Obama's Bay Area Visit Greeted by Protesters

President Obama, hitting the Bay Area Sunday to appear at a pair of pricy campaign fundraisers expected to raise millions, was also the focus of protests from activists - on both the right and the left - who hammered his jobs and economic agenda.

Tea Partiers on the conservative side, as well as a coalition of progressive black, Latino and Asian business leaders were among those who marked Obama's arrival Sunday in the Bay Area with protests as the president opened a two-day Western swing with seven fundraisers from San Diego to Seattle.

In the Bay Area, Obama will appear today at a public event to push his jobs bill - a live webcast town hall meeting starting at 11 a.m. in cooperation with the Mountain View social networking site LinkedIn.

But on Sunday, the president attended two high-end Silicon Valley fundraisers - the first, a reception at the Woodside home of John Thompson, chairman of Symantec, where donors paid $2,500 to get in the door, or $7,500 if they wanted a photo with Obama.

That appearance was followed by a lavish $38,500 per person dinner - the costliest ticket for any of his events on this fundraising swing - at the Atherton home of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. Pop singer Lady Gaga attended as a paying guest, according to the Associated Press.

The aggressive fundraising profile for Obama on his seventh presidential trip to California struck a nerve with executives in leading African American, Latino and Asian American business coalitions.

Len Canty, chair of the California-based Black Economic Council, Jorge Corralejo, chair of the Latino Business Chamber of Greater Los Angeles, and Faith Bautista, president and CEO of the National Asian American Coalition, in a public letter to the president, challenged Obama to "specifically request that each donor, at a minimum, match their donations to you with an individual or corporate contribution to create jobs."

The groups have expressed deep concern that the wealthy heads of tech firms in Silicon Valley - many of whom are writing checks to Obama - are lobbying hard for more H-1B visas to bring in qualified immigrant workers. But those executives have not made significant investments in job training programs or created an appreciable number of jobs here at home, said Yolanda Lewis, chief deputy of the Black Business Council. And, she added, they have failed to integrate their firms by hiring from minority communities, which are underrepresented in high tech.

"He's out here raising money and talking to these corporations who have the money and they're not hiring," Lewis said Sunday. "But in some places, our unemployment is higher than the highest levels for the Great Depression ... and we don't get stimulus funding."

John William Templeton, executive editor of blackmoney.com, said a recent study from the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council shows minority communities are still dramatically underrepresented in Silicon Valley. He noted just "a handful of blacks" were present for Obama's April town hall at Facebook in Palo Alto. LinkedIn, he said, "is likely to have even fewer blacks in the room."

Meanwhile, conservative Tea Party Express activist Sally Zelikovsky said members of her group would greet Obama's motorcade as he arrives at the fundraisers on the Peninsula.

Zelikovsky earlier this month hosted GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, who slammed Obama for providing Solyndra in Fremont with a $535 million government loan before it went belly-up. Tea Party activists have protested the administration's backing of Solyndra as an example of ineffective economic and jobs policies.

In a departure from all of Obama's past presidential fundraisers in the Bay Area, the White House said no local reporters would be included in the pool allowed to attend and cover the events.

Bay Area Labor Unions Demanded to Stop Auditing Business Payrolls

Bay Area labor unions demanded Wednesday that the Obama administration stop its increased practice of auditing business payrolls to check for illegal immigrant workers.

Using Berkeley-based Pacific Steel and Casting as an example, leaders from several unions said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement is wreaking havoc with immigrant families and local economies by demanding that employers provide it information about its employees.

Known as I-9 audits, investigators check the legal status of employees through the Social Security numbers and green card information the employees supplied to the business when hired. In many cases of illegal immigrants, that documentation is forged and the I-9 audits can determine who at a workplace is living and working in the country illegally.

ICE drastically increased its use of I-9 audits in 2009 when 1,444 businesses were audited, almost tripling the number audited in 2008, the New York Times reported this week. In 2010, the government audited 2,196 businesses.

Although the audits, in many cases, do not lead to the deportation of a worker, they do force an employer to fire the worker, harming the company, the worker and the economy, labor leaders said.

"These are silent raids," said Oakland Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, who also is the vice president of the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics, and Allied Workers International Union. "We know that this country was built by immigrants. These workers should have some rights."

Even employers are not pleased with the audits; many have said they disrupt production and, in some cases, force out key workers who have become valuable to the organization.

"It's terribly disruptive," said Elisabeth Jewel, a spokeswoman for Pacific Steel and Casting. "We have highly trained employees and to lose them is very damaging."

Pacific Steel and Casting was first notified that it was to be audited in late February when ICE sent a letter seeking information on the steel foundry's 550 employees. The company complied but has yet to hear back from the government.

In the meantime, the Alameda County Labor Council began lobbying local politicians to object to the increase I-9 raids. The group successfully won resolutions from the Berkeley and Oakland city councils that condemn the audits.

De La Fuente said he expects that 100 to 200 employees at Pacific Steel could lose their jobs as a result of the audit.