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31 January, 2008

Another ACLU ripoff

Two foreign nationals who said they were forcibly drugged by U.S. immigration officials during failed efforts to deport them have agreed to a settlement in the case, their attorney said Tuesday. In exchange for dropping the lawsuit, Amadou Diouf, a native of Senegal, will get $50,000, and Raymond Soeoth of Indonesia will receive $5,000 and be allowed to stay in the United States for at least two years, said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The ACLU filed the case jointly with the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Soeoth, who was appealing his case for political asylum, alleged in the lawsuit that he had been sedated with anti-psychotic drugs in December 2004 at a San Pedro detention facility. Diouf, who also was pursuing an appeal for permanent legal status, said he was medicated in February 2006 while on a commercial plane at Los Angeles International Airport.

Soeoth and Diouf became friends while being held for nearly two years at the Terminal Island detention facility in San Pedro. They reluctantly accepted the settlement when Soeoth and his wife lost their immigration appeal and were threatened with deportation, Diouf said. Soeoth, a Christian, fled his predominantly Muslim country in 1999 to escape religious persecution and "greatly feared returning to Indonesia," Arulanantham said.

Earlier this month, immigration officials said they would no longer forcibly sedate foreign nationals without a federal court order. At the time, ACLU lawyers promised to move forward with the lawsuit to gain compensation for Soeoth and Diouf. The settlement could make it more difficult to force the government to release details about its sedation policy, Arulanantham said.

The settlement reached Monday "does not constitute admission of wrongdoing by the government," but it does "reflect the fact that ICE has changed its policy regarding medical escorts for detainees," said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice.

Source



Illegal immigrant holed up in church

Saying she hoped the fear of God would keep federal agents away, undocumented immigrant Flor Crisostomo on Monday vowed to stay in a Humboldt Park church indefinitely to keep Congress focused on immigration reform. Tears streaming down her cheeks, a defiant Crisostomo said she did not believe she was breaking U.S. law, nor did she see herself as hiding.

Arrested in an immigration raid in April 2006, she was ordered to leave the country voluntarily by Jan. 28. Crisostomo sought "sanctuary" in the Adalberto United Methodist Church, the same church that housed undocumented immigrant Elvira Arellano and Arellano's U.S.-born son Saul, for more than a year. "I am taking a stand of civil disobedience to make America see what they are doing," Crisostomo said in a statement that was translated into English. Speaking in broken English, she said immigrants are not terrorists but hard-working people contributing to the economy. "The real problem is the color and the language," she said.

U.S. immigration officials saw the issue differently, releasing a statement that said Crisostomo was given a voluntary departure order Oct. 12, 2006. After an appeal failed in December 2007, she was given 60 more days to leave the country on her own. "Ms. Crisostomo will be taken into custody at an appropriate time and place with consideration given to the safety of all involved," read the statement released by Gail Montenegro, spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Montenegro said that it is also illegal to "knowingly harbor an illegal alien," and those who do so can be subject to criminal prosecution.

Source





30 January, 2008

Europeans think Islamic immigration is dangerous

An "overwhelming majority" of Europeans believe immigration from Islamic countries is a threat to their traditional way of life, a survey revealed last night. The poll, carried out across 21 countries, found "widespread anti-immigration sentiment", but warned Europe's Muslim population will treble in the next 17 years. It reported "a severe deficit of trust is found between the Western and Muslim communities", with most people wanting less interaction with the Muslim world.

Last night an MP warned it showed that political leaders in Britain who preach the benefits of unlimited immigration were dangerously out of touch with the public.

The study, whose authors include the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, was commissioned for leaders at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. It reports "a growing fear among Europeans of a perceived Islamic threat to their cultural identities, driven in part by immigration from predominantly Muslim nations". And it concludes: "An overwhelming majority of the surveyed populations in Europe believe greater interaction between Islam and the West is a threat."

Backbench Tory MP David Davies told the Sunday Express: "I am not surprised by these findings. People are fed up with multiculturalism and being told they have to give up their way of life. "Most people in Britain expect anyone who comes here to be willing to learn our language and fit in with us." Mr Davies, who serves on the Commons Home Affairs Committee, added: "People do get annoyed when they see millions spent on translating documents and legal aid being given to people fighting for the right to wear a head-to-toe covering at school. "A lot of people are very uncomfortable with the changes being caused by immigration and politicians have been too slow to wake up to that."

The report says people have little enthusiasm for greater understanding with Islam and attempts to improve relations have been "disappointing". And with the EU Muslim population expected to reach 15 per cent by 2025 it predicts: "Any deterioration on the international front will be felt most severely in Europe."

But leading Muslim academic Haleh Afshar, of York University, blamed media "hysteria" for the findings. She said: "There is an absence of trust towards Muslims, but to my mind that is very much driven by an uninformed media. "To blame immigration is much harder because the current influx of immigrants from eastern Europe are by-and-large not Muslim. The danger is that when people are fearful of people born and bred in this country it is likely that discrimination may follow."

Source



Australian citizenship test a 'stunning' success

Hmmmm... I am not sure I agree with the criterion for success here. Is a test that everyone passes of much use? Maybe so in the circumstances but what the test requires and what it brings about would surely be more important criteria for its "success"

FEARS the citizenship test is unfair to migrants have been proved unfounded by a review showing a stunning 93 per cent pass rate. Indians and Filipinos are doing far better on the exam than Brits and New Zealanders. But a high number of newcomers from war-torn states, most of them refugees, are struggling to get through the quiz, according to an analysis released last night. The study indicates that migrants keen to get citizenship are swotting up on their new country and taking the test seriously.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the Government wanted to ensure the test was not a barrier to migrants in need of support. But he said: "The test can play a valuable role in helping new citizens understand the rights and responsibilities of citizenship."

It was introduced by the former government to "assist" people who want to become Australians understand "Australian values, traditions, history and national symbols". The test, which started on October 1, has to be taken by migrants aged 18-60, before they apply for citizenship.

The Department of Immigration review from October to the end of December found 92.9 per cent passed on their first or subsequent attempts. Candidates are allowed as many attempts as they want. But there were some surprises:

The lowest failure rate was 0.9 per cent for the 338 South African applicants, followed by just 1.1 per cent for the 634 from India, and 1.9 per cent for the 254 from the Philippines. The 1103 British migrants had a 2.26 per cent failure rate, and the 282 New Zealanders, 2.8 per cent. Skilled migrants, who made up 44 per cent of the 9043 people from 172 countries who sat the test, had the best pass rate of 97 per cent, and family reunion migrants, 21.6 per cent of participants had a 90 per cent success rate. However, for migrants here on humanitarian grounds [Mostly Africans] the success rate fell to 80 per cent.

Source





29 January, 2008

Obama revealed: He's a doctrinaire leftwinger on immigration

Barack Obama's defeat in the Nevada caucus revealed a weakness that the Clintons have been only too happy to exploit: Obama doesn't win with Democrat Hispanic voters, or at least he didn't in that state. Hillary Clinton won among Latinos in Nevada, 64-24, making her win there a sign that as the primary season heads west, Obama is going to meet a racial headwind. His solution: Pander to Hispanics by promising to support drivers licenses for illegal aliens.

Asked directly about the issue now, her California campaign spokesman said Clinton "believes the solution is to pass comprehensive immigration reform." "Barack Obama has not backed down" on driver's licenses for undocumented people, said Federico Pena, a former Clinton administration Cabinet member and Denver mayor now supporting Obama. "I think when the Latino community hears Barack's position on such an important and controversial issue, they'll understand that his heart and his intellect is with Latino community."

Obama's intention is to draw distinctions between himself and Clinton on what are otherwise indistinguishable positions on immigration. Both have adopted the standard Democratic approach of favoring tougher enforcement along with earned legalization.

The Illinois senator is differentiating himself in three key areas: driver's licenses, a promise to take up immigration reform his first year in office, and his background as the son of an immigrant (his father was Kenyan) and a community organizer in Chicago.

By dragging his own father into the debate, Obama is also signaling that he'll blur the line between legal and illegal immigration. Most legal immigrants will not appreciate this move, at all. This policy emphasis may help Obama in the primaries but it certainly won't help him in the general election if he's the nominee.

More here



Israeli High Court says black Christians may be Jews (!)

The government must reexamine the eligibility for immigration of thousands of Falashmura and allow an additional 1,500 to move to Israel, the High Court of Justice ruled last week. This decision constitutes a serious blow to the government's plan to end immigration by the middle of this year of members of this community, who claim Jewish ancestry despite conversion to Christianity over the years.

"Justice has been done," said Avraham Nagosa, who heads an umbrella organization for Ethiopian immigrants. "We said they haven't finished and that they need to check whether there are more people who meet the criteria. We asked only that they do the basic thing of checking them. This High Court decision is the beginning, and ultimately all the 8,000 [Falashmura] left will be checked."

However, the Interior Ministry downplayed the decision, saying: "The High Court accepted the state position not to open the lists. Nonetheless, it said the state would do well to determine whether there is room to expand the list of eligibles to 17,000. It is not an order, and the state was asked to announce within three months what it has decided. The matter has been transferred to the cabinet secretary for a decision."

The government decided a year ago that by June, 2008 it would stop bringing over Falashmura and close its offices in Ethiopia. The Foreign Ministry representative in the Ethiopian city of Gondar, who was responsible for investigating the eligibility of Ethiopians seeking to move to Israel, was recalled to Israel a few weeks ago. Some 1,400 Falashmura in Gondar have already received approval to move here, and that group will be immigrating at a rate of 300 a month.

Ethiopian organizations in Israel, and their supporters the world over, have criticized the government plan to bring the Falashmura immigration to an end, arguing that there are more than 8,000 members of the community in Gondar who meet the government criteria for immigration.

In response to a High Court petition on the matter, filed by representatives of the Falashmura, Justices Ayala Procaccia, Miriam Naor and Edna Arbel issued an interim verdict last week stating that the government must allow an additional 1,500 Falashmure to immigrate because the government said in 2004 that there were 17,188 potential Falashmura immigrants, but only 14,620 have received permission to move here.

More here





28 January, 2008

Zogby: American Public Sees Latin America through Narrow Immigration Lens

As the U.S. presidential candidates head into Super Tuesday primaries, decidedly negative views of American adults toward immigration are not only playing a role in the campaigns, but also risk damaging the U.S. relations with Latin America that could take years to repair.

An overwhelming majority of American adults say a candidate's stance on immigration is important to their voting decisions, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows. More than 76 % of the online poll respondents said a candidate's position on immigration is a "very important" or "somewhat important" factor in their decision on who to vote for in the presidential elections of 2008. When asked to choose from among possible policies the United States should adopt as part of its foreign policy with Latin America, the largest percentage of poll respondents, 36%, identified "job creation to stem migration..." as the most important policy.

The Zogby Interactive poll included 7,106 adults nationwide and was conducted January 18-21, 2008. It carries a margin of error of +/- 1.2 percentage points.

"This survey suggests that the United States public sees Latin America increasingly through an immigration lens, and a very negative one at that," said Peter Hakim, the President of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank that collaborated with Zogby on the poll. "The fact is that most Americans think U.S. foreign policy in the hemisphere should prioritize stopping immigration," he added. "U.S. debates over immigration, tinged with anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic sentiments, have sounded mean-spirited and disparaging of Latin America," Hakim said, "and this sours prospects for improving U.S. policy and relations with the region in the years ahead."

The poll also found U.S. public disapproval over remittances, the money sent from migrant workers in the U.S. to their families back home. An ample majority (61%) believe remittances by immigrants to family members living in Latin America "take a significant amount of money away from the United States economy." That figure is particularly surprising, considering that over 20% of the public said in the survey they had either sent remittances or know someone who had.

While immigration and remittances are on the minds of the American public, the poll suggests that Latin America is not a major concern to Americans beyond that

More here



British police chief: `migrant tide adds to crime'

One of Britain's leading police chiefs has warned Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, that his force is struggling to cope with "migration surges" that are leading to increased crime. In a leaked private letter, Mike Fuller, the chief constable of Kent, tells Smith the government's failure to provide extra funds to match the influx of immigrants will have a "negative impact on performance".

Fuller, Britain's most senior black police officer, also warns the soaring cost of translation services is placing a strain on resources. He says he will need more than 500 extra constables if the population increase caused by immigration continues.

The warning will embarrass the government. Last night the Labour-dominated home affairs committee promised to investigate Fuller's complaints that government funding has failed to take into account "surges" in arrivals from overseas. In his letter to Smith dated October 22 last year, the police chief states: "I feel it is essential that I set out the impact that population growth is having in Kent and the pressure it is placing on finite resources."

Fuller estimates 78% of the population growth is accounted for by migration. This has contributed to a rise of more than a third in violent crimes over five years to about 7,800 incidents last year. He estimates the total additional cost to the force to be 34 million pounds over the past three years, but claims increases in funding from the Home Office have failed to keep pace.

Fuller, Britain's first black chief constable, is regarded as a high-flyer. He recently qualified as a barrister, training in his spare time, and has been tipped as a future Metropolitan police commissioner. In his letter he warns that government predictions about immigration and population growth have proved unreliable. He concludes: "There is a danger that if the future funding regime fails to respond to dynamic changes in migration the extra demand this generates will impact negatively on performance."

Fuller says translation services account for an increasing proportion of his budget, with costs having risen by a third over the past three years. According to Fuller, the total population of Kent is forecast to rise from 1.6m now to 1.9m in 2029. Most of this increase will be a result of immigration. He says that if these predictions are correct, he will need an extra 561 constables.

He also warns that Kent suffers special problems policing the ferry ports and Channel tunnel. "As the gateway to Europe, Kent has unique geographical status which places additional strain on limited resources." Fuller is not the first police chief to complain that government funding is failing to take account of rising immigration. Julie Spence, of Cambridgeshire police, warned last year that new arrivals, often from eastern Europe, had left her force struggling to deal with certain offences including knife crime and drink driving. She said immigrant communities had "different standards" from the UK.

When asked last month about Kent, ministers claimed no assessment had been made of the impact of immigration on costs. In a parliamentary answer, Tony NcNulty, the police minister, said: "Kent police do not separately identify costs incurred as a result of immigration."

Damian Green, Conservative immigration spokesman, said ministers had misled the public: "This is clear evidence that all over the country public services have found it impossible to cope with the unplanned and rapid rise in population over the past few years. "This is another largely rural police force which is having to spend money on translation services and cope with extra pressures caused by fast rates of immigration. Without properly controlled immigration this problem will only get worse."

Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the home affairs committee, said: "Mike Fuller raises very important issues concerned with the changing needs of local areas as a result of migration. It is important that in looking at funding formulas the government understands that there are pressures that need to be addressed. We will be looking at this issues when we launch our forthcoming inquiry into policing." A Home Office spokesman said: "We will consider any evidence provided by the police."

Source





27 January, 2008

'Hispanic panic' as Arizona immigration crackdown bites

One month after Arizona introduced a law cracking down on businesses which employ illegal immigrants, Latino workers are fleeing the state and companies are laying off employees in droves, officials and activists say. Arizona has become one of the frontlines of the US immigration debate and broke new ground on January 1 with a law that threatens to put of business companies which knowingly hire undocumented workers. The effects of the law have been immediate, according to businessmen, workers and rights activists who spoke to AFP, with companies driving up wages to attract labor while being forced to part company with prized employees.

Even though a federal judge ruled last week that there will be no prosecutions under the law until March, it has done little to prevent a phenomenon being dubbed "Hispanic Panic." "There's a lot of fear and some people are leaving," said Salvador Reza, an immigrant-rights activist who runs a day labor center in Phoenix. "The fear is not only at the worker level, it's at the employer level. I've never seen that before in my life."

Workers are going back to Mexico or to other states, Reza said. He predicted small businesses forced to lay off skilled employees like welders will now pay them in cash, creating a black economy. "The underground economy is going to take hold now, and there will be less money for the state," Reza said.

Ten men were laid off at Ironco, a steel fabrication company in Phoenix which builds large-scale construction projects. "We had to let them go," president Sheridan Bailey said. "Unfortunately some of these people were our best workers. This is terribly tragic." Two out of three men who apply at Ironco, a construction firm that specialises in buildings and parking garages made with heavy steel, are Hispanic or foreign-born Hispanic, the company said.

Ironco has raised steel fitters' wages 30 percent from a year ago, according to Bailey. "We've raised wages, competing for a diminishing supply (of workers)," he said. "We?ve been on a campaign of quality improvement, training, scouring the waterfront, so to speak, for American vets, ex-offenders trying to find their way back into society."

A crew leader who worked for Rick Robinson's Phoenix landscaping company left the state because his wife is an illegal worker. The worker was scared his wife would be deported. "I've talked to other companies who have said they can't find anybody," Robinson said. "I've heard they're going to Utah or Texas or New Mexico because they don't have a law like this. We and other landscape companies are uncertain as to how far-reaching it will be. People don't know what they can and can't do. The whole thing is confusing, gross, and unfair."

David Jones, head of the Arizona Contractors Association, said he knows of three construction companies which have laid off 30, 40, and 70 employees respectively since the beginning of the year. "They can't stand the risk of losing their license," Jones said. Many workers are heading to neigboring Nevada to find jobs. "We've created a climate which will make Arizona's construction industry subordinate to Nevada," Jones said. "We're all frustrated (with illegal immigration), but I don?t think this is the right approach. If we don?t have a functional guest worker program in this country, we?re going to be in trouble."

Businesses feel exposed to discrimination lawsuits and anonymous malicious complaints from competitors, said Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce vice president Todd Sanders. "What we're hearing from folks is a level of uncertainty because there are some loose ends in the law," Sanders said.

The ripple in Arizona's economy has spread to other sectors. Real estate agent John Aguero Sr. said he gets four to seven calls each day from people asking about what they can do with their homes. Fifteen out of 100 people who call Aguero "are just walking away from their property," he said. One man called and asked how long the foreclosure process would take if he skipped his 1,600 house payments. Aguero told him four months. "Well, I'll save that and just go home (to Guatemala)," Aguero said. "His wife is a citizen but he's not. The whole family will pack up and leave. He has three children, all of whom were born here."

Royal Palms Middle School serves a largely Hispanic and immigrant area of the city. Three or four students have formally left the school since the beginning of the year. Twice that number haven't shown up to school in ten days. Attendance is down five percent. "We've tied what we're hearing to attendance," said principal Lenny Hoover. An announcement was made to students that police cannot come into the school and seize them. "What I have noticed is a great deal of student mental diffidence about it," Hoover said. "They?re worried about it, and kids don?t worry about a lot."

Source



Feds target immigrants far from border

Detective Nick McLendon, on stakeout duty along a dark stretch of eastbound Interstate 20, noticed a red Chevy Suburban with heavily tinted windows and no light over its rear Texas license plate. The missing light gave him all the excuse he needed to pull the SUV over. Packed into the Suburban, he discovered, were 14 illegal immigrants, two suspected smugglers, and a spiral notebook on the front seat, listing the passengers and their destinations in Spanish - "Arterio Ramires to Nuy Yersey; David Luna to Nueba York; Marcelina and Jasmin to Carolina del Norte; Jose Aguilar to Alabama; Josefina Ortega to Chicago; Gustavo Ribera to Florida."

The arrests - some 800 miles from the Mexican border - represented a new and dramatic shift in U.S. immigration enforcement strategy. Federal agents, with help from local law officers like McLendon, a Pearl detective, have begun intercepting illegal immigrants and smugglers along stretches of highway deep in the U.S. interior, where those who have slipped into the country usually have little chance of getting caught. "They think they're pretty much home free once they get up here," said Bill Botts, the assistant chief patrol agent in charge of the Border Patrol's Gulfport, Miss., station. But Operation Uniforce, as the two-week crackdown begun Jan. 13 is called, "is pretty much a shocker for the smuggling organizations."

More than 300 immigrants and suspected smugglers had been arrested as of Tuesday, more than a week into the operation. Interstate 20 has become a major corridor for immigrant smugglers. It peels off from I-10 in West Texas and runs across the South, passing through Atlanta and linking up with other major highways, including I-95, which leads to Miami to the south and Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston to the north. About 40 Border Patrol and customs agents who normally work at or close to the border have been temporarily assigned to the crackdown. They and local law officers have spread out along several miles of I-20 and some of its connecting highways, parking their vehicles out in the open in the median or by the side of the road. After the two weeks are up, they will return to their usual jobs and evaluate what they learned. In the coming weeks or months, they may return to I-20 and do it again.

The hope, though, is whether they come back or not, the crackdown will put immigrant smugglers on notice and disrupt their business by forcing them to take longer, slower and more costly detours. Border Patrol spokesman Ramon Rivera said the vast majority of those caught in the crackdown are Mexicans headed to the East Coast, where they typically land jobs in agriculture, construction and manufacturing. Agents also found a Mexican who had paid a smuggler $400 to get him home to avoid a murder charge in Chicago.

But perhaps more important, the agents also uncovered vital information about a few prolific smuggling rings and a popular Texas stash house where immigrants were being kept after crossing the border. "The intelligence we are getting is absolutely priceless," Rivera said.

The Border Patrol said it had no immediate estimate of the cost of Operation Uniforce. Federal agents ran three such operations closer to the border last year: two in Baton Rouge, La., and one in Mobile, Ala. Those efforts seemed to force the smugglers north from I-10 to I-20. So this time, agents picked up and moved deeper into the interior to I-20, some 800 miles from the nearest border crossing, at Brownsville, Texas.

The Associated Press was allowed to document the operation during an nighttime ride-along last week in Mississippi. On that night, McLendon, who normally pulls over motorists in a search for drugs, found the exhausted immigrants crammed in the Suburban, shoes off, a few blankets on the floorboards, a half-empty jug of water in the back. The passengers, including a girl of about 10, had crossed into the United States from Mexico near Nogales, Ariz., some 1,200 miles away from this Mississippi town.

It was unclear whether they sneaked across the open desert on foot, or passed through a border crossing station and then climbed into the SUV. But the Suburban had made it all the way from the border in Arizona - a receipt in the vehicle showed that someone bought a new battery there on Wednesday - and passed through Dallas on Thursday - the driver stopped for an oil change about 1:30 p.m. - before being stopped outside Jackson, Miss.

If McLendon had come across these immigrants a week earlier, he would have issued a ticket for the missing light and sent them on their way. The nearest fixed Border Patrol station is 160 miles away in Gulfport, and he wouldn't have called it because the agents wouldn't have made the three-hour trip for such a routine matter. This time, Border Patrol agents posted along the highway promptly arrived on the scene, and all 16 people were arrested and held for deportation. "When Border Patrol pulled up you could see the disappointment on their face, that they would be going all the way back," McLendon said.

Source





26 January, 2008

Immigration database to mine 9 federal sources

About time! Sure to be bug-prone, though

A massive new database program that culls information from more than nine federal sources will help law enforcement agents link possible terrorists or other suspected criminals with associates whose records are in the system, federal officials say. The program's goal is to close gaps in information-sharing identified in The 9/11 Commission Report, which chided law enforcement for failing to piece together the hijackers' terrorist cell. Critics say it raises privacy and accuracy concerns. "The system will make connections for us," says Jason Henry, who runs the information-sharing program at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Other federal, state and local law enforcement will be able to access the ICE Pattern Analysis and Information Collection System, dubbed "ICEPIC." It will collect information from databases that track foreign students, visitors and immigrants as well as criminals and suspected terrorists. Among the databases is the government's terrorist watch list. More than 15,000 people have appealed to have their names taken off that list, saying it contains incomplete or inaccurate information. ICE declined to identify all the databases "because that becomes a road map for a terrorist or a member of a criminal organization," Henry said.

Investigators previously searched 10 to 15 databases manually for people who met "suspicious criteria," a process that could take as long as three days per person, Henry says.

Civil liberties and privacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union say they worry investigators will arrest innocent people based on information from flawed databases. "The difficulty is if you have bad data," ACLU attorney Tim Sparapani says. "Then that bad data migrates from one database to another database. You end up with all sorts of innocent people getting stopped or tagged as being suspicious."

James Dempsey of the Center for Democracy & Technology says if the agency builds in safeguards to protect innocent people, the data can be useful. ICE officials say they will not use the system to monitor travel or behavior patterns. "It's not data mining," says spokesman Brandon Alvarez Montgomery. Sparapani counters: "This is data mining of the highest order. They can say the sky is pink, but we all know it's blue." ICEPIC will be posted in the Federal Register on Tuesday and will be in use after a 30-day comment period, Henry says.

Source



An outrageous immigration story...

Arrogant Fascist bureaucrats. It shouldn't need intervention from a Congressman to get a bureaucracy to behave decently and competently

Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

On Thursday, Warziniack finally became a free man. Immigration officials released him after his family, who learned about his predicament from McClatchy, produced a birth certificate and after a U.S. senator demanded his release. "The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes," Warziniack said in an earlier phone interview from jail. "All I know is that somebody dropped the ball."

The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens. U.S. citizens who are mistakenly jailed by immigration authorities can get caught up in a nightmarish bureaucratic tangle in which they're simply not believed. An unpublished study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, in 2006 identified 125 people in immigration detention centers across the nation who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims. Vera initially focused on six facilities where most of the cases surfaced. The organization later broadened its analysis to 12 sites and plans to track the outcome of all cases involving citizens.

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. Less affluent or resourceful U.S. citizens who are detained must try to maneuver on their own through a complicated system. "It becomes your word against the government's, even when you know and insist that you're a U.S. citizen," Siulc said. "Your word doesn't always count, and the government doesn't always investigate fully."

Officials with ICE, the federal agency that oversees deportations, maintain that such cases are isolated because agents are required to obtain sufficient evidence that someone is an illegal immigrant before making an arrest. However, they don't track the number of U.S. citizens who are detained or deported. "We don't want to detain or deport U.S. citizens," said Ernestine Fobbs, an ICE spokeswoman. "It's just not something we do." While immigration advocates agree that the agents generally release detainees before deportation in clear-cut cases, they said that ICE sometimes ignores valid assertions of citizenship in the rush to ship out more illegal immigrants....

The attorneys said the chances of mistakes are growing as immigration agents step up sweeps in the country and state and local prisons with less experience in immigration matters screen more criminals on behalf of ICE. ICE's Fobbs said agents move as quickly as possible to check stories of people who claim they're American citizens. But she said that many of the cases involve complex legal arguments, such as whether U.S. citizenship is derived from parents, which an immigration judge has to sort out. "We have to be careful we don't release the wrong person," she said.

In Warziniack's case, ICE officials appear to have been oblivious to signs that they'd made a serious mistake. After he was arrested in Colorado on a minor drug charge, Warziniack told probation officials there wild stories about being shot seven times, stabbed twice and bombed four times as a Russian army colonel in Afghanistan, according to court records. He also insisted that he swam ashore to America from a Soviet submarine. Court officials were skeptical. Not only did his story seem preposterous, but the longtime heroin addict also had a Southern accent and didn't speak Russian.

Colorado court officials quickly determined his true identity in a national crime database: He was a Minnesota-born man who grew up in Georgia. Before Warziniack was sentenced to prison on the drug charge, his probation officer surmised in a report that he could be mentally ill. Although it took only minutes for McClatchy to confirm with Minnesota officials that a birth certificate under Warziniack's name and birth date was on file, Colorado prison officials notified federal authorities that Warziniack was a foreign-born prisoner.

McClatchy also was able to track down Warziniack's three half-sisters. Even though they hadn't seen him in almost 20 years, his sisters were willing to vouch for him. One of them, Missy Dolle, called the detention center repeatedly, until officials there stopped returning her calls. Her brother's attorney told her that a detainee in Warziniack's situation often has to wait weeks for results, even if he or she gets a copy of a U.S. birth certificate.

Warziniack, meanwhile, waited impatiently for an opportunity to prove his case. After he contacted the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, a group that provides legal advice to immigrants, a local attorney recently agreed to represent him for free.

Dolle and her husband, Keith, a retired sheriff's deputy in Mecklenburg County, N.C., flew to Arizona from their Charlotte home to attend her brother's hearing before an immigration judge. Before she left, she e-mailed Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. After someone from his office contacted ICE, immigration officials promised to release Warziniack if they got a birth certificate. After scrambling to get a power of attorney to obtain their brother's birth certificate, the sisters succeeded in getting a copy the day before the hearing. On Thursday, however, government lawyers told an immigration judge during a deportation hearing that they needed a week to verify the authenticity of Warziniack's birth record. The judge delayed his ruling.

"I still can't believe this is happening in America," Dolle said. Warziniack began to weep when he saw his sister. "They still don't believe me," he said. Later that day, however, ICE officials changed their minds and said that he could be released this week. They said they were able to confirm his birth certificate, but they didn't acknowledge any problem with the handling of the case.

The officials blamed conflicting information for the mix-up. "The burden of proof is on the individual to show they're legally entitled to be in the United States," said ICE spokeswoman Kice..... [What an arrogant heap of Soviet sh*t! Guilty until proven innocent! They should deport HER -- to Russia]

In the end, Sanguinetti said, ICE is responsible for making sure that it detains and deports the correct person. Her prisons flag hundreds of prisoners a month as foreign-born, but can't possibly verify the information, she said. "Could it happen again? Sure," Sanguinetti said. "But we would hope that ICE during their investigative process would discover the truth."

Rachel Rosenbloom, an attorney at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College who's identified at least seven U.S. citizens whom ICE has mistakenly deported since 2000, believes that the agency should set up a more formal way of handling detainees when they appear to have valid claims of U.S. citizenship. At the very least, she said, ICE could release people such as Warziniack on bond while waiting for immigration judges to hear the cases. "It's like finding innocent people on death row," Rosenbloom said. "There may be only a small number of cases, but when you find them you want to do everything in your power to make sure they get out."

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25 January, 2008

"Undocumented" thugs at work

There's one old lady who must wish that only "documented" people could enter the USA

Daly City police have identified a man suspected of driving a getaway vehicle following a botched Jan. 12 robbery that left a 78-year-old woman in critical condition, police Lt. Jay Morena said today. Police arrested Juan Carlos Cuellar, 36, after serving him with a search warrant at his home in the 800 block of Hillside Boulevard in Daly City on Sunday, Morena said. Police were tipped off by a witness who claimed Cuellar had confessed to the crime, Morena said.

Cuellar would not tell police the location of the getaway vehicle, a white 2007 Chevrolet extended-cab pickup truck with license plate No. 8K20092, according to Morena. Police believe the vehicle may contain physical evidence relating to the robbery attempt in which Cuellar's alleged accomplice, 28-year-old Jose Perez-Gonzalez, used a metal bar to pry open a rear sliding door of a 78-year-old woman's Serramonte neighborhood home.

Police believe that Perez-Gonzalez was surprised by the victim and beat her about the face with the pry bar, leaving her "bleeding profusely from massive facial and head trauma," according to police. The suspect then fled the home through the front door, setting off the silent alarm, and left the scene in the getaway car. Police responded to the alarm around 3:40 p.m. and found the victim suffering major injuries, police reported. The woman was taken to a local hospital where today she remains in critical condition, a police detective said.

Investigating officers discovered that Perez-Gonzalez apparently called the victim's home before the robbery pretending to be delivering a package to determine what time the victim would be out of the home. Both men will face a variety of felony offenses, Morena said, which include attempted murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault of an elderly person resulting in great bodily injury and two counts of residential burglary. However, Cuellar will not speak with detectives and Perez-Gonzalez remains at large.

Police believe that Perez-Gonzalez most recently lived on Sandra Court in South San Francisco, but have searched more of the Bay Area in hopes of finding him. He is described as 5 feet 6 inches tall, 145 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. He has a black and red 'Harley Davidson' motorcycle emblem and black dragon band tattooed on his right arm and may have 'Mexico' tattooed in large letters on the inside of his right forearm. In the past he has used the names Antonio Perez, Moses Omar Lopez-Padilla, Jose De Jesus Perez-Gonzalez and Juan Arellano.

Police said Cuellar an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador and Perez-Gonzalez is an undocumented immigrant originally from Guadalajara, Mexico.

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Canada toughening up?

Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to get into Canada, as border agents with better access to American criminal databases are turning people back for offenses ranging from assault to drunken driving to shoplifting. Canada has had better access to criminal records since the Sept. 11 terror attacks but lawyers say they are now using the records more aggressively. "There has been some changes in procedures," says Enrico Caruso, a Detroit-based immigration lawyer who says he has received more complaints in recent months from Americans shut out for old non-violent offenses. "There's more questions being asked at the point of entry," he says.

Americans took nearly 44 million trips to Canada in 2000, according to Canada Statistics, the federal government's statistical agency. Fewer than 29 million made the trip in 2006, the last year for which figures were available.

Caruso says one reason for the drop in visitors is concern among some Americans that Canada will stop them because of their past. "It is absolutely the case," he says. "An indiscretion can be anything from a DUI to when you were 18 and scalped tickets to a Red Wings game."

The Canadian Consulate General's office says almost all convictions can bar you from entry and improved sharing of criminal databases have made it easier for Canadian border agents to identify Americans with a criminal past. Canada Border Services spokesperson Derek Mellon says there has been no change in the line of questioning asked by his agents. And he says the number of Americans turned away is small. In fiscal year 2006, he says fewer than 6,000 people were turned away. Mellon said his agency's aim is to ensure the safety of Canadians. "That's the reality of a post-9/11 world," he said. "When people are coming to the country they have to know that there's regulations."

Randy Kutter, a firefighter from Princeton, Minn., had been taking fishing trips to Canada his entire life. But Canadian border agents barred him in 2005 because of two DUI convictions in the 1980s. "I couldn't fault any nation for trying to protect their borders," Kutter said. "I think that people who have paid their debt to society need to be forgiven at some point."

Although the United States has similar access to Canadian records the policy here does not appear to be as stringent. Michael Friel, a spokesman with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, says convictions for crimes like DUI, simple assault, disorderly conduct and breaking and entering do not make a person inadmissible to the United States.

David Cohen, a Montreal-based immigration attorney for 25 years, says that for the first time more than half of his calls in 2007 have come from Americans surprised after being turned back at the border. He said the big difference has been a question asked more frequently of visitors: "Do you have any criminal offenses?" "Normally, that isn't a question that would be asked to U.S. residents coming into Canada," Cohen says. "It was kind of on the honor system."

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24 January, 2008

Clinton hypocrisy

By Ruben Navarette

It's hard to find any candidate in either party who is speaking to Hispanics in a way that is substantive, respectful and empowering. Instead, we're served a combination plate of neglect, pandering, and double-talk - with a side of chips and guacamole. That's what Sen. Hillary Clinton offered recently to Hispanic voters while campaigning in a Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas. She was trying to make the point that, even with our differences, all Americans are connected and all their problems are connected despite the fact that "we treat them as though one is guacamole and one is chips."

Look, a white politician trying to relate to Hispanics by using Mexican food as an entree. How original. I asked Richardson what he thought of the analogy. "The remarks are a bit unfortunate," he said. "But with Latinos, she's always been very sensitive. This was a slip of the tongue. But it's still typical of an American mainstream view that we're defined by certain ethnic characteristics."

Mexican Americans are accustomed to politicians trying to relate to them through Mexican food. In his congressional races, Lyndon Johnson went into the Hispanic enclaves of south Texas and handed out tacos and beer. Years later, President Ford tried to bond with a Hispanic audience by biting into a tamale. Too bad Ford didn't realize he had to remove the husk. President Clinton loved Mexican food and consumed it in mythical proportions. During a visit to a Mexican restaurant in Tucson in the late 1990s, Clinton ate enough to sustain a family of four. The next day, there was an article in an Arizona newspaper talking about how Clinton met with black leaders and addressed Native Americans - and how, to show his affinity to Hispanics, he ate tons of Mexican food.

So what? How does that help me - or those Hispanics who hunger for respect from politicians? We get it. Almost everyone likes Mexican food. But listen to the immigration debate and it becomes clear that not everyone likes Mexicans. And that's what those who are running for president should be talking about. Why not can the superficiality and have a mature discussion about issues that impact people's lives?

Instead, when the immigration issue came up during her visit to the restaurant in Las Vegas, Sen. Clinton went for the easy applause line. When a man shouted out that his wife was illegal, Clinton drew cheers when she declared: "No woman is illegal." Not helpful. Clinton should have shown some tough love, and told these folks to take responsibility for their actions. No woman is illegal? What does that even mean?

Surely, people do sometimes engage in unlawful activities and they have to make restitution and ask forgiveness. People will be less likely to do that if you convince them that they didn't do anything wrong.

This kinder and gentler Hillary Clinton may take getting used to. In February 2003, when she was trying to impersonate a hawk on border security, Clinton assured a couple of talk show hosts at WABC radio in New York that she was "adamantly against illegal immigrants." Why, Sen. Clinton. Haven't you heard? No immigrant is illegal.

Now that Clinton is running for president and in hot pursuit of the Hispanic vote, it's no wonder she wants to keep things light and pass the chips and guacamole. The contradictions - between where she is now, and where she used to be - could be hard to swallow.

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Michigan to bar licenses to illegal aliens

Michigan will no longer let illegal immigrants get driver's licenses, a practice just seven other states continue to allow. Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, who oversees the motor vehicle department, announced the new policy Monday and said it takes effect Tuesday. The new policy also bars people who are legal but not permanent U.S. residents from getting licenses. Legislation to allow those on temporary work or student visas to get licenses is pending in the Legislature.

The change is aimed at complying with an opinion issued last month by Attorney General Mike Cox, who said granting licenses to illegal immigrants is inconsistent with federal law. Opinions by the attorney general's office are legally binding on state agencies and officers unless reversed by the courts. The new policy applies to first-time applicants for a Michigan driver's license or identification card. Updated procedures for renewals will be released soon.

"This is one more tool in our initiative to bolster Michigan's border and document security," Land said in a statement. "It also puts Michigan's procedure in line with those of most other states." Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington do not require drivers to prove legal status to obtain a license. Michigan borders Canada and contains some of the nation's busiest boundary crossings.

Driver's licenses are among several hot-button issues surrounding the debate over illegal immigration. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer last year proposed allowing illegal immigrants to get licenses, but withdrew the idea under heavy criticism.

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23 January, 2008

The good ol' Leftist tactic of doing your best to shut a critic up whom you cannot successfully debate

SCLC are a "rights" organization rather than representatives of a church or group of churches. That both Jesus (Mark 12:17) and St Paul (Romans 13:1-7) tell Chistians to obey the law of the land is one of those "optional" Christian doctrines, for them apparently. Otherwise they would not be suporting illegal imigration by word or deed. And there is only ONE group of racists in the matter. "La Raza" means "The race". How blatant can you get and still earn Leftist and media approval? Completely blatant, apparently -- as long as you don't mention the word "white", of course. Nice to see the SCLC supporting racism. I wonder what the founder of SCLC (M.L. King) would think of that?

A Kansas City parks official whose membership in an anti-illegal immigration group sparked the cancellation of two conventions here has resigned. Kansas City parks board commissioner Frances Semler, a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) which runs patrols on the U.S. border with Mexico as part of its effort to prompt more enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, resigned late on Monday, the city said.

Her resignation marks the latest skirmish in an increasingly emotional debate across America over illegal immigration. Although Kansas City is far from the Mexican border, the focal point for arguments over how to handle illegal crossings into the United States, the debate over Semler's views has spotlighted deep divisions among Americans on the issue.

Last week, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference said because of Semler's views it would join the National Council of La Raza, a U.S. Hispanic advocacy group, in rejecting Kansas City for national conventions previously planned for the city.

Semler said frustration with a lack of enforcement of U.S. immigration laws led her to join the Minuteman group in December. She had planned to attend a meeting of the organization planned for Kansas City on February 1-2 but was warned by Mayor Mark Funkhouser not to attend. "Any individual or organization who speaks with concern of the impact of the well-organized invasion of illegals in this country is subjected to being called terms such as bigot or racist," Semler said in her resignation letter.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference CEO Charles Steele Jr. also urged other civil rights groups to boycott the city. Leaders of the organizations could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, but in the past they and other critics said the Minuteman group is a racist organization that uses guns and intimidation against minorities.

In contrast, the group, which counts about 9,000 members nationally, says it is a peaceful organization trying to uphold U.S. law. Its has member patrols along the U.S. border with Mexico and reports illegal crossings to law enforcement agencies. "Mayor Funkhouser is clearly running a sanctuary city (for illegal immigrants) in Kansas City, and rather than demonstrate some leadership by enforcing the laws, he has chosen to play racial politics..." said Chris Simcox, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps president.

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Immigration is an economic issue too

Not surprisingly, Democrats have switched the pitch from Iraq to the economy, because the administration's latest Iraq strategy may actually be working.

An analysis of the economy consists of countless pieces, not the least of which is the issue of "foreigners" - either those who are taking our jobs as we export them to other countries (globalization) or those foreigners who take our jobs at this end as we "import" them - not the jobs - but the foreigners. It's a bit of a double whammy.

Democrats are, of course, railing over the globalized economy as though we can do something to stop it, but some of their strategists believe they are making a mistake to concede the immigrant issue to the Republicans. Democrats never want to concede a negative or populist issue. This is their meat and potatoes - attack anybody and anything - corporations, big oil, anyone who provides a job, drug companies, and the rich - but offer nothing constructive as a solution, other than government.

While their support of either illegal or legal immigration insures them of the Latino vote, the concern of the Democratic intelligentsia is that the majority of voting Americans may see this as an economic issue wrapped up in a patriotic cultural package. Both traditional blue collar and elitist Democrats see their jobs evaporating by being exported, or by being taken both at the low end and the high end by immigrants, both illegal and legal.

According to the World Bank, 36 percent of immigrants to first world countries have college degrees. So the intelligenzia too have cause for concern. This exceeds the percentage of Americans who have college degrees!

And these Democratic strategists are observing a serious immigration backlash in England ("British jobs for British workers"), France, Italy, Denmark, Norway (keep out the "far foreigners").The list is endless. The ethnically homogeneous societies of Scandinavia started panicking with the influx of asylum seeking refugees as far back as the 1980s.

And talk about fences in the U.S., India has completed a 2,500 mile fence along their border with Bangladesh to keep out their great unwashed neighbors. (Reminiscent of the Rabbit-proof or "vermin" fence in Australia which took six years to complete, but is "only" a little more than 2000 miles long.)

With a slowing economy, American voters too are going to worry about foreigners taking their jobs, welfare checks and public services, such as schools and hospitals, which we can't even afford to fund for ourselves.

The last wave of immigration ended in about 1920. Ironically that was the year my father came over. He was a skilled European chef and was responsible for training many U.S. workers. He brought over his brother and my grandfather who started a painting company.

Those were different times. Since there were no social programs, half of the immigrants returned to their native country. The immigrant educational level was about equal with ours. Not much to brag about. A worker with a high school diploma in those days was a high end employee. Nowadays, there is a worker living in 78 percent of immigrant households using at least one welfare program. So they remain, and account for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment.

The primary reason for their poverty is their low education levels - not their work ethic. Thirty-one percent haven't completed high school compared to 8 percent of our native born. So while they make an ideal constituency for the Democratic Party, the poorest 10 percent of Americans - a Democrat constituency - are competing with immigrants for jobs and seeing their wages cut by this competition.

But where history shows us that in the early 20th century immigrant assimilation was rapid, but causing a voter backlash even back then, there is anecdotal evidence today both here and in Europe (particularly with the Muslim immigrant) that immigrants are rejecting the culture of the host country.

This mindset is of interest to me. As a first generation American, and when a young grade-schooler, I naively thought when studying American history, that I was immersing myself in my cultural past. But I never thought that way when studying European history. Thinking about it today, many years later, it seems a bit strange - and on top of that, we lived in ethnically European neighborhoods.

And all of this is occurring as the immigrant population here has reached a record of close to 40 million, with about one in three illegal. To appreciate the cultural and economic implications - consider this: Our percentage of immigrants has quadrupled since 1970 from 9.6 million. Many Americans have seen this happen before their very eyes. This surge is unprecedented in American history. We feel it in our bones.

Public hostility to immigration internationally - much less in the U.S. - cannot be overstated and needs to be addressed by our legislators. Apart from addressing the illegal immigration issue, we need to address the economic implications of legal immigration. At the very least it seems silly to import another welfare constituency, which resists assimilation, and keeps ties with, and dollars flowing back to the mother country.

Political investigations are the only legislative business of interest to the old Democratic warhorses in Congress since the 2006 election. These septuagenarians get up every morning with one thought in mind: Which Republican can we subpoena today?

These are times when America needs a forward looking legislative body in Washington to resolve our immigration and economic issues. Yet we see Democrats governing as in the past by their subpoena power; the latest being the investigation into the CIA destruction of the Abu Zubaydah tapes in 2002 which allegedly show him giving valuable intelligence information after being water boarded.

Apparently the CIA saw the wisdom of destroying these tapes before they saw the light of day and gave the Middle East another "Abu Ghraib" moment. Makes sense to me. Is this the most constructive fact finding effort the House can do to either protect America or move our economy forward?

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22 January, 2008

Democrats afraid of their own voters

They close their eyes to anti-illegal-immigration views within their ranks

On Tuesday's Lou Dobbs Tonight, which was repeated on Sunday, CNN host Dobbs chided the media for not including illegal immigration in exit polls of Democratic voters simply because Democratic candidates have avoided discussing the issue to prevent, according to Bill Schneider, "stirring up a lot of passion," and relayed that he had pressured CNN into including the issue in its polls. Dobbs: "Would it surprise you if I were to tell you right here in front of God and everybody I had to convince CNN a couple of years ago to include illegal immigration in a poll because we didn't even in this organization believe it was an important issue, some of us didn't?" He even got Schneider to agree with his contention that the media's "complicity with that motive" of the Democratic candidates in ignoring the issue should "bring a sense of shame to these [media] organizations."

Dobbs set up the discussion with Schneider, Gloria Borger and CNN contributor/liberal talk radio host Roland Martin by showing a report by correspondent Casey Wian about a business owner who refused to hire illegal immigrants, and argued that he ended up suffering because his competitors exploited the cheaper labor of illegal workers. After Borger opined that increasing concern about the economy would lead to the illegal immigration issue moving "front and center" because the two issues are "intertwined," Dobbs brought up CNN's handling of the issue:

Would it surprise you if I were to tell you right here in front of God and everybody I had to convince CNN a couple of years ago to include illegal immigration in a poll because we didn't even in this organization believe it was an important issue, some of us didn't? Bill Schneider, the idea that the Democratic party is not being polled in exit polls on the issue of illegal immigration, you and I have talked about this, the idea that the national press corps doesn't think it's an important issue for Democrats in making that a priority judgement, your thoughts?

Schneider cited the refusal of Democratic candidates to talk about the issue to avoid "stirring up a lot of passion" as the rationale behind the issue's absence in exit poll questions to Democratic voters, but also conceded that "Democrats certainly care about the issue." When asked by Dobbs if it should "bring a sense of shame" to media organizations that they "act in complicity with that motive on the part of these candidates and the Democratic party," Schneider agreed: "I think it should. I think that they should poll on the issues that are of concern to the voters, whether or not the candidates talk about them."

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Mexico's Immigration Law: Let's Try It Here at Home

Mexico has a radical idea for a rational immigration policy that most Americans would love. However, Mexican officials haven’t been sharing that idea with us as they press for our Congress to adopt the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill.

That's too bad, because Mexico, which annually deports more illegal aliens than the United States does, has much to teach us about how it handles the immigration issue. Under Mexican law, it is a felony to be an illegal alien in Mexico.

At a time when the Supreme Court and many politicians seek to bring American law in line with foreign legal norms, it’s noteworthy that nobody has argued that the U.S. look at how Mexico deals with immigration and what it might teach us about how best to solve our illegal immigration problem. Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign visitors and immigrants are:

* in the country legally;

* have the means to sustain themselves economically;

* not destined to be burdens on society;

* of economic and social benefit to society;

* of good character and have no criminal records; and

* contributors to the general well-being of the nation.

The law also ensures that:

* immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;

* foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;

* foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country’s internal politics;

* foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or deported;

* foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned or deported;

* those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.

Who could disagree with such a law? It makes perfect sense. The Mexican constitution strictly defines the rights of citizens -- and the denial of many fundamental rights to non-citizens, illegal and illegal. Under the constitution, the Ley General de Poblacion, or General Law on Population, spells out specifically the country's immigration policy.

It is an interesting law -- and one that should cause us all to ask, Why is our great southern neighbor pushing us to water down our own immigration laws and policies, when its own immigration restrictions are the toughest on the continent? If a felony is a crime punishable by more than one year in prison, then Mexican law makes it a felony to be an illegal alien in Mexico. If the United States adopted such statutes, Mexico no doubt would denounce it as a manifestation of American racism and bigotry.

We looked at the immigration provisions of the Mexican constitution. [1] Now let's look at Mexico's main immigration law. Mexico welcomes only foreigners who will be useful to Mexican society:

* Foreigners are admitted into Mexico "according to their possibilities of contributing to national progress." (Article 32)

* Immigration officials must "ensure" that "immigrants will be useful elements for the country and that they have the necessary funds for their sustenance" and for their dependents. (Article 34)

* Foreigners may be barred from the country if their presence upsets "the equilibrium of the national demographics," when foreigners are deemed detrimental to "economic or national interests," when they do not behave like good citizens in their own country, when they have broken Mexican laws, and when "they are not found to be physically or mentally healthy." (Article 37)

* The Secretary of Governance may "suspend or prohibit the admission of foreigners when he determines it to be in the national interest." (Article 38)

Mexican authorities must keep track of every single person in the country:

* Federal, local and municipal police must cooperate with federal immigration authorities upon request, i.e., to assist in the arrests of illegal immigrants. (Article 73)

* A National Population Registry keeps track of "every single individual who comprises the population of the country," and verifies each individual's identity. (Articles 85 and 86)

* A national Catalog of Foreigners tracks foreign tourists and immigrants (Article 87), and assigns each individual with a unique tracking number (Article 91).

Foreigners with fake papers, or who enter the country under false pretenses, may be imprisoned:

* Foreigners with fake immigration papers may be fined or imprisoned. (Article 116)

* Foreigners who sign government documents "with a signature that is false or different from that which he normally uses" are subject to fine and imprisonment. (Article 116)

Foreigners who fail to obey the rules will be fined, deported, and/or imprisoned as felons:

* Foreigners who fail to obey a deportation order are to be punished. (Article 117)

* Foreigners who are deported from Mexico and attempt to re-enter the country without authorization can be imprisoned for up to 10 years. (Article 118)

* Foreigners who violate the terms of their visa may be sentenced to up to six years in prison (Articles 119, 120 and 121). Foreigners who misrepresent the terms of their visa while in Mexico -- such as working without a permit -- can also be imprisoned.

Under Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony. The General Law on Population says,

* "A penalty of up to two years in prison and a fine of three hundred to five thousand pesos will be imposed on the foreigner who enters the country illegally." (Article 123)

* Foreigners with legal immigration problems may be deported from Mexico instead of being imprisoned. (Article 125)

* Foreigners who "attempt against national sovereignty or security" will be deported. (Article 126)

Mexicans who help illegal aliens enter the country are themselves considered criminals under the law:

* A Mexican who marries a foreigner with the sole objective of helping the foreigner live in the country is subject to up to five years in prison. (Article 127)

* Shipping and airline companies that bring undocumented foreigners into Mexico will be fined. (Article 132)

All of the above runs contrary to what Mexican leaders are demanding of the United States. The stark contrast between Mexico's immigration practices versus its American immigration preachings is telling. It gives a clear picture of the Mexican government's agenda: to have a one-way immigration relationship with the United States.

Let's call Mexico's bluff on its unwarranted interference in U.S. immigration policy. Let's propose, just to make a point, that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) member nations standardize their immigration laws by using Mexico's own law as a model.

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21 January, 2008

New U.S. citizens could sway vote

Advocates fear delays in approval process

Applications for U.S. citizenship have almost doubled in one year, fueled by aggressive organizing by Latino activists and a political year marked by tough talk about immigration.

Political strategists are gauging how an increase in new citizens might affect the November presidential election, especially in swing states such as Nevada and Arizona, where a relative few votes cast by new citizens could make a difference. Much depends on whether the government's pace for processing applications slows significantly, leaving many would-be citizens unqualified to vote in November. Voting-rights advocates complain the delay would be unfair in light of the July 30 fee increases that were to help fund the timely processing of applications.

At last count, between October 2006 and October 2007, more than 1.4 million applications rolled into U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the division of Homeland Security that screens and tests applicants. Citizenship Services predicts that immigrants who have filed applications since June 2007 will have to wait 16 to 18 months for approval. The average wait time had been seven months.

The surge, records show, is one of the largest annual increases in applications during the last 100 years. "People are getting fed up because of the politics and the rhetoric," said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union. Medina's immigrant-heavy union joined with Spanish-language news media and 400 other groups a year ago to form "Ya es Hora," Spanish for "It's Time," a nationwide citizenship drive.

The last time so many citizenship petitions were filed was in 1997, when many Latinos felt that politicians, notably former California Gov. Pete Wilson, were targeting illegal immigrants for personal political gain. The Democratic Party said it gained support among new-citizen voters as a result, and some party outreach workers hope to benefit again.

Citizenship Services is not ready to release state-by-state data on this latest group of citizenship applicants, said spokeswoman Sharon Rummery. But California, where an increase in Latino voters has already changed the political landscape, will certainly lead. More than 201,000 of about 720,000 citizens naturalized in 2006 were California residents. Labor and voting-rights advocates said they're bracing for a possible fight to make sure citizenship processing keeps on pace. Because of the volume of applications, Citizenship Services is scrambling to hire 1,500 workers using money generated through higher fees, Rummery said. New staff, she said, has to be trained before applications can be processed as quickly as they had been.

Laura Lopez, 40, applied for citizenship one year ago and is still waiting to be called to her exam. The Sacramento woman has been a legal resident since 1987, after receiving amnesty as a young farmworker during President Ronald Reagan's administration. She feels confident enough about her English and civics knowledge to pass the test. She wants to vote, she said, in part because she's smarting over accusations she's heard directed at illegal immigrants and immigrants. "Everybody in my citizenship class has already been tested and sworn in," she added. "Nobody will tell me why I haven't been called yet." Lopez has returned to civics classes, to review what she learned so she won't forget it.

Dharsy Gaitan, 23, who works in the medical records section of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, came from Nicaragua as a child. She filed for citizenship in June, breezed through her test in December and was sworn in. She hasn't registered to vote yet, she said, but she will. She has sensed so much resentment toward immigrants in general, she said, that she has begun to fear the government might decide "legal immigrants can't be here anymore, either."

Lopez said she constantly reminds family and friends who can vote to do so. "I have my preferences as far as candidates go," she said. But she doesn't want to reveal them yet. "First," she said, "I must become a citizen."

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Libya set to deport all illegal immigrants

Libya on Friday defended plans to carry out a massive expulsion of illegal immigrants, rejecting criticism from a human rights group that doing so would violate international law. Labor officials estimate there are 2 million foreigners in Libya and that only 60,000 of them have work permits and legal visas. Most are Africans who sneak through the deserts into Libya from Sudan, Chad and Niger.

On Wednesday, the state news agency Jana said authorities were working on the "immediate deportation of all the illegal foreign residents," quoting a member of the national assembly. "No resident without a legal visa will be excluded," the report added.

London-based rights group Amnesty International called on Libya "not to implement what appears to be a rushed decision as it would violate the rights of potentially hundreds of thousands of people, including women and children," it said in a statement Friday....

Amnesty does not say what right the immigrants had to illegally enter the country. It appears that many of them were using Libya as a gateway for illegal entry into Europe. Human migration has been going on for thousands of years, but with the rule of law has come the regulating of the migration process and Amnesty is not going to be able to turn back the clock on that. Libya seems to be managing the process better than the UK and the US at this point.

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20 January, 2008

A not-so-heroic illegal

The much hyped case of Jesus Manuel Cordova. Report by Ruth of IllegalProtest.com

I had many questions about the details of this story, that many in the media seemed all too happy to overlook in their zealous quest to elevate Jesus Manuel Cordova to hero status. Imagine that! An illegal alien who did something we would all consider normal human behavior - he chose not to abandon a 9 year old boy in the desert after the van his mother was driving rolled down a steep embankment in the desert.

So I requested and received a copy of the police report from the Santa Cruz Sheriff's office. There are some very interesting differences in the report vs what was reported in the media.

Now I do agree that what Jesus Manuel Cordova did was indeed above and beyond what one would expect of a regular illegal alien who was sneaking into the US. He did a very kind thing by staying with the boy. However, he did not *rescue* the boy and after I received the initial police report of the incident today, I can safely say that perhaps he was actually *negligent* in his "heroic efforts". A question came to my mind immediately upon reading through the report.

Here is the paragraph that begs for more information - this is the account given by Jesus Cordova to the police after the incident and it immediately follows his description of having encountered the boy in the area of the van accident approximately 1.5 hours after the accident (5:00pm) which had occurred at 3:30pm:

Manuel Jesus told me he approached the van and could hear a female's voice complaining of pain or in agony. He told me he could not see or reach the female to aid her due to the rough and steep terrain. Manuel Jesus then told me he came back to the top of the canyon and started a campfire in hopes that someone would see the smoke and come to their aid.

Ok.. here is what bugs me about this. He HEARS the boy's mother IN PAIN in the van. He tells the police he can't reach her, but SHE WAS ALIVE WHEN CORDOVA ENCOUNTERED THE BOY AND THE ACCIDENT SCENE. It was 5pm - not exactly the dead of night. It was just beginning to get dark. They were located about 6 miles from State Route 289 and they were also about 6 miles from the Pena Blanca Lake campground where the boy and his mother had been staying. And it gets better. this is what Cordova told Amanda Lee Myers of The Associated Press:

By the looks of the mangled van down below, Cordova said, it was obvious the boy's mother had died. The child was distraught but did not cry. "I felt frustrated and sad because I couldn't do anything for the mother," Cordova said. "And I didn't know how to console the boy, so I just sat next to him." Cordova gave the boy the sweater he was wearing, climbed down to the van and found chocolate and cookies to feed him.

So Cordova was able to get to the van and find chocolate and cookies but he couldn't help the mother? You would think a "hero" would have tried to get help for the mother while she was still alive. What kind of person makes a fire and sits next to it for fourteen hours while a woman lay dying nearby? AND he told the police who couldn't reach the van.. but he told Amanda Myers of the AP that he was able to find chocolate and cookies in the van.. Anyone thinking to ask Mr Cordova a few more questions???

If he were truly a hero as everyone is making him out to be, he would have tried to get help RIGHT AWAY before the boy's mother died HOURS LATER while in agony the entire time. What kind of hero is that I ask you?

Thanks to Digger for reading the police report and finding this little gem of information in it regarding the condition of Dawn Tomko's body found by the firefighter Teddy Sang:

Teddy Sang stated that he noticed the onset of rigor mortis.

This was after he pronounced her dead at 8:23am. So if you know anything about how long it takes for rigor mortis to set in, then that means Dawn Tomko, the boy's mother, did not die until 3 or 4am.. about TEN HOURS after the so-called hero Jesus Manuel Cordova came upon the scene. Rigor mortis does not occur for at LEAST 3 hours after a person has died. Her injuries were not noticeable except for a large gash on her arm. So to anyone coming upon the accident scene it certainly was not apparent that she had died and now we know THAT SHE HAD NOT DIED until only 3-4 hours before help arrived! Had this so-called "hero" traveled the 6 miles to the White Rock Campground (average walking speed is about 3-4 miles per hour) , or in fact traveled in ANY direction to get help, he may have been able to save her life and that would have made him a true hero.

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A strange emission from Mexican legislators

They seem to think that deporting illegals violates their human rights and that Mexicans have a right to cross into the USA

The "Permanent Commission" of the Mexican Senate "expressed its most energetic repudiation concerning the xenophobic actions materialized in the United States against Mexican emigrants."

A resolution approved by senators of all political parties "also stated its opposition to round-ups and massive deportations of Mexicans carried out by American immigration authorities."

The accord exhorts the Executive Branch to use all diplomatic and consular channels for the purpose of emphasizing protective and defensive activities for those countrymen victims of human rights violations in the neighboring country. It also condemned the construction by the United States of a fence on the northern border and pointed out that neither fences nor restrictive walls are what is needed to stimulate the integration and cooperation between the two nations.

The legislators stated they were for an "integral migratory reform" which supports a framework of shared responsibility, aids family reunification and preserves human rights and international law.

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19 January, 2008

U.S. getting serious about deportations?

Even Canada is in on the act!

U.S. immigration officials deported 107 people to Nigeria, Egypt and Jordan in a mass "removal operation" this week from Niagara Falls. The group included 94 Nigerians, among them 55 with U.S. criminal convictions for embezzlement, forgery, fraud and other crimes. The rest had immigration violations. Also on the flight from Niagara Falls Airport Tuesday were 11 Palestinians, one person from Morocco and another from Egypt.

The Canadian government added 10 Nigerian deportees to the flight, seven of them criminals. The flight was staffed with 20 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, six Canadian officers and three Nigerian consular officers from the U.S. and Canadian embassies, the agency said Friday.

Such flights are regularly arranged by ICE after staging the deportees from around the country at a federal detention facility in Batavia, east of Buffalo. Charles Mule, acting field office director for ICE detention and removal operations in Buffalo, said more than half of the individuals on the latest flight have criminal records. In fiscal 2007, ICE removed more than 278,000 people [Most of whom just popped right back over the Mexican border], including more than 41,000 who returned voluntarily to their home countries. More than 91,000 had criminal histories.

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Progress in Minnesota

Gov. Tim Pawlenty spurred the first major legislative debate of 2008 last week by offering a revised plan to combat illegal immigration in Minnesota. The governor’s proposals – some of which need legislative approval – prompted Democrats to describe the announcement as election-year politicking on what actually is a federal issue. Surrounded by supporters and GOP lawmakers, the Republican governor said immigration is an “enormous benefit” to the United States. “We want to make sure, however, that the system is legal and reasonable and orderly,” Pawlenty said during the Capitol news conference.

Pawlenty signed an executive order that puts some of his proposals into effect without lawmakers’ approval. They mainly are focused on improving work among state agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, such as by allowing some state law enforcement officers to enforce customs law. Also, the executive order instructs the Minnesota Department of Public Safety to check 11 million photos in the state’s driver’s license database for possible fraud. Pawlenty said he hopes that will “root out” duplication or misuse of licenses.

The legislative proposals include creating a $5,000 fine for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Pawlenty is encouraging employers to use an Internet-based employment eligibility program to verify an applicant’s status. Pawlenty also wants to broaden anti-forgery laws, toughen human trafficking statutes and increase penalties for identity theft. The governor acknowledged at least part of his proposal faces stiff opposition. He wants lawmakers to end cities’ ability to prevent law enforcement from inquiring about a suspect’s immigration status.

Still, the governor said he reshaped his proposal for the upcoming legislative session, recognizing Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party lawmakers control the Legislature. “We believe in each case that they are reasonable and hope the Legislature will consider them in a bipartisan fashion,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, said Pawlenty was touting “warmed-over proposals” for an audience beyond Minnesota. “The governor is sharpening his message for the national campaign,” he said of Pawlenty, who is a leading supporter of GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. Democratic lawmakers said Minnesotans should be concerned about state money being spent on an issue that should be dealt with by Congress and the president.

Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, said illegal immigration was the top issue for residents in his legislative district when he campaigned in 2006. Ingebrigtsen, a former Douglas County sheriff, said illegal immigration is a problem but people are reluctant to talk about it openly for fear of being called racist. Ingebrigtsen said employers he has talked with would welcome Pawlenty’s plan. “In a certain sense, I think they’re asking for help,” he said.

Pawlenty said illegal immigration is a problem across the country and in Minnesota, but it is uneven. “There are some communities where the challenge is very concentrated and pronounced,” Pawlenty said, citing Willmar and Worthington. “The intensity of concern varies depending on the part of the country and the part of the state, but I just don’t think it’s credible for anyone to say that illegal immigration is not a concern.”

The governor’s executive order also directs the Department of Public Safety to hold immigration training meetings around Minnesota with the state’s sheriffs and police chiefs associations and the federal immigration agency. The sessions are to be held regionally to update local law enforcement about immigration laws, international gangs and human trafficking.

Illegal immigration is not the most important issue for residents in Rep. Steve Drazkowski’s southeastern Minnesota district, he said, but it is a concern for some. “I think there’s more awareness about how our laws are being violated,” Drazkowski, R-Wabasha, said. He was among Republican lawmakers who stood with Pawlenty at the Capitol announcement, but said he was not yet familiar with details of the governor’s proposals.

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18 January, 2008

Arab crook being deported

But somehow it's a sob story?? A Michigan newspaper below tells us that it is. How lucky we are to have a newspaper telling us that the law is unimportant

The American Dream is finished for Basem Nassar. But America isn't finished with him. Nassar, 45, has spent nearly 20 months in federal custody waiting for immigration officials to deport him to Israel after they discovered he never got his U.S. citizenship after his parents moved their family here when he was 12. Stuck in a Battle Creek jail cell as the two nations trade paperwork, Nassar's only face-to-face contact with his wife and three children is a 20-minute visit through security glass every Wednesday.

The ordeal has driven his wife, Luceille, past the point of a mental breakdown that saw her try to overdose on anxiety pills in the courtroom after a judge ordered him deported. "When he leaves (the country), we'll never see him again," said Luceille Nassar.

An Israeli consulate official in Chicago said travel papers for Nassar might not be ready until July, meaning he will likely spend another six months in jail unless a judge grants his request to be released until his deportation. Nassar was taken into federal custody May 31, 2006 after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents discovered he had a criminal record and no citizenship papers. He had come to the U.S. from Israel with his parents, brother and sisters in 1974 but never obtained the proper paperwork, said Luceille Nassar. "He just took for granted that he was a citizen," she said.

His alien status and a criminal record that includes drug offenses and assaulting a police officer were enough to convince an immigration judge to order him removed from the country in October 2006. An appeals board upheld the order in March 2007 but Israel hasn't approved paperwork to take him. A legal challenge filed by his attorney claims that ICE can only detain aliens for 90 days after a removal order and argues that Nassar should be released from jail if there is "no significant likelihood of removal in the foreseeable future." In court records, however, federal officials claim that Nassar is a convicted felon who should be detained for public safety.

The government has objected to the request to release Nassar on grounds that he will be sent back to Israel in the "reasonably foreseeable future." As they await the judge's decision, Luceille Nassar said she and her husband are scared by what may come next. Nassar has no family in Israel and has not gone back since he left as a boy. "He sees the U.S. as his home," said Luceille Nassar, who doesn't know if the family will ever be able to join him in Israel.

Nassar has had to cope with raising three children -- 14, 13 and 10 -- without a husband and the $70,000-plus income he brought in as a mechanic. Thursday family nights spent playing Uno or watching movies together are a distant memory as Nassar does everything she can to just get out of bed. "I depend on my kids when they should be depending on me," she said, her voice breaking. A bag with his clothing sits already packed in the house. When Israel is ready to take Nassar back, she said she has been told she will be given a 90-minute notice to meet him at the airport with his suitcase. "I wish love was enough... just to bring him back," she said.

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Indiana senator says immigration bill misperceived as race issue

Delph says his focus is 'rule of law,' but Hispanic leaders see it differently

State Sen. Mike Delph cringes when supporters of his tough new illegal immigration bill drop words like "gangs" and "drugs" and "disease in fast-food restaurants" when referring to Hispanic immigrants. Such phrases, offered during testimony Wednesday at a Senate committee hearing, do not help the Carmel Republican fight off the perception that his bill is racially insensitive to the state's growing Hispanic population. "This is not about race, ethnicity or nationality. It is about one thing only: respect for the law," Delph said again and again Wednesday, popping out of his chair a number of times to make his case.

But to Hispanic leaders, that's exactly the problem with Senate Bill 335, which would penalize Indiana businesses that knowingly employ illegal immigrants, including possibly revoking their licenses. Mary Jane Gonzalez, president of the Indiana State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, predicted the legislation would have unintended consequences. "Even though the strategy is to go after the employer, it does dwindle down to the undocumented worker," Gonzalez said. "In our community, we are already seeing folks begin to flee, to leave out of fear. "Having a bill that is so strong . . . it is making a loud statement toward our Latino community . . . in essence that, 'It's time for you guys to move on.' "

Roughly 50,000 illegal Hispanic immigrants live in Indiana, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Many of them work multiple jobs in the construction and fast-food industries, often using fraudulent documents to obtain Social Security numbers. Delph's bill calls for prosecutors and the attorney general to investigate complaints and go after businesses that use cheap and illegal labor to make more profit. Parts of the bill were patterned after similar legislation in Oklahoma, Arizona and other states.

Gonzalez stopped short of calling it a hateful bill. "I don't think hateful is the right word as much as it is unfriendly," she said. "I think Indiana prides itself as being a diverse state, but there tends to be a little bit of a diversity challenge where folks are unwilling to deal with the demographics that are changing rapidly."

In the next week, Delph will have to battle against that perception if he wants his bill to pass. On Wednesday, the bill was amended to provide protections for businesses that make a good-faith effort to verify the status of their employees. Delph said he found himself struggling to keep the focus of debate away from racially charged issues. It wasn't easy.

A Hispanic minister, the Rev. Samuel Ruiz, said he agrees that borders need to be protected. But he expressed some concerns about how the bill will be interpreted by future generations. "I don't want my children and your children to grow up in a hate society," said Ruiz, who emigrated 17 years ago from Cuba and is a U.S. citizen.

Bill supporter Allen Taylor, 60, representing Hoosiers for Secure Borders, said he was tired of being called a racist when he has raised two biracial children. "This issue is not about race but about the rule of law," he said.

Sen. Thomas K. Weatherwax, R-Logansport, said the bill's provisions are "pretty radical stuff. We are affecting a lot of people's lives, the way we do business and the way people live and look at our state." But Gary Jenkins, who lives in Delph's district, said there is "nothing radical about not tolerating illegal aliens. Supporting the rule of law is not a radical idea." Jenkins then said he feels like America is being invaded by criminal gangs, drugs, terrorists and those who spread disease at fast-food restaurants. "They tarnish the legal immigrants who did it the right way."

Offering further testimony was Family and Social Services Administration Secretary Mitch Roob, who spoke about the cost of providing health care to illegal immigrants. After Roob said Hoosiers spent $5.8 million in 2006 and $4.9 million in 2007 to help pay for Medicare benefits for illegal immigrants, Sen. Brent Waltz, R-Greenwood, asked for his opinion about why Indiana draws so many illegal immigrants. "Probably for the same reason my ancestors and your ancestors came: . . . economic, political and religious freedom," Roob said.

Delph said the debate must stay focused on the law. "Illegal immigration is illegal," he said. "When we sweep over the rule of law and we raise these inflammatory issues like race and nationality, there is a corroding effect on our state's soul." Delph, who said he studied in Mexico and once worked as an intern for Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro, said he feels like he is he best person to offer such legislation. "I know firsthand the challenges that the Latin American community has. And I don't want anyone to feel like they don't have a voice," he said. "I believe most of them are pro-freedom, pro-America, pro-God, pro-family. . . . We share a lot of the same values. "At the end of the day, all Hoosiers have got to pull together and stand up for one of the basic fundamental pillars of democracy: upholding the rule of law."

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17 January, 2008

Huckabee toughens up

Calls for Hiatus on Immigrant Visas from Countries that Sponsor Terrorism. In office, however, he would be afraid to offend the Saudis

Back in South Carolina after campaigning in Michigan this morning, Mike Huckabee toughened his stance on immigration today calling for a hiatus on immigrant visas that come from states that sponsor, or harbor terrorists.

"These are folks who have overstayed their welcome, every one of the 911 hijackers came here legally. Our government welcomed them in, " Huckabee said to a group of 500 plus. "We ought to put a hiatus on people who come here, and give them permits, if they come from countries that sponsor and harbor terrorists. Let's say until you get your act in order, and we get our act in order. We're not going to just let you keep coming and threaten the future and safety of America."

Huckabee has to outflank McCain on two fronts here in South Carolina: Immigration and with Evangelicals. The Huckabee campaign sees immigration, and McCain's failed plan on comprehensive immigration reform as an achilles heel here in the Palmetto State.

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Giuliani's Immigration Problem

Giuliani was in Florida the night of his Iowa and New Hampshire losses, and that is where he will make his stand on January 29, after laying off in Michigan, Nevada, and even South Carolina. He calls it a "big-state" strategy, though it looks more and more like merely a recognition of his own dismal immediate prospects. If he is staking his candidacy on Florida, however, he will have to come to grips with an issue foremost on Republican voters' minds there: immigration. But his campaign is on a collision course between that wedge issue -exploited the way gay marriage was in 2004-and Giuliani's own immigration resume.

Giuliani is not just a former New York mayor who has to answer to the GOP for policies that were benevolent to immigrants. Nearly three decades ago, when he was the third most powerful person in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, he was also its point man on immigration. In the post of associate attorney general, as well as when he was U.S. Attorney in Manhattan in the late '80s and mayor in the '90s, he established a pro-immigrant record that goes far beyond his already-documented support of health care and other benefits for illegals. And if that doesn't play well with Florida primary voters, neither will the time he took a tough stance on immigrants and wound up being rebuked by federal judges-in part for his treatment of Cuban refugees.

The exploitation of immigration as a campaign issue has already shaped the presidential fortunes of three present or onetime frontrunners: John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Giuliani. McCain's early national lead disappeared with his prominent link to a Bush-backed immigration bill considered by every other GOP presidential hopeful, including Giuliani, to be too welcoming. Clinton's slide began when she tried to take both positions on the question of drivers' licenses for illegals in a primary debate. Giuliani all but abandoned Iowa, meanwhile, where polls indicated that immigration was the highest concern for Republican voters, and where his so-called "sanctuary city" record as mayor was near the top of the list of shifting policy positions that hurt him. Giuliani's desperate declaration in December that, as mayor, he wanted to deport all 400,000 of the city's undocumented immigrants but found himself "stuck" with them-a slight variation on his 1994 observation that undocumented immigrants were the kind of people "we want in this city"-became one of the galling contrasts that crippled him in Iowa and diminished his national numbers.

Giuliani has recently taken to trying to inoculate himself against his pro-immigrant past by invoking Reagan (10 times, for example, in the ABC debate right before the New Hampshire vote), the theory being that the grand old hero of the Grand Old Party-also routinely cited for a variety of other reasons by Giuliani's opponents-might give him some cover. But Rudy himself has contended in recent debates that Reagan was no xenophobe: The president "did straight-out amnesty" and "would be in one" of Mitt Romney's negative commercials today, Giuliani pointed out.

What Giuliani didn't say was that, as the Justice Department official who oversaw the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and as a member of a 1981 White House working group on immigration, he helped craft the Gipper's first-ever amnesty bill, which was passed in 1986 and ultimately legalized three million undocumented immigrants, mostly Mexicans. It's that law-echoed in many ways by the 2006 bill that Giuliani opposed-that is widely seen as having spurred millions more to come to America in anticipation of future amnesties. Giuliani testified at a 1982 federal trial in Florida over INS detention policies that he was "the singular individual" responsible for immigration issues at the Department of Justice, and that he'd been deeply involved in drafting Reagan's immigration policy. Giuliani said that it "felt like" he was spending 100 percent of his time on immigration issues. A 1983 New York Times story reported that Giuliani "was active in promoting the administration's immigration bill last year, which sought to grant amnesty to illegal aliens."

Giuliani now says: "The first thing is, there should be no amnesty." His Florida chair is the state's attorney general, Bill McCollum, who made his name in state politics by leading the fight against the amnesty provisions in the Reagan bill and sponsoring an amendment to block it when he was in the House that lost by a scant seven votes. Shortly after the defeat of the McCollum amendment, Reagan said: "I supported this bill. I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and have lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally." While the Reagan administration, including Giuliani, had argued for years before the bill's final passage that legalization would lead to a reduction in illegal immigration, a record-breaking 850,000 new undocumented immigrants were said by the INS to have arrived in 1989, attracted by the promise of a repeat of the just-completed Reagan amnesties.

Today, Giuliani insists that, if elected, he will end illegal immigration in 18 months to three years through a national ID-card program-which is somewhat ironic, given that Reagan dismissed a similar proposal with a joke at a 1981 cabinet meeting, saying: "Maybe we should just brand all the babies." The GOP sponsor of that earlier attempt at an ID card-the since-retired Wyoming senator Alan Simpson-tells the Voice that the rejection of the card doomed the rest of the bill, which attempted, principally through employer sanctions, to restrict future illegals. It was Giuliani's immediate boss, Attorney General William French Smith, who chaired Reagan's immigration task force and dropped the card from his final proposal. If Giuliani has now seen the light on the ID-card issue, he never mentions how the administration he formerly served in trashed it in the past.

Giuliani's record also has special resonance for the state of Florida and its unique Republican base, which includes right-leaning Cuban-Americans, given his handling of the infamous Mariel boatlift. When Reagan and Giuliani both took office in 1981, they inherited the problem of what to do with the 125,000 Cubans that Fidel Castro had literally dumped into the country's lap in the last year of the Carter administration. After Castro's police fired on Cubans trying to emigrate through the Peruvian embassy in 1980, Castro announced that people who wanted to leave the country could do so, and soon 10,000 people had gathered at the embassy. Embarrassed and angered, Castro began dispatching boats jammed with Cubans and bound for Florida out of the town of Mariel, and then, so he could denounce the departing flood as "scum," he emptied some of his jails and mental institutions and put thousands of the unwanted on the same boats. The Carter administration had promised to grant resident status to Mariel Cubans (minus the criminals). But Reagan put a temporary stop to that: Instead, the INS categorized the Mariel refugees as "entrants" for more than three years, an uncertain status that deprived them of family unification and other rights.

The INS (under a statute overseen by Associate Attorney General Giuliani at the DOJ) also ordered the deportation of a Cuban refugee who had stowed away on a freighter that arrived in Florida from Argentina in December 1981-the first time that a Cuban had been barred from entering the U.S. since Castro came to power. When another stowaway was flown directly back to Cuba a month later by the Reagan administration, 5,000 Cubans protested in Miami, and one prominent Hispanic columnist proclaimed it "the end of an era."

Besides implementing White House policies, Giuliani also ran the detention camps where thousands of the Mariel refugees-some criminal and some not-were held. In response to inquiries from the president about why 950 of the Mariel Cubans were still being detained at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas a year and a half after the Reagan administration had taken office, Giuliani wrote a June 6, 1982, memo explaining that the Cubans "have problems that prevent their release into the community." Since none were criminals, Giuliani listed their problems as: "250 mentally ill and retarded; 400 antisocial; 100 homosexuals; 100 alcoholics or drug users; 100 women, babies, elderly and handicapped." Why gays (a crime in Castro's Cuba) or women with babies, among others, had to be detained was not explained. Giuliani was also in charge of the 1,050 Cubans jailed in an Atlanta prison-many of whom were serious criminals, including murderers and rapists. But a federal judge ruled in 1983 that the Justice Department could not hold the aliens indefinitely without establishing on a case-by-case basis that their continued detention was justified-an indictment of Giuliani's actions. (That decision was ultimately reversed by an appeals court that found the Cubans had no rights.)

In late 1984, Castro and the Reagan administration reached an agreement that permitted the repatriation of the worst of the criminals who had come to America as part of the boatlift. But until then, and throughout the years that Giuliani oversaw Cuban-refugee matters, the Reagan administration had refused to allow up to 23,000 Cubans whose immigration to the U.S. had been approved by Castro. This included 1,500 ex-political prisoners whose entry had been approved by the Carter administration. Over the protests of U.S. officials in Havana who had arranged the transfer of the political prisoners and others who had families in the U.S., Reagan broke off talks with Castro for years.

Despite this record, Giuliani has been courting Cuban votes at large Miami rallies recently, emphasizing his decision as mayor to bar Castro from a 50th-anniversary United Nations event. Ironically, his campaign website boasts-as an example of his counterterrorist prosecutions as U.S. Attorney in Manhattan-that he "put an end to the Omega 7 anti-Castro group," a reference to his 1984 prosecution of the group's founder, Eduardo Arocena, who killed a Castro attache to Cuba's U.N. mission. But Omega 7 has its supporters among the most hardened anti-Castro Cubans in Florida, and was once so influential that Giuliani wound up honoring one of its leaders at a City Hall ceremony in the '90s.

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16 January, 2008

Egyptian Torture Victim Released From U.S. Immigration Detention

There is no doubt that Christians in Egypt are under grave threat so it is rather a disgrace that the U.S. administration made no allowances for this man. He has in fact been given an extraordinarily hard time -- more suggestive of bigotry than anything else. Black refugees often sail through the admission procedures but being white is a big handicap in official circles these days

Egyptian national Sameh Khouzam was released from detention today days after a federal judge ruled that the U.S. government cannot rely on secret and unreviewable "assurances" from the Egyptian government that it will not torture him upon his return. Last Thursday, the judge granted Khouzam's habeas corpus petition and ordered that he be immediately freed from a Pennsylvania prison, where he has been held since May. Khouzam is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"I cannot express how thankful and relieved I am to be a free man again. I am so grateful to my lawyers and to the American court system for stopping the government from sending me back to Egypt where I know I would be tortured," said Khouzam. "This entire experience has been a nightmare, but I never lost my faith or the support from my community. I just want to put my life back together."

In his decision last week, Judge Thomas I. Vanaskie of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania soundly rejected the Bush administration's claim that the executive branch has unfettered authority to deport Khouzam, notwithstanding a prior ruling by a federal appeals court that it is probable Khouzam would be tortured if returned to Egypt.

Judge Vanaskie noted that Khouzam "made a credible showing that he had been the victim of torture at the hands of Egyptian law enforcement" and that removing Khouzam based on diplomatic assurances without court review would render the procedures established for seeking protection under the Convention Against Torture "a farce." He added, "Not even the President of the United States has the authority to sacrifice on the alter [sic] of foreign relations the right to be free from torture."

Following Judge Vanaskie's decision Thursday, the government asked Judge Vanaskie to block Khouzam's release while it appealed the ruling to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Vanaskie denied the government's request, rejecting its claim that Khouzam posed a danger or a flight risk. Judge Vanaskie noted that Khouzam was previously released into the community for more than a year during which time he fully complied with his conditions of release, "reporting regularly as required and gainfully employed and viewed as a valuable employee as well." The government then sought an emergency stay of Khouzam's release from the Third Circuit which was denied yesterday.

Until today, Khouzam - a Christian who came to the United States in 1998 fleeing religious persecution in Egypt - was detained in the York County Prison in Pennsylvania, the same prison where he previously spent eight years while the government fought his efforts to obtain protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Even after a federal appeals court found that he was entitled to such protection, the government refused to release him until it was ordered to do so by a federal court in February 2006. Since that time, and prior to his re-detention in May of 2007, Khouzam was living and working in Pennsylvania as controller of a real estate company.

"All people - citizens or not - are entitled to the protections of our Constitution," said Judy Rabinovitz, a senior attorney with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. "The government cannot lock people up indefinitely, as they have done with Mr. Khouzam, simply because they are fighting deportation. The government already forced Mr. Khouzam to endure more than eight years of imprisonment. That it would try to continue to detain him after last week's ruling is unconscionable."

Ratified by the U.S. in 1994, and implemented by domestic legislation, the Convention Against Torture prohibits the U.S. from transferring a person "to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." The U.S. government is using diplomatic assurances - in Khouzam's case and others - to circumvent its treaty obligations, and transferring individuals to foreign countries without judicial review.

In Khouzam's case, neither he nor his lawyers have seen the Egyptian assurances that are the basis for terminating his CAT protection. Nor has the U.S. government offered any explanation for why these assurances would be deemed sufficiently reliable to protect Khouzam from torture. Indeed, Khouzam did not receive any notice that his CAT protection was being terminated until May 29 of last year, when, upon appearing for a routine check-in with immigration authorities, he was taken into detention and provided with a one-paragraph explanation from Julie Myers, Assistant Secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, informing him that he could be removed within 72 hours.

Last June, Judge Vanaskie issued an emergency stay of Khouzam's removal, shortly after Khouzam was informed that his CAT protection had been terminated and his removal was imminent. That stay remained in place pending the outcome of the court proceedings. The U.S. government, however, has opposed the court's involvement in this case, repeatedly arguing that the executive branch has unfettered authority to determine that the diplomatic assurances are sufficiently reliable to deport Khouzam, and that the federal courts lack jurisdiction to review its decision.

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Britain: 'I feel like an alien in my home town'

Do 'no-go' zones for non-Muslims exist in Britain, as the Bishop of Rochester claims? Olga Craig reports from some of Yorkshire's Asian-dominated areas

It has been more than 40 years since Tim Carbin walked the length of Oak Lane, the Bradford backstreet of his boyhood. Then, when he lived with his grandmother Florence Pawson, a matriarch within the community, his task after school was to run errands. Down to Foster's, the baker's, for a loaf of bread and a pound of bacon from Donald Gilbank the butcher. "And mind it isn't too fatty," Florence would tell him. Mr Carbin, then 13, knew all the local storekeepers by name, just as he knew the families in the surrounding terraces.

Yesterday, outside number 95A, his grandmother's former home, Mr Carbin gazed in bewilderment as he scanned his old haunt. Not surprisingly, the stores of his youth had gone: such has been the change in our shopping habits over the decades that they have given way to supermarkets and fast-food outlets. But that was not all that had changed irrevocably in Oak Lane. Among the new stores, the clothes shops sell Muslim dress, the butcher stocks halal meat and even the local takeaway advertises halal pizza. "I feel like an alien, like I'm on a street in Karachi," Mr Carbin says, awkwardly. "I don't feel I have anything in common with this area. It's like I've never been here before. I knew it would be different but I knew, too, that I would feel uncomfortably like I don't belong."

He now lives just 10 miles away, in the north of Bradford. He hasn't returned because Oak Lane, like so many similar areas of so many northern cities, is now an almost exclusive Asian Muslim community.

Mr Carbin is far from a racist, however. Well educated and widely travelled in Muslim countries, he has the utmost respect for the Islamic religion. What is worrying him is that Britain's increasing espousal of multiculturalism has led not to an integrated society but, instead, to ghettoisation, with white-only and Asian-only communities existing cheek by jowl but with little or no common ground. And that, he believes, could have an ominous outcome. He is, clearly, one of those about whom Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester (Britain's only Asian-born bishop), wrote in The Sunday Telegraph last week: the increasing number of native white Britons who believe many of their streets have now become "no-go" areas.

The Bishop believes that one of the results of the resurgence of Islamic extremism has been to alienate young Muslims from this country and to view adherence to this ideology as a mark of acceptance. This, he says, means many Christians and those of other faiths find it difficult to live or work here because they feel there is hostility towards them. Britain's "novel philosophy" of multiculturalism, he believes, has caused Muslims to lead separate lives, in separate areas, speaking their native languages. His views have angered many in Muslim communities but, equally, they have struck a chord with many like Mr Carbin. "This isn't, as the Government would like us to believe, a multicultural society," he says. "This is pure racial segregation. And it's like this because the Muslim community simply refuses to integrate. So people like me feel like outcasts in our own country." As Mr Carbin trudges farther along Oak Lane, he passes the tumble-down Anglican church where many of his former neighbours worshipped. Amid the mound of bricks, Sunday school hymn books are strewn.

Across town, in another Asian enclave, one local shopkeeper is preparing to sell up after 30 years running a family firm. "I am retiring," he says. "But yes, it's true, a lot of people feel uncomfortable in Muslim areas. It's fine for me, I've stayed and I know everyone, but many are fearful of venturing into the area. "It's not so much fear of violence, rather that they feel a sense of not being welcome, of having nothing in common with the community here, and a feeling that no one would appreciate the interest should they show it. "I wish the Muslim community had integrated more, but they didn't. I haven't even been able to get them to join Neighbourhood Watch."

In the surrounding streets, the few white residents willing to talk speak of isolation rather than intimidation. One said he had had several members of the Asian community knocking on his door, asking if he wanted to sell his home. "At face value, that seems innocuous," he says. "But others believe it was a message saying I should get out." Another tells of how his father, an electrician, parked his van in the area only to have it rocked and thumped by a group of Asian youths telling him: "This is our area now. You are not welcome here."

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15 January, 2008

All visa applicants to Britain now being fingerprinted

Wow! Britain catches up with 19th century technology! It's only as good as the fingerprint database and how many "refugees" are in that? And it won't keep out illegals. Nor will it send home the many criminal illegals that Britain already permits to reside there. Still, it's better than nothing, I guess

All visitors to Britain requiring visas will have to be fingerprinted from today. The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, said a programme for installing biometric visa controls has been completed three months ahead of schedule. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It is done. It is done three months early, and it is done several million pounds under budget. "We now check everybody's fingerprint wherever they apply for a visa around the world."

Byrne said the new system - the first of 10 key changes to the UK's border controls to be implemented during this year - is already having an effect. "We have already found about 500 cases of people who have chosen not to give us their i