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29 February, 2008

Tougher British system now up

Employers who hire illegal immigrants can be fined 10,000 pounds per worker from today in cases involving negligence, compared with previous figure of 5,000. If the employer acts knowingly the penalty could be an unlimited fine or jail. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, described the moves, which include a points-based immigration system for people from outside the European Union, as "the biggest changes to British immigration policy in a generation".

Highly skilled migrants who wish to extend their stay will have to have suitable employment. The points-based system will be tested for highly skilled migrants applying from India in April, and extended to the rest of the world by the summer. The system will then be extended to skilled workers with a job offer, students, and temporary workers. A tier for low-skilled workers is not planned while vacancies can be filled by migrants from Eastern Europe.

The system puts in question the scheme under which Commonweatlh citizens with a British grandparent are allowed to settle in this country. The Labour MP Austin Mitchell said that any proposal to scrap "ancestral visas" would cause anger.

Source



Top Democrats trying to block the SAVE bill

("Secure America through Verification and Enforcement")

For months, leading Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chief Rahm Emanuel have tried to talk tough on illegal immigration. Mr. Emanuel told The Washington Post last year that immigration is "the third rail of American politics," adding that "anyone who doesn't realize that isn't with the American people," earning himself angry denunciations from the far-left fringe. Last month, Mrs. Pelosi joined House Minority Leader John Boehner in announcing that the House-passed economic stimulus bill would "not allow any taxpayer funds to be distributed to illegals." The Democratic leadership's efforts to sound tough on illegal immigration have created serious friction with some members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which believes the Democratic leadership is too timid about pushing for amnesty legislation.

If senior Democrats were really serious about a get-tough approach toward illegal immigration, we would be urging the Republican minority to reach across the aisle and work with the Democratic leadership to come up with a genuine bipartisan solution. But unfortunately, the Democrats are putting together an elaborate con job: using tough-sounding rhetoric while working behind the scenes with open-borders advocates in the business community to win support from firms that have become very dependent on cheap foreign labor. The goal of these Democrats - and possibly the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well - is to defeat a bipartisan bill that takes a no-amnesty, enforcement-oriented approach to illegal immigration. Specifically, they are very worried about the fact that a growing number of moderate and conservative Republicans and Democrats (and even a few liberals) are cosponsoring the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act, H.R. 4088, introduced by Rep. Heath Shuler, North Carolina Democrat.

The SAVE Act is an omnibus bill that would strengthen border security and require that employers verify that their workers are legally present in the United States. Forty-seven Democrats and 89 Republicans are cosponsoring the Shuler bill, which is currently bottled up in the House Judiciary Committee, where liberals like Rep. Zoe Lofgren, California Democrat and chairwoman of the Immigration Subcommittee, will work to ensure that it stays there. Cosponsors range from conservative Republicans like Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colorado); Rep. Brian Bilbray (California), chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus; and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (California) to moderate and liberal Democrats like Rep. Mark Udall of Colorado, Reps. Sanford Bishop of Georgia and Artur Davis of Alabama (both members of the Congressional Black Caucus); and Rep. Ciro Rodriguez of Texas, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Right now, Republican supporters of H.R. 4088 are circulating a discharge petition in an effort to bring the bill to the House floor for a vote. They need 218 members' signatures, meaning that at least 20 Democrats would have to take the supreme act of rebellion: directly defying Mrs. Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and the rest of the party leadership to bring to a vote legislation that the leadership wants no part of. Senior Democrats, worried that they may not be able to keep the bill tied up in committee, have come up with a Plan B - muddling the issue by attaching a killer amendment to the Shuler bill, which would come in the form of an amendment proposed by Rep. Joe Baca, California Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

The Baca Amendment would give illegal aliens who pass a background check a "five-year temporary worker permit" that expires on Dec. 31, 2012. It would also provide employers who hired illegal aliens "safe harbor" (apparently some measure of immunity from prosecution) for past hiring of illegal aliens. If Mr. Shuler gets enough signatures to force his bill to the floor to be debated, Democrats hope to neuter it by attaching the Baca Amendment. If Mr. Baca's proposal were to become law, open-borders advocates could come back later and pass legislation putting these illegals on a path to citizenship. While not endorsing the Baca Amendment, a senior official with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told Congressional Quarterly that he believed there was "some kind of deal in the works."

Fortunately, not everyone in the business community is pushing for amnesty. The National Federation of Independent Business, a leading group representing small businesses, has endorsed Mr. Shuler's bill as drafted. "I can't believe the leadership would be able to get any benefit from that," Mr. Bilbray says of Mrs. Pelosi's efforts to derail the SAVE Act with amnesty legislation. "What happened last summer," with the defeat of the Senate amnesty bill, "should be a warning," he told The Washington Times.

Source





28 February, 2008

The barely sane U.S. immigration bureaucracy again

It seems counterintuitive. The government pulls people suspected of being here illegally out of airplane lines and then pays to detain, prosecute and deport them to the country they were headed to in the first place. Public defenders say it's a colossal waste of time and taxpayer money. "What's silly about this is that they are on their way home. They have gotten the message that they shouldn't be here," said Houston's Federal Public Defender Marjorie Meyers. "It's not cost-effective."

Not true, says Houston's U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle. The people they are prosecuting are repeat violators of U.S. immigration laws and it's not only necessary, but also efficient, to stop them and prosecute them, he said. "We had already expended some time, effort and money before to institute deportation," DeGabrielle said. To allow them to come back into the country without proper permission and then just let them leave would minimize what the government is trying to accomplish, he said. "We feel it's definitely worth the resources to hold these people accountable," DeGabrielle said.

It's not the number of people who've been detained and prosecuted that has public defenders most concerned. The numbers have been relatively small. But a trend could be developing: five cases since July, four in the past three months. All five had been deported previously, had no criminal convictions and were stopped and detained by Customs and Border Protection officials at Bush Intercontinental Airport while trying to board planes to leave the country. The four men and one woman were heading south - to Mexico, Honduras or El Salvador. All were accused of the felony of re-entering the United States illegally after their prior deportation. A felony record will make it difficult for them to ever get legal permission to come back to this country. DeGabrielle said there is no new policy, and the cluster of people stopped while leaving the country, at least four of them just flying through Houston making a connection, is a coincidence. His office is not convinced they were leaving the country for good, he said, since all have come back without permission before.

Generally, the suspects are detained first at the airport, then brought downtown into custody of the U.S. Marshals Service. They then plead guilty to having entered the country illegally and are sentenced to time served, then deported at government expense, the lawyers involved said. The biggest cost to taxpayers is the detention, which a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman said averages $66.96 a day nationwide. They are held for two to three months, so that cost would be roughly $4,000 to $6,000. Added to that is the cost of deportation - a bus trip to the border for Mexico, a plane ride for other countries. And then there is a portion of the salaries of the government lawyers and the court personnel involved, plus court costs.

In the earliest case noticed by the public defenders in Houston in July, Freddy Navarro-Doblado was accompanied by a California police officer who had planned to take him all the way to Honduras. Instead, Navarro-Doblado was taken into custody in Houston.

The other four cases were in December and January. "It's a Catch-22 for these people. They can't leave the country to make it right," said Michael Herman, an assistant federal public defender who's handling some of the cases. "They are self-deporting, but they wind up in shackles and chains when these people have ... heeded the cry of the public for them to leave."

One defendant was sentenced this month by U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas. Hector Manuel Palafox-Acevedo, 29, pleaded guilty to the felony of entering the United States without proper documentation and was sentenced to the two months he has already served in detention. He will now be deported to Mexico, where he was heading when he was stopped as he tried to board a plane Dec. 12. Herman defended Palafox-Acevedo in court and said he was heading to his hometown on a one-way ticket to Mexico to get married to his fiancee, a U.S. citizen, and work to get proper papers to come back to the United States legally. He said Palafox-Acevedo has been here since he was 14, working as a machine operator and migrant worker and recently helping his fiancee raise her children.

Palafox-Acevedo, a slight man wearing detention center khakis, cried as he told the judge on Feb. 11 he would not come back to the United States again. "The only thing I want is to go back," Palafox-Acevedo told the judge tearfully through a court interpreter. "I am afraid of going back to jail." But as prosecutor Bert Isaacs noted, Palafox-Acevedo has been deported without a felony conviction three times: in 2002, 2006 and 2007. Isaacs asked the judge to hold Palafox-Acevedo longer while a full background check was done. "I don't know whether Mr. Palafox-Acevedo has gotten the message or not," Isaacs told the judge, when asking for the maximum penalty of six months in prison, given all the sentencing factors in the case. But the judge said it would not be a good use of resources to do a further background check since Palafox-Acevedo had already been vetted.

Kelly Klundt, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C., said the agency checks passenger lists to find people who have broken the law, which has helped stop a child abduction and find large amounts of currency and drugs. "We have an obligation and the authority to intercept them," Klundt said. She said she hasn't been asked about these kinds of detentions and prosecutions anywhere but Houston, and that it is the prosecutors' decision whether to see the cases through.

Source



Democrats bring the politics of fraud to immigration "reform"

For months, leading Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chief Rahm Emanuel have tried to talk tough on illegal immigrationIllegal-Immigration-Ruling Dec-07 . Mr. Emanuel told The Washington Post last year that immigration is "the third rail of American politics," adding that "anyone who doesn't realize that isn't with the American people," earning himself angry denunciations from the far-left fringe. Last month, Mrs. Pelosi joined House Minority Leader John Boehner in announcing that the House-passed economic stimulus bill would "not allow any taxpayer funds to be distributed to illegals." The Democratic leadership's efforts to sound tough on illegal immigration have created serious friction with some members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which believes the Democratic leadership is too timid about pushing for amnesty legislation.

If senior Democrats were really serious about a get-tough approach toward illegal immigration, we would be urging the Republican minority to reach across the aisle and work with the Democratic leadership to come up with a genuine bipartisan solution. But unfortunately, the Democrats are putting together an elaborate con job: using tough-sounding rhetoric while working behind the scenes with open-borders advocates in the business community to win support from from firms that have become very dependent on cheap foreign labor. The goal of these Democrats - and possibly the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well - is to defeat a bipartisan bill that takes a no-amnesty, enforcement-oriented approach to illegal immigration. Specifically, they are very worried about the fact that a growing number of moderate and conservative Republicans and Democrats (and even a few liberals) are cosponsoring the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act, H.R. 4088, introduced by Rep. Heath Shuler, North Carolina Democrat.....

Right now, Republican supporters of H.R. 4088 are circulating a discharge petition in an effort to bring the bill to the House floor for a vote. They need 218 members' signatures, meaning that at least 20 Democrats would have to take the supreme act of rebellion: directly defying Mrs. Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and the rest of the party leadership to bring to a vote legislation that the leadership wants no part of. Senior Democrats, worried that they may not be able to keep the bill tied up in committee, have come up with a Plan B - muddling the issue by attaching a killer amendment to the Shuler bill, which would come in the form of an amendment proposed by Rep. Joe Baca, California Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

The Baca Amendment would give illegal aliens who pass a background check a "five-year temporary worker permit" that expires on Dec. 31, 2012. It would also provide employers who hired illegal aliens "safe harbor" (apparently some measure of immunity from prosecution) for past hiring of illegal aliens. If Mr. Shuler gets enough signatures to force his bill to the floor to be debated, Democrats hope to neuter it by attaching the Baca Amendment. If Mr. Baca's proposal were to become law, open-borders advocates could come back later and pass legislation putting these illegals on a path to citizenship. While not endorsing the Baca Amendment, a senior official with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told Congressional Quarterly that he believed there was "some kind of deal in the works." ....

When it comes to immigration, the Democrat House leadership is not to be trusted. They are creating a track record to run against. They are also creating an opportunity for Republicans to work with some Democrats on bipartisan ways to thwart liberalism.

Source





27 February, 2008

Immigrants incarcerated less frequently

When I saw the headline above, I thought: Aha! This is the usual Leftist attempt to deceive by ignoring facts that do not suit. It is true that illegals do not have particularly high crime rates overall. BUT THEIR CHILDREN DO. So I was pleased to see that mentioned. I have highlighted in red why immigrant crime is low. But the kids are citizens so they do not have such incentives.

Note also that the report is about immigrants IN GENERAL. Very few illegal immigrants may have been included. Failure to note that explicitly was the real deception in the article. Do you think that illegal and legal immigrants might be kinda different?

Note also that even though the crime rate among illegals may not be high as a percentage, there are still a lot of criminal illegals so effective immigration law enforcement would still significantly reduce the number of crooks in the country.

Countering a widespread belief, a new report shows California's foreign-born population -- including illegal immigrants -- makes up only a sliver of the state's population of inmates. The report released Monday by the Public Policy Institute of California also suggests that the foreign-born population, which makes up more than a third of the state's adults, plays a disproportionately smaller role in serious crime. "Crime, Corrections, and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do with It?" gives one of the clearest glimpses yet into the effect of immigrants and immigration on the state's justice system. It also aims to dispel the perception that cities with large foreign-born populations are criminal hot beds, with several California cities showing a dip in police activity amid recent immigration waves.

But while the findings are surprising, they do not account for a complete relationship between immigration and crime. The report did not, for example, examine petty crimes such as shoplifting and vandalism, which would not necessarily result in jail time. The findings also do not take into consideration the effect that immigrants' children might have on crime.

Kristin Butcher, one of the report's co-authors, said the low rate of incarceration could be linked to U.S. immigration policies, which call for carefully weeding through visa applicants and deporting illegal immigrants accused of serious crimes such as gang involvement and murder. "The type of people who are immigrating are less likely to commit crimes because they're here for jobs," said Butcher, a professor at Wellesley College and a fellow for the nonpartisan policy research group.

The report underscores what Salvador Bustamante has been telling people for several years about the foreign-born population -- and illegal immigrants in particular. "A lot of people have painted immigrants as the criminal element in our society, and that isn't the case," said Bustamante, Northern California director of Strengthening Our Lives, a statewide nonprofit group that works to empower immigrants. He said immigrants come to the United States to work, often trying to stay under the radar of authorities and away from criminal activity to avoid deportation. "The more we can do to dispel the myths that have been created about immigrants will help with immigrant rights and immigration reform," he said.

The findings do not sit well with Bill Cole, an advocate for more stringent laws to make sure illegal immigrants who commit crimes are deported. Bill Cole's ex-wife, Sara, was hit by drunk driver Lucio Rodriguez -- an illegal immigrant previously convicted of driving drunk --in September, nearly severing her legs. Rodriguez has since pleaded guilty to drunk driving charges. "What we're trying to do is make the community safer," Bill Cole said.

The institute obtained its findings by examining the state's foreign-born population, which includes anyone born outside the United States, regardless of their naturalization status, Butcher said. It then focused on men ages 18 to 40 in jails, institutions and state prisons, drawing comparisons with their U.S.-born counterparts using California Census data.

Source



Courts unable to keep up with border arrests

The government has started cracking down on illegal border crossers in the Tucson Sector. But limited resources in Arizona's federal-court system are blocking the goal of prosecuting everyone who enters the country illegally.

The Border Patrol has referred 757 cases to authorities since the government began prosecuting illegal crossers in the Tucson area on Jan. 14. Up to 42 are prosecuted daily, and there are plans to prosecute up to 100 cases a day in the busiest human-smuggling area on the border. But federal courts in Tucson can hold only 60 immigration defendants a day, and even if they could handle the 100-a-day workload, that amounts to prosecuting only 10 percent of those arrested by the Border Patrol.

Still, officials expect the threat of prosecution and prison time to deter illegal crossers. The Operation Streamline policy, which has proved effective in the Yuma Sector and two parts of Texas, involves filing charges against nearly everyone caught crossing the border illegally.

Mexican authorities confirm that illegal immigrants have been deterred from crossing into the Yuma Sector by the prospect of spending two weeks to six months in prison for the misdemeanor crime. Historically, illegal immigrants have immediately been shipped back to Mexico if they did not have criminal records. Foreign criminals are deported after serving their prison sentences. And if they are caught re-entering illegally again, they are charged with felonies, which can carry sentences up to five years.

Demand on courts

The U.S. District Court of Arizona is the nation's busiest, presiding Chief Judge John M. Roll said. He said judges in his district sentence 500 felons a year, compared with a national average of 90. His office has asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lend magistrates. U.S. Magistrate Glenda Edmonds said she and her colleagues in Tucson typically handle half a dozen pretrial hearings a day. To meet the demand of the new flux of immigration cases, one magistrate takes them all for a week in a rotation system. "If we get to the point where we get to 100 cases a day in this building, we will need at least one more magistrate," Edmonds said.

Lawyers are also in short supply. The Department of Homeland Security has lent the U.S. Attorney's Office four lawyers to help prosecute the new immigration cases. First Assistant Federal Public Defender Heather Williams said there are only 32 panel lawyers who are willing to handle Streamline cases on a contract fee from the government. The court may increase the maximum caseload per lawyer or assign a public defender exclusively to immigration cases, Williams said, concluding that her office "will be able to handle fewer criminal cases."

Operation Streamline was created to deter illegal immigration. The Yuma Sector saw a 70 percent drop in arrests last year at a time arrests borderwide fell 20 percent. The policy was credited, along with extra border agents and improved fencing. Yet even in the Yuma Sector, where the Border Patrol arrests one-tenth of those arrested in the Tucson Sector, authorities have been unable to prosecute everyone. The Border Patrol has referred 1,511 immigrants for prosecution since the program was extended to the entire sector in the fall. It made 4,066 arrests. Courtroom holding space is a limiting factor in Yuma, too. Judges say they can handle up to 75 prosecutions a day, but because of space constraints, only 30 cases can be sent.

In the Tucson Sector, the Border Patrol has no immediate plans to phase in more than 100 prosecutions daily. That means at its peak, only one in 10 of those arrested can be prosecuted.

Still, Deputy Chief Robert Boatright said the clampdown is having results. He said that, in the 15-mile target area where the program was launched, a 79 percent recidivism rate has plummeted to 46 percent. Elsewhere in the Tucson Sector, immigrants re-enter 80 to 92 percent of the time. "We've been able to gain control of that area, maintain control of that area and widen out that area," Boatright said.

Tucson Sector agents arrested 11 percent fewer border crossers in January than they did a year earlier, although many believe this has as much to do with a slowing U.S. economy and Arizona's strict employer-sanctions law.

Boatright said even a 10 percent risk of being imprisoned appears too great for many immigrants. "I've talked to detainees, and they say it's just not worth it to them," said Ray Kondo, assistant chief in Arizona for the U.S. Marshal Service, which transports and houses the prisoners.

Effect on prisons

With federal detentions taking in the extra misdemeanor-immigration convicts, some prison-reform watchdogs worry that the prisons will run out of bed space and create a demand for more prisons or a crunch to release other criminals early. Kondo said that won't happen because once prosecutions reach their quota, people will be deported as fast as they are convicted. Even if Arizona's prisons get overloaded, federal prisoners can, and routinely do, get transferred to facilities throughout the country.

Reformists such as Judy Greene of Justice Strategies are unconvinced, knowing the government faces a million border crossers a year. "This looks tough but accomplishes very little. It will increase pressure for expanding the detention systems," she said. "It's going to cost a lot of money and drain resources from more important cases."

Two weeks ago, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Tucson Democrat, met for the fourth time with judges and federal agents about Streamline. Her spokesman, C.J. Karamargin, said Giffords supports the stronger enforcement and has been advised that it has worked elsewhere, but Giffords shares concerns about the drain on resources for the criminal-justice system. "Those concerns are valid," Karamargin said, "She wants these federal agencies to have the resources but doesn't want them wasted on something ineffective

Source





26 February, 2008

Stupid British immigration bureaucracy -- and "caring" Leftist politicians

"I'd have more chance of being allowed to stay and care for my frail mother if I was a foreign criminal"

All Deborah Phillips wants to do is care for her increasingly frail 80-year-old mother. She has no intention of claiming benefits and would save the taxpayer the cost of helping to look after another elderly woman. But because Miss Phillips was born in the United States, moving to England when she was three, she has been refused permission to stay and must leave the country with her seven-year-old daughter Alexandra by the end of April. When that happens her English mother Betty Phillips will be left alone.

Despite huge support from her local community and the backing of her MP, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne has rejected her request for residency.

Miss Phillips, 48, believes she would have a better chance of avoiding deportation if she was a foreign criminal or terror suspect facing the risk of persecution back home. She said: "Some of these people stay here with the help of human rights laws. What about the human rights of my English mother and her right to a family life? "Sometimes I feel like a criminal. I'm just a very soft target because I am doing everything by the rules. It is annoying because terrorist suspects are treated better and allowed to live here. I don't see the logic in that. We are not costing the Government a penny." Miss Phillips, who lives with her mother in Cottingham, near Hull, has a U.S. Navy pension and works part-time as a volunteer teaching assistant.

"We are not a burden on this Government nor are we criminals. I just want to be able to look after my mum. Once the Home Office gets rid of us, they will never let us back in. Then what would happen to this 80-year-old woman?"

Her mother lost her husband Phil, 77, who suffered from Alzheimer's, in May 2005. She has had two small strokes and suffers from arthritis, heart trouble and hypertension. She is also prone to stress and anxiety. Miss Phillips, who has been turned down four times for permission to live permanently in this country, insists her mother is too frail to take to the U.S. Her mother, a former teacher, is English and her late father was American.

Miss Phillips came here as a small child in 1963 when her father retired from the U.S. Navy. She speaks with an English accent, went to school and college in Hull and lived here until she too joined the U.S. Navy at 21 and went to sea. After leaving the Navy and working in the U.S. she decided to join her family in Yorkshire. Miss Phillips, whose brother David, 45, is a businessman in Kentucky, wanted to return to care for her parents and made the move in December 2003. "I always knew I could come back to England one day because this is my home," she said. "My parents needed looking after. I never knew it would cause this bother."

The divorcee misses out on automatic citizenship by 15 months after a rule change in 2003. Children born abroad to a British mother and foreign father after February 7, 1961, and before January 1, 1983, can now become British citizens through the maternal line. Miss Phillips missed out because she was born on November 5, 1959.

She first applied for residency in August 2005 but hit a mountain of red tape. In May 2006, Miss Phillips - and her daughter - were forced to leave Britain but returned in June last year aboard a U.S. military cargo plane after her mother's health deteriorated. "But I made no secret of what I was doing and applied again for permission to stay," she said. "Again I've been turned down."

The latest refusal from the Home Office gives one reason as "she (her mother) may also rely on friends and neighbours to some degree to alleviate her sense of loneliness and isolation". Miss Phillips said: "The day after receiving the notice one of mum's neighbours, they are all OAPs, was taken away in an ambulance. The Home Office doesn't even know who my mum's neighbours are."

Tory MP David Davis, who represents Haltemprice and Howden in East Yorkshire, said: "This decision is a disgrace when somebody born to a British woman is being threatened with deportation at a time when the Government cannot even deport foreign criminals. "This woman wants to stay in this country to care for her elderly mother and is actually saving the state money and making a positive contribution to society."

Source



Immigration Officials Identify Killer Driver in Bus Crash

Looks like she's an illegal

Immigration officials have identified the driver of the van involved in the school bus crash that killed 4 children in southwestern Minnesota last week. 24-year-old Olga Marina Franco, of Guatemala, was the driver of the van. The woman first gave investigators the name Alianiss Nunez Morales told them she was from Mexico.

ICE agents first interviewed Franco Feb. 21 and developed probable cause that she is in the United States illegally and that she is not using her true identity, the agency said in a statement. During that interview Franco told ICE agents that she was from Mexico. ICE agents ran Franco’s fingerprints through its databases and found no match, which indicates that she had no prior contact with immigration officials. "The only name we have for her is the name she gave us when she was booked," Claude Arnold, ICE special agent in charge of investigations, said last week.

Authorities in Lyon County have charged her with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide. She's also charged with running a stop sign and driving without a license. ICE has placed a detainer on Franco, so if she is released from the county’s custody for any reason, she will be turned over to ICE and placed in deportation proceedings. Franco did not have a Minnesota driver's license, and "she doesn't have a (driver's license) anywhere that we're aware of," said Lt. Mark Peterson of the Minnesota State Patrol.

LAST WEEK

A criminal complaint released Friday detailed the four criminal vehicular homicide charges against Franco. According the the complaint, Alianiss Nunez Morales, 23, of Minneota, Minn. (the name given to investigators at the time) was driving a van that ran a stop sign before hitting a bus carrying 28 students from Lakeview School. Morales was also charged with a stop sign violation and for driving without a valid license.

CRIMINAL COMPLAINT DETAILS

According to the criminal complaint, Morales was driving a 1998 Plymouth Voyager without a valid drivers’ license, failed to stop for a stop sign and struck the school, bus resulting in the deaths, of Reed Stevens, Emilee Olson and brothers Hunter and Jesse Javens.

In an interview with a State Trooper, bus driver Dennis Devereaux said he noticed the minivan going “pretty fast” and said he didn’t think it would be able to stop at the stop sign.

Devereaux said it looked like the van went airborne as it crossed the railroad tracks before the intersection and he didn’t have time to brake or accelerate. He hoped he would make it past the Highway 24 intersection but the minivan hit the bus near the back sending it into a spin before it fell to its side. According to the criminal complaint, several other drivers who witnessed the crash told troopers the van was moving at high speeds and saw it hit the side of the bus.....

The school bus was carrying 28 students. Cottonwood Fire Chief Dale Louluagie confirmed that 3 fatalities of the crash died immediately upon impact and the fourth victim died around 8 p.m. Tuesday night....

Source





25 February, 2008

The 'Virtual Fence' Has Its Limits

Homeland Security confirms that Boeing's 28-mile prototype of electronic border surveillance will not be expanded

The major Presidential candidates talked up its innovative approach to securing the U.S.-Mexico border. Aerospace and defense giant Boeing, along with dozens of subcontractors, anticipated that it would give them a lucrative foothold in future government work worth billions of dollars. And fervent advocates of stronger obstacles to illegal immigration hoped the U.S. had finally found a more affordable way to fortify its southwest border than building hundreds of miles of physical barriers.

But Homeland Security Dept. officials have decided that an experimental 28-mile "virtual fence" meant to extend the U.S. Border Patrol's eyes and ears along the U.S.-Mexico border-a web of radar, infrared cameras, ground sensors, and airborne drones-won't be copied anywhere else in its entirety. The project was plagued with design, software, and other glitches; had fallen months behind schedule; and sometimes proved inoperable. The government agreed to pay Boeing almost the full $20 million for successful completion of the prototype endeavor just south of Tucson, known as Project 28. But in choosing not to expand the project, Homeland Security officials are dashing expectations and causing embarrassment from Capitol Hill to the campaign trail.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledged on Feb. 22 that the government would use only some "elements of P28" in other locations. The virtual fence and its components, he said, are "not a standalone strategy." More traditional ground-based radar and airborne surveillance drones will be deployed in some places. Chertoff said Boeing deserved payment because "all of the defects" in the prototype project were either "cured" or "immaterial." Boeing agreed to give the government a $2 million discount on future work and said it has spent more than twice the award amount developing and remedying Project 28.

A Boeing spokesman said the company has proved the virtual fence concept works. And the government has agreed to pay Boeing an additional $64 million to develop a "common operating picture" software system for Border Patrol agents in vehicles and command centers.

Still, critics contend the government didn't get what it paid for with Project 28. The Government Accountability Office has said the project suffered from insufficient government monitoring and direction. While acquainted with operating war-fighting systems, Boeing knew little about border patrol realities. "The poorly structured contract that prevented the line Border Patrol agents from pointing out obvious flaws and caused an overreliance on contractors has resulted in a system that has been described as providing 'marginal' functionality at best," says Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Authorities remain determined to build better barriers, both physical and high tech. But even the most futuristic border scenarios are widely viewed among specialists in immigration and enforcement as likely to fail without more comprehensive approaches (BusinessWeek, 2/7/08) to immigration reform or stepped-up workplace enforcement, penalties for employers, and more reliable tools to verify an employee's work status.

But that hasn't stopped the major candidates from trumpeting the promise of high-tech solutions. Senators Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) did so during their Feb. 21 debate in Texas. Immigration will be a significant issue for Texas voters in a Mar. 4 primary. Both Democrats have voted in favor of hundreds of miles of physical fencing along the Mexico border. In the Austin debate, however, both emphasized the kind of innovation that Project 28 represented. "Let's deploy more technology and personnel, instead of the physical barrier," said Clinton. "I frankly think that will work better." Obama concurred. "There may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing," he said. "But for the most part, having Border Patrol, surveillance, [and] deploying effective technology-that's going to be the better approach." Likewise, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), once a prime architect of comprehensive immigration reform, has for weeks urged securing the border first through a mix of physical and technological barriers.

The allure of a technology fix is understandable, given what federal agents are up against. Along nearly 2,000 miles of scorching desert, steep canyons, winding rivers, and urban mazes, they routinely strive for the unattainable-to stop the flow of people so desperate for better lives that they will climb, run, swim, tunnel, bribe, and even hide in car undercarriages to get into the U.S. The number of Border Patrol agents has almost doubled since 2000, to 14,900, supplemented now by up to 3,000 National Guard troops. Still, migrants continue to cross. And they'll continue to come, as long as Mexico's per capita income remains one-fifth that of the U.S. and employers in El Norte continue to welcome them.

The government has been extending barriers for more than a decade, and there was much talk of technological solutions even during the administration of Clinton's husband, President Bill Clinton. As of Feb. 23, the government has built 302 miles of physical fence. The effort has taken 15 years.

The Bush Administration, meanwhile, is extending a crackdown on some illegal immigration. Federal contractors soon must participate in "E-Verify," a system now used by 53,000 employers to confirm employees' work status. And starting the week of Mar. 1, federal fines imposed on employers who hire undocumented migrants-$2,200 for first offense, and up to $10,000 after that-will rise by 25%.

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Black groups don't like Britain's new rules

A new immigration proposal announced recently to increase citizenship fees and landing charges for visa holders arriving in the United Kingdom (UK) has left Caribbean nationals and non-European residents in Britain worried. One of their major fears is that thousands of persons who have been living and working in the UK for decades might receive little or no social security benefits. The Sunday Gleaner has learnt that already, some lobby groups, including the Jamaica diaspora and Facilitator for a Better Jamaica (FFBJ), are examining the proposal and other immigration developments to make an appropriate response and representation.

Under the new immigration proposal, immigrants arriving in Britain will be required to pay an extra 20 pounds landing charge on top of their visa fees. Naturalisation fees attract over 700 pounds, while it costs 75 pounds for a British passport. At the same time, there is widespread speculation that there will be additional increases in immigration fees at the start of the financial year in April.

The extra charge is slated to fund schools, hospitals and other social services said to be under stress from an influx of migrants mainly from countries of the European Union. The British government is expected to rake in 15 million a year from the levy.

At the same time, social benefits in Britain are to be linked with citizenship and those who have been denied British passports will lose a wide range of welfare services, including child benefits, housing benefits and income support. Prisoners who serve time in Britain will automatically lose their rights to British citizenship and the benefits it offers.

Founder of Facilitators for a Better Jamaica (FFBJ) Sylbourne Sydial said his concern was not one of alarm, but one of unease as the new measures being implemented were a "smack in the face of multiculturalism and a shift from the Commonwealth." "Since the formation of the FFBJ's home office consultation team," he said, "we have seen that these different and new proposals - in the form of increase in fees, reduction in vacation period, 20 pounds landing charges and the many changes in the immigration rules - show very clearly that there is a shift in UK policy towards former Commonwealth nations of which Jamaica is a part."

While a number of Jamaicans and other West Indian nations with whom The Sunday Gleaner spoke are seeking to speed up the process of acquiring citizenship, Jamaican-born journalist, Luke Williams, believes the long-term impact on Jamaica and the Caribbean will be devastating. "What is happening is demoralising and is exploitation in many forms including financial and brain drain. It's a double-whammy: They (the British Government) are getting extra money from the high fees and putting pressure on those not considered the best, as well as getting rid of those they do not want," he said. [That's a bad idea??]

A Jamaican-trained medical doctor (Dr Brown) at the Greater Almond Street [Ormond St?] Hospital in Central London noted that many West Indian doctors are now looking alternative places to practise their skills. "Many are looking at places like the US and Canada. Some may even return home as the European Union has opened up and there is an influx of doctors," she said.

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23 February, 2008

Feds to Raise Fines for Hiring Illegals

The government will raise by 25 percent the fines it levies against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, officials said Friday. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the increase, which is the first boost in fines in nearly a decade.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for investigating illegal hirings, has stepped up its enforcement of the employer sanctions law in the past year, leading to a dozen major busts. Currently, fines range from $275 to $11,000 depending on the offense. The agency says some penalties could include at least six months in jail.

Between Oct. 1, 2006 and Sept. 30, 2007, ICE fined employers more than $30 million for violating immigration laws. ICE arrested 92 employers and 771 employees. The agency also began deportation proceedings for more than 4,000 people who were working in the country illegally.

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Obama, Clinton would consider suspending immigration raids

During a Democratic presidential debate in Austin, Texas, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton said they would consider suspending work site immigration raids until Congress passes an immigration overhaul which includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Clinton said she would request such legislation in the first 100 days of her administration. "When we see what's been happening, with literally babies being left with no one to take care of them, children coming home from school, no responsible adult left, that is not the America that I know," Clinton said.

Other immigration highlights from the debate:

Clinton: "We need a path to legalization, to bring the immigrants out of the shadows, give them the conditions that we expect them to meet, paying a fine for coming here illegally, trying to pay back taxes, over time, and learning English. If they had a committed a crime in our country or the country they came from, then they should be deported. But for everyone else, there must be a path to legalization."

Obama: "It is absolutely critical that we tone down the rhetoric when it comes to the immigration debate, because there has been an undertone that has been ugly. Oftentimes, it has been directed at the Hispanic community. We have seen hate crimes skyrocket in the wake of the immigration debate.and that is unacceptable."

Obama on the border fence: "There may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing. But for the most part, having border patrolled, surveillance, deploying effective technology, that's going to be the better approach."

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22 February, 2008

Foreign brides who plan to live in Britain 'must speak English'

Thousands of foreigners who want to marry a British person and move to Britain will have to take an English language test, the Prime Minister announced yesterday. Gordon Brown said that the test would help to prevent foreign brides being exploited. He made his surprise announcement only five hours after a Home Office Green Paper on overhauling citizenship rules said that consultations on English tests for foreigners were continuing.

The Prime Minister said in a speech in North London: "We will introduce a new English language requirement for those applying for a marriage visa and planning to settle in the UK - both as part of our determination that everyone who comes here to live should be able to speak English and to make sure that they cannot be exploited."

The English language test will apply to tens of thousands of spouses, particularly those from the Indian sub-continent. A total of 47,000 spouses and fianc‚es, including 17,000 from the sub-continent, were admitted to the UK in 2006. Ministers have for some time been concerned that some of those arriving from the sub-continent have no knowledge of English, are vulnerable to exploitation and cannot get access to the job market. It was unclear last night whether failure to pass the English language test would lead to outright refusal to come to Britain or whether a temporary visa would be granted.

Mr Brown's announcement came after proposals to reform citizenship rules under which migrants who want a British passport or to settle permanently in the country will have to undergo a probationary period of up to three years. Foreigners will be expected to leave the country if they fail to take citizenship or apply to settle permanently, as the Government seeks to end the situation where migrants "languish in limbo" having been allowed to stay. The Government is also considering ending the "ancestral visa" scheme under which Commonwealth citizens aged over 17 with a British grandparent are allowed to enter Britain to seek work and settle. [That would be very offensive to Australians. The Australian government has in the past retaliated against British restrictions on Australians by introducing similar restrictions on Brits] A scheme under which retired migrants with an annual income of at least 25,000 pounds are allowed to enter Britain, receive free healthcare and then settle may also be scrapped.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, made clear that she expected the number of new citizens - more than 1.1 million since Labour came to power 1997 - to increase as a result of the overhaul of citizenship rules. She said: "I would want to see a larger proportion of those that are here moving to full British citizenship. You will not be able to languish in limbo. Once your period of temporary residence comes to an end you will need to apply for the next stage or leave."

Gaining citizenship will take at least six years from arrival in the UK instead of the current five years, and could take as long as eight years. The probation period will last a year if the foreigner takes part in community activities such as charity fundraising, running a sports group or other voluntary work. Migrants who undertake no community or voluntary work will have to wait the existing five years plus a minimum three years on probation. Full access to non-contributory benefits will not be granted after a person has been in the UK for five years, but only after an applicant has completed the probationary period.

A fund financed by a surcharge on immigration applications will be set up to give cash to areas that experience problems because of immigration, such as oversubscribed schools. The fund is expected to raise tens of millions of pounds a year.

Migrants who have served a prison sentence will be barred from citizenship and minor offenders given a non-custodial sentence may have to serve three years on probation. A draft Bill based on the proposals is due this summer, and full legislation is expected in November.

Source



Stupid immigration swoop in Wales

This is typical of the lazy British bureaucracy. Just to show that they are doing something, they pick on the easy targets. Anybody can find illegals working in restaurants any time but as the restaurant workers are hard-working and providing a useful service they should be bottom priority. But grabbing the problem illegals -- parasitical Muslims and blacks -- would need work.

Note: I am NOT saying that ALL blacks and Muslims are parasitical. But I am saying that there are many in that category. In this age of political correctness, one has to guard against wilful misrepresentation of what one is saying.

Eight Malaysian and Chinese nationals found working illegally at restaurants and a takeaway in a Gwynedd town have been arrested. The Thai Emperor, Everyday Takeaway and Honour Chinese restaurants in Caernarfon were visited by a Border and Immigration Agency team and police. Six of those arrested, who had such jobs as cooking and serving customers, are due to be removed from the UK. The owner of all three premises was given a formal written warning. He will also face future visits by immigration officers, said the agency.

The operation on Wednesday evening followed intelligence. Officers went into all three places at the same time and checked the documents of staff to discover if they had the right to work in the UK. At Thai Emperor, a Malaysian man, 34, and woman, 31, were arrested and are due to be removed from the UK in the coming days. Next door, in Everyday Takeaway, a Malaysian man, 32, was arrested and is also due to be removed. Five illegal workers were arrested at the Honour Chinese restaurant, in Castle Square, including two Chinese men, aged 29 and 33, who were both failed asylum seekers. Steps are being taken to remove them from the UK as soon as possible, said the agency.

Two Malaysian women, aged 24 and 29, and a 39-year-old Malaysian man will be removed from the UK in the coming days. Another Chinese man arrested was later released after producing evidence he was working legally. All those arrested were taken to Caernarfon and St Asaph police stations for questioning. Jane Farleigh, regional director of the Border and Immigration Agency in Wales and the South West said: "This successful operation shows that we will find and arrest illegal workers wherever they are in Wales." [BULLSHIT! When a British bureaucrat's mouth is moving in public, you can be sure that he/she is misrepresenting something] She added: "Illegal working hurts good business, undercuts legal workers and law-abiding businesses, creates illegal profits and puts those employed at risk."

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21 February, 2008

Illegal Deported 14 Times, Caught Again

Post below lifted from Interested-Participant. See the original for links

(Eagle County, Colorado) A 22-year-old illegal alien was arrested yesterday and charged with human smuggling after being stopped on I-70 driving a van carrying 13 other illegal aliens.

Omar Alaverez-Mecedo, age 22, was arrested and charged with Human Smuggling, a class three felony, and operating a vehicle without a valid driver's license, a class two misdemeanor.

In the course of the investigation it was discovered that "Omar Alaverez-Mecedo's" real name is Israel Robles-Gaytan. According to ICE, Robles-Gaytan had already been caught and deported fourteen times; he gave law enforcement officials a different name each time.

Robles-Gaytan will be charged with Criminal Impersonation and 2nd degree Forgery in addition to the charges of Human Smuggling and operating a vehicle without a valid driver's license.

Robles-Gaytan was booked into custody at the Eagle County Detention Facility with immigration holds.

Presumably, Robles-Gaytan will be deported again and that would make 15 total deportations, placing him in the bonus round. It's probably covered in a confidential Homeland Security memo, but I'd guess that he is now eligible for cash awards for each additional deportation.

Kidding aside, it's difficult to understand how border patrol and immigration agents maintain any enthusiasm for their jobs. Everything they do seems to be automatically undone.



New conditions for obtaining British citizenship proposed

Immigrants with children and elderly relatives [who apply for citizenship] may have to pay a special levy to help to fund public services, under proposals to be published in a Green Paper today. The money would go into a British trust fund as part of a package of proposals for "earned" citizenship aimed at encouraging applicants for British passports to contribute to society. It is estimated that such a fund could raise up to 15 million pounds a year. A document leaked to Channel Four News states: "Money for the British trust fund will be raised through increases to certain fees for immigration applications, with migrants who tend to consume more in public services - such as children and elderly relatives - paying more than others."

The Green Paper also contains a proposal that immigrants who have worked in Britain for five years be put on probation for an additional year before they can become full British citizens. The document says that this would be to "incentivise immigrants to make the commitment to becoming British citizens and fully integrate into society". A Home Office spokesman said last night: "We are not commenting before the Green Paper is published."

Gordon Brown has already suggested that applicants should be asked to undertake community or voluntary work as a way of introducing them to British institutions and people. Ministers have rejected a points-based system for citizenship or fast-tracking applicants to a passport. They are, however, looking at barring people from becoming citizens if they have been convicted of a serious criminal offence. The existing citizenship requirement is that a person must have lived in Britain for five years, passed a test in English and demonstrated a knowledge of life in Britain.

Before he became Prime Minister Mr Brown said: "In any national debate it is right to consider asking men and women seeking citizenship to undertake some community work in our country or something akin to that which introduces them to a wider range of institutions and people in our country prior to enjoying the benefits of citizenship."

Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, who has been drawing up the proposals, said that the message had to be that becoming a British citizen was not something that was simply handed out but should be earned. In a recent speech he said that Britons had made clear that they thought newcomers should pay taxes and that no favours should be given to the rich. "I asked people whether successful migrants - like high-earning footballers or surgeons - should get ahead faster. I got a pretty blunt answer. Treat everyone the same. Just make sure no one's dodging their dues." He added that people wanted applicants to obey British laws. "When an offence is serious, I am afraid we do want to show newcomers the exit door," Mr Byrne said.

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20 February, 2008

Ron Paul reports:

I am no Paulist but he seems to talk sense below to me

For decades we have welcomed new immigrants to our American "melting pot". We respect those who come here peacefully to pursue their American Dream. But Americans have noticed lately that modern problems associated with illegal immigration are at a crisis point. Taxpayers are now suffering the consequences. Costs of social services for the estimated 21 million illegal immigrants in this country are approaching $400 billion. We educate 4.2 million children of illegals at a cost of $13.8 billion. There have been almost 2 million anchor babies born in this country since 2002, with labor and delivery costs of between $3 and 6 billion.

There are currently 360,000 illegals in our prisons and we have spent $1.4 billion to incarcerate them since 2001. In Prince William County near DC, ICE can't deport criminal illegals fast enough and has actually asked its local jails to slow down on referring them. Jurisdiction over illegal immigration lies at the federal level, yet many municipalities are struggling with the compounding problems of mandated costs and tied hands. My office has heard from at least one sheriff in my district considering seeking compensation from the Federal government for the cost of so many illegal immigrant inmates that wouldn't be here if the Federal government was doing its job and protecting our borders. The problems are widespread.

One thing is certain: If we subsidize them, they will come. We have rolled out the social services red carpet, so it is no surprise that many from other countries are eager to come take advantage of our very generous system. We must return to the American principle of personal responsibility. We must expect those who come here to take care of themselves and respect our laws. Not only is this the right thing to do for our overtaxed citizens, but we simply have no choice. We can't afford these policies anymore. Since we are $60 trillion in debt, there should be no taxpayer-paid benefits for non-citizens.

My bill, the Social Security for American Citizens Only Act, stops non-citizens from collecting Social Security Benefits. This bill, by the way, picked up three new cosponsors this week and is gaining momentum.

Also, we should not be awarding automatic citizenship to children born here minutes after their mothers illegally cross the border. It just doesn't make sense. The practice of birthright citizenship is an aberration of the original intent of the 14th amendment, the purpose of which was never to allow lawbreakers to bleed taxpayers of welfare benefits. I have introduced HJ Res 46 to address this loophole. Other Western countries such as Australia , France and England have stopped birth-right citizenship. It is only reasonable that we do the same. We must also empower local and state officials to deal with problems the Federal government can't or won't address. Actions like this are a matter of national security at this point.

Illegal immigration is draining and frustrating the American taxpayer. I will continue to work for a solution that does not reward those who break our laws.

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Colorado: Is immigration as important as the bark beetle?

U.S. senator Ken Salazar paid a visit to Grand Junction today. He wants to hear your concerns so he can take them back to the state senate. Among those, oil and gas, the bark beetle problem, and home foreclosures.

Salazar also addressed Mesa County residents both in favor and opposed to illegal immigration. Salazar says he'd like to see the United States adopt a system that works for everyone, but it's an extremely difficult issue with varying opinions.

The senator says the first step is to successfully secure our borders. He says there also needs to be a systematic process employers use to verify whether a worker is legal or not. Salazar hopes the November presidential election will yield positive results on this issue.

Salazar: "Whoever is president, on either the Democratic or Republican side, will work with the Congress and try to get an immigration package through that works because if we don't get an immigration reform package that works, we end up compromising our national security." Salazar says it's impossible to keep national security when we have half a million people coming into the country, and we don't know who they are.

The senator also says we need to find a path forward with respect to the 12 million undocumented workers living in the United States. He says because this affects small business, not doing so, could compromise our economic security even further.

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19 February, 2008

Stupid Protestant bishops in Kansas issue statement on immigration

Real Protestants don't have Bishops anyway! They don't need a man in a funny hat to help them communicate with their God. But perhaps that is my Presbyterian background speaking. And how insulting these potentates are! They are asserting that critics of illegal immigration are motivated by "fear and heated political rhetoric". If I were one of their parishoners I would find myself another church pronto!

And who are they to pontificate on whether the "U.S. economy depends upon immigrant labor"? The USA did perfectly well without illegals for centuries! I live in a civilized and prosperous English-speaking country that has virtually NO illegals! There are no Hispanics picking Australia's lettuces and tomatoes but we still have plenty of both! Can the mitred ones explain that? About time these knowall bishops went back to preaching the Gospel, methinks -- and perhaps discovering its message about humility

Leaders of three Protestant denominations are calling on Kansans to reject fear and heated political rhetoric when dealing with immigration. Issuing the statement are Bishops Dean Wolfe of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas; Scott Jameson Jones of the Kansas Area United Methodist Church; and Gerald Mansholt of the synod covering Kansas and Missouri in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

They acknowledged that respect for the law is crucial and that the Bible commands believers to respect and obey government authorities. However, they said, the U.S. economy depends upon immigrant labor and federal and state laws do not reflect that reality.

The bishops noted that the New Testament commands Christians to love their neighbors.

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Meddling Catholic bishops too

At least the tone of these guys is more respectful and Christian but it is their Hispanic flock they should be preaching to -- preaching what Jesus said about Caesar and what St Paul said about the superior authorities. And one of the Bishops seems to have had a mental breakdown. IF an illegal DOES pay taxes (some do but most don't) he WILL get the rebate the good bishop is talking about

Two American Catholic bishops have suggested changes in US immigration regulations, saying that current policies are unfair to immigrants and their families.

Bishop John Wester, the chairman of the US bishops' committee on migration; and Bishop Jaime Soto, the chairman of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, made their suggestions in a letter ot Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. They argued that more vigorous enforcement effort by the Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency (ICE) have taken a toll on immigrant families.

The bishops asked that ICE suspend enforcement during times of natural disasters, and said that the agency should not patrol for illegal immigrants near churches, hospitals, or schools. They asked for greater protection of the legal rights of those detained for illegal immigration.

Earlier his month Bishop Wester had sharply criticized the economic-stimulus package approved by Congress because it does not provide tax rebates to illegal immigrants. That approach, the bishop said, "reveals the hypocrisy of our laws" because illegal immigrants pay taxes but do not enjoy the benefit of the rebates.

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18 February, 2008

Appalling immigration abuse by authorities

Baby held in locked room at airport dies. One hopes there is a proper investigation of this, not just a claim that the officials "followed their protocols"

A 14-day-old infant traveling here for heart surgery died at Honolulu International Airport on Friday after he, his mother and a nurse were detained by immigration officials in a locked room, a lawyer for the boy's family said.

The Honolulu medical examiner's office yesterday identified the infant as Michael Futi of Tafuna, American Samoa's largest village, which is located on the east coast of Tutuila Island. Autopsy findings have been deferred. According to police, the child died at 5:50 a.m. It is unknown why immigration officials detained the mother, the nurse and the child.

Scott Ishikawa, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the child went into respiratory failure while in the customs office, which is located near the baggage claims area of the overseas terminal. Airport paramedics were called about 6:10 a.m., he said.

The group arrived on a Hawaiian Airlines flight that landed at 5:30 a.m. "We were later told the baby was coming here for heart surgery," Ishikawa said. Attorney Rick Fried said the child had come to Hawai'i from American Samoa for heart surgery. The boy's family plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit, Fried said

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Hopeless bureaucracy bypassed

Rule on background checks eases for some immigrants. It's a reasonable step but how about others who are held up for years by the same moronic bureaucracy that cannot find the time to process their applications?

A change in immigration rules will allow thousands of immigrants, already in the United States and applying for legal residency, to get their green cards before FBI background checks are completed, officials said Friday. Critics said the change could allow criminals to get through and threaten national security.

The change, which affects only legal immigrants already in the country waiting to adjust their status to legal resident, was outlined in a memo dated Feb. 4 written by Michael Aytes, associate director for domestic operations with the Citizenship and Immigration Services. "In the unlikely event that the FBI name checks reveal actionable information after the immigration judge grants an alien permanent residency status, (the Department of Homeland Security) may detain and initiate removal proceedings against the permanent resident," according to the memo.

One of the reasons for the decision, immigrant rights advocates say, is that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for deciding residency applications, is dealing with backlogs that mean years-long waits for some residency applicants.

The change would grant applicants their legal residency, or green cards, if they have been waiting on the background checks more than six months.

That worried Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, who said completing the background checks is a matter of national security. Bilbray is chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, which generally favors stricter immigration controls. "What we're dealing with is not just an inconvenience," Bilbray said in a phone interview from Washington. "It's an exposure to someone that shouldn't be in the country."

A leading critic of the backlogs has been the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency's own ombudsman, Prakash Khatri. In a 2007 report, Khatri called the backlogs one of the most "pervasive and serious problems" in the immigration system. The report said the agency was waiting for FBI name-check results in about 146,000 cases that had been otherwise completed. On Friday, the agency announced Khatri's resignation, but said his departure had nothing to do with his criticism of the backlogs. A spokesman said Khatri plans to return to the private sector.

Civil rights groups welcomed the change. "It seems like a step in the right direction," said Julia Harumi Mass, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's office in San Francisco. The civil rights organization has filed several lawsuits on behalf of immigrants applying for citizenship who have had to wait for months and even years for their applications to be processed because of the FBI checks. The group contends that the databases the bureau relies on are riddled with errors that lead to the delays.

Although acknowledging that the process is slow and cumbersome, Jessica Vaughn, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington organization that supports stricter immigration controls, said the checks are necessary. Vaughn said the agency had considered removing the FBI background checks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "The thinking was that there were so few hits that they thought they could deal with a few bad apples," she said. "Of course, that was before 9/11 and they found out what would happen if just a few people got through."

Those who support the agency's change said the suggestion that it could create security problems are unfounded. That's because the FBI checks will continue and the immigrants can be deported if the bureau's investigation discovers a problem. Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, said the congressman supports the change because it speeds the process, but still deports the immigrant if he or she fails the background check. Hill added that Issa supports more funding to reduce the FBI backlog. "We need to make playing by the rules a more attractive option," Hill said.

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17 February, 2008

Immigration task force targets fake IDs in Georgia

Something spooked the man selling fake IDs outside Los Primos restaurant in Chamblee. He told his customer — a police informant, it turns out — to meet him down the street at a gas station on Buford Highway because the area was too "hot." There, he sold the informant a fake green card and a fake Social Security card. Police turned on the blue lights and busted him.

Miguel Gonzalez Cadena, 32, an illegal Mexican immigrant, had been deported five times before and was arrested last year, federal officials say. He won't tell police whom he works for, but he's been charged with forgery and is now serving a two-year federal sentence for illegal re-entry into the United States, according to ICE officials.

Catching the guy selling documents on the street is the first step for police, state investigators and federal immigration officers who are trying to bust fake ID rings. For the past 2 1/2 years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has run a task force in Atlanta targeting fake IDs and those who seek to fraudulently obtain visas. It's one of several such task forces in the country. "It's a significant problem. It is really the first step in individuals' attempts to legitimize themselves here and gain employment," said Ken Smith, Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta office of ICE. "The bigger question is, if we don't know who these people are, what are they going to use these documents to do? Could they gain employment at a critical infrastructure, like an airport?"

False identification also creates more paperwork for federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service when more than one person uses the same Social Security number. The federal agencies try to track down the real owner of the number. A citizen may find that someone has used his or her Social Security number in a fake ID to get a job.

The Atlanta fake ID task force has opened more than 100 investigations; brought five federal cases; and federally indicted about 40 people. Those efforts dovetail with Gov. Sonny Perdue's Georgia Secure ID initiative, in which the state has devoted money for investigators at driver's license offices and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to rout out fake identification. "The state of Georgia is one of the better we've seen in attacking this," said Brock Nicholson, Deputy Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "The governor wants to get this under control."

Wednesday in federal court for the northern district of Georgia, five Mexican men who manufactured and sold fake Social Security cards, green cards, work permits and driver's licenses received federal sentences ranging from two and a half years to six years. They worked out of the Twelve Oaks apartment complex in Marietta and sold documents for about $100 each to customers outside a coin laundry in Smyrna.

As Georgia has devoted more resources to combating fake IDs, the counterfeiters move their operations around, making it harder to catch. One investigator also has noticed a decreased willingness by counterfeiters to manufacture a fake Georgia driver's license, although they'll make ones from other states. They tell customers police are more likely to spot a fake Georgia driver's license.

The fake ID rings range from one-man shows to labs that have an owner and several "lieutenants" who mark out shopping centers and other places for sales. Several runners work for each lieutenant, selling the documents on the street, said Wilson Cabrera, a criminal investigator with the Governor's office of Consumer Affairs. The lieutenants have to pay a weekly fee to sell documents. "It's the same thing like the drug dealers. They operate the same way. You have your neighborhood and you supply for that and no one else can come into that," Cabrera said.

The quality of fake documents ranges from cards with a photo that's obviously been cut and pasted, to green cards and Georgia driver's licenses on sturdy plastic with good photos, seals and even holograms, investigators said. Of course the best documents are real ones, where an illegal immigrant can simply assume someone's identity, ICE agents said.

Profit for counterfeiters varies. In one document lab, ICE investigators found $30,000 in a shoe box. The owner of a lab may also own a legitimate printing business, investigators said. Fake documents can be a nice side income. "Depending on how aggressive you are and how hard you want to work, the sky's the limit," Nicholson said.

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Irish illegals!

There is a lot of affection for the Irish in the USA so I am sure that any move to give them improved access would have wide support

[Boxer] Duddy has thrown his support to the New York-based Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, attending meetings and wearing a T-shirt into the ring promoting the group's website, legalizetheirish.org. The group estimates there are 50,000 undocumented Irish workers in the United States, lost in the shuffle of illegal immigrants from other parts of the globe and the bureaucracy that comes with applying for green cards and citizenship.

In 2006, the Irish were granted 2,038 green cards and 1,754 became U.S. citizens, according to the most recent data available from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Those numbers are on par with countries like Armenia and Belarus, and pale in comparison to the nearly 84,000 naturalized Mexicans and 47,500 from India.

"What we're seeing now is 20,000 immigrating to Australia each year that would come to the U.S. if they could come legally," said Kelly Finchem, executive director of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. "Irish people come to the U.S. almost reflexively." The group has political support from both sides of the aisle, and appears well-positioned for the November election. Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both expressed support for immigration reform, as has Republican front-runner John McCain.

It was McCain who attended a rally in the Bronx a couple years ago in support of the McCain-Kennedy Immigration Bill, a comprehensive reform package that included a temporary guest worker program and provisions that would have allowed undocumented immigrants a chance to work toward citizenship. The bill made it through the Senate but died in the House. Duddy also attended that town hall meeting and was asked to pose a question to McCain. "The moderator said we have a question from John Duddy, a couple thousand stand up and give him a standing ovation," Finchem said. "I'm sure Sen. McCain was wondering what was going on."

Duddy downplays his role in the campaign. He readily admits he doesn't understand American politics but figures if his people support him, the least he can do is support them. Besides, the dashing young Irishman has had his own problems with the immigration service. Realizing from a young age he wanted to be a professional boxer, Duddy moved to New York about four years ago in search of better trainers and better competition. When he went home for a visit, he learned he had overstayed his visa. It took months of wrangling to trim the red tape that allowed him to return to the U.S.

"People who come to work and are good citizens and didn't fill out the right paperwork, I look at it as personal," Duddy said through a thick brogue. "But again, I'm not a big influence on it. "I wear a T-shirt and appear at some events. I sort of look at myself as everybody else."

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16 February, 2008

Mexican President ignores the obvious

Mexican President Felipe Calderon urged California lawmakers on Wednesday to help his government address the volatile issue of illegal immigration in a way that will benefit his country and the United States. "We need to make migration legal, safe and organized," [It is ALREADY legal. The problem is that Mexicans don't obey the law!] Calderon told the legislature of the most-populous U.S. state, whose large and fast-growing Mexican-American population figures prominently in debates over illegal immigration.

The question of what to do about the millions living in the United States without papers has been one of the hot-button issues in the U.S. presidential election, with Republican candidates in particular vying to demonstrate their toughness on the issue.

Calderon, who has expressed concerned about an atmosphere full of prejudice generated by anti-immigrant rhetoric, urged cooperation. "We are at a historical turning point," said the conservative leader, on his first trip to the United States as Mexico's president. "Future generations will judge us by the decisions we make today. Did we work together to provide organized and humane migration, or did we continue to allow hundreds to die each year? "The choice is not between migration and security or between migration and prosperity," he said. "The choice is between a future of integration and success for both, or a future of distrust and resentment between us." [Obeying American laws would be a great place to start!] Many of those who attempt to sneak into the United States die in the rugged terrain along the border each year.

Calderon disputed contentions that Mexico is turning a blind eye to internal economic problems that spur its citizens to head north. "Migration carries off the best among us: our bravest, our youngest and our strongest people," he said.

Calderon urged California lawmakers to view Mexicans as assets to the economy, recalling the state's long historic ties with his country and guest-worker programs that tapped its labor from the 1940s through the 1960s. "This lesson from our past shows us the way to forge a better future as partners," Calderon said.

Mexico was deeply disappointed at the U.S. Congress' failure to pass President George W. Bush's comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws in June. It is also angry with the United States for building a security fence on parts of the southern border to keep illegal immigrants from Mexico out. [So America should not try to enforce its laws??]

Republican Assembly Leader Mike Villines said California's Republican lawmakers, among the most vocal U.S. critics of illegal immigration, remain very concerned. But he said he appreciated that Calderon bluntly addressed illegal immigration in his first speech to the state Legislature. "He came and addressed an issue pretty square-on," Villines told reporters in the Assembly's chamber.

Paul Farmer, a member of the civilian border patrol group known as the Minutemen, who have stoked the political debate over illegal immigration in recent years, criticized Calderon's visit. "We're tired of him sending his welfare people over here and draining our economy," Farmer said near a Sonoma County winery that Calderon visited after his speech.

Source



Feds admit mistakenly jailing citizens as illegal immigrants

The cases concerned have all been very sloppily and negligently handled (as far as I can see) and all those immigration empoyees involved need to be fired if any message is to be sent to their colleagues elsewhere. In an area of much contention, standards need to be of the highest

A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official acknowledged Wednesday that his agency has mistakenly detained U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, but he denied that his agency has widespread problems with deporting the wrong people. Gary Mead, ICE's deputy director of detention and removal operations, testified during a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing that U.S. citizens have been detained on "extremely" rare occasions, but he blamed the mix-ups on conflicting information from the detainees. Nonetheless, Mead said his agency is reviewing its handling of people who claim to be U.S. citizens "to determine if even greater safeguards can be put in place."

The testimony before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law came after immigration advocates told McClatchy that they'd seen a small but growing number of cases of U.S. citizens who've been mistakenly detained and sometimes deported by ICE. They accuse agents of ignoring valid assertions of citizenship in the rush to deport more illegal immigrants. Unlike suspects charged in criminal courts, detainees accused of immigration violations don't have a right to an attorney, and three-quarters of them represent themselves.

Last month, Thomas Warziniack, a U.S. citizen who was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, was mistakenly detained for weeks in an Arizona immigration facility and told that he was going to be deported to Russia. Warziniack, 40, was released after his family, who learned about his predicament from a McClatchy Newspapers reporter, produced his birth certificate.

In another high-profile example, ICE agents in California mistakenly deported Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen, to Mexico. Guzman was found months later when he tried to return to the United States.

Mead contended that both Warziniack and Guzman said they were illegal immigrants, and he said ICE agents have to be careful not to release the wrong people. Guzman and Warziniack had been serving time for minor offenses when their jailers turned them over to immigration authorities. Although Mead said that Guzman is the only U.S. citizen he knows who's been deported erroneously, immigration lawyers have said they've found at least seven others. In the past four years, ICE agents have detained more than 1 million people.

House committee members also heard stories of ICE agents interrogating or detaining U.S. citizens in their homes, at their workplaces and on the street. Marie Justeen Mancha, a 17-year-old born in Texas, said ICE agents raided her family's home in Georgia in 2006 while her mother was running an errand. Her mother is also a U.S. citizen. "I started to hear the words, 'Police! Illegals!'" she recalled. "I walked around the corner from the hallway and saw a tall man reach toward his gun and look straight at me." Mancha said the agents left after grilling her about her citizenship. "I carry that fear with me every day, wondering when they'll come back," she said. Mancha is one of five U.S. citizens named in a pending lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center that alleges wrongful interrogations or detentions by ICE in Southeast Georgia.

Rep. Steven King, R-Iowa, the ranking minority member of the committee, described the cases as isolated and urged the agency not to be distracted from detaining and deporting illegal immigrants. "ICE does not aim to harass and detain U.S. citizens," he said. But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the committee, said that after hearing such stories, she feared an "overzealous government is interrogating, detaining and deporting its own citizens."

Nancy Morawetz, who runs an immigration rights clinic at New York University, said getting proof of citizenship is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for detainees, especially when they're shipped to a facility far from home. In 2006, the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, identified 125 people in immigration detention centers who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims. "As a country we do not have a national identity card," Morawetz said in an interview. "People don't walk around with a 'C' on their forehead that says they're a U.S. citizen."

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15 February, 2008

New Zealand finally does the decent thing: U-turn grants centenarian's wish

A 101-year-old widower will live out his twilight years with his only living relative in New Zealand after immigration officials reversed a decision to send him back to England. The widower, a retired research chemist who has been living with his English-born New Zealand-resident son since 2006, was refused residency on a technicality - his son hadn't lived here for the required minimum 184 days in each of the three years before his application was made.

In his application for residency, the centenarian told immigration officials he no longer wished to live alone in Britain and his 63-year-old son thought the sensible and responsible option was for him to come to live with him and his wife. The 101-year-old arrived on a visitor's permit in July 2006. It expired in April 2007, but he didn't renew it because he believed he wasn't required to while his residence application was being determined.

In his appeal to the independent Residence Review Board (RRB), the man said he had "adequate financial resources" to support himself and met Immigration New Zealand (INZ) health requirements. Despite the man's savings of some $363,000 and receiving an annual pension of almost $83,000, the RRB confirmed INZ's decision to decline the man's application saying there were no special circumstances. "Overall, the appellant's age, his financial resources, the fact that his son lives in New Zealand and the fact the appellant has no family in Great Britain do not make him special," the RRB said. "There is no evidence that the appellant could not have continued to live in Great Britain alone and without his son, as he had done for many years."

But immigration officials softened their hardline stance after intervention from Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove, who asked them to take another look at the man's case. An INZ spokeswoman confirmed to NZPA today the man would be allowed to stay.

New Zealand welcomed another centenarian immigrant yesterday when 102-year-old Briton Eric King-Turner arrived in Wellington aboard the Saga Rose cruise ship. Mr King-Turner, New Zealand's oldest immigrant, moved halfway across the world with his New Zealand-born wife of more than 12 years, Doris, 89. They are believed to be settling in Nelson, where Mrs King-Turner is understood to own a house.

The spokeswoman told NZPA where cases do not meet policy requirements, there was provision for the individual merits of the case to be looked at, "and in this case residency was granted". "It is important to note that no two cases are exactly the same and where discretion is used it is based on the specific circumstances of that case," she said. Mr Cosgrove said both he and Associate Immigration Minister Shane Jones had discretion to ask officials to look again at exceptional cases referred to them. He said he asked immigration officials to review the man's case after he became aware of publicity in the media. Ministerial intervention was rarely used and only in exceptional circumstances. "I'm pleased," Mr Cosgrove told NZPA. "I think it's a good decision and I hope the gentleman has a good life."

Source



Rhode Island getting roiled

Rhode Island, facing a budget crisis that will lead to massive cutbacks, is engulfed in the most intense battle over illegal immigration in New England, with Republicans and Democrats alike calling for a crackdown on unauthorized workers. In the past few weeks, state lawmakers and the governor have proposed a battery of measures targeting unauthorized workers, from expelling undocumented children from the state's healthcare system to making English the official language to jailing business owners and landlords who harbor illegal workers. Even the father of the state's first baby born in the New Year was caught up in the issue. Days after a beaming Mynor Montufar appeared in the news, the illegal immigrant was picked up for deportation to Guatemala.

The increasingly vitriolic debate, playing out in coffee shops, on talk radio, and television, is dividing a state that has long taken pride in its immigrant roots. Lawmakers and angry taxpayers say the state is facing a $550 million budget deficit and cannot afford government services for illegal immigrants. But immigrants accuse their critics of betraying their own heritage, pointing out that Italians, Irish, and other groups came to the United States for the same reason as today's immigrants: to work. "If this is the country of immigrants, why the witch hunt?" said Enio Garcia, a Goya foods salesman, as he took orders at a market in Central Falls, a city outside of Providence. "They've forgotten where they came from."

Lawmakers and others say Rhode Island has been forced to search for its own solutions over the past year because Congress failed to do something about the 12 million immigrants in the United States illegally.

Nationally, other states are also taking on immigration. In Arizona, a law that took effect this year threatens to shut down businesses that intentionally hire illegal immigrants. Oklahoma began denying government benefits to illegal immigrants last year and made it a felony to harbor them. "We need to start taking care of the people who are residents of the state of Rhode Island, who rightfully belong here, who come here, pay taxes, and support all these programs," said state Senator Christopher B. Maselli, a Democrat and the great-grandson of Italian knife makers, who is cosponsoring the legislation that, among other things, would punish landlords and business owners who harbor illegal workers. "They're sick and tired of having to support people who don't come here the right way."

Rhode Island has long touted its immigrant past, and the contributions of European immigrants who once toiled in the textile mills. In downtown Providence, a new memorial commemorates the Irish famine. Across the street, a marble plaque honors Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano. Illegal immigrants account for 20,000 to 40,000 of the state's 1 million residents, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. For years, immigrants from Latin America and other lands felt safe strolling the streets and working in factories. But in the last few years, that has changed. Immigrants now say they are squirreling away money, staying indoors, and worrying about recent immigration raids.

Many immigrants were shaken by the arrest of Montufar, who had defied a deportation order. He also had convictions for disorderly conduct and domestic assault. In an especially dramatic turn, one of the Montufar family's boarders, David De La Roca, 27, was found hanged in an apparent suicide the day of Montufar's arrest. He was also an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala.

Lilliana, 34, an undocumented immigrant from Colombia, says one of her co-workers at a shoe factory breaks into a sweat when strangers enter the room, afraid they are immigration agents. "There are so many bad people out there. Why don't they go and get them?" said Lilliana, speaking in Spanish as she shopped at a mini-market in Central Falls, which has one of the highest proportions of immigrants in the state. "Leave the working people alone."

In Rhode Island, criticism of illegal immigrants crosses party lines. The Republican governor, Donald L. Carcieri, supports a bill to make English the state's official language, mainly a symbolic move. After an undocumented worker from Mexico cut his face open with a chainsaw and recently collected $30,000, Carcieri said he would file legislation to end workers' compensation benefits for illegal workers. Carcieri is already under fire for eliminating the jobs of three Southeast Asian interpreters last year, part of a reduction of 1,000 state jobs.

At the State House, Maselli and another Democratic lawmaker filed the bill, modeled after an Oklahoma law, that would punish landlords and business owners who hire or rent apartments to illegal immigrants. Another bill, which has dozens of cosponsors in the House and Senate, would force businesses to screen new workers through a federal database. Carcieri declined to comment, though he has aired his views repeatedly on talk radio and said the state should not support people who are here illegally.

Advocates for immigrants say illegal immigrants are the scapegoats for the financial troubles in a state that has been strained in the past by allegations of corruption and overspending. Juan Garcia, a community organizer in Providence, said cracking down on immigrants hurts the state's economy, pointing to the arrest of Montufar, 21, as one example. With Montufar out of work, Carmen Marrero, his 19-year-old girlfriend and a US citizen, said she is applying for aid for herself and her three children. "Now, there are four more people who are going on the rolls," Garcia said.

Critics of illegal immigrants say they hope the publicity over the legislation will pressure illegal immigrants to leave Rhode Island. In Lincoln, a rural town of brightly painted farmhouses, rolling fields, and few immigrants from Latin America, Terry Gorman is leading a grass-roots push for a statewide crackdown on illegal immigrants from his tanning salon in a strip mall. He founded Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement in 2006 after a friend without health insurance was hit with a $6,600 hospital bill, which Gorman believes an illegal immigrant could have avoided. Currently, the group has 450 members who attend legislative hearings and campaign against lawmakers who disagree with them. The group mailed dozens of bricks to US congressmen to show their support for a proposed wall along the southern border. Gorman, 67, a grandson of Irish immigrants, said he is often called racist for his work, but insisted that he is against lawbreakers only. "If you're from Poland, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, and anywhere in South America, if you're in the United States illegally, then I'm against you," he said.

A few stores away, paint shop owner Ted Sliney said he agreed with Gorman that immigrants should not be here illegally. He said he works 11- to 12-hour days to help pay an $800-a-month health insurance bill. "I don't mean to seem cruel, but I feel like I'm carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders," he said.

Critics of illegal immigrants draw a line between today's immigrants and their own ancestors, pointing out that previous generations followed the rules. But advocates for immigrants and others say it used to be a lot easier to get into the United States. "You can't really compare the experiences of the early immigrants with the current ones," said Darrell West, a public policy and political science professor at Brown University. "A hundred years ago half of these people arriving would have been considered illegal immigrants."

In Central Falls, immigrants say they are just following in the footsteps of previous generations. The bodegas, chicken stands, and bakeries on Dexter Street are stocked with cheeses, sour creams, and breads from their homelands. Colorful posters advertise Mexican groups playing at the Knights of Columbus, and DVDs for learning English hang from the walls in a Colombian store.

Garcia, the Goya foods salesman, said immigrants are leaving for other states. "The barrio is empty," said Garcia, a native of Guatemala who became a US citizen five years ago. "That's the fear that exists in this state. Rhode Island has changed."

More here





14 February, 2008

Europe announces plans for sweeping immigration controls

Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. "Plans" are all very well but pushing them through to realization is another thing

The European Commission has announced plans to introduce sweeping new immigration controls across the countries covered by the Schengen agreement. The plans include a satellite surveillance system monitoring the entire territory of the EU. They would also require all visitors to the EU to provide fingerprints so their movements can be tracked. EU citizens will also be required to submit fingerprints if they want to participate in new fast-track customs controls.

The EU says the measures are being proposed to counter fears about terrorism and security following last December's extension of the passport-free Schengen area to nine of the newer member states. However, civil liberties groups say they are an unwarranted infringement on privacy and are designed to prevent immigration from Africa [It is undoubtedly designed to prevent ILLEGAL immigration from Africa but is that a problem?] under the guise of combating terrorism.

Ireland and Britain will have a choice whether or not to participate in the new measures as the two countries are currently not in the Schengen area.

Source



Crazy Canadian border patrols

A tangle of conflicting laws on both sides of the border is tying the hands of joint Canada-U.S. border squads, undermining efforts to nab international criminals, says a newly released report. Team members can't radio one another. They have to surrender their sidearms when crossing into the other country. And they're forbidden from crossing the Canada-U.S. border except at official stations, even though criminals prefer the isolated points in between.

"Communication among partners and the co-ordination of activities has not been fully achieved," says the document, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act. The censored internal report, prepared by the public works department, examines the first five years of the Integrated Border Enforcement Teams, which expanded nationally in April 2002. The teams include RCMP officers, Canadian and U.S. border guards, American immigration and customs officers and the U.S. coast guard. The Mounties, the lead agency for Canada, have committed 150 officers and $25 million a year to the program. There are 23 teams situated along 15 regions of the Canada-U.S. border, poised to catch drug smugglers, illegal immigrants and terrorists.

The evaluation, completed in late 2006, found a raft of problems, including incompatible radios that won't communicate with equipment from the other side of the border. The radio problem is partly legal: a cat's cradle of federal, state and provincial laws require special licensing to use designated frequencies on each side of the border.

Gun laws in each country also effectively prevent officers from routinely carrying their duty sidearms and similar weapons into the other country. Canadian laws are so strict an RCMP officer who is given dispensation to carry a sidearm into the United States must forfeit the weapon on re-entering Canada.

Source





13 February, 2008

Over two million foreigners are now working in Britain

The number of foreign workers in the UK has risen above two million for the first time, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. There has been a 75 per cent increase in workers from abroad in the last six years, while the number of British employees has dropped by half a million, new figures show

The rise has followed an influx of hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans into the UK since 2004. At the same time the number of British people claiming incapacity benefit has soared while there has also been an increase in people emigrating. Official figures from the Labour Force Survey show that the number of foreigners in the UK workforce increased between 2001 and last year by 864,000 - to just over two million people. This is equivalent to one in 14 of a total working population. The Conservatives last night said the disclosure undermined Gordon Brown's vow to create jobs for British workers.

The figures were contained in a letter from Karen Dunnell, the national statistician and director of the Office for National Statistics, to the Conservative MP James Clappison, a member of the Commons home affairs select committee. He said: "Ministers are really out of touch with what is happening in the jobs market. "The Government has overseen a significant increase in the employment of foreign citizens but have had much less success in creating jobs for British citizens."

Shadow home secretary, David Davis, said: "These figures further undermine Gordon Brown's grand and unwise pronouncement to create British jobs for British workers. "In fact, they show the number of UK-born citizens in employment has actually fallen by half a million in the last six years. "There is nothing wrong with the fact that immigrants to the UK should join the workforce but it is a matter of concern that we have more than a million people under 25 not in employment, education or training."

The figures showed there was a 75 per cent increase in the number of "non-UK nationals" working in Britain compared with 2001, when the figure was just 1.15 million. More than 700,000 workers from Eastern Europe have registered to work in the UK from the eight countries which joined the European Union in 2004. By contrast the number of UK-born nationals in the workforce fell, between 2001 and 2007, down by 500,000 from 24.4 million in 2001 to 23.9 million last year.

Critics claim many British workers are either simply unemployed or claiming to be too ill to work. Around 4.8 million people are currently claiming out-of-work benefits. Around 2.6 million are on incapacity benefits - 120,000 more than when Labour came to power in 1997. Last weekend David Freud, the Government's new welfare adviser, told The Daily Telegraph that as many as 1.9?million people claiming incapacity benefit could in fact work.

An additional factor in the fall in British workers is emigration. In the 12 months to July 2006, 385,000 people left the country, thought to be the highest number since the 1960s. A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said: "It is well known the UK workforce has declined due to demographic changes. "Our challenge now is to help utilise the workforce out there, helping those people who have not yet got into the labour market to do so through targeted help and support."

Source



Immigration nastiness triggered by a socialized medicine system

A 101-year-old Briton may be kicked out of New Zealand after immigration bosses rejected his plea to spend his final years living with his son, his only living relative. Despite savings of 145,000 pounds and a 33,000 a year pension, the widower may have to pack his bags after being told his circumstances "do not make him special." A retired research chemist whose son is a university professor, the man, who has not been named, had pleaded to stay in New Zealand after arriving in 2006.

Details of his case emerged yesterday, just three days before the arrival of 102-year-old Eric King-Turner, from Hampshire, who will be New Zealand's oldest ever immigrant. Mr King-Turner has been allowed to move with his Kiwi-born wife, Doris, 87, and has spent the last weeks sailing from Southampton to his new home.

But although the unnamed man told the country's Residence Review Board that he, like Mr King-Turner, is hale and hearty, officials have been unmoved by his plight fearing he may be a drain on health resources.

The centre of gravity of my immediate family is very clearly in New Zealand," wrote the man in a letter reported in a New Zealand newspaper yesterday. Hard-nosed bureaucrats, however, said if they wanted to stay in touch his son should make the 24,000 mile round trip to visit him in Britain. "Overall the appellant's age, his financial resources, the fact that the appellant has no family in Great Britain, do not make him special," the board said in a written decision. "The board appreciates the submission made that the appellant's son is the only living family member the appellant has, but for many years the appellant has lived in Great Britain, apart from his son and alone. "Presumably his son has visited him in that time and there is no evidence as to why his son could not continue to do this in the future."

The decision has drawn fire from New Zealand's opposition spokesman on immigration, Dr Lockwood Smith. "I don't think we have a very smart policy when it comes to old folk," he said. "To just say no is not good enough. "I know there are concerns that elderly people become a drain on society but where people are of significant means and they have assets and a pension it ought to be possible." More than 10,000 Britons were granted New Zealand residency permits last year, nearly 25 per cent of all immigrants.

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12 February, 2008

The latest from CIS

1. The Weaponization of Immigration .

EXCERPT: . . . America's support for policies that offer citizenship to deserving persons and safeguard its borders are as essential to liberty as its brave men and women at arms. A wise and implacable urgency should inform our actions as a nation and a people. Nothing less than the survival of America is at stake. The outcome of this conflict will indeed be 'fundamental and astounding.'

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2. What Happened to Immigration? Reports of the issue's demise are greatly exaggerated. .

EXCERPT: McCain's move to the right on immigration (at least rhetorically) since the failure of his amnesty bill provides further evidence of the sustained significance of immigration, a move that is manifested by his pledge to secure the borders "first" (though the corollary is that he would then have an amnesty, something people often don't hear). As John O'Sullivan notes, "one of the endearing things about McCain is his inability to pander in a convincing way," so many people don't believe his claims to have "seen the light" on immigration. On the other hand, many do. For instance, the California exit polls showed that 29 percent of those who favored mass deportation of illegals as the solution to illegal immigration voted for McCain. (Deportation supporters made up a plurality - 38 percent - of California Republican primary voters.) With most people completely unaware of McCain's deeply held ideological multiculturalism, it's no surprise that voters tuning into the race only a few days before the contest could be taken in by McCain's pretense.

The rest of the Republican field further bolsters the claim that the immigration issue resonates with voters. Initially, Reps. Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter seemed the only hawkish candidates on immigration; however, the rest of the candidates quickly followed suit. Romney, after seeming open to amnesty in 2005, came out against it and repeatedly attacked Giuliani for presiding over a sanctuary city while mayor of New York. Giuliani saw that he needed to sound tough, so he came out against the Senate amnesty bill last summer and told audiences, "I could end illegal immigration in three years." Mike Huckabee's comments as Arkansas governor in support of illegal immigrants led many to think that he would clone McCain on the issue - but instead he modeled his immigration platform on an article I'd written for National Review. Fred Thompson explicitly promoted "attrition through enforcement" and, along with Huckabee, actually proposed significant reductions in legal immigration, marking the first time in generations that such has happened in a presidential campaign.

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3. Los Angeles Times Debate on Immigration .

EXCERPT: Illegal aliens are people too. And precisely because they are people like any others, they respond to incentives just like anyone else. What we've seen over the past year or so is that when government changes the incentives that illegal immigrants face, they change their behavior. In other words, immigration enforcement is working . . .

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4. Immigration Enforcement Disrupts Criminal Gangs in Virginia.

EXCERPT: Immigration law enforcement has been a key ingredient in the success of criminal gang suppression efforts in Virginia, says a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies. As state lawmakers consider steps to address the illegal immigration problem this session, they should give high priority to institutionalizing partnerships between state and local law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and federal immigration authorities (ICE), as well as to immigration's fiscal costs. A large share of those involved with the immigrant gangs active in Virginia, such as MS-13, Surenos, and 18th Street, are illegal aliens. Their illegal status means they are especially vulnerable to law enforcement, and local authorities should take advantage of the immigration tools available in order to disrupt criminal gang activity, remove gang members from the streets, and better protect the public. Once explained, these measures are generally supported in communities around the state, including immigrant communities where much of the immigrant gang violence and crime occurs. Among the findings . . .

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5. Mexico First? McCain has embraced a Vicente Fox aide as his own .

EXCERPT: The contempt for American citizenship that McCain has shown by naming this political bigamist to a post in his campaign isn't even the whole problem. One might also ask how McCain could even consult with a person of such extreme views, let alone name him Hispanic outreach director. McCain's support for amnesty and accelerated mass immigration is bad enough, but you can, at least in theory, be for those things and still support firm borders and patriotic assimilation.

But McCain's Hispanic outreach director is a man who has spent years opposing the very legitimacy of America's borders and Americanization in the most public way possible. The man has been on every TV-news show in creation rejecting as pass‚ the very idea of sovereign borders and patriotic assimilation into the American mainstream.

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6. John McCain, Multiculturalist: Immigration is just one problem .

EXCERPT: We all know John McCain is terrible on immigration. For years he held America's sovereignty and security hostage to amnesty and increased immigration, and his newfound support for "enforcement first" is so insubstantial and transparently insincere that it insults our intelligence. He's so bad that Americans for Better Immigration ranks his performance in office as the worst of all the presidential candidates - including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And as Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has pointed out, passage of McCain's bill "would represent the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years."

But his support for de facto open borders is merely one manifestation of a larger problem - John McCain is a multiculturalist.

I don't mean he eats tacos at the Cinco de Mayo parade (nothing wrong with that!) - I mean he's an ideological multiculturalist. Francis Fukuyama has described (PDF) the ideology of multiculturalism this way: "not just as tolerance of cultural diversity in de facto multicultural societies but as the demand for legal recognition of the rights of ethnic, racial, religious, or cultural groups." At almost every turn over his entire public career, John McCain has supported the pluribus over the unum.

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7. Would tighter security curb illegal immigration? Yes. .

EXCERPT: Border security is one piece of the very large controlling-immigration puzzle. But policing borders, including the use of physical barriers where necessary, has been integral to the preservation of national sovereignty for centuries. In our country, some two-thirds of the illegal population has snuck across the border with Mexico; the rest entered legally - as tourists, students, etc. - and never left.

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8. Jewish Establishment Off-Key In Immigration Debate .

EXCERPT: Finally, as George Orwell perhaps understood best, the corruption of politics and of language are interconnected. Besser uses the terms "liberal" and "progressive" to describe supporters of "comprehensive immigration reform." One wonders what sort of "progressive" would endorse a scheme concocted by President Bush, boosted by the Wall Street Journal and the nation's most exploitative industries to create a permanent underclass of impoverished immigrants, thus reducing wages and worsening working conditions for America's most vulnerable?

If you support a sordid scheme that devastates America's working class and working poor, puts at risk our national security, environment and social safety net and surrenders national sovereignty, find another label for your beliefs.

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9. Amnesty John: If this is straight talk, who needs lies? .

EXCERPT: As with the terminological issue, the most disturbing aspect of the Social-Security-for-illegal-aliens discussion is not so much the content of McCain's policy prescriptions (which we should be happy to debate), but his brazen dishonesty, making "Straight Talk" not just a joke but an Orwellian portent. Real Straight Talk would be to say "Sure, it's an amnesty, but we don't really have any choice" or "Of course, I support Social Security for today's illegal immigrants as part of my amnesty plan." But to get the nomination, McCain has thrown Straight Talk off the bus.

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10. Economist Debate on Foreign Students .

EXCERPT from Jessica M Vaughan: What's the downside? There isn't one, say representatives of the higher education industry. The Institute for International Education claims that foreign students and their families contribute about $13 billion annually to the U.S. economy. But this analysis is too simplistic, relying on generalizations about the actual tuition paid by foreign students and ignoring the cost of government subsidies that go to all students in public and private schools. IIE's own data show that 11 percent of foreign undergraduate students and 47 percent of foreign graduate students are supported "primarily" by the host college or university with scholarships, tuition waivers, employment, or fellowships. No student, foreign or local, pays enough in tuition to cover the actual cost of the education -- all college and university students are subsidized by taxpayers. Harvard University economist George Borjas reports that the average per-student subsidy may reach $6,400 in private universities and $9,200 in public universities, totaling several billion dollars per year.

Source: Center for Immigration Studies
1522 K St. NW, Suite 820
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076
center@cis.org www.cis.org



Putnam findings confirmed in Australia

Immigration destroys social cohesion and community spirit

Migrants from non-English speaking countries are less likely to be volunteers than Australian-born people or migrants from English-speaking nations, a new study shows. Ethnically diverse neighbourhoods have lower levels of volunteering - even among their Australian-born residents.

The study, by Ernest Healy, senior research fellow at the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, challenges the notion that ethnic diversity leads to a stronger, more cohesive society. "When you create societies from mixed backgrounds it may not lead to overt violence . but to something scarier, a withdrawal from the civic sphere," Dr Healy said, "a feeling of less connectedness."

Using levels of volunteering as an indicator of social cohesion, the study shows that suburbs with a high degree of ethnic diversity have markedly lower rates of volunteering than more homogenous localities. The study, based on 2006 census data for Melbourne, shows migrants from non-English speaking countries are less likely to be volunteers than Australian-born or people from English-speaking countries, even when their income and age are similar. Length of residence in Australia makes little difference, and nor does citizenship, but English proficiency has a small impact. About 18 per cent of Australian-born middle-income earners aged 25-64 were volunteers, for example, but only 13 per cent of those from non-English speaking countries. But in ethnically diverse areas, both the Australian-born residents and the migrants from non-English speaking countries are less likely to volunteer than their counterparts in the more homogenous neighbourhoods.

Dr Healy said the results were likely to be similar for Sydney. He said it would be wrong to conclude migrants from non-English speaking countries were unfriendly and uncaring and less altruistic than Australian-born people. It was likely their altruism was directed to friends, families and neighbours, not through organi