture of him raising his arms in victory was on a table surrounded by flowers and candles.

Police have accused a 17-year-old player in a recreational soccer league of punching Portillo after he called a foul on him and issued him a yellow card. Portillo died Saturday after a week in a coma.

His oldest daughter, Johana Portillo, said Sunday that she hopes to forgive the teenager someday but that it's still too soon.

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In strawberry fields, immigration reform holds sweet promise

By Lisa Baertlein and Gus Ruelas

OXNARD, California (Reuters) - California farm worker Antonia Espinoza would likely be throwing in the towel and heading back to her native Mexico to see her children, if not for the work of eight U.S. senators in Washington.

The bipartisan group of senators unveiled on Tuesday their proposal for immigration reform that would remove the threat of deportation for millions of undocumented workers and open a door for them to one day become U.S. citizens.

Espinoza, 32, lives with her U.S.-born daughter but is missing the other four children she left behind in Mexico so she could work in the strawberry fields in Oxnard, California, where pickers can take home $80 to $100 a shift on good days.

If not for the promise of legislation, she said on Tuesday, "I would be there right now."

"It's been too long. I want to see them now. I can't because, if this legislation passes, I'll have papers and I won't have to worry," said Espinoza, who is from Oaxaca, Mexico, and has not seen her children there during her latest four-year stay in the United States.

"I hope this time they're going to do it and not just talk about it," she said.

The proposed bill, which President Barack Obama endorsed on Tuesday, gives farm laborers like Espinoza a faster path toward U.S. citizenship than other undocumented workers.

It would give legal status to undocumented workers who were employed in agriculture in the past two years. After five to seven years, they could apply for permanent residency. Other workers would have to wait 10 years.

United Farm Workers union President Arturo Rodriguez estimates that a million farm workers and their families could gain legal status under the Senate bill.

"This is a huge step forward," Rodriguez said, adding that the workers would be able to buy cars and homes, engage openly in society and travel without fear. They also would have more protections on the job.

While the bill is touted by its Republican and Democratic supporters as the best chance to overhaul immigration since the 1980s, it will likely face a months-long battle, with the biggest challenge expected in the Republican-led House of Representatives.

Pro-reform advocates like Rodriguez have also said it is time for the United States to have a legal workforce to produce its food. A large part of the agricultural workforce, 60 percent by one estimate, is undocumented but is vital for growing fruit, vegetables and other crops and tending livestock.

In California, laborers from Mexico and Central America help make it the No. 1 farm state, with over $43 billion in cash receipts in 2011.

The state also supplies some 85 percent of the country's strawberries, and no place is more abundant in that crop than Oxnard, 60 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. Crews stoop in the green rows that stretch over the flat plain, plucking the red fruit with swift flicks of the wrist.

While the passage of legislation will allow them to stay and work, some workers appear to be just as interested in the ability to leave.

Adolfo Rodriguez Lopez, 41, has never returned to Mexico to visit his wife and four sons in Ensenada, Mexico, during the 12 years he has lived in the United States.

"When they get sick and you need (to) see them, you're not able to," said Rodriguez Lopez.

"Not only is it important (to) see my family, there is a certain tranquility of knowing that you're legally here and don't have to worry about the police," he said.

(Additional reporting by Charles Abbott in Washington; Editing by Mary Milliken and Philip Barbara)

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U.S. holds visa lottery for 85,000 skilled workers

By Sarah McBride

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. visa program ran a lottery on Sunday to award 85,000 slots for high-skilled workers just one week after the application period opened, the Citizenship and Immigration Service said, signaling companies feel confident enough about the economy to hire more foreign workers.

The USCIS held the lottery to approve petitions for the slots after it received approximately 124,000 H-1B petitions last week, including petitions filed for holders of advanced degrees from U.S. universities. The USCIS started accepting petitions for the visas just a week ago, on April 1 and stopped accepting them five days later because of high demand.

The last time the USCIS used a lottery this quickly to grant H-1B visas, a type companies must initiate, was in 2008, before the economic crisis hit. In April that year, when unemployment was around 5 percent, it received 163,000 petitions in five days.

Now the economy seems to be improving, with the unemployment rate nudging down to 7.6 percent last month according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as wages edge up.

The cap includes 65,000 high-skilled workers, plus a separate H-1B allocation of 20,000 masters and PhD graduates from U.S. universities. The actual granting of visas is made by the State Department, the final step for any H-1B applicant.

Petitioners are being notified by U.S. mail if they have won a slot, USCIS said. Those who have not will receive their petitions in the mail, along with their refunded filing fees.

The H-1B is a nonimmigrant visa in the United States that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. The duration of stay is three years, extendable to six years.

U.S. companies, particularly in technology, say they need the visas to fill vacant positions. But some worker-advocacy groups counter that the companies are using the visa program to hire cheaper foreign labor.

While the official quota is 65,000, the actual number of people who enter the United States on H-1Bs is higher because workers at universities and some other workplaces do not count toward the limit. The USCIS is still accepting petitions for those exempted categories of worker, it said.

Last year, the government issued 129,000 H-1B visas. Indian nationals received the largest number.

U.S. Congress is currently working on immigration reform legislation. Among the proposals is a revamp of the H-1B program that could raise the quota based on demand and eliminate the lottery.

(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

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Opposition holds big rally in Venezuelan capital

By Andrew Cawthorne and Deisy Buitrago

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan acting President Nicolas Maduro said on Saturday a centuries-old curse would fall on the heads of those who do not vote for him in next week's election to pick a successor to late leader Hugo Chavez.

Maduro's invocation of the "curse of Macarapana" was the latest twist in an increasingly surreal fight between him and opposition leader Henrique Capriles for control of the South American OPEC nation of 29 million people.

"If anyone among the people votes against Nicolas Maduro, he is voting against himself, and the curse of Macarapana is falling on him," said Maduro, referring to the 16th century Battle of Macarapana when Spanish colonial fighters massacred local Indian forces.

Wearing a local indigenous hat at a rally in Amazonas state, a largely jungle territory on the borders of Brazil and Colombia, Maduro compared Capriles and the opposition coalition to the enslaving Spanish occupiers.

"If the bourgeoisie win, they are going to privatize health and education, they are going to take land from the Indians, the curse of Macarapana would come on you," he added.

CAPRILES SAYS ONLY CURSE IS GOVERNMENT

Calling himself the "son" of Chavez, Maduro has more than a 10-point lead in most polls, although Capriles supporters are predicting a late pro-opposition surge as sympathy wears off from the former president's death a month ago.

Capriles, 40, a state governor, says Venezuela needs a fresh start after 14 years of Chavez's hardline socialism, and is vowing to install a Brazilian-style administration of free-market economics with strong social policies.

He ridiculed Maduro's latest speech.

"Now in their desperation, they're threatening a curse on the people. The people are with God, so nothing like that will happen," he told a rally in the western state of Tachira.

"He (Maduro) lied and threatened the people, saying that if they trust in progress, a curse will fall on them. I tell you here, all Venezuelans, the real curse is that little group that we are going to get rid of on April 14."

The opposition leader also continued to mock Maduro's twice-told story of having seen the spirit of Chavez in a bird that flew over his head and sang to him last week.

While to some outsiders, talk of spirits and curses may seem absurd in an election campaign, Venezuela's mix of Catholic and animist beliefs, especially in the south-central plains and jungles, is fertile ground for such references.

In his daily campaign rallies, Maduro has been referring constantly to Chavez and playing a video where the former president endorses his protege last year as his successor.

Puncturing Capriles' public admiration of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Maduro has also been playing a video of the former Brazilian president endorsing him too.

At his rallies, Capriles mocks Maduro as a poor imitation of Chavez. He says Maduro's track record during the president's sickness from cancer and after his death has wrought disaster on Venezuelans in terms of a currency devaluation and price rises.

Maduro, 50, was a bus driver and union leader who rose to become Chavez's foreign minister and then vice president.

Venezuela's vote will decide not only the future of "Chavismo" socialism but control of the world's biggest oil reserves and economic aid to a handful of left-leaning nations in Latin America and the Caribbean from Cuba to Ecuador.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

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