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30 April, 2007

Immigration system broken, Bush tells grads

It's broken all right but who broke it? Successive administrations that failed to enforce the laws they are entrusted to enforce. Recent enforcement efforts show what could have been done all along

President Bush came to a city of immigrants Saturday to press his case for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. In a 20-minute commencement address at Miami Dade College, Bush urged graduates to press Congress to bridge its divide over immigration proposals. He made the address at a college where more than half of the students were raised speaking a language other than English. "Our current immigration system is in need of reform. It is not working," said Bush, as the crowd cheered. "We need a system where our laws are respected. We need a system that meets the legitimate needs of our economy." Outside, several hundred people gathered to protest the war in Iraq.

Bush has called for a bill with tighter border controls, a temporary-worker program and legal status for many of the men and women living in the U.S. without documents. Congress failed to pass legislation last year as members of the then-GOP-controlled House passed a measure focusing on enforcement. But the Democratically controlled House in March passed a bill that offers 12 million immigrants living in the country without authorization a path to citizenship. If the Senate passes a similar measure, the president could get his wish.

Bush told the graduates he supports immigration that "will allow us to secure our borders and enforce our laws once and for all, that will keep us competitive in a global economy, and that will resolve the status of those who are already here, without amnesty, and without animosity." Bush applauded the college's diversity, which in Saturday's ceremony represented 64 countries. As the graduates received their diplomas, protesters and musicians gathered near the four entrances of the campus holding signs that read "Fire the Liar" and "Out of Iraq."

Source



Official British immigration figures 'are false'

Councils say the government's statistics are seriously underestimating the total influx and they need more money to cope

Councils are so concerned that official figures are failing to record the true number of migrants entering their area that they are to start their own polling to gauge the scale of the influx. This is a serious embarrassment to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which has tried to play down concerns that its estimates for the number of people entering the UK are badly flawed.

Although the office plans to improve its methods for tracking immigration, critics say the new way of counting migrants was equally problematic. The critics point out that, under the new calculations, the number entering London supposedly decreased by 60,000 between 2002 and 2005 - the most up-to-date records available - though most experts say they actually increased. Councils in and around the capital claim the rise in immigrants is placing greater pressure on services and is starting to have an impact on their finances.

'We are so concerned that these official statistics still do not properly count those coming in to the UK that we will be commissioning our own independent polls,' said Colin Barrow, deputy leader at Westminster council. 'This will give a more accurate picture of the situation on the streets in central London.' Other councils echoed Westminster's concerns, saying they had experienced significant increases in immigration which appeared to be at odds with official estimates. 'Our electoral register has gone up by 23,000 over the past few years yet they're saying it's gone down,' said Sir Robin Wales, mayor of Newham, east London. 'It's ludicrous. We've nothing against migration - it is great for the economy and great for Newham. However, it needs to be properly funded. We would be willing to pay for a census just to rectify these figures. It would cost us a lot of money, but these inaccurate figures are costing us even more.'

The office estimates that Slough has received 1,100 extra migrants since 2002. But the local council estimates that at least 10,000 Polish people alone have arrived to work in the town since 2004. 'The migrants that come to Slough are hard working and bring great benefit to the local economy but the council remains severely underfunded because of these poor statistics,' said Andrew Blake-Herbert, strategic director of finance and property at Slough Council.

The ONS has previously acknowledged problems in the way it counts migrants. In May 2006, Karen Dunnell, National Statistician there, wrote to four government departments stating: 'There is now broad agreement that available estimates of migrant numbers are inadequate for managing the economy, policies and services.' And earlier this month the Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne, said the ONS needed to improve its figures on which key local financing decisions are based.

Critics say the office's figures are also at odds with those collated by the government. Migration figures released by the ONS earlier this month suggested that approximately 56,000 Poles entered the UK in 2005, although the Department for Work and Pensions has issued figures suggesting that over 170,000 Polish citizens applied for National Insurance numbers in the same year. Stung by criticism, the ONS will use details from the quarterly Labour Force Survey, which selects households at random to provide a population snapshot, rather than relying on interviewing people entering ports and airports.

But councils are not convinced. 'The government's new figures suggest we have fewer migrants than three years ago,' said Councillor Mark Loveday, cabinet member for strategy at Hammersmith and Fulham council. National Insurance registrations by people from countries which recently joined the European Union 'are up by more than 550 per cent and that's before other migrants are counted'. An ONS spokesman said its method for counting people at ports of entry ensured a reflective snapshot of population flows in and out of the UK. [I guess the illegals who enter in the backs of trucks don't exist]

Source



29 April, 2007

Brits getting tired of immigration problems

Having immigrants and the children of immigrants blowing up your buses and trains (among other things) is beginning to get to even the tolerant British -- and since the mainstream parties are trying to ignore the disquiet, a new party that does not ignore that is getting more and more votes

It is, at first sight, a vision of rural bliss - a cream-coloured cottage high in the hills of Mid Wales and two miles from the nearest road. The daffodils are out. Lambs gambol in the fields. Chickens peck around the yard. In the side garden, beyond the rabbit hutch and fishpond, two blonde girls are playing in the sun. Look closer, however, and you spot the incongruities: the two rottweilers in their caged kennel, security cameras, the burglar alarm. You begin to suspect that the owner has chosen this house precisely for its inaccessibility. He has reason to. Nick Griffin is leader of the whites-only British National Party and one of the most hated - and, to his many detractors, hateful - men in the country....

Griffin kisses Jackie goodbye, reminds her to water his newly planted aubretia, and we head off in his Ford Mondeo estate for the fertile BNP territory of West Yorkshire, with its immigrant populations of 10, 20 or even 30 per cent. In the back is a book recording the Scottish National Party's transformation from an extreme to a mainstream party. Griffin's inspiration, however, is Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of France's far-right National Front, who turned "a bunch of crazies into a serious political force"....

He tells me about a life spent mostly on the extreme right of British politics. His parents met while heckling a Communist Party meeting in North London in 1948. During the 1964 general election campaign, Griffin pedalled up and down the street outside his home in Barnet with Conservative posters on his tricycle. By 1974 his father, a Tory councillor and member of the right-wing Monday Club, was so dismayed by Britain's leftward drift that he took his family to a National Front meeting. Griffin, then 15, joined immediately.....

Griffin has earned his 1,800 pounds-a-month BNP salary. The party won three council seats in Burnley in 2002. It now has 49 nationwide, and on May 3 Griffin expects to win many more in what he sarcastically calls "enriched" areas such as inner Essex, the Black Country, West Yorkshire and Lancashire. The party will also be contesting seats in blue-rinse towns such as Harrogate, Bath, Windsor and Torbay. One recent poll suggested that 7 per cent of the electorate would consider voting for it.

Griffin says that membership has risen from 1,300 in 1999 to 10,500, boosted by home-grown Islamic terrorist plots, globalisation and his dramatic acquittal in last year's race-hate trials. Critics insist that the BNP's move towards respectability is purely cosmetic. Griffin retorts, as we join the motorway, that it is "deep and sincere". He admits "past stupidities", and says that he regrets the way that the BNP used to provoke confrontations or to discuss race in a way that was "frankly crude, or cruelly and inaccurately supremacist". He is not racist, he argues. He does not believe that whites are superior. He believes that races are different and that multiculturalism is a recipe for disaster. He opposes miscegenation "because most people want their grandchildren to look basically like them". If the liberal elite had its way, the world would become "a giant melting pot turning out coffee-coloured citizens by the million".

The BNP no longer demands the recriminalisation of homosexuality, but Griffin still expresses disgust at the idea of two men "snogging in public". His revised views on the Holocaust are striking, too. He says that he derided the Holocaust only because the Left used it as "a huge moral club" with which to beat opponents of multiculturalism. He now accepts that millions of Jews were killed, but claims that some historians (he cites David Irving) still question whether it was deliberate genocide.....

In pockets of Britain the BNP is almost a mainstream party now, with ever more people daring to run for office or to put posters in windows. But it still prints its newspaper in Eastern Europe because British plants refuse to, has trouble renting halls and cannot advertise its meetings because they would be picketed. Potential supporters are instead instructed to gather at "redirection points" and told where to go.

In Ripon the meeting point is the town square, where the local BBC radio station interviews Griffin. Ripon and Harrogate are "lovely English towns and we believe they should stay that way. They can't if there are high levels of immigration," he says. On our way to the meeting we pass a painting of a black inmate outside the Workhouse Museum. Griffin splutters. It was poor whites who suffered in workhouses, he says.

About 70 people are packed into a back room of the Golden Lion pub, with not a skinhead or pair of Doc Martens in sight and more tweeds than T-shirts. They are male and female, young and old, working class and middle class, ex-Labour and ex-Tory, several of them Daily Telegraph readers. They are mostly solid Yorkshire folk who have watched immigrants transform areas in which they grew up and believe - rightly or wrongly - that their way of life is under threat. They are bewildered more than hate-filled. They are fearful more than fear-inspiring, and feel gagged by political correctness. They do not come from sink estates. They are stakeholders, people with something to lose. "We're being overwhelmed," laments a retired Latin teacher. "I've nothing against other races. It's just that they keep flooding into the country to breaking point," says a lorry driver. "We can't invite the whole world to live in England," says a former merchant marine officer. Few will give their names.

Griffin and his fellow speakers do nothing to calm their fears. Quite the opposite. In a promotional video he decries the alleged banning of the cross of St George, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and even Piglet because the character offends Muslims. Against a background of soft music and beautiful scenery, a woman's voice decries the millions of foreigners of all races settling in Britain: "The one thing they have in common is there are too many of them."

Michelle Shrubb, a candidate who lived in South Africa, says that a black crimewave is coming to Britain. Nick Cass, the BNP's Yorkshire organiser, declares that "decent British people are fed up to the back teeth with seeing the country fall apart and being called racist when they want to do something about it". The merchandise table offers "It's Cool to be White" T-shirts and "I vote BNP because they look after me" bumper stickers. BNP candidates are presented with rosettes for daring to stand up and be counted. Griffin humorously coaxes about 500 pounds in donations from the audience, then answers questions for an hour. He puts on no airs and graces. He has a pint on the table beside him. He presents himself as an ordinary bloke, like his audience, who is fighting a corrupt elite that bleeds taxpayers for its disastrous social engineering projects and treats them with contempt. He is a shameless populist. He calls the rise of the BNP "a peasants' revolt". He talks of "our people", meaning whites. He mocks those who regard criminals as victims, advocates "damn good thrashings" for wayward teenagers, and says of drug-dealers: "Hang the bastards."

The audience loves it, but this is more than knockabout political rhetoric. Griffin firmly believes all this. Party policy - which he sets - is draconian and xenophobic. The BNP would deport all illegal immigrants, asylum-seekers and subversive foreigners, and offer existing immigrants money to return home. "It's clearly worth talking in terms of six-figure sums to persuade families to go," Griffin says. He would create civilian anti-crime patrols. Anyone who has done National Service would be allowed to keep guns to shoot burglars, and as "a last resort against a tyrannical government". He would restore hanging for the worst murderers, paedophiles, rapists and drug-dealers, and bring back the birch.

He would abolish affirmative action programmes and hate-crime legislation, ban the promotion of homosexuality, prevent the NHS from recruiting foreign workers and stop women soldiers serving on the front line. State schools would restore mandatory (nonhalal) lunches and morning assemblies with Christian worship (minorities should "either accept our ways or go somewhere else"). A BNP government would take Britain out of the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights. Remove the BNP label, Griffin claims, and most Brits would support these policies....

Between umpteen calls on his mobile phone - one is about ways to use Simone Clarke, the ballet dancer identified as a BNP member - I ask if Griffin sees any advantages to multiculturalism. Chicken tikka masala, he replies. And some good sportsmen, though he thinks that England's all-white 1966 World Cup footballers outperformed today's team because they had "common values and identity". Then he lists the downsides - a catastrophic loss of social cohesion, racial harassment and violence, spreading knife and gun cultures and old folk dying in nursing homes surrounded by staff who do not speak their language and feeling "totally alone, alienated and in a foreign place".

He warms to the theme, claiming that some Muslims deliberately use heroin - "Paki poison" - to undermine non-Muslim communities around them. "It's narco-terrorism." Even worse, he says, is the way that hardline Muslim males deliberately seduce and corrupt "thousands" of young white girls in a practice called "grooming" that the authorities downplay for fear of being labelled racist....

The 60 people at that night's BNP meeting in a Batley pub are not thinking in such apocalyptic terms. They have more immediate and prosaic fears about the consequences of immigration - their children being squeezed out of jobs and council housing, the emergence of no-go areas, the undermining of their rights and culture.

"We're frightened to be British," says Ann Nailor, who runs five Age Concern shops. "I feel alienated in my own community," says Neil Feeney, a water company employee. "People who read your paper have no idea about places like this," said Marjorie Shaw, a former policewoman now in a wheelchair. "The BNP are the only ones standing up for this country," adds Lynn Winfield, a pub dishwasher. Griffin fans the flames. He calls the English "one of the most oppressed peoples on earth". He says that when people like him try to speak out about real problems "they try to throw them in jail". He says that bad laws should be broken. He calls global warming "an excuse to say that we, the international elite, have to interfere with every sovereign state in the world, and if we don't you will sink by Thursday".

Source



British courts over-rule deportation of Jihadists

Two of Britain’s most dangerous terror suspects will be on our streets within days, after a hugely damaging defeat for the Government. A map marking routes under Birmingham airport’s flight path was found at the home of one of the men – described as a “global jihadist” – who has family links to two notorious terrorists. The second man is accused of being a former leader of a terror cell in Italy, that authorities feared was on the verge of an attack, probably in Europe.

But the pair, both Libyans, are expected to be bailed next week, after winning their appeals against deportation. The ruling leaves the Government’s anti-terror policy in chaos, after judges threw out much-heralded agreements between Britain and Libya that the men would not be tortured if they returned.

Special Immigration Appeals Commission chairman Mr Justice Ouseley said there remained a real risk that the European Convention on Human Rights would be breached if the two men were returned.

The so-called memoranda of understanding are a key part of the promise by Tony Blair and John Reid to return terror suspects to countries known for human rights abuses.

Yesterday’s decision leaves the planned deportation of at least eight Libyan suspects, including the two who are to be bailed, in disarray, and casts grave doubts over similar agreements with other nations.

The Tories’ terrorism expert, MP Patrick Mercer said: “I find it extraordinary that we have imposed these people on our society. “It will be extremely difficult to keep these men to their bail conditions, particularly with this level of oversight. “They will not be on bail forever and I am very interested to know what the Government will do.”

The two Libyans, granted bail in principle, have been held in the maximum-security prison at Long Lartin, Worcs, under immigration detention. But Mr Justice Mitting said keeping them in after they had won their appeal would be on the “cusp of legality”. Instead they were bailed with strict conditions, including a 12-hour curfew and no access to mobile phones or the internet. They will still be allowed out for 12 hours a day. The two Libyans are accused of travelling on false passports. Both claimed asylum after they got into Britain. One, who can be identified only as DD, had an AtoZ street map in a car parked near his house, marking footpaths under the flight path to Birmingham International Airport. The appeals commission ruled that DD is a “real and direct threat to the national security of the UK” and a “global jihadist with links to the Taliban and Al Qaeda”. The second terror suspect, AS, was also ruled a “clear danger to national security”.

The Government wants to deport eight suspects to Libya. Moves against another four have been put off while they face terror prosecutions here. A Home Office spokesman said: “We are very disappointed with the decision that it is not safe to deport these individuals. “We believe that the assurances given to us by the Libyans do provide effective safeguards for the proper treatment of individuals being returned and do ensure that their rights will be respected. We intend, therefore, to appeal.”

Source



28 April, 2007

Immigration-Related Cases Clog Courts

Immigration-related felony cases are swamping federal courts along the Southwest border, forcing judges to handle hundreds more cases than their peers elsewhere. Judges in the five, mostly rural judicial districts on the border carry the heaviest felony caseloads in the nation. Each judge in New Mexico, which ranked first, handled an average of 397 felony cases last year, compared with the national average of 84. Federal judges in those five districts _ Southern and Western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California _ handled one-third of all the felonies prosecuted in the nation's 94 federal judicial districts in 2005, according to federal court statistics.

While Congress has increased the number of border patrol officers, the pace of the law enforcement has eclipsed the resources for the court system. Judges say they are stretched to the limit with cases involving drug trafficking or illegal immigrants who have also committed serious crimes. Judges say they need help. "The need is really dire. You cannot keep increasing the number of Border Patrol agents but not increasing the number of judges," said Chief Judge John M. Roll of the District of Arizona.

A bill by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and co-sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, would add 10 permanent and temporary judges in Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern and Western Texas. This proposal, and others like it, have gone nowhere in the past two years. "I can't even tell you how much we need that," Roll said. The entire federal court system is affected, from U.S. marshals to magistrate judges. The bottleneck has even derailed enforcement efforts.

During a push to crack down on illegal immigration last fall, Customs and Border Protection floated a plan for New Mexico that would have suspended the practice of sending home hundreds of illegal immigrants caught near the border with Mexico. Instead, these people would be sent to court. The idea, called "Operation Streamline," was to make it clear that people caught illegally in the U.S. would be prosecuted. Then New Mexico's federal judges reminded the Border Patrol that they lacked the resources to handle the hundreds of new defendants who would stream into the court system every day. "We said, 'Do you realize that the second week into this we're going to run out of (jail) space?'" Martha Vazquez, chief judge for the District of New Mexico, recalled telling Border Patrol chief David Aguilar. "We were obviously alarmed because where would we put our bank robbers? Our rapists? Those who violate probation?" she said.

Border Patrol eventually dropped the idea. Officials said they could not get all the necessary agencies to agree to it. It is estimated more than 1 million people sneak across the southwestern U.S. border and illegally enter the country every year. In Arizona, the busiest entry point for illegal immigration, state officials believe almost 4,000 people attempted to enter every day in 2006.

Many lawmakers, advocates and President Bush favor overhauling guest worker programs and rules for businesses that hire illegal immigrants. The intent is to eliminate the incentive for workers to sneak into the country. Bush promoted his latest proposal for new worker visas this month in the border community of Yuma, Ariz. In recent years, however, Congress has focused on increased enforcement.

The Border Patrol has almost 2,800 more agents than the 9,821 it had in September of 2001. An additional 6,000 National Guard troops have provided logistical support to the Border Patrol since last May. Congress has made available more than $1.2 billion for reinforcements, including fences, vehicle barriers, cameras and other security equipment. Homeland Security officials say the increased security is working. In Yuma, Bush said that the number of people apprehended for illegally crossing the southern border into the U.S. has declined by nearly 30 percent this year.

Court officials, however, say they are in crisis mode trying to deal with all the defendants. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., a staunch opponent of illegal immigration, has urged U.S. attorneys and courts to prosecute more illegal immigrants and pushed for more resources for both. But he has discovered that while his colleagues who do not represent a border district are eager to add Border Patrol officers, many do not realize the effect that will have on the court system, his spokesman said.

Even lawmakers from border states say they cannot justify adding judgeships in one district when other districts also need them. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, says her state needs 12 judges, not just help on the border. "I'd be happy to support any bill that gives California its fair share," Feinstein said in a statement. "And I will seek to amend any bill that does not."

Court officials say they have had to be creative just to try the cases they have. Visiting judges help out in some districts. In Arizona, magistrates hold sessions on the weekends and have seen as many as 150 defendants in a day. In New Mexico, Vazquez, the chief judge, and former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias went on a Spanish-language radio station broadcast in Mexico this winter to warn people about the penalties for illegally entering the country.

Court administrators have trouble keeping employees, such as interpreters, because of the grind. Judges' staffs struggle with burnout. Everyone fights to keep up morale as they hear countless sad stories from migrants who broke the law searching for a better life in the United States. "It'd be swell to have another judge or two," said Judge George Kazen, who is based on the border in Laredo, in the Southern District of Texas. "It would mean a little more time to spend on civil stuff, and a little more time to reflect. We have to make quick calls and move on."

Source



Immigration scrutiny in Australia

Australia has very little illegal immigration so the Feds are cracking down on abuses of legal immigration

Employers will be subject to unannounced spot checks by immigration officials and could face fines for exploiting or underpaying migrant workers in a shake-up of visa arrangements. Under reforms announced yesterday by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews, employers will also be required to ensure that overseas workers have a functional level of English. Applicants will be required to detail their English language skills and, on a targeted basis, may be required to complete an International English Language Testing System test.

The Howard Government has faced criticism for its handling of the scheme, which has grown so rapidly recently because of labour shortages that the bureaucracy could not keep up with monitoring and compliance of employers. Over the past 12 months, the union movement and the Labor Party have highlighted extreme cases of exploitation where workers have been charged exorbitant amounts for rent and other fees, paid in foreign currencies and forced to work in unskilled roles despite being highly qualified.

Mr Andrews said the changes, to take effect later this year, would reward employers who had a "strong and demonstrated record" of complying with the 457 visa program by having their applications to sponsor workers fast-tracked. Employers who underpaid workers or made them perform in unskilled jobs would face civil penalties similar to those in the Workplace Relations Act, he said. Mr Andrews said existing penalties, where employers faced being excluded from access to further foreign workers, were insufficient. The government's workplace watchdog, the Office of Workplace Services, would also be given greater powers to investigate breaches of the minimum salary level under the changes. The immigration department granted 368,333 business visitor visas in 2005-06.

Labor's immigration spokesman Tony Burke said the announcement simply put "a band-aid over a gaping wound". "The real problem remains: that the Government doesn't understand that most of the abuses have in fact been legal and continue to be legal," he said. "We saw the example not long ago of the 40 Filipino welders I visited in Brisbane last year who were being paid the minimum salary level under the visa, but this was 20 per cent below the going rate in the area. Mr Burke urged the Government to do more to stop foreign workers being exploited and said unscrupulous employers would be able to undercut local Australian wages by tens of thousands of dollars despite the changes. "You will still be able to undermine a salary through exorbitant compulsory deductions and kickbacks to rogue employers," he said. "With the new announcement, the system is better than it was but decent businesses can still face unfair competition from shonky operators who exploit foreign workers."

Source



27 April, 2007

Net influx of 185,000 per annum into the UK

In 2005, an estimated 565,000 migrants arrived to live in the UK for at least a year. This was lower than the 2004 estimate, but higher than all other years since the method to estimate Total International Migration began in 1991. In the same period, 380,000 people emigrated from the UK for a year or more; over half of these were British citizens. Australia was the most popular destination for British emigrants followed by Spain and France. Net migration, the difference between immigration and emigration, was 185,000. This was equivalent to adding just over 500 people a day to the UK population.

In 2005, 80,000 citizens from the group of eight central and eastern European countries that acceded to the EU on 1 May 2004 (known as the A8) immigrated to the UK for a year or more. This was 54 per cent higher than the 52,000 estimate for 2004. This can be explained by 2005 being the first calendar year following EU accession, and A8 citizens having increased freedom to live and work in the UK. Over 70 per cent of A8 migrants arriving in 2005 were Polish citizens.

Almost 85 per cent of those A8 citizens migrating to the UK came for work reasons, that is, they were 'looking for work' or had a 'definite job' to go to. Overall, nearly half of all citizens migrating to the UK gave work-related reasons.

'Formal study' is another important reason for people migrating to the UK accounting for almost a quarter of all immigration in 2005.

There are notable differences in the routes that migrants of different citizenships use to enter the UK. In 2004 and 2005, nearly 90 per cent of A8 migrants entered via routes other than the main UK airports (such as via sea ports, the Channel Tunnel, or Stansted and Luton and other local airports).

In contrast, nearly 75 per cent of citizens from Commonwealth and Other foreign countries entered the UK via Heathrow airport. Over 60 per cent of British migrants entered the UK via Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports.

Source



America can ill-afford immigrant labor

Advocates of unrestricted immigration often argue that the American economy depends on laborers who stream across our largely unguarded borders. But a new study by the conservative Heritage Foundation soundly refutes that claim. It turns out that low-skill immigrants here legally or otherwise depend on American taxpayers, not the other way around.

In the first major study to quantify the hidden costs of immigration, Heritage analysts Robert Rector, Christine Kim and Shanea Watkins crunched the numbers and found that a typical household headed by an unskilled worker lacking the equivalent of a high school diploma earns $20,564 and pays $9,689 in taxes per year on average. But the same household collects $32,138 in direct and means-tested government benefits. Over 50 years, that adds up to $1.3 million per household - a largely hidden, but dramatic transfer of wealth from U.S. taxpayers.

"Immigrants do make the pie larger," Rector told The Examiner, "but they eat the additional slice they create." And then some. If, as appears likely, Congress allows the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to expire, the present annual tax burden of $32,706 per household will climb substantially. Allowing more low-skill immigrants to enter the country will simply drive that burden even higher. Note that a bill currently in the House would allow 4 million additional unskilled workers into the country over the next decade.

This "cheap" labor also depresses wages and benefits for low-income Americans, particularly native-born minorities. Instead of lifting our own citizens out of poverty, we're importing millions more poor people.

The Heritage team concluded that government transfers to low-skilled workers already in the United States represent a net economic loss of $100 billion a year. That figure will be much higher if immigration reform allows millions more to enter the United States. In order to make immigration "fiscally neutral," the study found, it would be necessary to "eliminate Social Security, Medicare, all 60 means-tested aid programs and cut the cost of public education in half." Barring such draconian measures, immigration - both legal and illegal - will continue to "generate deep fiscal deficits for the foreseeable future."

Even if the borders were sealed tomorrow, the long-term outlook for entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicaid is already grim. Rector warns of an even larger welfare state comparable to those in Europe as our nation's incoherent immigration policy "selectively draws the least competent workers into the U.S." - and sends taxpayers the bill.

Slowly, but inexorably, we are allowing agenda-driven activists, clueless corporate suits and dissembling government officials to dismantle the world-class standard of living it took generations of hard-working Americans to build.

Source



26 April, 2007

'Family values' won't be boosted by immigration

The high rate of illegitimate births to immigrants is a warning to American leaders not to expect help building family values from such newcomers, according to a new study released today by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.

Hispanic immigrants have seen the largest increase in out-of-wedlock births, from 19 percent in 1980 to 42 percent in 2003, according to the study entitled "Illegitimate Nation," authored by Dr. Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research at CIS. Camarota notes that illegitimate births in the native population have increased as well, from 19 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2003. For immigrants overall, both legal and illegal, out-of-wedlock birth rates have been comparable to illegitimate birth rates among the native population, increasing from 13 percent in 1980 for immigrants (both legal and illegal) to 32 percent in 2003.

The higher rate of illegitimate births among Hispanic immigrants is important, Camarota notes, because births to Hispanic mothers now account for 59 percent of all births to foreign-born mothers. "How the children of Hispanic immigrants fare is one of the most critically important questions we face as a nation with regard to the integration of children from immigrant families," Camarota wrote. "The birth rate data indicate that a very large share of these children are starting life at a significant social disadvantage."

Camarota found that illegitimate births tend to associate with the low education levels of the mothers. In 2003, 65 percent of illegitimate births to Hispanic immigrants were to mothers who lacked a high school diploma. In 2003, for the first time, the absolute number of illegitimate births among Hispanic immigrants exceeded the absolute number of illegitimate births among African-Americans.

Camarota cited the extensive social science research that shows illegitimacy and family breakdown have concerned policy makers, researchers, and the public for more than half a century, at least since Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 publication of what became known as "The Moynihan Report." "Research shows that children of unmarried parents are much more likely to live in poverty, have low academic achievement, and have higher high school dropout rates than those born to married persons," Camarota commented. "Run-ins with the law, drug use, and incarceration are all more common among children born to unmarried parents," he continued. "Welfare use is also significantly higher for married families with illegitimate children. Infants born out of wedlock suffer higher mortality rates. Illegitimate children have been found to suffer from more-difficult-to-solve problems such as low levels of self esteem and self worth." Moreover, Camarota noted that children of unmarried parents are themselves at a higher risk of becoming out-of-wedlock parents themselves, setting up a generational perpetuation of the problem.

Camarota cited President Bush's frequent statement that "family values do not stop at the Rio Grande." Keying from this claim, a major goal of Camarota's study was to answer the following question: "Is one of the benefits of immigration that it will infuse the country with traditional family values?" After reviewing the high rate of illegitimate births, especially among Hispanic immigrants, his answer was a resounding, "No."

His conclusion was that illegitimate births to immigrants will add to a growing societal problem. He wrote, "Children of immigrants born to immigrant parents will be at a higher risk for low academic achievement, criminality, weak attachment to the labor force, use of welfare, and all the other social problems the illegitimate children are at a higher risk to experience."

Camarota concluded, "Immigrants are subject to the same social forces as everybody else, and illegitimacy is as big a problem among immigrants as it is for the rest of society. Thus, the idea that immigration will reinvigorate traditional family values is unrealistic."

Source



Big media hide truth about immigration

Comment by Lou Dobbs

The Bush administration and the leadership of the Democratic Party are preparing to take another legislative leap at imposing a massive illegal alien amnesty on American citizens. And the mainstream media are complicit in advancing this thinly veiled blanket amnesty. Instead of asking and answering important questions about why our immigration laws aren't being enforced and why we're permitting pervasive document fraud, the national media seem hell-bent on trying to obfuscate the issue, shamelessly playing with language, equating legal immigration with illegal immigration while obviously trying to preserve the illusion of objectivity.

Too often, the language of the national media describes illegal immigration as "migration" and illegal aliens as "undocumented immigrants," even though many of them have lots of documents, most of which are fraudulent or stolen. Some media outlets have taken to calling illegal aliens "entrants." Whether such language is meant to engender sympathy or to intentionally blur the distinction between legal and illegal, the mainstream media are taking sides in this debate.

The Arizona Republic, for example, used "undocumented immigrant" more than 80 times in 36 separate stories in the past month alone; the term appeared as many as 12 times in one article on "migration," according to our Lexis-Nexis search. At the same time, "illegal alien" appeared a total of only nine times during that span, with seven of the references coming from readers' opinions, one from a quotation and one from an editorial.

The mainstream media report as if America would no longer be a welcoming nation if we stopped illegal immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Why do the national media conveniently and routinely neglect to report that the United States brings in more lawful immigrants than the countries of the rest of the world combined? Each year, we accept 2 million immigrants legally. We give a million legal immigrants permanent residency every year. We bestow citizenship on 700,000 people a year and provide almost half a million work-related visas a year.

Illegal immigration, in fact, has the potential to change the course of American history: Demographers at the Brookings Institution and the Population Reference Bureau paint a troubling picture of the future of our democracy. As more illegal aliens cross our borders and settle in large states like California, Texas and Florida, congressional seats will be redistributed to these bigger states following each decennial Census. States with low levels of immigration will ultimately lose seats as a result. Unfortunately for American citizens, this seismic shift in political representation will be decided by noncitizens that cannot vote.

Congress will soon take up so-called comprehensive immigration reform, and a bipartisan House bill would probably admit 400,000 guest workers a year. And since any plan calling for eventual legalization would include family members who live outside the United States, the legislation would open our borders to tens of millions of people. The Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector estimated that the 2006 version of the McCain-Kennedy bill would have added an additional 66 million immigrants over the next 20 years. The bill may change, but that estimate has yet to be refuted.

There's no question this type of mass immigration would have a calamitous effect on working citizens and their families. Professor Carol Swain, professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University and author of "Debating Immigration," would like to see more people speak up for the sectors of society most affected by illegal immigration. "How many African-American leaders have you seen come out and address the impact that high levels of illegal immigration [are] having in the communities when it comes to jobs, when it comes to education, when it comes to health care?" she asked. "And often, these low-skilled, low-wage workers compete in the same sectors for jobs."

Let's have a vigorous open debate on illegal immigration in this country, and let's begin with the facts. Estimates of illegal aliens in this country range from 12 million to 20 million people. Why doesn't our government know how many there are? Shouldn't this Congress and this president at least recognize that the industries in which illegal aliens are employed in the greatest percentages also are suffering the largest wage declines? And shouldn't there be an economic impact statement researched and delivered to this Congress, this president and the rest of us before any legislation granting amnesty is even considered? Shouldn't we first bring the facts of illegal immigration out of the shadows?

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25 April, 2007

"Impromptu" protest

What a crock! Read the last paragraph below and decide how impromptu it sounds to you

CHICAGO -- An immigration raid in the Little Village neighborhood sparked an impromptu protest Tuesday afternoon.

The raid, which took place near 26th Street and Albany Avenue, was aimed at busting an alleged fake ID document organization at a local discount mall. U.S. attorney's office spokesman Randall Samborn said agents made arrests and conducted searches in the neighborhood. Witnesses said dozens of undocumented immigrants were apprehended.

"This is affecting all our people, everybody -- not just Latinos, but all immigrants throughout the country," one man said at the scene. Another witness was incensed by the raid. "This is discrimination. This is unfair because the United States is made out of immigrants," she said.

The neighborhood responded with a march through the streets. Dozens of residents linked arm-in-arm and marched through the neighborhood. Police cars at the front and rear of the gathering drove slowly along with the marchers. The protesters began at 26th and Albany and marched through the neighborhood to a church, Our Lady Of Tepeyac, at 22nd and Whipple streets.

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Arpaio locks up illegals

Arpaio shows that law enforcement IS possible. Arpaio is himself the son of (legal) Italian immigrants

"America's Toughest Sheriff," Joe Arpaio, is locking up criminals - including immigrant smugglers and those being smuggled - despite his jails being overcapacity. Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., is using his authority under state and federal laws to send a message, not only to those who smuggle immigrants into America but to anyone who participates.

In San Bernardino County, illegal immigrants who are arrested are turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the largest investigative branch of the Department of Homeland Security. They identify criminal activities and work to eliminate vulnerabilities that pose a threat to our nation's borders, according to the ICE Web site. When an illegal alien is arrested in San Bernardino County, ICE officers working in the jails take them into custody and try to get them deported.

But in Maricopa County, Ariz., Arpaio welcomes all human smugglers and those being smuggled with open jail cells and tents. Since a state law was passed in spring 2006 making human smuggling a felony, Maricopa County law enforcement agents have arrested 526, including two arrested Monday. In the past 10 days, 94 have been arrested under the state and federal immigration laws. "The Terminator should call me and thank me," Arpaio said, referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Seventy percent of the 500 arrested were headed for California."

Arpaio is also training 160 officers to enforce the Arizona state law and federal immigration statutes. They make up the Triple I Strike Force, which stands for illegal immigration interdiction, officials said. Thirty-seven have already been trained, and 35 more started training last week. No other county is dealing with immigration on the level that Maricopa County is. "The sheriff has a philosophy and a vision, and we are acting accordingly," said Lt. Paul Chagolla of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department.

Arpaio's interpretation of the law has drawn criticism from many different quarters, including from the congressman who sponsored the law and normally supports Arpaio. Rep. Jonathon Patton, R-Ariz., said that throwing the people who are being smuggled in jail was never the intent of the law. Arpaio has been sued over his interpretation of the law and how he enforces it but said that he will take it to the Supreme Court if need be.

He takes pride in the fact that he is in uncharted waters and said he believes firmly that his view is right. Arpaio said he locks them up to teach them a lesson, instead of turning them over to ICE agents to get a free ride back to Mexico.

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24 April, 2007

Senator Kyl (R-AZ) sums up what is happening in Congress

“A group of senators who voted against last year’s bill, and a group of some of the senators who voted for the bill, along with the White House and in particular, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez – have been meeting to try to see if we can achieve a consensus around a bill that will provide us with meaningful immigration reform that can get passed and sent to the President for his signature before the end of this year. We’re spending scores of hours a week on this endeavor. I am cautiously optimistic that, even though we come to the table with very different views about what ought to be done, with a constructive attitude, we will be able to get a bill that could pass and be signed by the President.

“Immigration arrests are down this year, not because the Border Patrol isn’t doing its job, but because there are fewer attempts to cross the border illegally. It’s because of the fencing, the vehicle barriers, the additional border patrol agents, the surveillance equipment, and the other activities that have helped control the border – but that process needs to move forward.”

“We’re going to need some additional labor in this country as time goes on in certain areas, in certain occupations, and at certain times. The best way to achieve that is through a temporary worker system that allows people to come to the United States when work is available that they want to do and is not being done by Americans – but on a temporary basis.”

“Securing the border, enforcing the law, a simple employee verification system, a temporary worker program, and resolving the status of illegal immigrants – those are the key elements of immigration reform. I’m hopeful we can reach a consensus on all of these views.”

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Immigration and the Va. massacre

We now have treason on display in the Virginia Tech massacre as a peace process parading itself as an immigration policy. This immigration policy is based upon equality or Openness as in the Open Society or what we refer to here at SANE following Professor Robert J. Loewenberg's term, Indiscriminacy. It is a Peace Process that always ends up sacrificing "victims" to prove that men, peoples, and the societies they form, are essentially no different one from the other. It is a Peace Process that, in the name of peace, seeks the World State.

So what do we know of this 23-year old South Korean apparently mesmerized by the Arabic-sounding reference to "Ismail Ax"? What we know is that he was a resident alien, meaning he was NOT an American citizen. He came here as an eight-year old boy with his parents. And, the family remained resident aliens, never actually becoming citizens, choosing for whatever reason to simply renew their "green card" on the first 10-year anniversary of their resident status.

But beyond that we know quite a bit in a relatively short three days since the shooting. We know he was "troubled" to the point of frightening and threatening his fellow students. So much so that some of them refused to attend the same class with him and so much so that one of his professors threatened to quit teaching the class if he was not removed.

He was removed but only then to be tutored by the Chairwoman of the department. He was also troubled enough that at least two female students called the police on separate occasions because he was harassing them. He was also troubled enough that yet another student called police to say that he thought the murderer-to-be was suicidal. The troubled young man was then hospitalized as a danger to himself and possibly to others but released fairly quickly and referred to outpatient care and provided anti-depressant medication.

All of this and he was not even a citizen! He was here as a resident ALIEN! But withal, this troubled young man was able to walk into a gun shop and purchase a nine millimeter semi-automatic revolver and a 22-calibre pistol.

At SANE, we believe the Second Amendment and the responsibility granted to Americans to bear arms is almost sacred. It is who we are as self-reliant people. It begins with our citizen militias at the time of the Revolution and continues through our history of self-defense and citizen-motivated programs to guard the borders, to form citizen posses, and to serve in the Reserves and in the National Guard even as we become citizens in every other way. Americans have always had just the right amount of suspicion that their government could very well fail them when national defense was needed most. We've certainly lived through enough examples of the grossest forms of government incompetence which have cost thousands of American lives to know what Ronald Reagan said to be true: too often government is not the solution; it is the problem.

But what does the Second Amendment have to do with an immigrant who is NOT a citizen and certainly is not part of the American people? The Second Amendment reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." How can it be that "resident ALIENS" become part of the American PEOPLE and are granted the right to walk around armed?

The answer of course is that in America, as well as in Virginia and most states, resident aliens are treated just like citizens. We have taken the position in this country that the American People and the Society we have formed is no longer about a People. It is now about legal categories. White Christians were at the founding of this nation a distinct people and privileged as such. Men of means among this people were given the opportunity for representative government. This is, for those of you flinching, not a thesis or "viewpoint"; this is historical fact.

After the Civil War, this changed; with the move into the 20th century this change became a wholesale reformation. Today, you cannot speak of Christianity in the public sphere and if you mention "white" and "Christians" in the same sentence you will be set upon as a despicable racist by every "fair-minded" public person. And, this phenomenon extends far beyond race. It is now the case that you cannot speak of the evil of Islam and remain a serious participant in public discourse. In order to speak of the unfathomable murder and mayhem brought to the Western world by Mohammed and his god Allah and the threat it poses to our very existence, we must label it in such ways as to disfigure our very meaning. Thus, Islamists are the bad guys not Muslims; Islamo-fascism is their political ideology not Islam simply and not even Islamic law; and we must, almost per force of law, begin by noting that our critique is not of the noble religion of peace but of radical Islam hijacked by the few extremists among the faithful.

Talk of "illegal" immigrants as opposed to "undocumented" immigrants is likened to the lexicon of Nazis. Even our Republican president informs us that we have an obligation as Americans to care for and accept as one of us those men and women who have broken our laws and intruded into our homes. The argument is that because some bad or weak American actors have given these illegal intruders jobs once they are here, we have somehow relinquished forever our authority and responsibility to protect our nation, its Peoplehood, and its security.

So it is that President Bush and enough of the Republicans can join with the Open Society crowd to defeat sane immigration proposals because they sincerely believe in the "openness" of a liberal democracy and because they see this belief reflected in poll after poll. In other words, most Americans believe in it too!?! While the word "amnesty" doesn't hold much public enthusiasm, words and phrases such as "path to legal citizenship", "mainstreaming", "coming out of the shadows", "family reunification", "comprehensive immigration reform", "guest worker program", and other such disguised amnesty jargon are ways to package the idea that the plight of the illegal intruder non-citizen is somehow our fault for insisting on borders and peoplehood.

It was of course the beloved Ronald Reagan, the David of conservatism against the Goliath of Liberalism, who was the first president in the history of the US to actually grant amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants with his support of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. And before that, it was the Great Society's Lyndon B. Johnson who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which eliminated nation-specific quotas, replacing them with just one overall quota. This meant of course that we had as a country effectively determined that we were not a white Christian nation, but would become a brownish-black nation of third world types who could barely speak our language, knew nothing of our culture and civilization, and indeed desired to be one of "us" predominantly for economic reasons.

But this new view fits our Redirection perfectly; indeed the two are intimately intertwined. As a People we once understood that if we moved away from being a distinct people, meaning overwhelmingly white and Christian with ancestors from the European continent, the America nation would cease to exist because the people would no longer be. Today, with the Redirection in the ascendancy, we are now a country of "citizens" who no longer lay claim to being a distinct nation and people. The question that is surely worth asking is if it is even possible today to expect otherwise?

Indeed, once the 14th Amendment was ratified to "fix" the problem of the "unequal" treatment of the emancipated African slaves in lieu of a plan of mass repatriation, the Supreme Court went to work "incorporating" almost all of the Bill of Rights into the amendment's expansive language thereby bringing state governments, their autonomy and sovereignty, into the jurisdiction of the federal courts and Congress. That of course was not enough for those who wished to destroy the notion of local government and peoplehood at the level of the states. To finish the job the Supreme Court eventually took the Commerce Clause, which was meant to protect the individual states from abuse by other states and to facilitate commerce between the states, and turned it into a club to beat our federalist system to an unrecognizable pulp.

What this came to mean in the late 20th century is that the courts were now free to determine that the American people, including the individual peoples and societies of the formerly sovereign 50 states, were now "legal citizens", "residents", "aliens" and the like all within the purview of its long-arm of egalitarian, nationalized, and indiscriminate legal rules.

(Peoplehood, once experienced as real and certain, was so well understood at the founding that it was enshrined for example in the Second Amendment where you wouldn't imagine granting someone who was not "of the people" the privilege to bear arms. This was given to the people as such precisely because the government should neither be blindly trusted to do what it should do to defend the people against intruder-enemies nor be given license to define and to limit its own reach lest it become the intruder-enemy itself ["A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."].)

And so it was that we come to the Supreme Court's now famous footnote dicta in Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982). Plyler was really about whether a state like Texas which was inundated with illegal immigrants from Mexico could withhold certain public benefits to the children of these illegal immigrants, such as a free public education. The case did not specifically address whether the affected children were also illegal immigrants born in Mexico or possibly "anchor babies" born in the US to illegal immigrants.

On the main point, the Court decided that there was indeed a constitutional interest to make certain that the states did not "discriminate" against these poor helpess children just because they were "undocumented" by applying the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause (". . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.") which applied to "persons".

But the Court would have to explain how the Equal Protection Clause could possible be read to mean that the state of Texas could not preserve its public school system financed by mostly state tax dollars by reserving its privileged use to legal residents. To answer this in a way to destroy the state's sovereignty and the peoplehood of that state, the Court then reached into another of its bags of tricks and pulled out of the Constitution something no one has ever found there: the "Intermediate Scrutiny Test", which is just another of those fictions and constitutional amendments the Court has appended to the written word by fiat without so much as a peep out of the American People now defined out of existence and converted into "legal constructs".

But Pyler's damage to the sovereignty of the states and the residual notion of Peoplehood was not greatest at the point of impact. The real damage was what was implicit in the Court's attitude about "citizenship" and how it read the 14th Amendment. The result was that the destruction it wrought was from the collateral damage contained in footnote 10 of the Court's 5-4 opinion wherein it wrote:

". . . no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment "jurisdiction" can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful."

In other words, it was not enough to destroy the very notion of a People existing as a distinct Society and political order and to replace that with a legal construct consisting of words as symbols and definitions, now the Court wanted to make clear that even the legalistic distinctions between citizens and legal immigrant-residents and illegal immigrant-residents was to be blurred merely by hopping the fence.

And, indeed, as a practical matter, this is how immigration law now works. If a pregnant Mexican woman can cross the border long enough to plop out another of her offspring, take pictures and document it, that baby can then immediately claim to be part of the American People because there is no people anymore but rather legalistic notions of Indiscriminacy. Does one wonder what might happen if our Latino mother has one foot in Mexico and one in the US? Would it depend where exactly the baby plops out? What if little Enrique lands on the line?

And as we all know, when the misfit "racists" and "Resurgent Atavists" raise their "ugly" voices and talk about Peoplehood and immigration controls, the PC machine is ready to shut them down by marginalizing them to the far corners of the blogosphere, typically right next to David Duke but now joined by the Hollywood and Radio City loudmouths like Don Imus. Immediately the PC chorus chimes in about how wonderful the Latino friend is who immigrated here twenty years ago or the Muslim cardiologist who has been here 35 years. But if this is their logic, then why not actively pursue open border immigration as a policy? Join the George Soros "Open World Society". Why not embrace a North American Union like the European Union and tear down our borders? Is there a justification to create a "legal" distinction, nothing more than an artificial "social construct" between Americans and Canadians? And, if we could learn Spanish or teach the Mexicans English or embrace a bi-lingual multi-cultural society, we could destroy our southern border as well. Imagine what all that cheap labor could do for our manufacturing industry. We, the people of the world, all cherish freedom and democracy, do we not? Why should a child born through no fault of his own on one side of the border or the other (which again is not a physical or actual boundary between Peoples and nations but a legal construct to "discriminate" between two equal human beings) be denied "Equal Protection of the Laws"?

So now we have a better understanding of the Virginia Tech massacre. We don't care how many immigrants and resident aliens - legal or illegal - will be inconvenienced by our concerns. Every single life of an American as a member of a distinct and unique People is worth more than all of the "aliens" put together. The Redirection, of course, informs us otherwise by pointing out that per science and democracy there can be no real distinctions between people or peoples. In science as in democracy, we are all radically equal and indistinguishable.

The Virginia Tech murderer, although not an American in any sense of the word was here "legally". Per the Elites, who don't simply suffer from the Redirection but relish and embrace it, there could have been no grounds to discriminate against him. The idea that this "troubled" young man should have been cared for and pampered is second nature and indeed a "human right" embodied in the Constitution even if not in its written word.

The response we know to expect now would be, "What could you possibly be suggesting would have been the proper response of the authorities?" And to that question the answer should be, but is not, obvious. That he and his parents should not have been here in the first instance is clear. That this "troubled" young man was not deported, but should have been, at the first sign of "trouble" is also clear. And, we did not because it would not have been "fair" because he is, after all, as President Bush reminds us about the illegal immigrants in America, a "person" just like "us" except what that means of course is that there is not US only ALL or the World. And therein lies the treason.

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23 April, 2007

DUI illegal arrested, convicted 9 times since 2003

Authorities can't explain why alien who killed father of 5 still in U.S.

When Isidro Pena Soto's SUV slammed into an oncoming pickup truck, after passing another car at 90 miles-per-hour, the illegal alien who had been arrested or convicted at least nine times since 2003 made Kent Boone the fifth fatality in two weeks along a dangerous stretch of Northern California highway. The notorious two-lane roadway, known as "blood alley," runs through Napa, Solano, Sacramento and San Joaquin counties. It averaged more than 10 deaths a year during the five-year period ending in 2005.

Pena, 26, was driving without a license while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. California Highway Patrol officers found two pounds of methamphetamine in his vehicle and more at his home. It was not his first brush with U.S. law, and that's what Boone's survivors find so hard to understand. "He needs to be in prison, there's no way they're going to be able to deport him and keep him out of our country," Boone's widow, Regina Sorisio, told the Oroville Mercury Register.

Boone, a 33-year-old pipe fitter and father of five, was killed on March 31 as he drove to work. Pena was hospitalized following the accident but arrested when he was released from doctors' care. This week he pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. "It's been quite challenging getting any information on anything," April Godin, Boone's former wife and mother of two of his children, told the Contra Costa Times. "It's just all of the loopholes and lack of information." The information that is coming out now makes Boone's family and law enforcement officials wonder why Pena had not been deported before.

Pena has been convicted six times of driving without a license. In 2003 and 2005, he was convicted for DUI in Contra Costa County - and for a felony narcotics charge in the same county in 2005. That same year, he was convicted of a DUI in neighboring Solano County - the county where he killed Boone last month. According to the Contra Costa Times, court records do not show the circumstances of his release from custody on those charges. A spokeswoman with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency said no one from any of the law enforcement agencies or courts that had handled Pena's offenses in the past had ever contacted her agency. "Cases like this certainly underscore why we want to encourage local law enforcement agencies to tell us when they encounter foreign nationals with multiple prior convictions for crimes that certainly present a potential threat to public safety," said ICE's Virginia Kice.

"The only time [immigration status] is a relevant issue is if someone is charged with a crime and we incarcerate them," said Concord police Lt. David Chilimidos. "We actually treat everybody like they were here legally," said Richmond police Capt. Alec Griffin. "We don't make contacts with ICE just in the course of normal business."

In Richmond, with its large immigrant population, local police do not participate with ICE in roundups of suspected illegals. The city terminated daylight traffic checkpoints aimed at stopping street crimes, Griffin said, because immigrants feared they were being targeted.

For whatever reason, Pena's multiple trips through the justice system never resulted in him being identified as an illegal alien who might "present a potential threat to public safety." "It doesn't seem like it would be hard to put a red flag on there," Godin said. "There's so many questions I have. ... Why isn't anyone giving us information?" There is now an immigration hold on Pena, who is being held without bail and will be turned over to immigration authorities for deportation if and when he is released from custody.

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An interesting analogy

Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration.Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely. Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.

Let's say I break into your house.Let's say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.But I say, "I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors. I've done all the things you don't like to do. I'm hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).

According to the protesters:

You are Required to let me stay in your house. You are Required to add me to your family's insurance plan.You are Required to Educate my kids.You are Required to Provide other benefits to me & to my family.(my husband will do all of your yard work because he is also hard-working and honest, except for that breaking in part).

If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my RIGHT to be there.

It's only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I'm just trying to better myself. I'm a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know, I did break into your house And what a deal it is for me!!!I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of cold, uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and bigoted behavior.

Oh yeah, I DEMAND that you learn MY LANGUAGE!!! so you can communicate with me.Why can't people see how ridiculous this is?! Only in America."

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22 April, 2007

San Francisco Police Won't Assist In ICE Raids

San Francisco police chief Heather Fong re-asserted San Francisco's status as a sanctuary city. That means local police will not assist federal agents in arresting illegal immigrants. The chief's comments come just as the Feds are fully engaged in a crackdown on immigration fugitives. San Francisco community activists say more and more immigrants won't call police when they are victims of a crime. They're afraid they, or someone they know, will end up being deported for being undocumented. They are well aware of a national crackdown by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Lenora Melgarejo, community activist: "What I hear from testimonies from people every day when I talk to them is that constant fear of actually making that phone call to the police because it's not clear in the minds of people yet that the police isn't collaborating with ICE."

Heather Fong, S.F. police chief: "We are here to protect all people who live or work or visit San Francisco." Police Chief Heather Fong says her officers do not assist federal agents in immigration sweeps. That's because the city has what's known as a sanctuary ordinance. The city has a law which put limits on police cooperation with immigration agents.

The chief hopes crime victims will not be afraid to call, even if they are undocumented immigrants. Heather Fong, S.F. police chief: "Often times we have seen that individuals who do not speak the English language or individuals who do not feel that they can report, they are being preyed upon by members of their own community and that's not acceptable."

Rick Oltman, Californians for Population Control: "There is no provision of the U.S. constitution or in federal law for any type of sanctuary from immigration law enforcement." Rick Oltman says San Francisco is an example of government anarchy, and his group plans to ask the state and U.S. Attorneys General to see if the city is breaking federal immigration law. Rick Oltman, Californians for Population Control: "So long as the law is on the books we should insist that citizens obey the law, immigrants obey the law, and certainly elected officials and governments obey the law."

President Bush has called for an overhaul of the immigration system. He's proposing a plan that would expand the temporary worker program but force illegal immigrants to return to their home country, re-apply to enter legally and pay a $10,000 dollar fine. The Senate is slated to take up the issue next month.

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`Marrying' Rajneeshis breaching Australian immigration laws

The Immigration Department of Australia is investigating a number of Aussie followers of the Indian guru Bhagwan Rajneesh for alleged sham marriages. A commune of the disciples of the controversial Indian guru, also known as Osho, at the scenic beach town of Byron Bay has attracted Australian authorities' gaze for breaching immigration laws.

A New South Wales resident had claimed in a recent newspaper article that several members of the Rajneeshite sect, known as `Sanyassins', have been intermarrying just to get Australian permanent residence. David Honeycombe of Bangalow had made the claim in his article in The Australian spurring the department of immigration and citizenship into investigating the small community.

According to the news article, most of the 2000-strong Sanyassin community members living in Byron Bay town region were born overseas. The list includes all the five directors of the Mullumbimby-based Sanyassin-owned company Melaleuca Properties. Three of the eight directors of another Rajneeshite commune Osho Mevlana Foundation, according to the newspaper article are also foreigners. Now all the Sanyassins are under the immigration investigation thanks to the media attention drawn by Honeycombe's startling claim.

He is reported to have contacted a Byron Bay police officer after hearing guests at a Sanyassin marriage joke about flouting Australian immigration laws by marrying fellow Rajneesh disciples. "The attitude of the police was that they weren't the slightest bit interested," David Honeycombe was quoted as saying by The Australian.

"They seemed to be more interested in not upsetting the locals," he added. Federal immigration Minister Kevin Andrews had reportedly said that allegations of sham marriages were viewed "very seriously" by the government.

"The department will undertake an immediate investigation to determine if there are any irregularities in the Byron Bay area," the Minister's spokeswoman said in a statement. "Anyone with information should contact the department of immigration and citizenship."

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21 April, 2007

They're flooding into Britain

Record numbers of people are flowing into the UK after net immigration rocketed by 42 per cent in just a year. The gap between those arriving and staying for at least a year and those leaving is now at its highest because of Labour's open door on immigration. And the influx of Eastern Europeans since Tony Blair threw open our labour market has helped fuel the massive rise.

The revelation came after official figures revealed immigrants are flocking to Britain at a rate of 1,500 every day. With only 1,000 leaving per day, it means our population is soaring by 500 daily and almost half are coming to find work or have already landed jobs here. Immigration minister Liam Byrne confirmed a new points-based system for immigrants will start next year but there are no guarantees it will reduce the inflow.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: "This number of people migrating into this country shows why a points-based immigration system without a limit is pointless. "Liam Byrne this week acknowledged that there are limited amounts of schools, hospitals and houses in the country, therefore he must accept that there should be a limit to the amount of people who can come here."

Between June 2004 and June 2005, 246,200 more people came to the UK than left. That was up 42 per cent on the 173,600 during the previous 12 months, according to the Office for National Statistics.

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Illegals bad for blacks

For many African-Americans, today's debate over immigration evokes a bitter sense of deja vu. In 1965, a new immigration law restarted mass immigration just as African-Americans, emerging from long years of segregation, were poised to enter the economic mainstream. In the decades since, millions of immigrants - legal and illegal - have settled here, causing the immigrant population to balloon from fewer than 10 million in 1970 to about 36 million today.

Black Americans have suffered economically in periods of high immigration. On the other hand, when immigration ebbed and labor supply was tight - during World War I, for example - African-American prosperity soared.

The current wave of immigration has been especially destructive, coming at a time of severe economic restructuring caused by globalization and outsourcing. Unlike previous immigration cycles, this massive influx continues with no natural end in site. What's more, since immigrants are likely to have little education, immigration is significantly adding to the economic challenges of the underclass by importing competitors for jobs. The effects are predictable: Wages drop, working conditions deteriorate, and the native-born are crowded out of the job market. Education, medical care and other services are diverted to address new, unplanned-for needs. Whole industries have organized themselves in expectation of an unending supply of foreign labor.

The effects have been devastating to many African-Americans. A study from Northeastern University reports, "The existence of slack labor market conditions in recent years has created more direct competition for available jobs between immigrants and many subgroups of native workers." Of those "subgroups," African-Americans, especially less educated black men, find themselves squeezed out of entry-level positions that previously served as the first rung into stable work. Now those rungs are increasingly occupied by immigrants, both legal and illegal. Even higher-skilled African-Americans are experiencing artificial competition from such programs as the H-1B visa, a cheap-labor program that computer companies are ferociously lobbying to expand.

Now President Bush and many in Congress are calling for "comprehensive immigration reform." All of the various plans would reward more than 12 million illegal aliens with legal status - i.e., amnesty - and further increase today's record-high levels of legal immigration. Experience has proven that we should view such "fixes" with skepticism. In 1965, Americans were assured that the new immigration law would neither change the demographic makeup of the country nor increase the population. Likewise, the 1986 amnesty was touted as a one-time-only event; we now know that amnesty actually increases illegal immigration.

If the first responsibility of our lawmakers is to ensure that their actions do not harm their fellow Americans, then all of the "comprehensive" reforms fall short, because none provide genuine protection, relief or equity for our country's own disadvantaged citizens.

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20 April, 2007

Crooked churches!

Fraud in the name of the Lord??

The federal government is inspecting churches and religious groups to clamp down on fraud in a visa program for religious workers, government officials said Thursday. The visits are part of an effort by Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, to tighten rules for the religious worker visas after finding fraud in about 33 percent of applications. The agency said that because of the level of fraud it did not want to wait until proposed rule changes became final to start checking on the religious organizations.

Every religious organization that files visa applications for its workers will be visited before the application is approved. They may not get a second visit if they seek a visa for a second worker, but could be contacted by phone, said Janis Sposato, an associate director of CIS who led the fraud review.

The review uncovered churches that did not exist and applications filed falsely under the name of a legitimate church that did not petition for the worker, Sposato said. "This is an ongoing program. There is no start date. We are doing the site visits," Sposato said.

Costs for the federal inspection would be absorbed in fee increases proposed by Citizenship and Immigration Services. Eventually, federal contractors would do the inspections, she said. The proposed rule changes come 20 months after the agency reviewed the religious worker visa program and found the 33 percent fraud rate, officials said Thursday. Sposato refused to say whether the review uncovered any terrorism suspects or someone who might cause harm in the country.

The Government Accountability Office reported fraud in the religious visa program in March 1999, finding churches applying for hundreds of visas for people who planned to stay in the country illegally. The visas, which are temporary, are for foreigners who will work in the country as religious ministers, in a professional religious vocation or job or someone working for a nonprofit religious organization.

Immigration officials want to limit the visas to one year, renewable twice for two years each time. Workers would be required to prove they worked for the religious organization with a W-2 wage statement before a visa can be renewed. Filing of visa applications by individuals at embassies or consulates would end. The public will have 60 days to comment on the proposed rules. The agency would not say when it hopes to implement the rules.

Kevin Appleby, a spokesman for the National Catholic Conference of Bishops, said Catholic dioceses use the visas frequently. The bishops support tightening rules to eliminate fraud, but want to ensure legitimate religious workers are not prevented from entering the country, he said. "It's an important program. We hope the restrictions aren't such that makes it an ineffective one," Appleby said.

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Weird U.S./Australia arrangement

A new way to get to America -- via Australia! A bad deal for both countries

The US denies it has a legally binding agreement with Australia to swap up to 200 refugees a year between the two countries. [Australian] Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews announced this week that an agreement had been signed with the US to "provide mutual assistance for the resettlement of people in need of international protection". Under the scheme, Australia would send asylum-seekers held in its offshore processing facilities to the US; in return it would take Cuban refugees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormick yesterday described the scheme struck between Washington and Canberra as a non-binding "informal arrangement for mutual assistance". "There is an informal arrangement for mutual assistance that provides that each will consider resettlement of people interdicted at sea and found to be in need of international protection," he said. "The arrangement does not create legal obligations."

The scheme was negotiated by Immigration Department secretary Andrew Metcalfe in Washington last week but the Government has refused to confirm which country initiated the deal. The Australian Government announced that 83 Sri Lankans and eight Burmese asylum-seekers detained on the Pacific island of Nauru were likely to be the first refugees to be resettled in the US under the scheme. In return, Australia is likely to resettle Cuban refugees picked up by the US Navy on their way to the US mainland.

A spokeswoman for Mr Andrews said the comments by the US State Department did not diminish the deal. "The comments by the US reflect the agreement as it stands," she said.

But Labor immigration spokesman Tony Burke said Mr McCormick's attempt to play down the deal was embarrassing for the Government. "Every way you look at it, this policy is in a shambles," Mr Burke told The Australian last night. "Logic tells us this could provide an incentive to people-smugglers and America seems to be telling us that the agreement is less iron-clad than John Howard had led us to believe."

But writing in The Australian today, Mr Andrews says potential resettlement in the US "will be a disincentive to those who seek to come to Australia illegally because they have friends here": "This is simply an additional option for the Australian Government to consider when resettling refugees and there is no guarantee that any person with a claim for asylum will be resettled in the US." Mr Andrews writes that it is important the Government does all in its power to prevent and deter the perpetrators of smuggling.

Mr McCormack, in his daily press briefing, said the scheme did not require the direct exchange of a refugee processed in Australia for one processed in the US, and that no referrals had yet been made. No one referred for resettlement in Australia would be forced to accept resettlement, he said. "In the spirit of our mutual humanitarian traditions and commitment to assist individuals in need of international protection, the US and Australia are willing to consider resettling up to 200 individuals in a calendar year referred by the other country under this arrangement," he said. "The US and Australia will each consider individuals for resettlement in accordance with our own regulations and procedures respectively."

A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Canberra said the US had agreements with several countries for the resettlement of refugees. "We want to deter dangerous and illegal migration and alien-smuggling that puts lives at risk, which is why when the US interdicts migrants at sea we don't bring them to the US," she said. Refugees accepted for resettlement from the US would be placed in the mainland Australian community.

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19 April, 2007

The British Left gets nervous about immigration

Large-scale immigration has damaged the poorest communities and deeply unsettled the country, Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, says today. Mr Byrne says that inequality and child poverty are two of the main side-effects of migration, which has been running at record levels since Labour came to power. He also highlights the pressures caused by migration on schools and housing, and how they are affecting attempts to improve educational standards.

Mr Byrne makes his remarks before publication tomorrow of official figures showing net migration of 185,000 in 2005, four times the figure when Labour came to power in 1997. He tells his party that if Labour fails to address public concern about the level of immigration, and its effects on the country and public services, it could lose the next general election.

The scale of net migration has caused a marked change in public concern about immigration, Mr Byrne says. Globalisation and immigration have made Britain richer but have also "deeply unsettled the country", he writes in a pamphlet titled Rethinking Immigration and Integration, published by Policy Network, a centre-left think-tank. He says: "We also have to accept that laissez-faire migration runs the risk of damaging communities where parts of our antipoverty strategy come under pressure."

Mr Byrne says sudden increases in immigration into poor parts of Britain hit government attempts to improve life for the indigenous population. "When a junior school such as the school in Hodge Hill, my own constituency in Birmingham, sees its population of children with English as a second language rise from 5 per cent to 20 per cent in a year, then boosting standards in our poorest communities gets harder," he says.

Mr Byrne says existing communities were not sure that change arising from immigration had been fair. He says the speed of migration meant that public services in some communities had found it difficult to change as quickly as the communities around them are changing. "It is true that a small number of schools have struggled to cope, that some local authorities have reported problems of overcrowding in private housing and that there have been cost pressures on English language training, but the answer is in action that is simultaneously firm and fair."

Last month research published by the Home Office said that thousands of impoverished asylum-seekers had been dumped in socially deprived areas of the country under the Government's dispersal policy. The study found they were met with resistance from local people, racial harassment and racist attacks. Their arrival also had a significant impact on local health and education services. It said placing asylum-seekers in poorer areas of the country, such as Everton, Glasgow, Tyneside and parts of Manchester, had accentuated existing deprivation among the indigenous population.

The report, which was produced in 2002 but only released under freedom of information laws last month, highlighted some of the difficulties caused by the arrival of new migrants in poor areas. Fifty different languages had been introduced into Newcastle upon Tyne, and in other areas doctors dealing with new migrants experienced difficulties treating unfamiliar diseases such as malaria and TB. A health centre in Liverpool found that there were 24 different languages spoken by asylum-seeking patients.

In a separate article in today's pamphlet, Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham and a deputy leadership candidate, says that the communities undergoing the most rapid demographic change because of migration are the most poorly equipped to deal with it as they suffer high levels of poverty, social immobility and poor public services. John Reid, the Home Secretary, met the French Interior Minister yesterday and raised the issue of a centre being built offering showers, information and food to migrants gathering in Sangatte, northern France. The Conservatives fear that the building will act as a magnet for those seeking to enter Britain illegally.

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Britain to follow Australia's immigration example

Britain will next year adopt an Australian-style model for restricting immigration to those with skills in need. British Immigration Minister Liam Byrne unveiled the timetable for introducing the points-based system during a fact-finding visit to Australia, which uses a similar model to attract migrants with in-demand skills and reject those who would compete with local workers for unskilled jobs. "With the exception of an elite group of highly-skilled migrants, all other foreign workers or students will need a UK sponsor to vouch for them and help us make sure they are playing by the rules," Mr Byrne was quoted as saying in The Guardian newspaper. Under the system, would-be migrants would need to amass a certain number of points according to their skills and sector gaps in the UK.

It was first announced by Home Secretary John Reid last year and will replace more than 80 routes of entry to the UK with five tiers for workers with different skill levels. The first tier, for highly-skilled migrants such as scientists and entrepreneurs, will be launched at the beginning of next year. It will be followed later in 2008 by new tiers for skilled workers such as nurses, teachers and engineers with job offers, temporary workers and young people on working holidays. A further tier for students will begin at the start of 2009.

The announcement comes ahead of Thursday's publication of official statistics which The Times newspaper predicted would show net migration into Britain of 185,000 in 2005. The figure is down from the previous year's 222,600, but four times the level in 1997.

Writing in a pamphlet due out later this month and widely reported in British media on Wednesday, Mr Byrne warned uncontrolled migration could damage the poorest communities. He said while migration had made the UK richer, it had also "unsettled the country". Mr Byrne is attending an international conference on immigration issues in Sydney.

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18 April, 2007

Immigration deceptions

Senator Kennedy led the push for amnesty in 1986, and is doing so again. That amnesty was to be the very last one and to involve only about 300,000 illegals. The number turned out to be three million. Estimates of how many are here now vary from twelve million to thirty million. Nobody really knows for sure, since agencies that should be asking are not allowed to do so. It is a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. It forbids welfare agencies to ask the legal status of recipients. The two federal agencies, (the IRS and Census Bureau), that might have somewhat accurate figures will not give them out, citing "privacy" issues. We are left to speculate that we might have twice the cited illegal population here, which would be about twenty-four million, or even three times the estimate, which would be thirty-six million. Talk about buying a pig in a poke.

The promise that the borders would be controlled was just that..a promise. It was never done. And now, we continue to hear the mantra that more cheap labor is needed by industry. The logical question is: how many more millions do we need? Building industries statistics show that foreign workers are getting the new jobs being created. This is probably due to employers taking advantage of being able to pay them lower wages, off the books, with no taxes being paid and no health insurance provided. It means that low-wage earners who are citizens are being made to compete for jobs against many who are here illegally. The black population in particular is losing jobs this way.

There are many studies to contradict the claim for needing millions more low wage laborers. In its January 2005 report "The Underground and Labor Force is Rising to the Surface", Bear Stearns estimated that we have 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S., more than double the nine million that the Census Bureau estimated at that time. Bear Stearns also stated that one of the reasons for the undercount is that at least five million illegal aliens are paid under the table and do not show up in the normal demographic data the bureau uses to calculate population.

Bear Stearns reported that those 5+ millions cheat the government out of over $35 Billion a year in income taxes. At the same time, they receive $30 Billion a year in government largess. Taxpayers make up the difference in taxes not paid by these tax cheaters. Taxpayers also provide the generous welfare dollars for them.

California has probably more illegal aliens than any other state. A study released in late 2004 by Milken Institute entitled "The Los Angeles Economy Project" was done in partnership with the City of Los Angeles and County of Los Angeles.. What this study found was that 15 percent of the workforce (680,000 workers), were paid under the table That is just in L.A. County. They estimated that 61 percent are illegal aliens.

Those 680,00 workers cheat the government out of $2 Billion a year in taxes. L.A. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich estimated that illegal aliens cost L.A. County about $1 Billion a year just in health care, criminal incarceration and public education. The authors of the report conclude that there is a real risk that a steadily increasing number of employers will adopt this illicit practice in order to remain competitive. After all, if a roofing company is paying somebody under the table and not taking any taxes out of the wages, it can undercut bids every time of someone who is abiding by the law. This is how a law abiding company can be put out of business.

The region's underground economy, estimated in 2006 at a $8.1 Biillion payroll annually, siphons off vast sums of money as workers and employers fail to make payments to Social Security, workers compensation, health insurance and other social safety net programs. Even if an illegal alien is carried on the payroll, most are poorly educated and unskilled, resulting in them not earning enough money to pay taxes. Poorly paid or not, they have saved money to send back to their families in Mexico, an estimated $28 Billion since January of last year, competing with Mexico's revenues from oil and the tourist industries for number one source of income.

It is easy to see why Mexico is lobbying our Congress to keep its workers here and give amnesty to them. Those Billions are going to enrich its economy by taking it out of ours. The real question is: why are we letting them do it, and why are our representatives in Washington working to legalize those who prop up Mexico?

Using Census Bureau data, it is estimated that 96 percent of the increase in enrollment in public schools is due to immigration. This being so, and parents of those students contribute little or nothing in taxes to support their education, something has to give, usually the taxpaying citizens. We hear constantly that if we don't raise taxes for schools, programs and teachers must be cut. We rarely hear that to avoid the cuts we must get rid of those in this country illegally.

Current immigration policies that allow two to three million legal and illegal immigrants per year into the country are overwhelming our public schools, our public health systems, and the criminal justice system, (about 30 percent of the inmates in federal prison are not citizens), sending the livability of our communities in a downward spiral. If this population is made legal by amnesty, it will mean they will no longer have any fear of deportation. And because our border is still almost wide open, it will only encourage more waves of people to cross it.

While all this is happening, our senators right now are considering whether we should just forget about our laws and make all the ones who have sneaked in legal. No matter that they have broken one law by coming in, another by taking up residence, and another law by working here, some of the senators are willing to overlook the lawbreaking for the sake of their own agendas. Republicans are pandering to the businesses that hire illegals. Democrats are eyeing the voters they think will come their way. As usual, the average taxpaying American is not represented in any meaningful way. The only thing these senators fear is loss of power. If enough of their constituents tell them "no amnesty, no way, no matter what you call it", the powerful interests that are pulling them to amnesty might be overcome. After all, they need votes to be re-elected.

Otherwise, be ready to welcome all who are here illegally now, plus their families who will be allowed to come legally. There will also be millions more who will be pulled by the magnet of becoming citizens if they can just get over the border.

It is now fooling time again in the Senate. Unless enough constituents tell their senators to close the borders, punish the employers of illegals, and forget about any amnesty, those senators will surely succeed in fooling us all the second time.

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Even immigrants in France want a stop to further immigration

Fadela, Afef, Naima and Yasmine all grew up in North African families in the Mediterranean city of Marseille, and all want a policy of firmness on immigration and welfare reform from France's next president. For centuries Marseille has acted as a melting pot, absorbing waves of immigration from Italy, Armenia, eastern Europe and France's former African colonies that made it the country's most ethnically-mixed city. "Marseille is a land of welcome. People here say they are `Marseillais' first, and French second," said Myriam Salah-Eddine, the 35-year-old daughter of Moroccan immigrants and a deputy to the city's centre-right mayor. "There is a real sense of belonging," forged in loyalty to the local football team and star player Zinedine Zidane and helped by a sunny climate and urban planning that managed to avoid immigrant ghettoes, she said.

But among established North Africans, estimated at around 150,000 people out of a population of 800,000, there are signs that attitudes towards immigration are toughening. Fatima Arazi, a 51-year-old photographer who moved to France from Morocco 30 years ago, runs a tea room and women's association in an immigrant district of central Marseille. Though she belongs to a network campaigning for an amnesty for illegal immigrants already settled in France, Fatima has come to back a radical line on immigration. "North Africans are sick of seeing their countrymen living in misery. There just isn't enough work here," said Fatima, who runs co-development schemes in African villages "to persuade people not to come here in the first place."

"The going rate for illegal immigrant workers in the neighbourhood is 15 euros a day for a woman, 20 for a man - how can you live on that?" She says she cannot bear to see Muslim women in their 50s forced to work as prostitutes in the neighbourhood and advocates "one big amnesty and then we stop everything".

For Yasmine Mendy, 21, a catering student who arrived in France from Morocco as a baby, "We need to stop immigration and sort out our own problems first." Algerian-born Fadela Garbi, also 21 and training to become a laboratory technician, agrees there should be "no more immigration at all", admitting that she doesn't "want immigrants pinching my job". Only Samia - a 21-year-old biotechnology student whose parents arrived illegally from Tunisia - said she supported further immigration "if it can give people a chance, like I had".

The others deny any affinity with the far-right National Front (FN) leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who calls for zero immigration, the deportation of all illegal immigrants and the scrapping of welfare protection for foreigners. "If Le Pen wins, my suitcases are ready - I'll get straight out of here!" said Fatima with a rueful laugh. But an ethnic minority vote for the FN exists in the Bouches-du-Rhone region around Marseille, where Le Pen clocked up one of his highest scores in the run-off against Jacques Chirac in 2002. "Many people from minorities do vote for the FN, though it's hard to put a figure on it," said Salah-Eddine, who belongs to the UMP party of Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing presidential frontrunner. "Many black and Arab people have real trouble accepting a small fraction of their community that soils their image - like Islamic extremists - and they imagine that Le Pen targets only those people."

Asked who they would back in Sunday's vote, the women in Fatima's tea room gave short shrift to the Socialist candidate Segolene Royal. "Segolene's just trying to pull the wool over our eyes," said Yasmine, while Fatima worried "no one knows how she plans to pay for all these promises". "People think `I'm North African so I have to vote for the left'," said Naima Yahia-Berrouiguet, a 30-year-old secretary of Algerian parents. "But Segolene just wants to raise taxes - with the left we're going to sacrifice people on middle-incomes."

All approved of Sarkozy's campaign pledge to make work pay more than welfare - and were unfazed by his description of young troublemakers in immigrant suburbs as "racaille" (rabble). "Guys here boast about being `racailles'. It's not even an insult," Fadela said.

Fatima said she "agrees with seven out of 10 things Sarkozy says", complaining that "France's welfare system has created a culture of layabouts - once you add up all the different benefits, it's not even worth getting a job". But she and the others were also uncomfortable with his blunt style - Fadela reproaching him for always "taking the side of the police" and Naima warning "for young people, it would be like a Big Brother society if he's elected".

Afef, 43, a soft-spoken mother of five who arrived in France from Tunisia as a toddler and works as a school caretaker, said: "I agree with Sarkozy's ideas, on tax and jobs for young people - but he scares me." So four of the six women said they were preparing, without much conviction, to vote for the centrist Francois Bayrou because, in Samia's words: "There's no other choice. Sarkozy has lots of good ideas - but his methods just aren't right."

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17 April, 2007

Some illegals pay tax to gain legal status

With the tax deadline approaching, illegal immigrants are sending in federal returns in what appear to be record numbers despite fears heightened by recent immigration raids around the country. The increase in filings comes amid talk of an immigration overhaul, with some proposals introduced in Congress linking amnesty to the payment of taxes. Many illegal immigrants showing up at tax preparation offices around the country say they hope that filing a return will create a paper trail that could lead to citizenship one day.

In Raleigh, N.C., a tax preparer found 350 immigrants waiting outside his office at 7 a.m., including one dragging a suitcase that held $14,000 in cash for back taxes. In Baltimore, a community agency offering free tax help that was deserted the day after 69 people were rounded up in immigration raids elsewhere in the city was crowded again within 24 hours. And a help center in Queens did record business among illegal immigrants like Dionicio Quinde Lima, who has worked in construction strictly off the books since he arrived from Ecuador three years ago, but was eager to join the fold of United States taxpayers last week. "I feel it's my responsibility to pay," said Mr. Lima, 39, clutching a $202 money order for the Internal Revenue Service. "And if it helps me get papers, fine. The most important would be a permit to travel back and forth to see my family."

Illegal immigrants do not have Social Security numbers, but the Internal Revenue Service allows them to file taxes by assigning applicants individual taxpayer identification numbers. The numbers were introduced in 1996 to encourage noncitizens with United States income, including foreign investors, to file returns. It is generally accepted that most of the 11 million numbers issued since then have gone to illegal immigrants. The I.R.S., which does not ask about immigration status, is barred from divulging taxpayer information, with very limited exceptions, to other agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security.

In the 2005 tax year, the last for which such data is available, 1.9 million returns were filed with the primary taxpayer's using an individual taxpayer number, known as an ITIN, up 30 percent from 2004. Applications for the numbers spiked last year, with 1.5 million new ITINs issued through the beginning of November, more than any full year since the program started.

Nancy Mathis, a spokeswoman for the I.R.S., said the agency did not know the reason for the increase, but added, "It is likely due to more effective outreach by community organizations and proposed legislation last year linking payment of taxes to eventual citizenship."

In 2005 alone, more than $5 billion in tax liability - the total owed, including money withheld from paychecks during the year - was reported in the 2.9 million returns that listed at least one person with an ITIN, she said. And between 1996 and 2003, such filers reported nearly $50 billion of tax liability.

Organizations pushing for stricter immigration enforcement have criticized the use of the individual numbers by illegal immigrants, saying that allowing them to file returns, pay taxes and receive refund checks legitimizes their illegal presence. But the I.R.S. says it is just doing its job as a tax collector, and is not an immigration enforcement agency. "Clearly, we maintain a separation between the two systems," Mark W. Everson, the commissioner of the I.R.S., said recently. "We want your money whether you are here legally or not and whether you earned it legally or not."

And because most immigration bills make the payment of back taxes a prerequisite for legal status, that message seems to be getting through more clearly than ever. "Right now there's quite a stampede going on in many areas, including mine," said Blaire Borthayre, a consultant in Hispanic marketing based in Raleigh who described early-morning crowds gathering outside Family Tax Service, her husband's tax preparation business. "It's word of mouth." One client, she said, was a Mexican man who lugged in a suitcase holding $14,000, cash he had set aside to pay his taxes over six years of work as a landscaper. Like many, he had only recently learned that he could file a legitimate tax return, said Ms. Borthayre, who is the author of several books on tax preparation with ITINs.

Like Social Security numbers, individual taxpayer numbers have nine digits, but all begin with a "9." The appeal of the numbers grew as they were accepted in some places as alternative identification to open a bank account, qualify for credit or even obtain a driver's license - all uses that the I.R.S. opposed and has tried to curb, Ms. Mathis said.

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Enforcing current immigration laws is the answer

There are numerous news stories regarding criminal acts by illegal aliens. In just the last few weeks, for example, Mexican illegals attacked US National Guard troops who retreated ON AMERICAN SOIL because our political leaders in Washington refuse to allow those troops to carry and use weapons.

Then there's the story that caused Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly to hyperventilate: an illegal alien - once again - raped a child. But the kicker is the judge in the case released the criminal alien on $5,000 bail, which is actually only a $500 bail bond. The judge did this knowing that the child rapist had committed a previous sex crime in the US for which he was deported back to Mexico.

Meanwhile, the new Democrat-led Congress is hellbent on raising taxes, but they're not interested in protecting the people whom they bleed for tax money - the American people.

The US Congress is continuing its battle to pass new immigration laws, but they are perpetrating a fraud on the American people. The problem isn't about the need for new laws; the problem is about the lack of enforcement of existing laws. The US Constitution provides the executive branch with a number of inherent powers such as the enforcement of immigration laws.

The Constitution also mandates that the President protect American sovereignty and the American people. That is the number one priority for our government - or it should be. And congress is mandated to provide domestic tranquility for Americans. Criminal alien gangbangers do not add to our domestic tranquility.

Why is it suddenly necessary for congress to pass laws on illegal immigration when we haven't been enforcing the laws that already exist. The executive branch has the power to add border agents, equipment and other resources. The President has the power to use the military if necessary to enhance border protection. Passing laws is an easy, painless process. The trick is to enforce those laws.

And why isn't the US government arresting illegal aliens while they are protesting in our city's streets all across the country? The protests are said to be sponsored by left-wing groups including Open Borders and MEChA.

The University of Texas at El Paso recently conducted a study that found the following: Treating illegal immigrants in hospitals accounts for nearly one quarter of the uncompensated costs at border county hospitals in Cochise County. That county in Arizona spends tens of thousands of dollars just picking up trash left at campsites by these illegals.

Prosecuting and jailing illegals costs this county an additional $5 million a year. And 25 percent of Cochise County's budget is paid for health care for the uninsured, the majority of whom are illegally in the country.

In another study of a sample group of 55,000 criminal aliens, it was discovered they accounted for over 400,000 arrests and more than 700,000 criminal acts including felonies. In Los Angeles, the city that's hosting the protest - which was whole-heartedly endorsed by its mayor - 95% of the outstanding arrest warrants for homicides are for illegal aliens and 65% of all felony warrants are for so-called undocumented immigrants. Are they committing the crimes Americans won't commit?

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16 April, 2007

What the people want is as clear as a bell

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released the results of a nationwide poll conducted in partnership with Zogby International concerning the American people's attitudes towards illegal immigration.

Among the highlights of the poll conducted March 22 - 26, 2007:

Overall, 66% of likely voters believe that more emphasis should be placed on law enforcement when addressing the issue of illegal immigration, including 51.6% of Hispanics and 56.8% of self-described political "liberals." Only 5% said the emphasis on law enforcement should be diminished, including 3% of Hispanics.

79% believe public officials should not use taxpayer funds to operate day laborer sites that help illegal aliens, including 71.9% of Hispanics and 70% of self-described political "liberals."

72% of likely voters believe local law enforcement officers should help enforce federal immigration laws, including 40% of Hispanics and 55% of self-described political "liberals."

"The American people speak with one voice on the topic of illegal immigration. Virtually every voter demographic - even those supposedly most sympathetic to illegal aliens - want our illegal immigration laws to be strictly enforced," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "Overwhelmingly, the American people want local officials to help address illegal immigration through law enforcement, not taxpayer subsidies and 'sanctuary' policies."

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Contest "degrades" immigration issue

From Louisiana State U:

"The campus College Republican event "Are you legal?" - a campuswide game with students labeled as undocumented immigrants - is offensive and shows an ignorance of issues surrounding immigration.

A similar contest led by the College Republicans at New York University in February caught the eye of national media and was the subject of widespread protest in the area. The College Republicans must have had knowledge of the trouble the event caused elsewhere but held the event anyway.

Source

So exactly WHO was it that caused the "trouble"? Would it be Republicans having fun or violent Leftist thugs? In which case exactly whom should we be criticizing? Or are Leftists retarded children who cannot help their violent impulses?



More illegals for lucky old Britain

A planned welfare centre offering showers and soup to migrants near Calais threatens to encourage illegal immigration into Britain, the Conservatives claimed yesterday. The new centre will provide information on how to claim asylum to the hundreds of migrants sleeping in makeshift camps in an area known as "the jungle".

John Reid, the Home Secretary, will raise the issue when he holds long-arranged talks with Francois Baroin, the new French Interior Minister, in London on Tuesday. But the Home Office made clear that the primary item for discussion was counter-terrorism rather than the threat of illegal immigration.

Opponents of the Calais plan have already described the facilities as "Sangatte II" after the refugee camp shut down in 2002, but the new centre will not provide anywhere for migrants to sleep. It will offer food, showers and information and advice to the hundreds who are now sleeping rough.

Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, said that the proposed centre would act as a magnet by encouraging people to congregate and attempt to enter Britain illegally. "It's clearly Sangatte II. I think it's hugely disappointing that the French Government is allowing this to happen," he said. "They made an agreement with the British Government a few years ago that they weren't going to have facilities in Calais which just encourage people to arrive there to try to come to this country illegally. "It's disappointing that our own Home Office doesn't seem to be doing anything about this. As I understand it, they are saying, `It's no Sangatte II, we shouldn't worry about it'."

Mr Green said that most of the refugees were being transported by commercial people-traffickers, whom he described as "some of the most evil people in the world". He accused the Home Office of being "appallingly complacent" over the issue.

No minister from the Home Office commented on the planned welfare centre yesterday. Instead Lin Homer, the director general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, and Brodie Clark, the head of UK border control, were put forward for media broadcasts.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: "This is a serious situation. It speaks volumes about Dr Reid's attitude to dealing with this situation that there is not a minister in sight. "Any Home Secretary should take responsibility for his or her brief and not hide behind officials."

Officers from Kent County Council have visited Calais on a fact-finding mission during which they discussed the plans with local officials. They hope that it will not become a "pull factor" encouraging other migrants to head towards Calais and then to try to enter Britain. But the officers admit that this will depend on how the French authorities police the centre.

Richard Ashworth, the Conservative MEP for the South East, said that the new centre had the "right intentions, but ultimately they are creating another hub for people wanting to enter the UK unlawfully".

A Home Office spokesperson said: "There have always been humanitarian services for migrants in the Calais area. We have had assurances from the French tha