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IMMIGRATION WATCH



Archive for March, 2007

America a haven for African homosexuals?

What a flood that could be!

Olivia Nabulwala says her family in Uganda was so angry and ashamed to learn she was a lesbian that her relatives hurled insults at her, pummeled her and, finally, stripped her and held her down while a stranger raped her. “I hated myself from that day,” she said in a sworn statement. “I disliked my family for subjecting me to such torture, and yet they felt this was a good punishment for me.” Now, in a case that illuminates a relatively unexplored area of U.S. immigration law, the African immigrant is asking for asylum in the U.S. on the grounds she was persecuted over her sexual orientation. A federal appeals court ruling last week has raised her hopes of success.

Persecution based on sexual orientation has been grounds for asylum in the U.S. since the 1990s, but such cases are still rare. Most involve gay men persecuted by their government. There are few cases involving women, who are more likely to be persecuted by family members, said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, a gay rights group that represents immigrants.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it does not systematically track the number of asylum claims based on sexual orientation. Most immigration cases are dispensed without a published opinion. “That’s why we’re so excited about this case,” Tiven said. “A published opinion gives it greater weight, makes it citable.”

Immigration Equality, based in New York, said that last year it won 18 asylum cases for gay men and transgender women from the Congo, Algeria, Jamaica, Russia, Egypt, Peru, Bangladesh, Venezuela and Colombia. It said it lost two such asylum cases. Among some recent cases: A man who said he was beaten by Mexican police and threatened because he is gay won asylum in January. Another Mexican man was granted asylum in a 2000 appeals court ruling that extended protection to transvestites.

To qualify for asylum, applicants must demonstrate past persecution or well-founded fear of future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group, which now includes homosexuals. Asylum seekers must also show, among other things, that their government was unable or unwilling to protect them. In 1990, a gay Cuban who said he was abused by government officials in his homeland won asylum in the first significant ruling of its kind in the U.S. That ruling became the basis for then-Attorney General Janet Reno’s 1994 order allowing gays from other countries to seek asylum for persecution based on sexual orientation.

“It is a relatively new area of asylum law; there’s not a lot of bricks in the wall as to how these cases get played out,” Tiven said. “But here’s a high-level court, citing a reasonable and relevant application of government passivity.” “For women, it’s developed quite slowly,” she added. “Around the world, women face harm, often severe harm, from the nearest and not so dearest.”

In an affidavit in support of her application for asylum, Nabulwala, who is in her late 20s, says being gay is shameful in African culture and illegal in Uganda, and that her family expelled her from the clan. The Associated Press normally withholds the names of people who claim to be victims of sexual assault, but Nabulwala agreed through her lawyer to allow her name to be used. In her affidavit, Nabulwala says she realized she was a lesbian while attending an all-girls Christian boarding school in Kampala. In her senior year, 1994, after the local newspaper wrote a story about lesbian relationships at her high school, and her parents confronted her, Nabulwala admitted she was gay. She says her admission was a “big blow” to her father, who angrily told her she must end it or she “could no longer be his child.” Later, she says, she was brought to a family meeting, where insults were hurled at her and an aunt “beat me so hard with clenched fists and said it would help bring me back to my senses.”

In 2001, Nabulwala, by then in college, says she was called to another family meeting after relatives learned she was still involved in a lesbian relationship. “During this meeting, my Dad said so many unpleasant and hurtful words to me,” she says. “He was so angry that he reached out to grab my neck to strangle me. He stated he was going to kill me because I was an embarrassment to him, our family, as well as the entire clan.” She says two aunts dragged her out of the meeting into her room, where a young man was waiting. “I was forced to have sex with a total stranger, which was very nasty, while my aunts watched in laughter,” she says. #8220;Afterwards, they all left me lying there in a lot of pain.”

Three months later, she entered the U.S. on a visitor visa, overstayed, then fought deportation by asserting a right to asylum. An immigration judge in Minnesota, where she now lives, said he did not doubt Nabulwala had suffered in Uganda because of her sexual orientation. But he ruled that the rape was a “private family mistreatment,” and not sponsored or authorized by the government. However, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the judge used the wrong legal standard, and ordered the case sent back for further proceedings on whether the Ugandan government was unwilling or unable to control the abuse, as Nabulwala contends.

Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda and punishable by one to four years in prison. But a police spokeswoman, Alice Nakoba, said no one has ever been convicted. She defended her country’s treatment of gays, saying that Ugandans seeking asylum in developed countries exaggerate. Nabulwala is “extremely happy” about the March 21 ruling, said her attorney, Eric Dorkin. Dorkin would not allow her to be interviewed or photographed, citing concerns about her safety and privacy. If Nabulwala is unsuccessful, she will be deported. “She’s afraid to go back,” Immigration Equality legal director Victoria Neilson said. “There’s no protection in Uganda for gay people.”

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Latest CIS Bulletin:

1. ”Amnesty Follies: The false inevitability of ‘Comprehensive immigration reform”’
Mark Krikorian
National Review Online, March 15, 2007

EXCERPT: ”When the Democrats won in November, there was a sense that an illegal-alien amnesty and huge increases in future immigration were inevitable. Even Rep. Tom Tancredo, the uber-hawk on immigration, was taken in: ‘We will fight it, we will lose,’ he told the Washington Times. ‘It will go to the Senate, it will pass. The president will sign it. And it will happen quickly because that’s one thing they know they can pass.’

”Sometimes it’s good to be wrong. . . . ”

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2. ”An easy curb on illegal immigration”
by Jessica M. Vaughan
The Providence Journal, March 14, 2007

EXCERPT: ” … The most widely accepted approach is to prevent the employment of illegal aliens by making sure that businesses, state agencies and their contractors confirm the immigration status of new employees with the federal government. Colorado, Georgia and Idaho have already passed some degree of mandatory verification, and a bill filed by Sen. Marc Cote and Rep. Jon Brien, two Democrats from Woonsocket, would establish a similar practice in the Ocean State. … ”

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3. ”Latino Voting in the 2006 Election: Realignment to the GOP Remains Distant”
James G. Gimpel
Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, March 2007

EXCERPT: ” … Practically speaking this means that to attract a steady stream of Latinos toward the GOP, continued economic prosperity and upward economic mobility will be important issues of concern. Republicans will make steady gains among Latinos through policies that facilitate Latino economic prosperity, business ownership, and secure employment.

”There is no evidence that a more open immigration policy is one of those policies, as there is ample evidence from economics that unskilled immigrants compete in the same labor market niches as unskilled natives, lowering wages and living standards among all unskilled workers (Borjas 2001; 2003). The best course toward the long-term political realignment of the Latino vote may be a less open immigration policy. The share of Latinos voting Republican has remained largely unchanged across three decades, with fluctuations barely exceeding the error margin in most surveys. If the path to Republican Party identification is paved by upward economic mobility, there would be many more Latino Republicans if these last 30 years had not witnessed record levels of unskilled immigration. … ”

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4. ”Assistance for Elderly and Disabled Refugees”
Statement of Mark Krikorian before the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives March 22, 2007

EXCERPT: ” … In the context of limited government resources, and given the fact that a refugee is dramatically more costly to taxpayers than any other kind of immigrant, policymakers must consider whether the costs of admitting additional refugees should be balanced by a reduction in the admission of other immigrants. To govern is to choose, and if we choose to permit humanitarian immigration (as I would argue we must, though not necessarily as it is arranged today), then we must face up to the costs and order the rest of our immigration system accordingly.”

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5. ”Crossing the Border: Immigrants in Detention and Victims of Trafficking”
Statement of Michael W. Cutler before the House Committee on Homeland Security March 15, 2007

EXCERPT: ” … Because of the inherent risks to the safety and well being of our nation and our citizens, I would strongly urge that aliens who apply for political asylum be kept in a detention facility until their true identities can be determined along with a proper determination being made of their credible fear should they be returned to their home country. I believe, however that it is essential to provide comfortable detention facilities for these aliens who are illegally in the United States and have applied for political asylum, especially if they are accompanied by their families. In this perilous era, it is my judgment that while our officials conduct investigations of the bona fides of claims of credible fear articulated by applicants for political asylum, that we have the way to detain such aliens until they are determined to pose no threat to our country and have, indeed, met the requirements to be eligible to be granted political asylum. However, should an alien be proven to not be eligible to be granted political asylum wither because he committed fraud or because he actually poses a threat to our national security, retaining such an alien in custody would deny him the ability to abscond and embed himself in our country. … ”

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6. ”Preventing Illegal Employment: Federal ‘Basic Pilot’ Verification Program is an Effective and Business-friendly Tool”
Statement of Jessica M. Vaughan before the House Committee on Labor, Rhode Island General Assembly March 14, 2007

EXCERPT: ” … Mandatory verification of immigration status for new employment is not a silver bullet. Rather, it should be considered as one key part of a larger strategy to address illegal immigration that relies on partnerships between federal and state authorities, and between government agencies. This strategy acknowledges that the population of more than 12 million illegal immigrants realistically cannot be apprehended and deported one by one. Nor is the federal government likely to enact a mass amnesty to legalize this population. Instead, lawmakers should rely on an array of policies to increase the day-to-day enforcement of immigration laws, prevent employment, and encourage voluntary compliance with immigration laws. Other proven tools include electronic status verification for public benefits, immigration law training for state and local law enforcement and public agency employees, strict standards for drivers’ licensing, and rigorous identification standards for financial institutions. Adoption of these policies will convince a large number of illegal aliens that they would be better off returning home on their own, thereby easing the burden on local communities, and enabling federal authorities to concentrate their resources on the most problematic cases.”

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New Bush proposal

The Bush administration floated elements of an immigration plan on Wednesday that would make it harder for millions of illegal immigrants to gain citizenship than under legislation passed by the Senate last year, according to officials in both parties. These officials said the administration also suggested barring future guest workers who enter the country legally from bringing family members with them — a proposal unlikely to survive intact. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss about elements of a plan that was not yet public.

President Bush and Democratic leaders of Congress have both pledged to seek a compromise on immigration legislation this year, and the administration’s point men, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, sat down in the Capitol with key senators of both parties for an initial meeting.

Efforts to pass compromise legislation last year collapsed when Republican lawmakers objected to a Senate-passed bill that created a path to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million to 12 million men women and children in the country illegally. Bush spoke favorably of the measure, even making a prime-time televised speech at one point backing a plan to allow millions of immigrants an eventual chance at citizenship as part of a comprehensive approach to the issue. But conservative critics attacked it as amnesty, and it died last fall when the expiring Republican-controlled Congress adjourned without taking final action.

Administration officials have been meeting privately in recent weeks with key Republicans, including some who opposed the 2006 legislation, in hopes of forging a general agreement within the party. As described by several officials, the proposal would allow currently illegal immigrants to stay in the United States under a new Z visa. They could apply for so-called green cards, taking their place in line alongside men and women who are in the country legally and want citizenship, and would be required to undergo periodic background checks while waiting. Immigrants possessing green cards have lawful permanent residency status.

The length of their wait would depend on the number of green cards available — a feature that officials in both parties said would mean millions of illegal immigrants would have to wait far longer than under the Senate bill of last year. “It takes longer and they’ve got to go through the same channels as everybody else,” said one Republican who had been briefed on the administration’s proposal.

Under last year’s bill, immigrants in the U.S. longer than five years could apply for citizenship without leaving the country. Those in the U.S. for more than two years but fewer than five would be required to go to a border point of entry, but they could return quickly as legal temporary workers while their citizenship application was pending.

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Maryland raids

Immigration agents arrested more than 50 people Thursday in raids on a temporary employment agency’s offices and places where it provided undocumented workers, including the port of Baltimore, authorities said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also seized a bank account containing more than $600,000 from the employment agency, Jones Industrial Network, which provides workers in the Baltimore area. The agency’s offices and eight other businesses were searched, including three where the temp agency is suspected of providing undocumented workers, ICE said.

The investigation began last year after immigration officials heard that temp agencies had provided illegal immigrants as workers to the port of Baltimore and other unwitting employers, ICE said. Having “illegal aliens working and having access to our ports is a major security vulnerability,” said ICE field office director Calvin McCormick.

The employment agency’s offices downtown near the Inner Harbor were closed Thursday, with a sign in English and Spanish saying the company would not be open. An exact number of officials and temporary workers arrested was not immediately released. Jones officials were not arrested or charged, although ICE officials said their investigation continued. Jones is the only company that has been targeted criminally, and all others involved in the raids have cooperated, ICE officials said.

A lawyer for sportswear maker Under Armour Inc., which was also raided, said the Baltimore company was not aware that employees were illegal immigrations. The company has cooperated fully with the investigation, of which it is not a target, and it is considering legal action against the temp agency, general counsel Kevin Haley said. “At Under Armour, we are patriots first and last, and we’re fully committed to compliance with all laws and regulations,” Haley said. “We’re furious that apparently one of the temp agencies we use was not so committed or gave the appearance of being not so committed.” The workers were employed at the company’s distribution center, Haley said.

McCormick said 20 of those detained may qualify for humanitarian release. James Dinkins, ICE special agent in charge, said those detained were being transferred to three institutions in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Immigration officials said state and federal officials would interview the detainees to determine whether any medical, sole-caregiver or other issues would qualify them for humanitarian release. Relatives of the detainees can call a 24-hour toll-free hot line, 866-341-3858.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick this month urged federal authorities not to move out of that state any more factory workers detained in an immigration raid until their children were located and arrangements made for their care. More than 300 people were detained for possible deportation in a raid at a leather factory that makes equipment for the military.

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65 million Muslims in Europe by 2037

So can Sharia be far behind? But Sweden’s consul general in Istanbul, Ingmar Karlsson, is not concerned about that. No, he is sure that a tolerant, Europeanized Islam will somehow magically appear. He is much more exercised about “xenophobia” than about the Islamization of Europe. “Islam is and will be a European religion,” from Today’s Zaman:

“The birthrate among Muslim immigrants in Europe is three times higher than that of the non-Muslim European population. According to Sweden’s consul general in ?stanbul, Ingmar Karlsson, if this trend continues, the Muslim population will be doubled by 2015, while Europe’s non-Muslim population will decrease by 3.5 percent. Some estimates indicate that in 30 years the number of Muslims in Europe could be as high as 65 million.

The outspoken consul general, who is a doctor of divinity and the author of more than 10 books on the subjects of Europe’s relationship with faith, terrorism, Islam and minorities, has said that the trend towards a multi-racial and multi-confessional Europe is unstoppable; therefore, Islam must be recognized and regarded as a “domestic” European religion.

Therefore? Domestic? /p>

Karlsson, whose latest book will be available in Sweden today, titled “Europe and the Turk,” said that Turkey’s membership in the European Union would demonstrate the falsity of the argument that Islam and democracy cannot mix, also helping to bring about favorable changes in the Islamic world’s attitude towards Europe.

Neither of these follow. All that Turkey’s entry into the EU would prove would be the suicidal short-sightedness of the Europeans, and it would make the Islamic world regard Europe favorably the way one may view his lunch favorably.

“There is nothing which intrinsically prevents a Muslim from being as good a Swede as a member of the Pentecostal Bretheren or an adherent of the Jewish faith, nor is there anything that prevents mosques from becoming as natural a feature of Swedish cities as churches have always been in ?stanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, Mosul or Cairo,” Karlsson said.

Wishful thinking. Karlsson ignores the fact that traditionally Islam has never recognized a sacred/secular distinction, and that Muslims come to Europe with a ready-made model of society — a model that many, if not most, believe superior to the European model, and which many, if not most, would be happy to see replace European society and laws as they are currently constituted. Pentecostals and Jews never went anywhere with anything comparable to that.

For EU membership, religion is not among the criteria, therefore, refusing Turkey’s admission on religious grounds would send a dangerous signal, especially after Sept.11, 2001, Karlsson noted, adding that Turkey’s rejection by the EU would have a radicalizing effect both in the Muslim world and in Turkey itself.

Did you catch that? Islam is benign, so let Turkey into the EU, because if we don’t, these benign folks will kill us. Karlsson just goes on in this vein. Read it all, if you have the stomach.

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Britain: New concern at impact of record immigration

After 10 years of record immigration, the Government is to set up a high-level forum to assess its impact on communities. The move marks a significant change of approach by Labour, which has justified the four-fold increase since 1997 almost entirely on economic grounds. David Blunkett, a former Home Secretary, once said there was no obvious upper limit to the numbers that could come from outside the EU. But the Home Office said yesterday that it was establishing a Migration Impacts Forum (MIF) alongside another new body advising on skills shortages that immigrants might be able to fill.

The announcement was part of a package of measures that included the prospect of a 1,000 pound fine on families whose relatives failed to go home when their visas expir d. It is already an offence punishable by a 5,000pound fine to retain a nanny who has overstayed. It also envisaged further curbs on forced marriage by raising the minimum age for bringing a spouse to the UK from 18 to 21. It will be a requirement for spouses to learn English before they can join their wife or husband.

Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, who will chair the MIF alongside Phil Woolas, the communities minister, said: “I want to make sure that when ministers decide how high the hurdle should be set, they have got a clear understanding of where in the British economy migration is needed and where it isn’t. They also must have access to information about the impacts that immigration is having on communities. “We need to ensure that we are making decisions with our eyes wide open.”

The forum will consider evidence that schools, hospitals, housing and transport infrastructure are all feeling the strain of a growing population. Doctors have complained that their surgeries cannot cope with the number of new patients now registering, largely from Eastern Europe. Many were women who were seeking assistance with a pregnancy or who were seeking an abortion.

Figures published today by Migrationwatch, which has campaigned for the wider impact to be considered, - suggest that at least 73,000 new homes would be needed every year to house England’s rapidly growing immigrant population. Council chiefs have already warned the Government that local services are coming under huge strain as a result of unprecedented levels of immigration. Over an 18-month period, about 9,000 new National Insurance numbers were issued in Slough, Berks, of which just 150 went to British nationals. Yet the Office for National Statistics recorded only 300 international migrants settling in the area. Net immigration in 2005 was close to 200,000 - four times the number when Labour took office in 1997.

The latest measures foreshadow a new visa regime for tourists, whose length of stay could be reduced from six months to three months. Officials said only two per cent of visitors stayed longer than three months and these could be people who worked illegally or breached their visa terms.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: “It is high time that the wider picture was considered, including the widespread public concern that we are losing our own culture. “But this forum will be useless if it includes only the usual suspects from the immigration industry and employers who stand to gain from immigration.”

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Immigration officials really good at keeping desirable immigrants out

The best interests of U.S. citizens are obviously not on the bure ucratic list of priorities

A Bradenton man is fighting to keep his family together, even though they are half a world away. He and his wife, a Japanese national, are caught in the middle of an immigration nightmare. It started with what seemed like a simple visa mistake. Now every moment of every day, Keith Campbell is fighting to bring home his wife and two young boys. “I can’t let it go on forever, being half a world away. I’ve got little kids. I feel like I need to be protected from my own government,” said Campbell.

He and his wife Akiko met in Asia while he was working overseas. They got married nine years ago and built a life together with their children in Bradenton. Campbell says his wife entered the country with a fiance visa - the problem was that they’d just gotten married. “That’s it. There’s no, no criminal activity, no questionable behavior, no link to terrorism. There’s no anything,” offered Campbell. But in the eyes of immigration officials, she was in the country illegally. Campbell says they’ve struggled to clear up the mistake for years. So, when a letter arrived, saying “notice of approval for visa petition,” they thought their prayers were answered.

In January, Akiko flew to Japan and went to the U.S. embassy as instructed. She took the kids with her for a visit to her homeland. But when she got there, Campbell says she was told she couldn’t come back. She was not only denied a visa, but told she couldn’t re-apply for another 10-years.

“It was a shock. It changed the spirit of what was going on. It went from her going over there for a visit, to her being over there forever,” said Campbell. He believes immigration officials never intended to issue a visa to his wife. “I went to the embassy. I asked if they knew it was denied all along and they said yes. We knew it up front. So it’s definitely an underhanded, dishonest way,” said Campbell. “It is an outrage. I can’t be outraged though. People who are outraged aren’t successful. So, I’ve got to be calculated and do what makes sense and be morally correct. And I’ve got to be within the law. But I feel like the government’s picked a fight and I’m gonna fight. I’m gonna fight to get her back because she deserves to be here.”

Campbell has received hundreds of letters of support from friends and colleagues. He’s also written plenty of letters himself to immigration officials and politicians. So far nothing’s worked. But, he’s not giving up. He says his wife and children are his life. “She hasn’t given up hope and that’s what fuels my fire. But she tells me it’s hard to hope. It’s getting harder to hope.”

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Tough in Tucson

Immigration attorneys advising clients to avoid driving

Tucson immigration attorneys are advising clients to avoid driving or riding in cars in light of stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws across the country.

Immigration attorneys are reporting an increase in the number of clients seeking help after being detained by the U.S. Border Patrol during routine traffic stops. Patricia Mejia said she receives calls every other day from clients who were detained for a traffic violation. “Some were stopped for something as minor as turning on a yellow light or swerving,” she said. “Yeah, it’s true, but does that mean now you deport me and my entire family? It seems extreme.”

Detentions appear to have escalated in the past year, she said. Previously, drivers might have been detained, but now, she said many of her clients who were detained were passengers in the car. Now she advises her clients not to drive, or even ride in a car unless it’s an emergency. “I just tell them to take the bus or ride your bike,” she said, “because if you’re driving and you get pulled over, you are going to Mexico tonight.”

Tucson police officers will call the Border Patrol if they suspect someone they come into contact with is in the country illegally, said Sgt. Mark Robinson, of the Tucson Police Department.

Immigration attorney Gloria Goldman said there seems to be an escalation in detention of people in the Tucson area and the environment has led to increased fear among many illegal immigrants. “People are in a panic so they’re coming to see me,” said Goldman, who has seen an uptick in the number of people seeking her services. Unfortunately, she said, many have no recourse under current immigration law and there is little she can do to help them.

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ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: RHETORIC AND REALITY

This is based on a true story. The name and location have been changed to protect a lady who is in great fear for her life. However, it could be any number of millions of people who have seen their neighborhoods, cities, states and country becoming balkanized by illegal immigration. The rhetoric is that illegal aliens are coming into our country just to get jobs and to feed their families. Also, we hear repeatedly that “family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande”. However, gangs, disease, crime, drug running, smuggling and violence of all sorts do not stop at the Rio Grande, either.

Janice has good reason to put those comforting words in chilling perspective. She says: “I am the victim of illegals..Nicaraguan, Columbian, Peruvian and Mexican”. She tells of being victimized repeatedly by an international gang that robbed her, on and off for one and a half years. She was a registered nurse, working at night in the Emergency Room, helping people. Meanwhile, this gang was taking whatever they wanted from her house. They threatened her life by spray painting all over her walls “We’re going to kill you, you f….Anglo bitch”. They broke in one time with a gun while she was in the house. When she left, fearing for her safety, they burned her house down, putting her into debt for $25,000.

The police gang unit tried to catch them, but the professionalism of the gang, as well as the physical layout of the neighborhood, always gave the gang time to escape. They only apprehended one member, who had removed his glove as he sprayed the accelerant all over her furniture and her thousands of books before the fire was lit. His thumbprint was left on the accelerant can.

Janice respects legal immigrants and recalls that her people were Lithuanian, who were being executed by the Russians, when they invaded. Her great-grandfather had a premonition and took his family on “vacation” to another country, only one week before the invasion. Although he claimed political asylum, he was not allowed to come to America for three years, after he was checked out thoroughly. He was told to learn our language, obey our laws, expect no social welfare help of any kind, and the future was up to him. He shared a room with seventeen other men. They took turns sleeping on the floor with a blanket. He saved every penny he could to bring over his wife and Janice’s grandmother, who was a child at the time. This took five years to accomplish. No government forms were printed in Lithuanian for this family. They learned English and learned how to get along in this country by becoming self sufficient and contributing to society, appreciating the opportunity to do so.

With that kind of background, it is alarming for her to see the amount of taxpayer provided aid directed to illegal aliens. She recalls: “In the Emergency Room I took care of a child with Brazilian parents, who proudly presented her with her Medicaid card. They were driving a Mercedes. The parents each had a Rolex watch and other expensive jewelry, handmade clothing and shoes. Even the child was wearing more expensive jewelry than I could afford. They commented that this is the `greatest country`”. They explained that it is well known in Brazil that if you come to Disneyland for the last month of pregnancy and stay here until the baby is born, then the baby is a United States citizen and enables the whole family to apply for help.”

What Janice described as the “last straw” happened when she was Christmas shopping and went into a business with a Spanish speaking owner. He folded his arms and stated, in Spanish, that he didn’t speak English. She said that was not a problem, as she spoke Spanish. He told her he didn’t like her Spanish. At that point, a young man had come into the shop and heard the exchange. He said that “your kind does not belong here. We’re going to drive your kind out of this state.” It was astounding to encounter such hatred when Janice had only gone in to spend money. In this vein, Janice recalls one who was smuggled into the country who said that Americans work too hard, and he would go home except that Americans are so easy to steal from, because they want to believe good about everyone.

The prevalent attitude of some who are coming here now is that everything is free and they have a right to services. They are told by their communities that they can get anything they want by calling 911. In the Emergency Room, Janice had to hang up the phone after a discharged patient called 911 to get a ride home. She got very angry at Janice when she was told that 911 was for life-threatening emergencies only.

Because of the viciousness of the gang that was targeting her, Janice had to move and even sell her car, to try to escape detection. Janice maintains that we have enough hom -grown criminals already; we don’t have to import more. Also, she is tired of her tax money going to house and maintain jailed illegals. Paying for prison is just the last stop on the road to incarceration. Before that happens, a policeman has to arrest, a judge has to sit, and an attorney, (appointed by the state and paid for by taxpayers), has to defend a suspected lawbreaker.

Resettled now in another state, Janice still feels the trauma of not knowing just what she would encounter in her own home. “What this gang did to me was a form of murder..torture…What our government doesn’t get is that victims (survivors) of these criminals are left with deep emotional scars.” Although Janice deeply loves her country, she feels betrayed by a government that will not protect its borders, allowing criminal gangs to settle in cities and terrorize taxpaying citizens. Having been so severely victimized, she now is in constant fear for her safety, which no government entity can any longer ensure.

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Compassionate Conservatism for Illegal Immigrants

For all of the media’s Bush-bashing, there is one issue where the liberal media, Bush, and the Democrats agree: amnesty for illegal immigrants. Proof of this collaboration is evident when the media continue to quote and praise one particular “Bushism” on the controversial topic. In the March 12, 2007 issue of Time magazine, writer Massimo Calabresi quotes Bush from a 1999 campaign stop in Iowa as saying, “Family values do not stop at the Rio Grande.” Calabresi wrote that Bush’s words on the subject of illegal immigration showed “it was hard not to believe he [Bush] was speaking from the heart,” adding that “the felicitous phrase became a touchstone of compassionate conservatism.”

This is one “Bushism” that the liberal media do like. In Orwellian doublespeak, illegal aliens have become “undocumented workers,” and “family values south of the border” have come to mean amnesty for those who break our laws. In one sense, Bush was right. Family values do not stop at the Rio Grande. But, the fact remains that the U.S. border does stop at the Rio Grande. Crossing it illegally makes a foreign national a criminal. Any worthwhile concept or discussion of “family values” should not condone lawbreaking.

From Open Borders to No Borders

Although it went relatively unnoticed at the time, Bush’s comment should have been a warning that he never had any serious intention of stopping illegal immigration. But going from inaction on humanitarian grounds to a plan to grant amnesty to millions of criminals is a stretch that has left most conservatives dismayed and angry.

In fact, the situation is worse than that. s we have documented in the AIM Report, a process which started under Clinton and is continuing under Bush is leading to an emerging North American Community or Union of the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The “Security and Prosperity Partnership” is leading to the creation of a regional bloc of nations which threatens the sovereignty and borders of each. Some of the proponents, such as former President Carter official and Clinton adviser Robert Pastor, envision a “North American Parliament” and super-national institutions, including a North American Supreme Court. There are some good reasons for increased cooperation among the three nations, especially on such issues as energy and security, but it should be done in an open manner and with necessary congressional oversight. However, under no circumstances should it lead to the creation of a transnational form of government that undermines our national sovereignty and democratic and representative government.

Few could have imagined that less than eight years later, Bush would be one of the biggest advocates of an amnesty plan that will, in effect, forgive 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants for the crimes of entering the country illegally but also, in many cases, failing to pay taxes, and identity theft. Illegal immigrants will be rewarded for violating American sovereignty and cheating the system while legal immigrants, who play by the rules, wait years to become citizens.

As proof that Bush is serious about enacting immigration reform, Calabresi quotes White House spokesman Tony Snow as saying that for President Bush, “making immigration fair and safe ‘is a matter of very strong personal commitment.’” This statement, however, requires translation. Making immigration “fair and safe” really means rewarding those who broke the law and facilitating the entry into the U.S. of millions of more foreign workers. We could use less of this “personal commitment” to encourage more illegal aliens to come to the U.S., and instead some actual commitment to enforce our immigration laws.

The Bush-Kennedy Bill

According to Calabresi, Congress is preparing to debate a “compromise bill” in the coming weeks and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate say “Bush’s help is crucial.” One of those leaders, it turns out, is Senator Ted Kennedy. Calabresi recounts that Kennedy said that “in a private meeting on Jan. 8, Bush gave him a commitment to back ‘comprehensive’ legislation, which Kennedy believes is a commitment to granting them [illegal immigrants] eventual citizenship.” This is amnesty, regardless of how long it eventually takes.

Bush could never have gotten a Republican Congress to go along with such an audacious scheme. But with the Democrats in charge, the situation has changed. Calabresi writes that “November’s Democratic victory in Congress should have improved Bush’s odds of getting what he calls ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’” For Bush, comprehensive immigration reform includes both amnesty and a guest-worker program, although even Calabresi admits that “some Democrats side with unions in opposition” to the latter. One of those Democrats, Rep. Charles Rangel, says a guest-worker program is a form of slavery.

Calabresi’s information is helpful but not always correct. He writes, for example, that some of Bush’s most outspoken Republican opponents on the immigration matter “lost in races to Democrats who back his position.” But, this statement is more pro-illegal immigration propaganda. As reported January 1, 2007 by Accuracy in Media, “no political candidate who won this November ran on a campaign promise of more immigration or amnesty for illegal immigrants, and among Republicans the turnover was less among those candidates who took the strongest stands against illegal immigration; 11.5% of all Republican seats in Congress were l st, but only 6.7% of the Members of the Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.”

All of this means that, if Bush wants to get his “comprehensive” package through Congress, it will be through the cooperation of liberals like Ted Kennedy. Bush seems to realize this. Although Bush and the Democrats working together on an amnesty bill is fine with the media, it is not fine with conservatives. Conservatives helped elect a president to protect the borders, not hold out the welcome mat.

The Democratic Angle

For their part, the Democrats clearly see the amnesty recipients as potential voters for their party and candidates. The Bush Administration has another motive. In explaining the Bush rationale for the program, Calabresi writes that there “has been a marked labor shortage, especially in agriculture,” and that “growers nationwide blame the shortage for losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.” An alternative explanation is that there have been some high-profile cases of agricultural products such as spinach and lettuce being tainted and poisonous, causing sales and consumption to decline. Nevertheless, Calabresi reports that business is “leaning on lawmakers to do something.” The “something” means bringing in more foreign workers at cheap wages. Calabresi quotes a “senior Senate Republican aide” as saying that business pressure has “increased the chances of comprehensive immigration reform.”

So the immigration “reform” measure is shaping up as a combination of Republicans selling out to Big Business demands for cheap labor, while Democrats award citizenship for votes. This is the way Washington works, and it is a disgrace.

Calabresi says that a new amnesty bill is already in the works, could be introduced soon, and that its cosponsors will be Kennedy and Republican John McCain. One Democratic aide told Calabresi that Senate Majority Leader Reid “plans to get the new bipartisan bill to the floor this spring in the hope of forcing it through Congress before the presidential campaign paralyzes Washington. If it’s not done by August, says one, ‘it’s dead.’”

The Sales Pitch

Our liberal media will do their best to assist this process, promoting the finished product as a fine bipartisan effort. Bush may call it compassionate, but it is not compassionate to reward criminals, and it is certainly not conservative.

As Ronald Reagan famously said, “A nation without borders is not a nation.” But this is exactly what the U.S. is dangerously close to becoming.

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Illegals to sue imprisoned deputy sheriff

Mexicans say civil rights violated when injured during escape from officer

In a case eerily reminiscent of the controversial jailing of Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos while the illegal-alien drug-smuggler they wounded went free, two illegal aliens are now suing imprisoned Texas Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez for injuries from shell fragments that struck them as the officer shot at the tires of a van in which they escaped from a routine traffic stop. Maricela Rodriguez-Garcia and Candido Garcia-Perez are preparing to file a civil lawsuit against Hernandez and Sheriff Don G. Letsinger, possibly seeking millions of dollars in damages for alleged violation of their civil rights.

Jimmy Parks, defense attorney for Hernandez, told WND the lawsuit “has just become standard operating procedure down here on the border.” “There is a natural progression that begins when these people organize a professional (human) smuggling ring to get illegal aliens into the United States,” he said. “They become very sophisticated at it, then when law enforcement makes the attempt to try to break up the smuggling ring, they just run away.”

WND has obtained a copy of a draft complaint to be filed in the U.S. District Court in Del Rio, Texas, against Hernandez and Letsinger, both individually and in their official capacities. Parks said he was not surprised by the lawsuit and expects “the illegal aliens are going to sue for millions in this case.”

Hernandez was sentenced last week to one-year plus one-day in federal prison for criminally violating the civil rights of the illegal aliens who were in a van that attempted to run over Hernandez after a traffic stop April 14, 2005, in Rocksprings, Texas. As WND reported, the federal government had recommended a seven-year prison term. Rodriguez-Garcia was injured in the face and Garcia Perez on the arm by shell fragments from Hernandez’s weapon.

The complaint claims violations of Rodriguez-Garcia and Garcia-Perez’s civil rights under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and under the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Jim Kosub, the attorney representing Letsinger and Edwards County, told WND a mediation hearing had been scheduled in April on the threatened lawsuit. The complaint charges Hernandez deprived the plaintiffs of their civil rights “by using deadly force in a situation in which such force was unwarranted.”

Parks told WND the illegal aliens organizing human smuggling operations don’t view the lights go ng off on a police vehicle as “a stop command.” “The way to win the lottery is to take off and refuse to obey the lawful authority in the United States,” he said. “The illegal aliens know that if they can scrutinize the acts of the law enforcement officer, there’s a decent chance the police may end up going to prison, while the illegal aliens are end up with one good lawsuit.” Parks explained that during the trial, evidence came out that the Mexican consulate was trying to get jobs and citizenship for the illegal aliens involved in the Hernandez incident, including Rodriguez-Garcia and Garcia Perez.

The draft complaint identifies the two as residents of Travis County, Texas. Parks affirmed that Rodriguez-Garcia and Garcia-Perez “have been living in Travis County for some time,” but they “just go back and forth to Mexico illegally.” “What the complaint doesn’t say is that they are illegal residents of Travis County,” he said. “That’s the truth.” A frustrated Parks asked, “Why would anyone in their right mind want to be a law enforcement officer down on the border in this day and age?” He said Homeland Security “puts undue pressure on the border law enforcement officers, telling them that they are our nation’s frontline of defense against another terrorist attack in New York or Washington.” “But if you make one single mistake, you may be prosecuted, sent to federal prison, and bankrupt in a civil suit,” he said.

Hernandez and his wife were devastated by the prospect of facing this law suit. “Economically, Mrs. Hernandez is living day-to-day,” Parks said. “The only thing that gives them inspiration to get through the day is that Gil Hernandez and his wife know they have to stay strong for their 7-month daughter, Alektra. This civil law suit just adds injury on top of injury for Gil Hernandez and his family.”

Letsinger also said the suit was expected. “I think it is kind of ridiculous that a bunch of people enter into a felony conspiracy to violate the immigration laws of the United States, and one of the conspirators who was driving the vehicle tries to run over a deputy sheriff,” Letsinger told WND. “And now the conspirators want to turn around and sue the deputy sheriff for defending his life, as well as sue the county and the sheriff the deputy worked for.”

The complaint alleges the “force used by said Defendant was excessive and caused Plaintiffs severe injuries. Said Defendant’s conduct was grossly disproportionate to the need for action under the circumstances and amounted to an abuse of official power that shocks the conscience.” The complaint charges Letsinger and Edwards County, claiming their “rules regulations and policies, as well as the training program in existence prior to and at the time of the shooting” were “unconstitutionally deficient and authorized unconstitutional behavior.” The “deadly force policy in effect” caused Hernandez to “use excessive force” against the illegals, the complaint said.

Damages will be sought for “medical expenses, pain and suffering, mental anguish, and physical impairment. Plaintiffs also will seek exemplary damages, as well as reimbursement for attorneys’ fees and the costs of litigation.”

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EU dithering

Once a taboo subject in most European Union capitals, legal immigration has climbed up the agenda as the 27-nation bloc struggles to compensate for an ageing population and to fill labour shortages, especially in the vital information technology sector. Despite the new focus on seeking out foreign workers, managing migration flows - both through legal and illicit channels - remains one of the EU’s biggest challenges. First and foremost, EU governments are under pressure to curb the uncontrolled influx of mainly African illegal migrants to Europe’s southern member states. The crisis has a tragic human angle since many of the would-be migrants, using rickety boats to make the hazardous sea crossing to Europe, have drowned on the way.

The EU has responded by stepping up border controls, with so-called ‘frontline’ states, Spain, Italy and Malta, demanding even tougher measures against the illegals. In addition, faced with labour shortages in key economic sectors, EU governments are for the first time seriously looking at ways of opening up channels for legal immigration.

EU officials say that the bloc must first and foremost try and attract skilled and well-trained migrants to compensate for Europe’s falling birth rates and ageing population. This is also seen as necessary if the EU is to compete successfully with emerging economic powerhouses China and India.

In spite of the recent enlargement, which has brought the total number of people living in the EU to about 500 million, statistics show that given low birth rates and an ageing population, Europe will lose 20 million workers by 2050. The EU’s top immigration official Franco Frattini argues that Europe must match labour supply and demand and has called for ’selective immigration to continue the EU’s economic development and rise to the challenge of globalisation.’ Frattini recently sounded the alarm bell, warning that high-skilled workers from poor African countries were moving to the United States and Canada while Europe was facing an influx of less-trained migrants.

His latest ideas to turn Europe into a magnet for foreign smart brains include a European version of the US green card. Such a scheme could make the bloc more attractive for skilled workers by simplifying bureaucratic procedures, thus allowing foreigners to move freely between EU member states. The European Commission is currently asking national governments to provide the EU executive with details of their labour shortages. So-called ‘job centres’ are planned for African countries. Under the new scheme, foreigners will be given temporary migration opportunities to fill gaps on the EU labour market in areas such as agriculture, construction and tourism. The centres will also inform would-be migrants about the dangers of illegal migration as well as help African countries create jobs.

The International Organisation for Migration sees the EU move to open up legal opportunities for migrants as a ‘constructive step in the right direction.’ But while member states like France, Spain and Italy have signalled support for the commission’s drive to coordinate legal immigration at European level, other EU governments are strongly opposed to the plans. The bloc’s new members from central and eastern Europe for instance are demanding that work barriers against their c tizens should be removed before any action is taken to boost immigration from outside the EU. This follows what many eastern Europeans see as discriminatory rules which allow some western European countries to temporarily keep out low-cost workers from former communist states.

National governments’ unwillingness to cede control on immigration issues to the European Commission is not surprising since the question touches on the sensitive concepts of citizenship and nationhood. As a result, national immigration policies are mapped out according to domestic labour market needs, which means that they are not only different, but also often contradictory. Spain in 2005 angered its EU neighbours by launching a programme granting legal amnesty to up to 800,000 undocumented immigrants. Ireland and Finland are also relatively open on immigration because of their booming economies.

Those with weak economies and high unemployment figures, however, have introduced tougher immigration measures. ‘The EU is such a diverse place,’ said Hugo Brady, immigration expert at the London-based Centre of European Reform. As such, progress in forging a common EU policy on legal migration would be ‘the slowest of all ways to manage migration,’ he said.

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Britain: Immigrants being blamed for the negativity spawned by the Left

Can immigrants be blamed for lack of loyalty to a country that seems to have lost faith in itself?

UK Chancellor Gordon Brown’s recent initiative to ensure that immigrants feel a proper sense of loyalty to Britain has been criticised for being either too little too late or just plain daft. Brown said last month that immigrants should do some `community work’ before being granted British citizenship. For Brown, citizenship should be a `kind of contract’ with `rights and responsibilities’. This follows on from other proposals suggesting that immigrants should be `encouraged’ to learn English and should take tests to demonstrate that they know what Britain is all about and that they wish to be part of it.

Enforced community service is unlikely to engender a sense of belonging. But then, what really seems to be behind the latest demands for immigrants to buy into Britishness is a lack of any positive, coherent sense of what it is to be British amongst the British elite itself. This weakened sense of Britishness has nothing intrinsically to do with immigrants. And yet, more and more, a situation that is the result of various complex historical and political factors is being represented as a problem to do with immigration. This is itself a problem for the rest of us, as it means attention is misplaced upon immigrants and energy is misdirected towards helping immigrants to fit into something that isn’t really there.

Take education. It is argued by some that there has been a `downward drag’ in standards due to there being too many immigrant children in the classroom. My guess is that pupils today are more disadvantaged by an educational establishment which is not able, or willing, to assert the need for teaching English language and literature to take precedence over the need to be `multicultural’ than they are by the presence of pupils who do not speak English very well.

Some believe that a big problem in the health service today is that patients don’t understand their doctors, and apparently have to strain to make sense of what the man or woman with the strange accent is saying. What about all the other major problems with the health service, from a lack of resources to the transformation of the NHS into a behaviour-policing outfit? Time and time again, problems that are the result of the actions and policies of the British authorities are being ascribed to immigrants `failing to fit in’. Few ask what exactly there is for them to fit into.

Most Indian immigrants of my parents’ generation felt positively hostile to certain British institutions. For example, many were distrustful of the British Army and supported the Quit India Movement, the civil disobedience movement launched in India in 1942 in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s call for the immediate independence of India from Britain. Yet simultaneously they felt an affinity with British society and culture. This meant they wanted to make a break with their country of birth in order to be part of a society perceived as going forwards.

Financial gain was not uppermost in their minds. Individual freedom, meritocracy and social mobility were high on the list of attractions. Even when they arrived in the UK and realised that these things were not available to all on an equal basis, their belief in, and desire to be part of, British life remained. They believed that by working through institutions and popular organisations such as trade unions and political parties, many people - themselves included - could improve their lot.

The dynamic engendered by British society at that time was strong enough to inspire people all over the world. Today what immigrants once sought to do spontaneously (learn the language and culture) has to be imposed by government - not primarily because immigrants have changed, but because British society represents less of what they want to sign up to.

Rather than address more difficult issues - that Britain today is less than inspirational on the world stage, is less of a meritocracy, more socially stratified and a place where individuals are more closely monitored in virtually all aspects of our lives - politicians and pundits tear their hair out wondering why on earth immigrants don’t appear to want to be part of and to celebrate British culture.

Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. I can see no reason why it should matter to anyone. Many people live outside their countries of birth; they work and socialise without conflict. Yet they do not feel that they necessarily belong to, or have to belong to, the country they have chosen to live in. People may feel contradictory affiliations; and something as subjective as a sense of belonging frequently waxes and wanes over time. A more confident, forward-looking society would be more relaxed about these facts.

Whatever measures or cod `solutions’ the British political caste comes up with, people’s subjective sense of belonging cannot be created by diktat. One of the few positive virtues of British society that politicians often cite is its tolerance. It is ironic, then, that the present government is so intolerant of people who do not conform to its increasingly long list of absurd criteria of what makes for a `good British citizen’.

Still, as long as the focus remains on what immigrants do or don’t do to prove their loyalty, the heat is off looking at ourselves, and identifyi g what the real problems are and what some real solutions might be.

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Democrats face hurdles in passing immigration bill

Democrats may have support from President Bush on immigration, but they face other obstacles in getting a bill through Congress. The Democrats lack enough votes within their party and must overcome lingering Republican disdain for what some consider “amnesty” for some people in the U.S. illegally, as well as union opposition.

The difficulty of their predicament is showing. The bill’s Senate sponsors couldn’t agree and gave up their alliance on joint legislation, while its House sponsors introduced their own version, knowing its prospects are heavily dependent on Bush. “We need to get a bill and he needs to start twisting a few arms,” said the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Although Bush supported last year’s Senate bill, he also signed a House Republican bill calling for a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexican border. And he did little to persuade Republicans to negotiate an immigration bill. Originally, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., planned to introduce a sweeping immigration reform bill with their House partners, Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. an Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. McCain’s enthusiasm withered as he faced a mounting challenge from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and conservatives on the presidential campaign trail unwilling to accept anything less than deportation of illegal immigrants. In response, McCain broke with Kennedy and said he is looking at proposals that could pass, including one requiring illegal immigrants to self deport and apply for jobs in the U.S. through private employment centers set up in certain countries.

“Both parties are clear where they need to be on a bipartisan bill and a realistic bill, but the politics of getting there is not easy and the clock is running,” said Deborah Meyers, senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. Gutierrez and Flake have gone forward with the bill they began drafting with Kennedy and McCain, and have made it the starting point for debate in the House. They hope to lure Republicans and provide some cover for Democrats elected on tough immigration platforms with a provision requiring illegal immigrants to leave the country at some point during a six-year period and return legally. Even so, “there aren’t enough Democrats in the House to pass comprehensive immigration reform. There aren’t enough senators, Democratic senators … to pass it,” Gutierrez said.

On the House side, Several Democratic freshmen campaigned against so-called amnesty to elp their party win control of Congress. Among them was Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, who won the conservative Republican district once held by former Majority Leader Tom DeLay. “He would not support a bill that has a road to legal residency for illegal and undocumented workers who are already here,” said Lampson spokesman Bobby Zafarnia.

During his recent visit to Mexico, Bush pledged to intensify his push for a comprehensive immigration bill. He said he would work to reject “protectionist sentiments” that are bogging down the debate, and named Kennedy as his key ally in the effort. He dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and some White House officials to meet with a group of Republican senators on immigration over several days. The meetings have included Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz, and John Cornyn, R-Texas. Both voted against last year’s Senate bill and wrote their own bill that would have required illegal immigrants to return home, even for a short period, before getting on a path to citizenship. Cornyn and Kyl also are critical of proposals to allow future guestworkers a shot at citizenship too, another feature of last year’s Senate bill.

Kennedy wants to start the Senate debate with the immigration bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last year — a bill heavily written by Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Four of the 12 committee members who voted for that bill were Republicans, including another Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

Democrats also are facing opposition from unions. Many AFL-CIO member unions and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are concerned that employers will choose to hire foreigners over more expensive American workers. They want limits on work visas for foreigners, but also full labor protections that would let them join unions. “The ideal immigration reform bill would not contain a guest worker program,” said Yvette Pena Lopes, a Teamsters lobbyist. If one is created, the Teamsters and other unions want it to expire in three to five years, Lopes said. Immigration bill sponsors say allowing workers to become legal permanent residents after several years of work will help protect them from exploitation by employers. The bill is HR1645.

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Memo shows immigration prosecutions rare

Guidelines issued by U.S. attorneys in Texas showed that most illegal immigrants crossing into the state had to be arrested at least six times before federal authorities would prosecute them, according to an internal Justice Department memo. The disclosure provides a rare view of how federal authorities attempt to curb illegal immigration. The memo was released this week in response to a congressional investigation of the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys.

The Border Patrol makes more than 1 million arrests a year on the U.S.-Mexico border. T.J. Bonner, head of a union representing Border Patrol agents, said it’s unrealistic to prosecute all violators. “Let’s be honest, there isn’t enough jail space to incarcerate everyone who crosses that border,” said Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council. “If everyone demanded a hearing in front of an immigration judge, it would bring our system to a grinding halt in a matter of days.”

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Thursday that immigration prosecutions are a high priority and that the government sent 30 additional attorneys to the border region in the second half of 2006. He said U.S. attorneys set guidelines that, in part, reflect local crime issues and staffing. “Increasing the number of prosecutors will permit districts to adjust their guidelines and take in more cases,” he said. “For law enforcement reasons, the department cannot discuss what the present prosecutorial guidelines are concerning the border.”

The memo was written in response to Justice Department inquiries about immigration prosecutions by the five U.S. attorney offices that cover the 2,000-mile border - San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio, Houston and Albuquerque, N.M. Guidelines vary by office, but migrants with no criminal records who have not been deported by an immigration judge will almost certainly be turned back to Mexico “numerous times” before getting prosecuted, according to another Justice Department memo dated Nov. 22, 2005. Those “voluntary returns” are booked on administrative, not criminal, violations. Parts of the other memo are blacked out, so it’s unclear whether the document refers to U.S. attorneys in Houston or San Antonio.

The memo says one Texas district prosecutes migrants if the Border Patrol catches them at least six to eight times. The other district prosecutes after someone is caught at least seven times.

In late 2005, the government created a 200-mile zone near Del Rio, Texas, in which every adult arrested for illegal immigration would be prosecuted and jailed before being deported.

The San Diego office, which covers an area stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Arizona state line, does not prosecute “purely economic migrants” as a general rule, according to the memo.

The Arizona district, the nation’s busiest corridor for illegal crossings, “almost certainly” declines to prosecute on a first or second offense, the memo says. The New Mexico district makes decisions based on criminal records in the U.S. There are many exceptions to the rule, including violators with criminal records. Representatives of all five U.S. attorney offices declined to comment.

Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who advocates a crackdown on illegal immigration, said the Texas guidelines underscore a lax enforcement attitude. He said the federal government should contract for more jail space, perhaps with local governments. “If you made it a priority of the department, you would see a reduction,” Tancredo said. Arizona’s Paul Charlton and New Mexico’s David Iglesias were also among the eight U.S. attorneys abruptly fired. Justice Department officials have said they were concerned about the prosecutors’ approach to immigration cases.

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Immigration to Israel

Excerpt:

Joseph Massad decries the immigration policies that gives Jews preference in acquiring Israeli citizenship and residency. He also appears to be woefully ill informed when it comes to immigration policy. As a free and sovereign state, Israel has the right to have any immigration policy it chooses. Further, Israeli immigration policy is remarkably similar to the immigration policies of other nations.

Citizenship status is derived by way of one of two criteria- ‘blood’ or ‘land.’ In the United States, for example, citizenship is primarily derived by ‘land’ status. That means that if you were born here, you are automatically awarded citizenship. Conversely, being born in Switzerland is no guarantee of citizenship. In fact, there are generations of people that have been born in Switzerland that are not entitled to Swiss citizenship according to Swiss law.

Descendants of British, Irish and Polish ancestry, for example, are all entitled to enhanced and privileged immigration status by those nations. Throughout most of Europe, having even a bit of ‘preferred’ blood entitles one to a citizenship ‘fast track.’ Israel has every right to determine her own immigration rules.

Consider too, the rescue of Ethiopian Jews (the largest rescue of Blacks by whites in history) and compare that to the slaughter by the Arab tribe janjaweed in Darfur and the ongoing slave trade by Arab slave traders in Mauritania. It isn’t surprising that Muslims that made their way from Sudan want to stay in Israel.

In fact, when the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon after occupying an 11 mile security zone (After years of rocket attacks against civilians and the Lebanese government’s inability or unwillingness to halt those attacks, the Israelis had enough), even the Alawites, the clan than claims the ruling Assads of Syria, pleaded to remain under Israeli jurisdiction, preferring Israeli rule to that of an Arab country.

One might ask Mr Massad why there are no long lines for residency permits at Arab embassies and consulates and yet other Arabs and Muslims would be happy to live in Israel.

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New immigration bill introduced in U.S. House

An immigration bill introduced today in the House, which contains provisions for legalization for longtime undocumented immigrants, is reigniting the hopes of immigrants and their advocates in El Paso. The legislation, Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy Act, or STRIVE, of 2007 was introduced by U.S. Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Il., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. It is the first major immigration bill this year. It would offer temporary legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants but would require them to leave the country before they could be eligible for permanent residency and U.S. citizenship, a provision called “touchback.” …

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C., group pushing for stricter immigration laws, said the touchback provision was no more than a “pointless roundtrip to the nearest border” in a written release. “Making them (undocumented immigrants) take a road trip and giving them a piece of paper won’t change the impact that the millions who have come here illegally continue to have on jobs, education, health care and other areas of American life,” said Dan Stein, FAIR president. Rep. Flake explained that the touchback provision was important because it would create a record of legal entry for immigrants.

The bill also includes border security features, an increase in penalties against criminal immigrants, an employment verification system and a worker visa program that could bring 400,000 new workers the first year. The bill’s sponsor insist that undocumented immigrants wanting permanent residency would go to the back of the line and only attended to when the visa backlog has been cleared.

U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, was a co-sponsor of the bill. “During my ten years in Congress, I have pushed for progress through what I have always referred to as a ‘three-legged stool’ of increased border security, immigration reform with a path to earned legalization, and enforcement of employer sanctions. All three components are critical to a successful bill and are reflected in this legislation,” he said.

Last year, House Republicans, who were the majority, passed an immigration bill that contained no legalization, no guest worker program and that would have made it a felony to be in the United States without without the proper documents. The Pew Hispanic Center estimated last year that there were 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. The House bill failed to be reconciled with a more pro-immigrant, bipartisan one from the Senate.

This year, with Democrats at the helm and the support of president Bush for a guest worker program, immigrants’ advocates are hoping things have changed in their favor. But Democrats do not have enough votes to pass a bill without the support of some Republicans, experts said. Gutierrez and Flake have spent months drafting their bill behind closed doors with input from White House officials, members of both parties and senators. They initially were working with Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., the architect’s of last year’s Senate immigration bill, but the senators bailed out after they couldn’t agree on some key issues.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, MALDEF, supported the effort. “Immigrants, who work in some of the most dangerous jobs in the United States, deserve to work and live with dignity,” said Eric Gutierrez, the group’s legislative attorney.

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Immigration conflict raised in firings

During a congressional showdown over illegal immigration last spring, Justice Department officials found themselves scrambling to answer Republicans’ pointed questions about low immigration-related prosecution rates by U.S. attorneys on the southwest border. Republicans, including Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., had homed in on Southern California’s U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, demanding to know why they were hearing she had refused to prosecute illegal immigrants unless they had previously been convicted of two felonies.

Internal e-mails released as a part of a congressional investigation show Justice Department officials conceded among themselves that they had “some concerns about asserting that the SO Cal U.S. attorney’s office has a strong record in this area.” The e-mail exchange - between Associate Deputy Attorney General Lee Otis and other Justice officials in April 2006 - is one of several contained in more than 3,000 pages of documents released over the past week. The newest batch, released Wednesday, includes further references to intense criticism from Republican lawmakers about the priorities of several border-state U.S. attorneys. Just months later, Lam, Arizona’s Paul Charlton and New Mexico’s David Iglesias were among eight U.S. attorneys abruptly fired with no explanation.

The dismissals have caused an uproar on Capitol Hill as lawmakers have demanded to know whether they were part of a purge to replace the prosecutors with political cronies or as a result of their work on political corruption cases. All three border prosecutors were investigating political corruption cases at the time they were fired.

Justice Department officials said after the firings that poor performance and policy disputes were behind their decision. Immigration-related prosecutions were at least part of their concerns with Lam, Charlton and Iglesias, Justice Department officials have said, although officials have also said they had other problems with each. Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Wednesday that “consistency with the department’s policy priorities” on immigration was “an appropriate factor that (it) considered in deciding to ask for the resignations of U.S. attorneys.”

The border-state U.S. attorneys were scrutinized at a difficult time for the Bush administration. The president was struggling to get wary House Republicans to back his immigration plan, which called for a guest worker program for foreigners and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the country now. Many Republican lawmakers were calling for a border fence and tough restrictions on illegal immigrants.

The U.S. attorneys on the southern border prosecuted more than two-thirds of the criminal immigration cases in the nation in 2005. But lawmakers repeatedly questioned their priorities. Even Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., now one of Lam’s strongest supporters, questioned Lam’s immigration prosecution rates, although Feinstein said she was satisfied with the answer that Lam was focusing on big cases.

Issa and 18 other lawmakers angrily wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Oct. 20, 2005, about immigration prosecutions, particularly in Southern Cal fornia. “It is the responsibility of the Department of Justice to punish dangerous criminals who violate federal laws, and this includes criminal aliens,” the letter reads. Republican Sen. Pete Domenici called Gonzales in January 2006 to discuss the “criminal docket and caseload” in his home state of New Mexico. Domenici’s call prompted a flurry of questions about how the caseload in New Mexico compared with other states. A memo from the U.S. attorney’s executive office quotes Iglesias as saying there was a severe need for more prosecutors in the border city of Las Cruces. Justice Department officials later listed poor morale and insufficient resources in Las Cruces among their concerns about Iglesias’ management.

And in a July 2006 meeting with Bush, then-Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., raised concerns about Charlton’s policy of prosecuting only cases charging possession of more than 500 pounds of marijuana. At the time, the Justice Department defended Charlton and his colleagues. Federal prosecutors’ resources on the southwest border - particularly Arizona - were “absolutely stretched to the limit,” wrote Rachel Brand, an assistant attorney general, in an e-mail to Gonzales’ chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, who recently resigned. Less than two months later, Charlton was on the list of federal prosecutors the attorney general’s office and the White House were considering pushing out.

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A moderate Democratic pundit takes on NYT over illegal immigration

Mickey Kaus of Slate magazine takes a shrewd look at how the New York Times frames the illegal immigration debate as involving smart, humane people on one side and dumb, inhumane yahoos on the other side. He also points out how the media try to boil down the illegal immigration debate to either let-’em-stay-one-way-or-the-other or send-all-12-million-home-this-instant:

By associating the anti-McCain view with not only deportation but immediate deportation, polls like the one cited by [NYT reporter Adam] Nagourney reinforce the idea that massive deportation of millions of illegals is the only alternative to McCain’s “comprehensive” approach.

In fact, the most intense opponents of McCain’s plan–such as Tancredo or Mark Krikorian of Center for Immigration Studies–favor a slow strategy of “attrition,” not mass deportation. And it’s quite possible to envision a less harsh alternative to McCain-Kennedy that involves no additional deportation–like the alternative of simply not passing McCain-Kennedy (and living with the status quo). Or just building a border fence, which would keep illegal immigrants from entering the country b t do nothing to kick out those who are already here. Or requiring U.S. employers to actually check (as opposed to pretend to check) the immigration status of new hires but not of their existing workers.

We’re not served by coverage that doesn’t look at these options, especially “requiring U.S. employers to actually check (as opposed to pretend to check) the immigration status of new hires but not of their existing workers.” That turns off the magnet without (at least at first) disrupting existing businesses. Why not try this small attempt at reform first before pursuing the NYT’s grand agenda?

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A belated interest in enforcement

They could have been doing this years ago

No, Ana Figueroa told the young seamstress, who was posing as a recent immigrant from Mexico. Without papers, she couldn’t work at the plant. A beat passed. Then Ms. Figueroa, who screened employees at Michael Bianco Inc. (MBI), told her to see “Felix” on the factory floor. He would get her papers for $60. “Usted no oy๓ eso de mํ,” she added. (”You didn’t hear that from me.”) A few days later, the seamstress, who happened to be an undercover informant wearing a microphone, found herself at a sewing machine, stitching survival vests for the US military.

That chain of events, described in a federal affidavit, led to a high-profile immigration-enforcement raid in New Bedford, Mass., two weeks ago. While media accounts focused on the firm’s immigrant workers, many of them mothers with young children, the company’s owner and three other officials, including Figueroa, were also arrested and now face federal charges with prison terms up to 10 years. (Figueroa’s attorney, Ray O’Hara, says she was an hourly employee, not a manager: “She was told what to do, and that was it.”)

The raid is part of a growing crackdown on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Historically, such charges have been all but impossible to prove because managers could always say they were unaware that workers carried false documents. Now, the federal government is playing hardball with tactics reminiscent of the war on drugs: undercover agents, hidden recording equipment, and seizures of property connected with the crime.

The goal is to go after employers in industries that draw large numbers of illegal immigrants, such as meatpacking, construction, and apparel. The raids also have a potential political payoff. By showing a willingness to crack down on illegal immigrants and their employers, the Bush administration may be hoping to convince immigration hard-liners to support a guest-worker program, political observers say. “It’s a sea change in enforcement strategy,” says Jennifer Chacon, an immigration expert at the University of California at Davis.

For example: The old Immigration and Naturalization Service fined employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants. Its successor organization, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, is arresting them. That’s why the number of workplace fines dropped from 417 in fiscal year 1999 to three in FY 2004, while criminal arrests – of which a sizable number involve company executives or managers – are up dramatically. In FY 2005, there were 176 arrests; a year later, there were 718. In the first three months of FY 2007, which began in October, there have been 395 criminal arrests.

Seizures of property are also on the rise. In drug busts, for example, the federal government can take property related to a crime, requiring the property owner to prove in a hearing that it’s not part of a crime. Such seizures often end up with owners forfeiting the property. Now the ICE is using the tactic. In FY 2005, it got $15 million from a single forfeiture case – more money than the total the government collected in immigration-related workplace fines in the previous eight years. The result: a rising tide of criminal convictions. In FY 2005 (the latest numbers available), there were 127, up from 46 in 2004. In a recent case, the owner of a Baltimore sushi chain pleaded guilty to money-laundering and harboring illegal workers and agreed to settle for $1 million.

ICE officials say agents are, in effect, carrying out the enforcement measures promised but never delivered after the 1986 amnesty of some 4 million illegal workers. A nearly $100 million boost in its budget last year has allowed ICE to hire 67 new agents and add nearly 2,000 detention beds, laying the groundwork for the crackdown, officials say. “We’re doing a lot of sophisticated targeting,” says ICE spokeswoman Pat Reilly. “It’s one thing to remove people, but the magnet [for illegals] is getting a job. If you can make that a little more risky both for the employer and the person who takes the job, then hopefully it stems the flow somewhat.”

Tipped off by a company insider, ICE sent an undercover informant to an IFCO Systems plant in Guilderland, N.Y. Pretending to look for work, the informant showed an executive a green card with someone else’s name and face on it. “This will probably work – it looks like you to me,” the executive replied, according to a federal indictment. When the informant later came back with a batch of fake green cards, forged by ICE’s own documents lab, the management asked for more and thanked him for his service to the company, the indictment says.

A follow-up ICE investigation found that managers at IFCO, a large Houston-based manufacturer of pallets and containers, recruited illegal workers in Texas and brought them to facilities across the country. The company put them up in company-owned houses and drove them to and from work. Last April, ICE conducted a multistate raid, netting more than 1,000 illegal workers at IFCO and seven current and former managers. Last month, five of them pleaded guilty in Albany, N.Y., to federal charges of conspiracy to hire illegal workers, with each facing up to two years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

In another big case, three principals of RCI, a multimillion-dollar cleaning firm, were charged last month for tax evasion and harboring illegal aliens. The workers were recruited at Hispanic fairs and through Spanish newspapers and were never required to fill out W-4 tax-withholding documents or I-9 employee-verification forms, according to the federal indictment. All wages were paid in cash through a variety of shell companies, prosecutors say.

The use of illegal workers “pervades many industries throughout the United States,” writes John Vandevelde, a lawyer representing one of the RCI executives, in an e-mail. His client “expects to resolve this matter to everyone’s satisfaction.”

Spokesmen for the poultry, meat, and construction industries say that such outright scams are not the norm. Most such industries support collaborative efforts by ICE, such as the Basic Pilot program, which helps businesses double-check IDs with a Social Security database, and a new “best practices” framework, IMAGE, which provides a set of guidelines that companies can follow to ensure they don’t hire illegal workers.

Still, for many industries that employ low-wage laborers, obeying current federal regulations remains a “not too hot, not too cold” enterprise, says Janet Riley, a spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute, a Washington, D.C., trade group. “If you don’t screen closely enough and [papers] are falsified, then you face immigration issues. If you scrutinize too close, you face [federal] civil rights issues.”

So far, the recent arrests of plant managers and executives aren’t affecting hiring practices of low-wage labor, says Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the Chicken Council in Washington.

Some observers say the targeted enforcement may be a short-lived and symbolic shot aimed straight at Congress. Though everyone “from the dog catcher to the coroner” in theory supports tougher immigration enforcement, the workplace crackdown is more likely a “dress rehearsal” for another attempt at establishing a guest-worker program, says US Rep. Tom Tancredo (R) of Colorado, a candidate for president in 2008.

The upshot? “Increasing enforcement of businesses is going to really ratchet up the lobbying pressure on senators and congressmen who get a good chunk of their campaign cash from business interests,” says John Booth, political scientist at the University of North Texas in Denton. “Those who stand to benefit from a normalization of a wider labor supply from abroad are going to put some real pressure on Congress to fix this before they get their executives put in jail.”

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“Basic Pilot” getting more use

The Orange County city of Mission Viejo has decided on its own to follow up on at least some of the failed federal immigration laws. It’s an idea that may catch on. Immigrant-rights groups are appalled, but they shouldn’t be. The effort is pretty mild, and could help refine a national screening system known as the Basic Pilot Program. Mission Viejo’s ordinance requires that new city employees and companies contracting with the city screen their employees through Basic Pilot to verify they are legally allowed to work in this country.

Basic Pilot is a computer screening system started experimentally in 1996 and expanded to all 50 states in 2004. Ordinarily, participation is voluntary, and thousands of employers, public and private, use it. What’s different about Mission Viejo is that the city will require private businesses, at least those working for the city, to screen their employees.

Ana Maria Patino, an activist lawyer who lives in Laguna Beach, told the Orange County Register the ordinance is anti-immigrant and anti-business. But Nancy Cho, president of the Mission Viejo Chamber of Commerce, said she thinks the city’s approach is “just great.” Some of the city’s bigger employees are using Basic Pilot. Orange County’s Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Jaime Soto, a supporter of illegal immigrants’ rights, issued a statement saying Mission Viejo’s ordinance “further confirms the need for a comprehensive immigration reform” and is punitive.

Amen, bishop, except for the punitive part. Hardly anybody would disagree about the need for reform, depending, of course, on what kind we end up with. If any. The likeliest outcome nationally is that there is going to be a long wait for anything of substance. What’s needed are secure borders that neither would-be workers nor terrorists can easily penetrate, together with immigration controls that provide enough documented workers to meet the nation’s job needs.

As for Basic Pilot, it is a useful service. Employers simply supply the Social Security number of a job applicant to make sure it is valid, and that the applicant is in the country legally. Opponents complain that Basic Pilot’s databases are inaccurate and outdated. But there is no better way to improve them than to use them.

We’ll soon see how well Mission Viejo’s new ordinance works. Cities can’t have their own immigration policies and they can’t enforce federal immigration laws. But there’s no reason they can’t check their own employees’ legal status, including employees of contractors who work for them. Incidentally, there’s no reason any business, large or small, shouldn’t use Basic Pilot. Remember Wal-Mart’s embarrassment when it turned out some of its contractors were using illegals? Wal-Mart simply changed its policy to require that contractors use Basic Pilot, and the problem was solved. Owners of sma l businesses can simply go to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Web site and follow some simple online directions.

No matter which side of the immigration debate you’re on, there is nothing wrong with following the law. Federal or local.

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Former Border Security Official Stresses Immigration Enforcement

Before the United States develops comprehensive immigration reform it must first enforce its current laws and secure the border, a former undersecretary for border and transportation security said Tuesday. Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman and undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security, argued that the American people must believe that the government will stop the flow of illegal immigrants before it considers alternatives, such as amnesty or a guest worker program. “You need to focus on enforcement,” he said. “Once people have confidence in that, you can fully support to have legal status for that 12 million here.”

Hutchinson’s advice comes at a time when 2008 presidential hopefuls are bombarded with questions and concerns over immigration on early stump speeches across the country. He gave the keynote address before students and professors at the American University Washington College of Law for the school’s “Holes in the Fence: Immigration Reform and Border Security in the United States” program. Before he resigned from the department in 2005, for an unsuccessful run for governor in his home state of Arkansas, Hutchinson said he focused on deterring people from entering the country illegally. “I’ve never had a tougher job in my life,” he said.

Hutchinson said he wants the government to use biometric systems to record people’s fingerprints so agents can check anyone coming over the border. He also wants an online system that employers could use to quickly check someone’s legal status. An illegal immigrant “takes these risks because he knows when he gets through he will get a job in the United States,” he said. “We need to change it so employers won’t hire them.”

Hutchinson did manage to pull a laugh from the crowd when he mentioned his failed bid for governor. “Yes I ran as a Republican, yes I lost,” he said. “Here’s some advice: don’t run for office after you’ve overseen border security.” But he said immigration reform will happen if the government balances “the rule of law” with “compassion.”

In an interview after his address, Hutchinson said governors fighting for immigration reform, such as Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, D, would receive congressional support from both sides of the aisle. “There is bipartisan support regardless of the majority,” he added.

During a later panel on the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a law authorizing a wall in several places along the U.S.-Mexico border, activists on both sides of the issue lashed out against current immigration practices. The law remains controversial because it requires the wall be built but doesn’t allocate any money for it.

Mark Krikorian, the executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, said fencing may serve as an important first step but it’s merely a political ploy. “A spoonful of enforcement helps the amnesty go down,” he said. Krikorian, whose think tank advocates stern immigration enforcement, said he would rather have the government slowly shrink the number of illegal immigrants than try to enact broad legislation. “Real change is not something Congress can vote on,” he said. “The political elite has to have the will to enforce the law.”

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Immigration status complex, expert says

Federal immigration law is so complex that it can take years for the government to determine whether a person is in the country legally or illegally, an expert witness testified yesterday in the trial over Hazleton’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration lawyer and co-author of a 20-volume treatise on immigration law, said there are many ways illegal immigrants can “regularize their status.” Among those are marrying a U.S. citizen and obtaining political asylum. Even someone facing deportation can take advantage of a lengthy federal appeals process, he said. “Your current legal status at any given time does not determine whether you may ultimately stay in the United States,” said Yale-Loehr, testifying for plaintiffs seeking to overturn Hazleton’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act.

The ordinance penalizes landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and companies that employ them. A companion measure requires tenants to register with City Hall. Enforcement of the laws has been barred pending the legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union and Hispanic groups.

The ACLU called Yale-Loehr to the stand in an effort to show that the local measures fail to account for the nuances of federal immigration law and might wind up hurting people who are eligible for legal residency but are still in the process of getting it.

Earlier, an expert witness called by Hazleton’s lawyers testified that immigration depresses wages for lower-skilled U.S. workers. George Borjas, a Harvard University economist, conducted a 20-year study that concluded that the wages of U.S.-born citizens working in low-skilled jobs decreased by about 8 percent over the short term because of immigrant labor.

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Trooper Enforcement Of Immigration Laws Passes Tennessee Senate

The state Senate voted Monday to give the Tennessee Highway Patrol the authority to enforce immigration laws. The legislation would authorize the commissioner of the Department of Safety to negotiate an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concerning enforcement of such laws by Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers. Following training and certification, the troopers could enforce federal immigration and customs laws while conducting their normal duties.

The companion bill is scheduled to be heard in a subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee on Tuesday. The Senate bill is sponsored by Mark Norris of Collierville.

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France becoming more critical of immigrants

On current polling, Sarkozy will be the next President

Right-wing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy reached out to France’s youth Sunday with an appeal for brotherhood among races and religions, but refused to back off his proposal for a ministry of immigration and national identity. Condemning Sarkozy’s proposal — a clear outreach to the far right — has become a rare point of agreement for his rivals in the campaign. Some critics have said the idea evokes “the darkest hours” of France, a reference to the laws of France’s Nazi puppet regime of World War II which had an agency for questions relating to Jews. “I’m not afraid to defend the identity of F ance, of the republic, of the nation,” Sarkozy said at a rally of some 8,000 youths, mainly from his own governing party, the Union for a Popular Majority. “If we don’t talk about France how can we be surprised that what separates us ends up being bigger than what unites us?”

Mainstream candidates have tried to seduce extreme-right voters in every French presidential election. But Sarkozy, France’s tough interior minister and the front-runner in all polls, stunned even some members of his own camp by proposing the new ministry 10 days ago. As interior minister, Sarkozy has backed two laws to tighten immigration regulations, and he hopes to push through another if he is elected president, arguing that France should choose its immigrants more carefully. He was quicker even than far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in bringing the sensitive topic of immigration and national identity to the center of the presidential debate. Le Pen’s stunning performance in the 2002 elections, when he reached the runoff to face incumbent President Jacques Chirac, has made the subject particularly touchy in this year’s race. Le Pen was overwhelmingly defeated in the runoff in 2002 in a rare show of left-right unity.

Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, Sarkozy’s main rival in the April 22-May 6 two-round race, said Saturday it was “intolerable that one can think that normal immigration is a risk for the national identity.” Centrist Francois Bayrou, the No. 3 candidate in polls, has also denounced the proposal. Even Le Pen, who is running again this year as leader of the National Front, has dismissed Sarkozy’s idea as an attempt to “capture a few extra votes.”

In a rare show of frankness, Sarkozy conceded Sunday night on France 3 television that part of his aim was “bringing back to the camp of the republic voters who have gone to the National Front.” In Sarkozy’s own camp, Equal Rights Minister Azouz Begag, who is of Algerian descent, and respected former Health Minister Simone Veil have distanced themselves from the proposed new ministry. Veil recently decided to support Sarkozy’s presidential bid, but publicly lamented that the candidate had mixed immigration issues with national identity.

While standing by his proposal, Sarkozy also tried to bridge the distance between his candidacy and France’s youth. His image suffered in the housing projects of France after he called some delinquent youths “scum,” a remark many contend fanned 2005 riots in poor, suburban neighborhoods that are mainly home to immigrants and their descendants.

On Sunday, Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, evoked Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in appealing for French “fraternity.” “I dream that you live in a France where no one is judged by the color of his skin, his religion or the address of his neighborhood, but on the nature of his character,” Sarkozy said, adding that he dreams that “Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim children can sit together at the table of French fraternity.” The interior minister lags some 12 points behind Royal among youths aged 18-21, according to a study by Cevipof, a think tank of the Paris-based Institute for Political Science. Fifteen percent of the electorate is aged 18-25. Youth at the rally defended Sarkozy’s ideas. “We’re here to support him,” said 16-year-old Timothee Mali. “He dares to say things that others only think.”

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A letter to Immigrants

By Vasko Kohlmayer (Vasko Kohlmayer defected from Communist Czechoslovakia at the age of 19)

Dear Fellow Immigrant:

As you may know, immigration has become a very serious problem in this country. So much so, there are even concerns that if not dealt with wisely, it has the potential to subvert American society altogether. Whether or not such fears are justified, one thing is certain: Addressing this issue will be a major challenge in the years to come. As such, it is only appropriate that we who are at the center of it should do our best to help with the solution. I am afraid, however, that the behavior and attitude of some among us only make the already complex matters worse.

You may have noticed certain unlovely tendencies that recently have been becoming increasingly prominent in the immigrant population. Almost every day someone from our midst comes up with new demands and then grumbles when these are not met. In addition to requesting benefits of various kinds, many repudiate their host culture and insist that natives conform to their ways. There are even those who refuse to learn the English language and then chide their hosts for not accommodating their linguistic peculiarities. When they meet with resistance or difficulties they protest and complain, tossing about the charges of cultural insensitivity, discrimination or worse.

It is safe to say that this ungracious attitude would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world. That it has been in America is due to the matchless amity of her people who try their best to satisfy the desires of their guests. But as criticisms and complaints grow more and more unreasonable, the situation is reaching the point of becoming intolerable.

Being an immigrant myself let me say something that needs to be said, but which Americans - the genial hosts that they are - are reluctant to do: If you do not like it here, you should seriously think about going back to where you came from. Ultimately such a move may prove to be the best thing for you, because living in a country you dislike is probably more damaging to you than you realize. For one thing, in the long run this kind of festering dissatisfaction tends to embitter the heart, a condition which should always be a matter for concern.

But regardless of where you ultimately decide to live, you would definitely benefit from introspection, since your attitude shows that there something profoundly wrong either with your judgment or character or both.

It is because of this that you have failed to recognize that you live in the most immigrant-friendly country on this planet. I have been privileged to visit many places and have realized long ago that Americans are by far the most welcoming and hospitable people anywhere. This is especially true where foreigners are concerned. Whereas in most other lands, immigrants are often looked upon with prejudice, suspicion and even scorn, Americans greet them with open arms. Rather than holding your foreignness against you, they encourage you when you’re weak, help you when you’re in need, and lift you up when you stumble. Patient with our shortcomings, Americans are ever ready to overlook our blunders.

This, my friend, is not how aliens are norma ly treated in other places. But I probably do not need to tell you this, since you must have enough first-hand experience from your homeland. The chances are that in your own country foreigners are not treated nearly as kindly as they are here. In fact, it is very likely that your own country does not treat its own citizens as well as America does its foreign-born inhabitants, which is probably the reason why you are now here in the first place.

You would do well to remember that America has given you the most precious thing a country can give: The freedom to pursue your dreams. Whatever your inclinations, whatever the deepest stirrings of your heart, whatever your ambitions in America you can try to make them come true. America is one country on this earth where you truly have the opportunity to live up to your God-given potential.

But this is not all, for even while you pursue your dreams, America will faithfully protect your rights and freedoms. And while she gives so much, she asks for almost nothing in return. You are even free to criticize if you feel like it and America will defend your right to do so. Can you conceive of any other country that would allow you to do this? Can you think of any other system that would guard your rights and autonomy to this extent?

This, however, does not mean that we should abuse the privilege. America is a gracious host and you should try your best to be a gracious guest. Although you will never be asked to pay for all the things you have received here, you should have the good sense to recognize that to give something in return is the decent thing to do. Bestowing upon America a measure of our love and loyalty is, in my opinion, the least we immigrants can do.

A young American president once said: `Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.’ We immigrants especially should be mindful of this admonishment. America has given us the unique opportunity to pursue our dreams and live a life of dignity, which is something most of us could never hope for in the country of our birth. Let us never forget that.

Be thankful to this generous nation and its kind-hearted people who do not despise you because you look different, smell different or speak with an accent. Most Americans who crossed your path - I am sure - have done their best to overlook your idiosyncrasies and offered support instead of criticism. It is only proper that we should at least try to match their goodwill, which is why it is so unseemly to gripe and complain about mostly imaginary grievances. Of all people, we immigrants should be most keenly appreciative of the benevolence and kindness of this great nation. If despite your best efforts you are still not able to do so, then you really would be better off living somewhere else.

This is a land of immigrants who responded to this country’s goodness with industriousness and faithfulness. They gave of their sweat and life to build this wondrous thing called America. They strove and labored and struggled uncomplainingly, even though their lives were far more difficult than yours or mine are today. Let us, then, each carry our burden with good cheer and resolve. To be sure, life won’t always be easy. It rarely is, and if truth be told, human existence is arduous no matter where you live. But for honest and hard-working people nowhere is life more rewarding than in America.

Despite its share of problems, America is by almost any objective measure the greatest country that has ever been. Let us, therefore, be continually thankful for the incredible privilege of being allowed to live here. And above all, let us learn how to love her, for if there ever was a country that merits the love of its people, it surely must be America. She deserves it especially from those us who arrived as aliens, but whom she nevertheless so graciously accepted as her own.

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Europe’s immigrant problem

After the death last Sunday of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old indigenous Dutchman who was shot by a police officer, non-immigrant citizens went on a rampage in Utrecht. Apparently Mulder intervened when Muslim youths harassed a pregnant native Dutch woman. Locals claim the police has failed to protect them for years. They say the authorities are afraid of the immigrants and tolerate their criminal behavior.

This issue is not just about Utrecht or Holland. Similar resentment against Muslim immigrants, but at least as much against their own authorities, is quietly brewing among the natives all over Western Europe.

It is insulting that two thirds of the Dutch, one of the founding members of the European community, voted against the proposed EU Constitution, and yet EU leaders will apparently just ignore this and force their massively undemocratic Constitution down people’s throats anyway. The German Presidency wants EU leaders to agree on a text for a new treaty by February 2008. The label ‘Constitution’ is to be dropped, in order to avoid further referendums.

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso expressed unease with the prospect of a second Dutch constitution referendum. “Referendums make the process of approval of European treaties much more complicated and less predictable,” he said “If a referendum had been held on the creation of the European Community or the introduction of the Euro, do you think these would have passed?”

Although the EU warns against “Islamophobia,” those who live in the real world know that there has been an explosion of violent infidelophobia in Western Europe staged by Muslim immigrants. This wave of violence especially targets Jews, but the attacks against Christians that are going on in the Middle East are increasingly spreading to Europe as well. In more and more cities across the continent, non-Muslims are being harassed, robbed, mugged, raped, stabbed and even killed by Muslims. Native Europeans are slowly becoming second-rate citizens in their own countries.

This violence by Muslims is usually labelled simply as “crime,” but I believe it should more accurately be called Jihad. Those who know early Islamic history, as described in books such as The Truth About Muhammad by Robert Spencer, know that looting and stealing the property of non-Muslims has been part and parcel of Jihad from the very beginning. In fact, so much of the behavior of Muhammad himself and the early Muslims could be deemed criminal that it is difficult to know exactly where crime ends and Jihad begins. In the city of Oslo, for instance, it is documented that some of the criminal Muslim gangs also have close ties to radical religious groups at home and abroad. As Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen points out, the Koran is seen by some Muslims as a God-given “hunting licence,” granting them the right to assault and even murder non-Muslims. It is hardly accidental that while Muslims make up about 10% of the population in France, they make up an estimated 70% of French prison inmates.

In the city of Antwerp, Belgium, Marij Uijt den Bogaard from 2003 to 2006 worked as a civil servant in the immigrant borough of Berchem. She noted how radical Islamist groups began to take over the immigrant neighbourhoods, but was fired when she warned against this danger in her reports to the authorities: “Many victims of burglaries in houses and cars, of steaming and other forms of violence, can testify that aggression by Muslims is not directed against brothers and sisters, but against whoever is a kafir, a non-believer. Young Muslims justify their behaviour towards women who do not wear the headscarf, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, by referring to the Salafist teaching which says that these women are whores and should be treated as such. They told me this. I wrote it down in my reports, but the authorities refuse to hear it.”

Filmmaker Pierre Rehov tells how a friend of his is a retired chief of police who used to be in charge of the security of a major city in the south of France. According to him, 80% of the rapes in the area were made by Muslim young men. In most cases, the parents would not understand why they would be arrested. The only evil those parents would see, genuinely, was the temptation that the male children had to face from infidel women.

The wave of robberies the increasingly Muslim-dominated city of Malm” is witnessing is part of a “war against Swedes,” this according to statements from the immigrant youths themselves. “When we are in the city and robbing, we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes.” This argument was repeated several times. “Power for me means that Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet.”

Jonathan Friedman, an American living in Sweden, mentions that the so-called Integration Act of 1997 proclaimed that “Sweden is a Multicultural society.” The Act implicitly states that Sweden doesn’t have a history, only the various ethnic groups that live there. Native Swedes have been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. As Friedman puts it: “In Sweden, it’s almost as if the state has sided with the immigrants against the Swedish working class.”

Pierre Schori, Minister for immigration, during a parliamentary debate in 1997 said that: “Racism and xenophobia should be banned and chased [away],” and that one should not accept “excuses, such as that there were flaws in the immigration and refugee policies.” In other words: It should be viewed as a crime for the indigenous population not to assist in wiping themselves out. The state is turned into an enemy of the very population it is supposed to protect. Swedes pay some of the highest tax rates in the world, and for this they get runaway crime rates and a government that is actively hostile to their interests.

“Exit the People’s Home of Sweden” is a book from 2005 about immigration and the Swedish welfare state model. According to the authors, the Multicultural elites see themselves first of all as citizens of the world. In order to emphasize and accentuate diversity, everything that smacks of “native culture” is deliberately disparaged. Opposition to this policy is considered a form of racism: “The dominant ideology in Sweden, which has been made dominant by powerful methods of silencing and repression, is a totalitarian ideology, where the elites oppose the national aspect of the nation state.”

Researchers Gert Tinggaard Svendsen og Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen have written the book Social Kapital. When general levels of trust were measured in 86 countries, the Nordic nations Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland came out on top. According to the authors, the trust between citizens and the trust between citizens and the state is very high in these countries, and this “social capital” is highly profitable and accounts for up a to a quarter of these countries’ wealth.

However, they also warn that such trust is vulnerable. A society can lose its social capital and trust rather quickly, but it can take centuries to rebuild it. This social capital is now being squandered a matter of official state policy all over Western Europe, accompanied by wild cheers from the media and the intelligentsia.

Although such high levels of trust are in many ways attractive and desirable, they also contain some potential pitfalls. People’s trusting nature may make them easy targets for outsiders from more cynical cultures, who view them as gullible fools. However, it also makes them vulnerable to threats from within.

In the 1990s, Swedish authorities decided that native Swedes and their culture had no more claim to the country than Kurds. At the same time, the country became a member of the EU. Mass immigration to Sweden started years before EU membership and wasn’t caused by this, but the EU certainly didn’t help. Now suddenly, as with other EU members, Swedes have most of their laws passed by unelected EU bureaucrats rather than their own elected national representatives.

Swedes were used to that laws were passed with their consent and with their best interests in mind, because by and large they had been. Within a few years, all of this has changed. Laws are now passed by EU bureaucrats who don’t give a damn about their interests, and by elites who don’t care about their own people, in fact view them as potential stumbling blocks for the new Multicultural society. Yet most Europeans still follow these laws. Why? I can see at least two reasons.

Germany’s ex-president Roman Herzog pointed out that between 1999 and 2004, 84 percent of the legal acts in Germany stemmed from Brussels, and warned that “EU policies suffer to an alarming degree from a lack of democracy and a de facto suspension of the separation of powers. The question has to be raised of whether Germany can still unreservedly be called a parliamentary democracy.”

Why is this pan-European EU dictatorship still functioning? Because seeing is believing. Most Europeans still don’t know that EU leaders are using their money without their consent to merge Europe with the Arab world because their media don’t tell them this. Due to the common Euro currency and the lack of national borders they can move around most of Europe at ease, which seems convenient. They don’t physically see, however, that the EU has also usurped the power of their national parliaments. The latter appear to be working just as always, but have now been reduced to implementing the policies of unelected Eurocrats.

The second reason is because ordinary European citizens are held hostage by their own law-abiding nature. Abiding by rules and regulations used to serve them well in the past, but things have changed. Even the laws that are in their interest are no longer upheld. Their nations have vacated their national borders and the ensuing uncontrolled mass immigration is creating rampant urban insecurity.

For Dutchmen, in what once was a peaceful and orderly country, to go against decades of indoctrination to stage something like the recent uprisings in Utrecht, they have to feel an extreme amount of repressed frustration and anger. Perhaps they watched the media reactions to the Muslim riots in France, which were sympathetic and were followed by promises from political leaders to listen to the “legitimate grievances” of the rioters. Perhaps the native Dutch in Utrecht thought that hey, we are quiet and peaceful and yet we get only contempt from our so-called leaders. Muslims burn stuff and get concessions. Perhaps we should start burning stuff, too. What have we got to lose? We’re already losing our country.

The excellent Chinese blogger Ohmyrus has warned against pre isely this: “While it took a long time for Europeans to learn to settle their differences peacefully through the ballot box, this important lesson is slowly being unlearned. The lesson learned from the Danish cartoon affair is that violence pays. Most Western governments caved in by issuing apologies or condemning the cartoons instead of defending free speech. Soon groups that oppose immigration will turn to violence too. If European democracies cannot manage their ethnic tensions, democracy will break down, ushering in dictatorial rule.”

In a British poll from January 2007, a massive 82% disagreed (57% strongly) as to whether the government was in control of immigration. When asked if the government was “open and honest” about the scale of immigration into Britain, 80% disagreed. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: “After a decade of efforts to stifle debate, there is now a fundamental lack of trust between the Government and the public on this issue.” The numbers also “reflect a deep underlying resentment among the public that they have not had any opportunity to express their views - still less to be consulted - on a matter of major importance to them and to the future of our country.”

According to Theodore Dalrymple, “For the last 40 years, government policy in Britain, de facto if not always de jure, has been to render the British population virtually defenseless against criminals and criminality. Almost alone of British government policies, this one has been supremely effective: no Briton nowadays goes many hours without wondering how to avoid being victimized by a criminal intent on theft, burglary, or violence.” He fears that “the failure of the state to protect the lives and property of its citizens, and to take seriously its duty in this regard, creates a politically dangerous situation, for it puts the very legitimacy of the state itself at risk. The potential consequences are incalculable, for the failure might bring the rule of law itself into disrepute and give an opportunity to the brutal and the authoritarian.”

Much more here

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Australia: Death threats over Muslim comments

Muslims do their best to prove the Rev. Nile correct

NSW Christian Democratic Party leader Reverend Fred Nile says he has received death threats over his call for a moratorium on Islamic immigration to Australia. Mr Nile, who is recontesting his upper house seat at the March 24 state election, on Saturday called for a 10-year ban on Islamic immigration. He wants the immigration department to give preference to persecuted Christians while studies on the impact of Islamic immigration are carried out during the moratorium. Mr Nile has previously called for a ban on the wearing of full-face scarves in NSW.

< >Today, he said he and another Christian Democratic Party (CDP) candidate had received death threats in recent days. On Friday, a man had telephoned Allan Lotfizadeh, the CDP candidate for the western Sydney electorate of Auburn, and said: “You Christian pig. You are dead”, Mr Nile said. Yesterday, Mr Nile said, a man approached a CDP election worker at Granville and asked her where Mr Nile lived, and what he had against Muslims. He had then said: “Tell Fred Nile I am going to act out my faith on him”.

Mr Nile said he believed the threats were linked to his statements on Islamic immigration and full-face scarves. “I think, if they’re talking about the Muslim issue it’s related to the Muslim issue,” he said. Mr Nile said the threats, which have been reported to police, highlighted the need for the immigration moratorium. “The reason why I called for the moratorium is because of what’s happening in France and Holland where the Muslim minority are becoming militant,” he said.

Prominent Muslim community leader Keysar Trad condemned the threats against Mr Nile. “Anybody who thinks of making death threats should cease and desist and anybody who knows anybody who’s making threats should call the police,” he said. Mr Trad said many members of the Islamic community had been the victims of threats and verbal or physical abuse. “Now he (Mr Nile) has an idea what it’s like for us,” Mr Trad said.

A split appeared to emerge in the CDP over the immigration issue today, with Mr Nile’s fellow upper house MP Gordon Moyes indicating he had reservations about the policy. “In the Christian Democratic Party we are instructed to vote on issues according to our conscience and therefore we can have different points of view on some issues,” Dr Moyes said. “I have some differences with Fred on this matter but Fred is the one standing for election so I’m not getting into that debate.”

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The raid in New England reveals a broken system

I don’t often agree with anything in the “Washington Post” — which is a tentacle of the NYT — but they hit the nail on the head below in pointing out that the New Bedford raid showed that US immigration officials are so unused to enforcing the law that they made a real botch of it when they tried. Unlike the WaPo, I think the solution is for them to develop proper and reasonable systems for more such raids. Any more raids like the New Bedford one will just discredit all immigration control — though that may of course at some level have been the aim of that raid

THE HYPOCRISY of U.S. immigration law was on l rid display last week in a raid on a defense contractor in New England. Accompanied by dogs and a helicopter swooping overhead, hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents charged into Michael Bianco Inc., a leather-goods factory in New Bedford, Mass., that makes backpacks, ammunition pouches and other gear for GIs.

When the dust settled, the agents had arrested some 360 illegal immigrant employees at the plant, many of them women from Guatemala and other Central American nations. The workers had toiled in sweatshop conditions that allegedly included draconian restrictions on bathroom breaks, toilet paper supply, and snacking and talking at their workstations. They were seized, handcuffed, questioned and, in about 200 cases, whisked away to detention centers in New Mexico and Texas without regard to their roots in the community, their spouses or their children, including American-born children who are U.S. citizens.

Amid the pandemonium, families and communities were split, and children were left with babysitters, relatives, siblings or other families. Immigration and Customs Enforcement insisted it had released about 60 of the immigrants — including nursing mothers and sole or primary caregivers for young children — for “humanitarian” reasons. But reports of confusion and mistakes were common, and state officials said scores of children were separated from their parents. In one case, doctors treated an 8-month-old baby, Keylyn Zusana Lopez Ayala, for pneumonia and possible dehydration after her mother was detained and unable to breast-feed her. Keylyn is an American citizen. Three days after the raid, a federal judge was sufficiently concerned that he barred immigration officials from transporting any more detainees out of state. The raid, said Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D), “reflects, for me, not what this country is about.”

Federal officials have been under mounting pressure to enforce immigration laws, and there have been other sweeps recently. But even if such raids net tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, they will not seriously address the issue of 12 million undocumented immigrants. Few Americans have the stomach for mass deportations, and few politicians support such a policy.

Among the absurdities revealed by the raid, consider the following: Because the factory held military contracts worth more than $90 million, the Pentagon maintained a quality control office there, staffed by an inspector who must have known or suspected the plant employed hundreds of undocumented immigrants. Apparently the inspector was operating under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and for good reason — the federal government, like so many other enterprises, depends on illegal immigrant labor.

Or consider the factory owner, Francesco Insolia, who has been charged with conspiring to recruit and hire illegal immigrants, and with imposing harsh workplace conditions. He was arrested along with plant managers but was released the next day in time to make a scheduled business trip to Puerto Rico. In his first public statement after his release, Mr. Insolia noted in his own defense that the Pentagon inspector “interacted with our workers without incident or complaint.” …

Cruel, self-defeating and illogical, the New Bedford raid is an inelegant example of how badly this country needs a clear-eyed immigration policy, one that provides not only for tough enforcement but also humane protections and a path to citizenship for immigrants who have put down roots and contributed to the national economy. The current regimen is a blight — on immigrants who need the work, on employers who need the labor, and on a nation whose ideals of fair play and image as a welcoming and caring place are seriously at risk.

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Lou Dobbs likes the President — of Mexico!

Excerpt from a recent statement below. For non-American readers, Dobbs is a prominent opponent of free trade and is very critical of America’s partial free trade agreement with Mexico

Our president told the Guatemalan people that the American people “need to be persuaded” that the U.S. government takes seriously its responsibility to secure our national borders before passing so-called comprehensive immigration reform. I almost got sick to my stomach as I heard President Bush try to explain that he couldn’t just throw the borders wide open because his foolish fellow citizens truly believe that their president has first an obligation to secure the nation and the safety of all Americans.

This administration seems to believe “persuasion” of the American people is a sufficient response to every challenge, rather than a straightforward resolution of issues. And this from the president that likes to call himself The Decider. I think even he now realizes that’s only true in the most limited sense.

The president concluded his trip in Mexico, where he met with President Felipe Calderon. And for the first time in more than five years, I can honestly say the Mexican government is doing a few things right. President Calderon, in office less than four months, has strongly challenged the drug cartels wreaking havoc in Northern Mexico and even sent a dozen drug cartel and gang leaders to the United States to stand trial.

Calderon has shown every sign of trying to clamp down on crime and violence, reasserting federal police power and strengthening Mexico’s drug laws. He has sent federal police and the military to eight of the nation’s 31 states to stop the escalating violence that could tear apart his country.

President Calderon promises that drug cartel threats to his administration will not stop his crackdown on drugs, crime and violence. And President Bush should demand an equally vigorous attack on the cartels north of the border and expend every U.S. effort to eradicate drug traffic on our southern border. It’s as if this president, who has refused to secure our borders, is indifferent to potential terrorist threats, illegal immigration and the fact that the vast majority of methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine and heroin enter the United States from Mexico.

I hope our president understands that the American people want more than his efforts at persuasion on our national border security, illegal immigration and drug trafficking crises. We want real action, real results.

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A flippant solution to illegal immigration

Attributed to George Carlin

Bush wants us to cut the amount of gas we use. The best way to stop using so much gas is to deport 11 million illegal immigrants! That would be 11 million less people using our gas. The price of gas would come down.

Bring our troops home from Iraq to guard the border. When they catch an illegal immigrant crossing the border, hand him a canteen, rifle and some ammo and ship him to Iraq . Tell him if he wants to come to America he must serve a tour in the military. Give him a soldier’s pay while he’s there and tax him on it. After his tour, he will be allowed to become a citizen since he defended this country. He will also be registered to be taxed and be a legal patriot. This option will probably deter illegal immigration and provide a solution for the troops in Iraq and the aliens trying to make a better life for themselves.

If they refuse to serve, ship them to Iraq anyway, without the canteen, rifle or ammo. Problem solved…

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Poll Shows French Back Sarkozy on Immigration

Presidential candidate Sarkozy call for a ministry for immigration and national identity outraged rights groups and all politicians. But a poll on Friday found that most French backed his idea.

Critics have said linking the two policies stigmatised immigrants and was a low blow by the centre-right Sarkozy, who is trying to shore up his ratings with voters from the far right to counterbalance centrist Francois Bayrou’s rising popularity. But the OpinionWay survey for Le Figaro daily found that 55 percent of French people agreed with Sarkozy’s proposal for a ministry and 65 percent with his subsequent explanation that the “immigrants that join us must sign up to the national identity”.

The interior minister’s comments found the most support in his ruling UMP party, but also won a strong backing from far-right sympathisers and Bayrou’s UDF party. They even found an echo with 31 percent of the Socialist sympathisers who took part in the survey.

Immigration has dominated media headlines since Sarkozy made the proposal last week, putting the subject back at the heart of the campaign for the April and May presidential election which had been dominated by discussion of jobs and purchasing power. Sarkozy, who is leading election opinion polls, has made a hard line on immigration part of his campaign from the start to try and pick up votes from far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen who stunned France in the 2002 elections by finishing second. Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, lying second in polls, has said Sarkozy was trying to scare people by making an “unacceptable” link between immigration and national identity.

Images of desperate immigrants combined with fears about terrorism and unemployment have fuelled insecurities and stirred the immigration debate across Europe and in the United States. Sarkozy says there is no shame in trying to attract voters from the far right. “I do not agree that the simple fact of talking about immigration is associated with the extremes and racism,” he said at an event in Nantes in western France on Thursday. “Since 1983, we have the strongest far right in Europe, we must not carry on as if it does not exist. I want to talk to those who have moved towards the far right because they are suffering.”

Sarkozy took a tough line with rioters in poor suburbs housing largely immigrant populations and made waves over the expulsion of some immigrant school children last year.

While his strategy may turn out to be popular with voters, many politicians, inclu ing some in the government, disagree. “This mixture of a ministry of immigration and French identity is indecent,” Azouz Begag, the minister for equal opportunities, said on France 2 television on Friday. “I’m not stupid and nor are the French. It’s a hook to go and look for the lost sheep of the National Front to bring them back to the Republican fold.”

National Front leader Le Pen has accused Sarkozy of stealing his ideas and in a sign he is worried about losing votes to his main rival has stepped up media appearances in recent days. “We’ve been saying for a long time that immigration is a very serious problem,” his daughter, Marine Le Pen said. “But ideas are not enough. You need actions.”

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Immigration bill still stalled

President Bush says he wants an immigration bill this year. So do the top Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. Other supporters range from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Service Employees International Union. Seldom has legislation received such high-profile backers from across such a broad ideological spectrum. And seldom has legislation with such powerful backing faced such an uphill battle.

Behind the scenes, both on and off Capitol Hill, efforts have been underway for weeks to build momentum for a sweeping new immigration law designed to eliminate the nation’s underground economy by intensifying security along the nation’s borders, broadening opportunities for foreigners to work in the USA and legalizing many of the 12 million people who live in the country illegally. Those efforts hit a bump in the road this week when a bipartisan group working to draft a bill — Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. and John McCain, R-Ariz., and Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. — postponed efforts to reach a deal.

Kennedy told USA TODAY on Tuesday he plans to use immigration legislation the Senate Judiciary Committee approved last year as the starting point. He said “rather than having a new departure,” advocates for the immigration overhaul “would save ourselves a lot of time” by beginning work on last year’s bill. The decision marks a change in strategy for the foursome, who have been working on the immigration legislation with the hope of winning Senate passage before the end of May. Last week, Gutierrez told reporters they would unveil legislation shortly. “We are going to keep it bipartisan and bicameral,” he said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who chairs the Judiciary Committee, the first stop in the legislative process for any new immigration legislation, wouldn’t say whether he would go along with Kennedy’s plan. He sounded exasperated when reporters asked about it. “Last week, he was doing a bill with Sen. McCain; this week, it’s something different,” Leahy said.

McCain’s spokeswoman, Eileen McMenamin, said her boss remains committed to passage of an immigration bill that gives many illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship. That position is anathema to some conservative Republicans, a constituency McCain needs to win presidential primaries next year. “It’s rewarding people for breaking the law,” says Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, a group of House members who oppose the effort to legalize people who are here unlawfully. The inability of Kennedy, McCain, Gutierrez and Flake to introduce a joint immigration bill underscores the difficulty in working on an issue that is so divisive for both political parties.

* Divisions on the left: The NAACP, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the National Council of La Raza are among the civil rights groups lobbying in favor of immigration legislation that includes an expanded “guest worker” program for foreigners and a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. So are the labor unions UNITE HERE and the SEIU. The AFL-CIO has withheld support because of concerns over the impact of foreign guest workers on U.S. wages and working conditions. This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center announced plans to oppose expansion of a guest-worker program that law center lawyer Mary Bauer described as “shamefully abusive.”

* Divisions on the right: Led by the Chamber of Commerce, business interests ranging from Microsoft to the American Nursery and Landscape Association press for legislation that would allow more foreigners to work here and those who are working here illegally to stay. There is a fierce push back from the GOP’s populist wing. “You have big businesses just watering at the mouth looking at this pool of cheap labor,” Bilbray said in an interview this month. “Wealthy white people get cheap gardeners, but the blue-collar lose jobs.”

Bush, who last year endorsed a Senate bill that included the possibility of citizenship for illegal immigrants, may be backing off this year. Last month, two members of his Cabinet, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that they favored giving illegal workers legal status but stopped short of endorsing citizenship.

At an appearance before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Barry Jackson, a deputy assistant to the president, cautioned that the bill must be passed this year before the next presidential campaign complicates the political picture. “Time is not an ally in this debate,” Jackson said.

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More on the Dutch unrest

Post lifted from American Thinker

The Brussels Journal has been following the outbreak of rioting by the non-immigrant residents of a working class neighborhood in the Dutch town of Utrecht following the death last Sunday of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old indigenous Dutchman who was shot by a police officer. This incident apparently followed many complaints by residents about intimidation by youths of Moroccan origin.

Apparently Mulder intervened when Muslim youths harassed a pregnant native Dutch woman. He was able to grab the knife of one of the youths. When the police arrived Mulder was shot because he had raised the knife. Witnesses say Mulder was indicating to the police that he had called for them.

The blog Klein Verzet reports in some detail that media and government officials are trying to place the blame on football style hooliganism (for which Utrecht fans have a deserved reputation).The activities of Turkish “youths” in this working class community are mostly ignored by the media and government. “Klein Verzet” also notes

When ‘youths’ where involved Dutch government never took such measures, the tough repressive action seem reserved for the native Dutch folks before he asks this excellent question.  One can only wonder, how much more confidence the people in the neighborhood will get in a government that does not protect them but arrests them…

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More on the Hazleton Trial

The debate over Hazleton’s effort to deal with illegal immigration has finally found its way to a court of law. But don’t expect the trial now under way in U.S. District Court at Scranton to settle the matter. However Judge James Munley rules on the challenge to the city’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act, the losing side will almost surely appeal. The process is giving northeastern Pennsylvanians a first-hand look at how meticulous, deliberative and sometimes silly our legal system can be.

When you take an emotionally explosive issue like immigration, put it into a federal courtroom and expose it to the national media, you get a strong public reaction. E-mails and letters to the editor of the Standard-Speaker from around the country show a mixed reaction. Some see Mayor Louis Barletta’s efforts to control illegal immigration as discriminatory against Hazleton’s Hispanic community. Others see it as a small-town mayor’s crusade to handle something the federal government has failed to do.

The legal question over the ordinance is serious and legitimate. From our vantage point, the trial has exposed weaknesses on both sides. The city, for example, has been forced to change language in the ordinance that makes reference to “national origin, ethnicity, or race.” It’s hard to fathom how city officials allowed that phrase to survive the numerous drafts leading up to the law’s passage.

The plaintiffs continue to cling to dubious claims that the law has resulted in ethnic intimidation, including a specious charge that a family’s garbage wasn’t picked up because they are Hispanic and a complaint about police presence at a demonstration last summer.

And there have been silly moments. When Councilman Joseph Yannuzzi responded to a question about why council didn’t hire a consultant to study the effects of illegal immigration before passing the law, he responded that the city couldn’t launch a study for every proposed ordinance. “The pooper-scooper law, why not do a study on that?” he asked. At least one regional newspaper seized on the remark, using the headline, “Act likened to pooper-scooper law.” The implication that Yannuzzi was comparing illegal immigrants to dog litter was unfair and ridiculous. But that’s the way things go in the emotionally charged debate about immigration.

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Now Official: Mexico Running US Immigration Policy

Comment from Sher Zieve

It has now become official. Mexico (if not other south of the border countries) is now running US immigration policy. During President Bush’s meetings in Mexico, this week, he was chastised by Mexican President Felipe Calderon for not pushing “immigration reform” (AKA “amnesty” or “open border”-take your pick) for illegal Mexican national entering the USA. Calderon continued to blast Bush on US plans to build a border fence and any other methods to curb the continued illegal aliens’ immigration from Mexico into the United States. Instead, Calderon said that improving the economic conditions of Mexico “is the only way in order to truly solve the migratory issue.” Note: Mexico’s leaders have done little to nothing to improve that country’s “economic conditions” for decades. The illegal immigration from Mexico has been ongoing since long before President Ronald Reagan was POTUS in the 1980s.

Instead, from the US side of the equation, the border fence bill (which was passed by both US Congressional houses in 2006) is now in jeopardy of ever being implemented. DHS Chief Michael Chertoff recently said that US Border officials advised that the building of the fence `may be unnecessary’. One has to wonder if any coercion was used in order to gain this concession from the USBP. Don’t forget that this is the same DHS whose Inspector General Richard Skinner admitted to Congress that he and his staff had lied about Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean, in its provision of faked “evidence” to prosecutor Johnny Sutton-in order to gain convictions against those who were doing their jobs by daring to attempt to quell illegal immigration and to stop admitted drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila. The current administration still remains silent on this revelation, Ramos and Compean remain in prison and there has been no indication of even a consideration of presidential pardon.

For his steadfastness in prosecuting a war against Islamo-fascism, against the statements of Democrat and RINO “leaders”, who are now even condemning the usage of the words “evil” and “victory”, I commend President Bush. I also commend him on the strong economy that his administration has produced for the country. However, the illegal immigration (which includes illegal Mexican nationals, armed drug smugglers and OTMs-other than Mexican terrorists) essentially open borders policy has as great an opportunity of bringing the US to its knees as does a nuclear bomb fired from a foreign country. We taxpayers are expected to fund illegals who receive free healthcare-while it is demanded that we pay for it. US citizens, however, must pay for our own.

The open borders policy has allowed the multi-national Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) Central American gang to both enter the US and take over major portions of multiple US cities. Although Mexican President Calderon said Wednesday “I have family in the United States, and what I can say is that they are people who work and respect the country, people who pay taxes to your government, people who harvest the vegetables you probably eat, people who serve food in restaurants, people who contribute to the prosperity of the United States”, their drain upon US services far outweighs any contributions to the country. But, President Bush seemed to agree with Calderon, when he commented: “If we have immigration reform, it will make it less likely that somebody will feel like they have to sneak across the border and therefore, take pressure off the border.” Note: By any other name, this “immigration reform” means amnesty and increased illegal immigration across our southern border areas.

In addition to promising the Mexican people that he would push for immigration reform (amnesty) he also promised the Guatemalan people (and one must assume all Central, Latin and South American countries) the same thing. With President Bush’s recent promises to those south-of-our borders, the real question is what promises does he give to citizens of the United States. The clear answer strongly appears to be US open borders and the additional onslaughts of illegal aliens.

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Big unrest over immigrants in the Netherlands

Dutch police in Utrecht attack the Dutch and ignore immigrant misbehaviour

The Dutch police deny that the police officer wh killed Rinie Mulder is of Moroccan or Turkish descent. Esther, a Dutch blogger, refers to a post on a Moroccan website saying the police officer is Turkish, not Moroccan. The post has, however, been removed. Yesterday, we reported, relying on sources in Ondiep, that the officer was a Moroccan woman.

It remains unclear what happened in the Utrecht neighbourhood Ondiep on Sunday evening when a police officer shot 54-year old Mulder. According to some press reports, which also rely on rumours, Mulder was drunk when he and a friend became involved in a quarrel with immigrant youths. When the police intervened they shot Mulder. The man had been complaining about harassment by immigrant youths for months. Neighbours accuse the police of turning a blind eye to the youths’ behaviour.

Following Mulder’s death indigenous Dutch have started rioting. According to the authorities many rioters came from outside the neighbourhood.

The police have placed fences and cameras around the neighbourhood, and have closed it off to non-residents. The closure of the neighborhood will be reviewed day by day. The fines for those entering are going up. On Tuesday the fine amounted to 200 euros, on Wednesday to 300 euros and on Thursday to 400 euros.

Ondiep has now literally become a no-go area.

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Communist Rally Goes Awry

The raid by immigration officials on a factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts, has got a lot of attention. Mainstream Leftists did not seem to be interested enough so some far Left groups staged a protest rally. But even Communists are not allowed to defame the Democratic party! A few fun excerpts:

“Chanting slogans in Spanish and English, some carrying bilingual signs, about two dozen demonstrators showed up outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office downtown on Monday. They were protesting last week’s raid in which 361 alleged illegal immigrants were rounded up at a New Bedford factory that supplies backpacks and other gear for the military.

No mainstream immigration activist groups showed up for the 5 p.m rally and picket line. Most of the participants were Brown University students or members of small social justice or labor groups. Brian Chidester of the International Socialist Organization [Communists], one of the leaders of the demonstration, railed against what he called a military-style raid on the workers at Michael Bianco Inc. a week ago today…. “This was a total crime - terrorism on the part of the U.S. government is what you would have to call it.” ….

Not all went smoothly, however, at least two speakers were shouted down and had the microphone wrested from them when their speeches deviated from the accepted line, criticizing the Democratic Party and illegal immigration.

Fred Bergen, representing a group called Working Class Emancipation, declared, “the only thing that can stop these attacks on immigrant workers is the power of the labor movement.” But, he said, that power was “hijacked by people who wanted to turn this into a movement for the Democratic Party. The party that is against immigrant workers, the party that is for building a wall on the border, the party that is for more so-called enforcement. We need a party that represents the working class. “This is not going to come from Congress, it’s not going to come from the Green Party or Ralph Nader who campaigned on a platform of anti-immigrant racism.”

“Go away!” said Chidester, ripping the microphone from Bergen’s hand, “if you are going to attack people, go away.”

Paul Tarullo, executive director of US Citizens Rights, got only a few words into a speech against illegal immigration when people started calling him a “racist” and shouting “Get out of here. We don’t need racists around here.” He too lost the microphone, and as he was walking away, the protesters started chanting “Racist go home!”

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No free speech for conservatives there! And Leftists have to toe just the right line! Stalin would have understood.

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Riot police called in to quell riot at British immigration centre

“Seven staff and two inmates were taken to hospital after suffering smoke inhalation after a riot broke out at an immigration detention centre today. Riot police carrying shields were seen entering the centre at Kidlington, Oxfordshire, to help specialist Tornado units - highly trained prison officers trained to deal with riots. A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Police, fire and ambulance teams are on the scene and a number of Tornado units from the Prison Service have been deployed to the centre.

A Thames Valley Police spokesman said all three emergency services were called to the centre, to the north of Oxford, at 6.50am. He said 30 firefighters were at the scene to deal with a fire, although the main issue was smoke damage. “No serious injuries have been reported and the fire has now been put out,” he said. “Police on the scene and the fire service are investigating the cause but it’s likely to be suspicious.”

The centre, which is run by private company GEO UK Ltd, opened in 1993 and holds 200 adult male detainees, including failed asylum seekers and immigration offenders awaiting deportation.

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Hazleton trial update

Day three of the Hazleton Immigration trial sees the man who sparked a headline-grabbing controversy taking the witness stand to explain himself. In Brittany Westbrook’s report, we hear what Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta had to say. It is considered by many to be the highlight of the trial which will last about two weeks.

In court today, Mayor Lou Barletta took the stand in staunch defense of Hazleton’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act. “I’ve been waiting for this day that’s all I can say.”

Reporter: A confident Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta enters the federal courthouse in Scranton to take the stand in defense of his city’s passing of the Illegal Immigration Relief Act. The law punishes employers for hiring and landlords for housing illegal immigrants.

ACLU: “he absolutely is a key witness and we’re looking forward to his testimony”

Reporter: The American Civil Liberties Union is one of the plaintiffs claiming that the law is unconstitutional because immigration matters are strictly under the power of the federal government. Barletta has always given a spike in crime and dip in the quality of life in Hazleton as part of the motivation for the law, but in court, attorneys representing the ACLU wanted to know what evidence he has to prove it.

ACLU: “whether they were based on clear minded and consistent and logical research or based on whim and fancy which we believe”

Defense Attorney: “city councils pass ordinances everyday and there is no rule under the constitution or federal law that a city council commission an independent scientific study every time they act”

Reporter: Defense attorneys say Hazleton’s only constitutional obligation is to act reasonably and that’s what the city has done. Still, Barletta admitted that he has no idea how many illegal immigrants are actually in Hazleton and said he doesn’t know the details of the city’s statistics on the crime rate in relation to illegal immigrants. Still he defends the law.

Mayor Lou Barletta: “the story is true and this is heartfelt i am fighting for he people of my city… tomorrow will be my day and my opportunity to tell my story”

Brittany Westbrook: Barletta says he will not back down in Scranton not in Philadelphia if we have to and not in the Supreme Court, he believes Hazleton is doing the right thing. The trial continues in Scranton tomorrow.

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Bush returns home to deal with illegal migrants’ future

“President Bush ended his five-nation tour of Latin America yesterday by pleading with senators back home to agree a “middle way” deal on the future of 12 million illegal immigrants in the US. On a trip mired in scenes of sometimes violent protests this week, the need for US immigration reform has been made plain at every stop Mr Bush has made - but never more so than at yesterday’s joint press conference with President Calderon of Mexico.

Asked by an American reporter whether he had relatives working illegally over the US border, Mr Calderon did not attempt to deny it. Instead, he said: “We do have family in the United States. These are people who work and respect that country.” They paid taxes, had children, laboured in fields and, he added, “probably handle what you eat”.

Mr Bush insisted that he was upbeat about his chances of pushing through Congress immigration reforms that would give legal rights and a “pathway to citizenship” to many Latino migrant workers. The measures are similar to ones blocked by Republicans last year, but since then control on Capitol Hill has passed to the Democrats, who are much more sympathetic to comprehensive immigration reform. An immigration Bill is one of the few areas where Mr Bush, by working with his Democrat opponents, can still hope to secure meaningful legislation in the next year.

But for any Bill to succeed it would still need the support of perhaps 20 Republicans in the Senate and double that number in the House of Representatives. Mr Bush promised yesterday that his Administration was working with leaders of both parties to secure a compromise deal. “We believe we can find a rational way forward - some way between automatic citizenship and kicking people out of the country,” said Mr Bush, who went on to offer rare praise for Edward Kennedy, the liberal Democrat leading the effort on Capitol Hill, as “one of the best legislative senators there is . . . he gets the job done”.

Democrat leaders are promising that the Senate will vote on a new immigration Bill late next month or in early May. But Mr Kennedy broke ranks this week with a cross-party group working on the legislation by announcing that he planned to back a Bill agreed in committee last year before being amended on the Senate floor by Republicans. This would give all illegal immigrants the chance to apply for US citizenship, rather than limiting such rights to only those who have been in America for at least five years. It remains far from clear whether Mr Bush would support such a measure. He said yesterday that the option of offering a complete amnesty to illegal workers “would not fly”.

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Bush defends immigrant crackdown — presses for new laws

The US President, George Bush, has defended a surge of deportations that have inflamed passions in Latin America, but he vowed to redouble efforts to overhaul the migration system, calling on the Senate to pass new laws by August. “The system needs to be fixed,” he said on Monday during his first visit to Guatemala, an impoverished nation which many have fled seeking opportunities in the US, legally and illegally. “It seems like to me, we’ve got to get this done by August.”

Although he called it a goal rather than a deadline, it was the first time Mr Bush has prodded politicians with a time frame since the Democrats took over Congress. It lso was a tacit acknowledgment that the next few months represent his last chance to push through the most significant domestic initiative remaining in his presidency. After that, aides believe, the approach of the 2008 presidential primaries would make consensus implausible.

The President’s visit put him in the awkward position of defending tough enforcement actions he has ordered recently to appease conservatives while assuring Latin Americans he will not expel most illegal immigrants from the US. Guatemala’s President, Oscar Berger, pressed him about recent deportations of Guatemalans that upset a country where a 10th of its population has moved north of the Rio Grande. About 18,000 Guatemalan illegal migrants were deported from the US last year, an increase of 60 per cent compared with 2005. Most were caught soon after crossing the US border, but a quarter had been in the country more than a year. “I’m sure they don’t want to be sent home,” Mr Bush said during an appearance with Mr Berger at the National Palace. “But we enforce our laws.”

Mr Bush also defended plans to seal off parts of the border with Mexico with a fence, saying it would give sceptical politicians confidence to back a guest worker program for immigrants.

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No more smart immigrants from India?

If you could choose between starting a high-tech career in India or the U.S., which would you pick? Indian immigrant Rosen Sharma opted for the U.S. in 1993 and has done extraordinarily well here. But if he were just coming out of college these days, he says, he would pick India. The business opportunities are better, he says, and quality of life issues are at least as good: Nice housing? Schools? Safe streets? The chance to feel prosperous on a young engineer’s salary? India is holding its own just fine against the U.S., he believes.

Sharma’s answer is unnerving. A big part of the U.S. tech boom over the past 20 years has come from our ability to pull in the best and the brightest from India, Taiwan and other Asian countries, year after year. We’ve taken it for granted that these talented immigrants want to come here and that they will help the next generation of American start-ups achieve greatness.

But Sharma’s perspective demands our attention. In 1993, he says, after graduating with flying colors from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Sharma headed straight for the U.S. So did most of his classmates. Of the 40 people in Sharma’s graduating class at IIT Delhi, he says, all but three came to the U.S.

It was a smart move for him and a great deal for the U.S. Sharma earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University and has since started more than a ha f-dozen companies–building products, generating revenue, rewarding investors and creating jobs. Now he sits on five company boards and runs his own start-up, SolidCore Systems, in Palo Alto, Calif.

The U.S. is home to Sharma now. He’s applied for U.S. citizenship. He’s raising his children here. He wants the U.S. to be an engine of innovation, for U.S. companies to build sought-after products and to generate good returns for workers and shareholders.

But Sharma, who is president of the IIT Delhi Alumni Association, says the next generation of Indian engineers are unlikely to feel the way he does: Last year, only 10 of the 45 IIT graduates who went through the same program Sharma did decided to pursue jobs in the U.S., he says.

If this represents a trend, it will have significant consequences for the U.S. AnnaLee Saxenian, now dean of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, has devoted years to tracking the impact of immigrant entrepreneurs. Along with researchers at Duke University, she reported in January that foreign-born immigrants helped start one of every four U.S. technology start-ups over the past decade. Together, those companies employed 450,000 people and generated $52 billion in sales in 2005, according to the study.

As America staggers toward the next national election, we’ll hear plenty of slogans about making the U.S. “more competitive.” Candidates will debate tax policies and vow to fix our public schools. Chances are you won’t hear them talking about making the U.S. more receptive to ambitious graduates from overseas. But they should. But take another look at my first question: It doesn’t just apply to foreign nationals. If you’re a bright young person born in the U.S., where should you begin your career? In this country or abroad? “Overseas,” asserts Sharma–but this time, for positive reasons. In order for U.S. companies to be competitive, to serve the largest number of customers and build the most suitable products for customers all over the globe, they will need executives who have broad global experience.

Students are already sensing this trend: Several months ago, when I spoke to business school students touring Silicon Valley about job prospects, many said they were actively considering international opportunities, too. It sounds like a contradiction–that the U.S. should continue to try to try to woo the best and the brightest from overseas even as homegrown emerging stars seek their fortunes outside our borders. But in a world where competition is truly global, that kind of exchange program makes sense–particularly if those Americans eventually return home and help build stronger companies.

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The oldest refugee population of all is still having to move

“Over the past few years there have been reports of French Jews relocating or even being urged to relocate by some Jewish groups and now there’s a new twist: French Jews are fleeing into Florida, the Miami Herald reports. And it’s providing a booming business for Florida immigration lawyers:

“Rod Kukurudz decided to uproot his family from a comfortable life in France to Surfside when his then 16-year-old daughter, Audrey, came home one night in 2005 - upset and fearful. “Dad,” she told him, “now even if it’s hot I have to wear a scarf to hide my Star of David,” while riding the Paris Metro.

French Jews living in South Florida told The Miami Herald that hostility from Islamic militants in France after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States spurred them to leave. Departures surged after last year’s abduction and death of Ilan Halimi in France. The 23-year-old Halimi, a French Jew of Moroccan parents, was kidnapped Jan. 21, 2006, by a gang of youths calling themselves the “Barbarians.”

“The atmosphere created by that episode, plus other incidents and the general hostility of Muslims in France toward Jews, is what’s behind my decision to leave,” said Kukurudz, who now lives with his wife and their three daughters, including Audrey, in Surfside. Vanessa Elmaleh is among a growing number of South Florida immigration attorneys helping French Jews secure U.S. visas - but not necessarily asylum.

So it’s being done perhaps a bit more under the political radar:

“Immigration court figures show a slight uptick in the number of asylum applications from French nationals starting in 2003 - but those figures do not specify whether applicants were French Jews. South Florida immigration attorneys say the majority of French Jews are arriving on immigrant, investor and business visas.

The Herald notes that a new State Department human rights reports say anti-semitic incidents are down in France from the same period in 2004 but up from the same period last year. The French government condemns any such incidents.

“France is not an anti-Semitic country,” Philippe Vinogradoff, France’s consul general in Miami, told The Miami Herald on Thursday. “France is doing a lot of efforts in its jurisdiction, in its education system, to eradicate definitively any trace of anti-Semitism.”

France’s Jewish population has been variously estimated at between 500,000 and 700,000 and its Muslim population at five million to six million. But French Jews here say the community has been depleted by frequent departures, the majority to Israel. Jewish Agency.figures show that almost 14,000 French Jews have resettled in Israel since 2001.

But the situation has become perceived as increasingly perilous for Jews in France. By 2005, some French Jews were bombproofing their schools.

More here

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A story from the trenches

The lack of economic insight below is saddening. No doubt that the firm was in the wrong but the alternative probably was to transfer the whole operation to the Mexican side of the border — as many firms have done already. As it was, at least some jobs were being kept in the USA. I doubt that there ever was much intention to hire many New Bedford citizens.

Punishing firms for doing what the government turns a blind eye to — and it REALLY turned a blind eye here, witness the Defence Dept. involvement — is rather disgusting. It is not much different from what would legally be defined as “entrapment”. It is border control that is needed — rather than punishing people for picking up what is dropped in front of them

A New Bedford, Mass., clothing and leather manufacturer, whose owner and managers were arrested last week in a massive federal raid on charges of hiring illegal aliens, had reneged on a promise to hire local residents in exchange for $57,000 in tax breaks and the city wants its money back. Mayor Scott W. Lang told The Washington Times he plans to “get every dime back” of tax benefits the company received as part of a five-year deal in which Michael Bianco Inc. (MBI) promised to hire local residents to fill an expanding work force. The mayor said the city has a long history of supplying skilled workers for needle-trade industries like MBI and he intends to “make sure we keep those jobs here.”

“We have no shortage of people in this town who are skilled, qualified and in the country legally. I intend to keep this company and these jobs in this city even under new management,” Mr. Lang said. “We’re talking about 500 jobs for the city, and I don’t want the greed of one employer to make them go away.”

Mr. Lang said he intends to seek the appointment of a trustee to oversee MBI. He also has called for an audit of all New Bedford businesses awarded tax breaks over the past 10 years to determine whether they are complying with hiring laws. In its last report to the city, in July 2005, MBI said it had created 291 jobs, 270 of which went to New Bedford residents.

Hundreds of federal agents and state and local police, led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), descended on MBI last week with search and arrests warrants, rounding up 361 illegal aliens from among the company’s 500 employees. Criminal complaints in the case accused MBI owner Francesco Insolia, 50; payroll manager Ana Figueroa, 40; plant manager Dilia Costa, 55; and office manager Gloria Melo, 41, of conspiring to encourage or induce illegal aliens to reside in the U.S. and conspiring to hire illegal aliens. Luis Torres, 45, also was charged in a separate complaint of providing phony identification papers to workers at the MBI factory.

The complaint said Mr. Insolia maintained a majority-illegals work force and that he intentionally sought out illegal aliens because “they were more desperate to find employment, and are thus more likely to endure severe workplace conditions he has imposed.” It described some of the workplace conditions as docking pay by 15 minutes for every minute an employee is late; fining employees $20 for spending more than two minutes in the restroom; providing one roll of toilet paper per restroom stall per day; fining employees $20 for leaving the work area before the break bell sounds; and fining employees $20 for talking while working.

MBI received a tax break from New Bedford before Mr. Lang’s election that saved the company $57,000 in property taxes over the past two years. Over a five-year period in which the company would have received more than $80,000 in tax breaks, MBI was to “give preference to qualified New Bedford residents” as the company expanded.

The mayor also questioned how the company, which has been awarded more than $90 million in Defense Department contracts to manufacture products for the U.S. military, could have avoided questions concerning its employees and working conditions from Defense Department quality-control inspectors who regularly visited the plant. “Federal government inspectors were in the plant on a regular basis, and working conditions and the legality of the work force which spoke four or five languages should have been very apparent,” he said. “They had to realize these were not the typical needle-trade workers, most of whom have been in the country for a very long time.”

In a statement, Mr. Insolia urged the public to “withhold judgment until all of the facts come out” and denied accusations about shabby workplace conditions and the treatment of workers. He also noted Defense Department quality-control inspectors were on-site up to four days a week and “freely and frequently walked the premises and interacted with our workers without incident or complaint.”

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Gonzales defends his patch

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was in San Diego recently to trumpet a major drug bust. After a 20-month investigation, authorities broke up a smuggling ring, arresting more than 400 people, seizing more than 18 tons of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines and confiscating $45 million in drug profits. Yet as Gonzales and I sat down for a quick interview, the conversation wandered off to the recently fired U.S. attorneys, immigration reform, and a notorious case involving ex-Border Patrol agents. He even brought up baseball. The graduate of Harvard Law School and pride of Humble, Texas, is a huge fan.

So it was no surprise when, in discussing the firings of eight U.S. attorneys — a subject on which Congress held hearings this past week — Gonzales started to sound like the manager of a team. “What I care about,” he said, “is, ‘Are we trading up?’ Are we going to make an improvement in the performance in that (judicial) district?” That may not be easy to do. Most of those who were dismissed had stellar performance reviews. Still, Gonzales disputed the suggestion that the firings may have been politically motivated.

“Some of the reasons that have been speculated are just not true,” Gonzales said. “For example, the notion that we would remove someone because they failed to pursue a public corruption case, we would not do that.” “I have an obligation,” he continued, “to ensure that we have the best people. All I will say is that the decisions that were made … were based upon performance, and there are many factors that go into that.”

Gonzales has one good argument on his side: U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. “We have to remember that these are political appointees,” he said. “These people were put in initially in large part because we thought they support the president’s priorities and support the president’s policies. And the president is entitled to have the people he wants as part of his team.”

Gonzales and Bush seem much more committed to keeping on their team U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton. It was his office that prosecuted the case of ex-Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who went to prison for shooting a drug smuggler. Sutton ‘will continue to have my full support,” Gonzales said. “We’ve known each other for many years. … Johnny is a law-and-order kind of guy. He does what he thinks is right.” Gonzales is also committed to the case. “What happened here was not Border Patrol agents doing their jobs,” he said. “They broke the law. … This was not just a question of agents shooting at an unarmed man, running away from them, who posed no deadly threat to their safety, but they lied about it. They covered it up. They concealed it. We can’t tolerate that.”

Gonzales also thinks that some of the public’s reaction to the case has to do with the anxiety that many Americans feel about immigration. That’s why the administration wants some sort of immigration reform that combines enforcement with a guest worker program and a path to legalization for illegal immigrants already here. After a few months of hiatus, Congress has now returned to that issue. The administration expects results. “The president laid out his principles for comprehensive immigration reform,” Gonzales said, “and he was very clear in saying he would not support amnesty.”

When I asked him how much of the debate is anchored in nativism, Gonzales smiled and said, “I’m not sure that I’m the best person to ask that because of the fact of my ancestry.” “That’s why I asked,” I said. I figured Gonzales might have some additional insights because of his ethnicity. He did. The nation’s first Mexican-American attorney general doesn’t seem too anxious over immigration and the changes it brings to the country. “Our country is so great because we’re a land of immigrants,” he said. “It is part of who we are, part of our history, part of our tradition. In many ways, it’s one of the strengths of our country.”

The nation’s top cop is right about that. He’s also right about the ex-Border Patrol agents. But he may yet be proved wrong on whether the firing of the U.S. attorneys amounts to “trading up.” As batting averages go, that’s not bad. But it could stand some improvement. Trouble is, we’re headed into the final innings of this administration.

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Australia: Christian politician calls for a halt to Muslim immigration

The leader of the Christian Democratic Party, Reverend Fred Nile, has called for an immediate moratorium on Islamic immigration to Australia. Rev Nile, who is the longest serving member of the NSW Legislative Council, was speaking to supporters at a gathering in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde yesterday. He said there has been no serious study of the potential effects on Australia of more than 300,000 Muslims who are already here, and Australians deserve a breathing space so the situation can be carefully assessed before Islamic immigration can be allowed to resume.

In the meantime, Australia should extend a welcoming hand to the many thousands of persecuted Christians who are presently displaced or at risk in the Middle East. “I pray that within a decade, Muslims in Australia will clearly have demonstrated their commitment to Aussie values including democratic pluralism and the rights of women. We can then assess whether Muslim immigration should begin again,” he said.

Rev Nile is leading 21 Christian Democratic Party candidates contesting seats in the NSW Legislative Council at the March 24 state election. Fifty-three Christian Democratic Party candidates are also running in Legislative Assembly electorates across the state.

Rev Nile said there are many reasons why it’s appropriate for NSW voters to make a statement on a federal issue as important as immigration. He said NSW has the benefit of a big share of Australia’s Middle Eastern Christians, and they’re rightly alarmed at the rapid growth in NSW of Islamic concentrations, where the English language is disregarded and Australian family values are unknown or despised

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Crooked Mexican Immigration Agents

Federal [Mexican] police detained 81 Chinese immigrants and 22 immigration agents on Friday after the Chinese were discovered hiding in the Cancun airport terminal, possibly with the protection of Mexican immigration officers. The 53 Chinese men and 28 women arrived on a flight from Europe late Thursday. Because of a lack of interpreters, police were unable to glean more details. “We don’t have all the information, what we can confirm is that 81 Chinese citizens were detained this morning at the airport,” said Guadalupe Cerino, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office. “We still do not have details on how they entered Mexico.”

Federal police doing routine patrols found the Chinese in the airport, apparently accompanied by agents of the National Immigration Institute, police said. Whe police asked the immigration officers what they were doing with the immigrants, they gave contradictory explanations, leading police to detain both them and the Chinese, police said. In the past, some immigration officers have been known to allow or help undocumented immigrants on their way to Mexico’s northern border - where they usually try to enter the United States - in exchange for bribes.
The immigrants were taken to the local offices of the federal attorney general.

The immigration officers were being held for questioning at separate offices, police said. Police were waiting for interpreters to interview the Chinese immigrants and determine whether the immigration agents were involved in a scheme to smuggle them to the United States.

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Hazleton (PA) fighting ACLU now

A U.S. trial that starts Monday will be the first to explore just how far local governments can go in trying to fight illegal immigration, a highly sensitive subject in the United States. This city made national headlines when it tried to penalize the landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and the businesses who give them jobs. An estimated 12 million illegal immigrants live in the U.S., and dozens of other communities have tried to find ways to contain them, including proposing English-only measures and working with immigration authorities to report illegal residents. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress continues to debate the issue at large.

Republican Mayor Lou Barletta, who pushed through the laws, said illegal immigrants were joining gangs, dealing drugs, committing violent crimes and destroying the quality of life in this city of 31,000. “We’re not only fighting for Hazleton, we’re fighting for cities all across America,” he said.

But the American Civil Liberties Union and Hispanic groups, which filed suit against the city, call the measures divisive and racist and say they trample on the U.S. government’s exclusive power to regulate immigration. U.S. District Judge James Munley has barred enforcement of the laws pending trial, but even the threat of action has led many Hispanics to flee the city, and businesses that cater to them report plummeting sales. “The city of Hazleton is promoting discrimination,” said Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director.

In court papers, Hazleton said illegal immigrants have committed at least 47 crimes since last spring - including the shooting death of a 29-year-old man - consuming much of the city’s police overtime budget. Illegal immigrants were the subject of one-third of all drug arrests in 2005, and they have driven up the costs of health care and education, the city said.

The city’s remedy, the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, would impose fines on landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and deny business permits to companies that employ them. The law e powers the city to investigate written complaints about a person’s immigration status, using a federal database. Ethnicity may be used as a basis for making a complaint, as long as it is not the sole or primary factor. A companion measure requires tenants to register with City Hall.

Critics say if the Hazleton measures are allowed to stand, white residents will be suspicious of every Hispanic they see. “Every Latino will be a target,” said Cesar A. Perales, president of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the groups filing suit. “The significance of Hazleton is about stopping this anti-immigrant movement dead in its tracks.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has sided with the ACLU, arguing in a friend-of-the-court brief that if cities were permitted to enforce their own immigration laws, businesses would have to comply with a “patchwork of different and potentially inconsistent obligations.” But Judicial Watch, a Washington-based conservative legal group, said in its own brief that the ordinances “are in harmony with federal law, not at odds with it” because they rely on the federal government’s own standards on who may be in the country.

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Deval “Bling” Patrick doing all he can to hinder law enforcement

The immigration raid of a New Bedford leather manufacturer offered beleaguered [Massachusetts] Gov. Deval Patrick a much-needed chance to show leadership — and get the spotlight off a series of embarrassing political gaffes [like spending taxpayer money on various sorts of personal showiness]. Patrick, whose campaign for governor included a call to let illegal immigrants get drivers licenses, wasted no time criticizing the conduct of the raid that netted 361 factory workers.

After the raid, Patrick took federal immigration officials to task for initially barring state social service workers from interviewing detainees and for quickly flying many of those swept up in the raid out of Massachusetts, splitting families. “It is a humanitarian crisis and it is not over yet,” Patrick said Friday, the morning after traveling to New Bedford for an emotional meeting with relatives of the detainees. “Our focus is on the children and those other vulnerable people who were affected by this.”

There was both peril and promise in Patrick’s reaction to the raid. On the plus side for Patrick, it drew attention away from a spate of political fumbles and gave him a chance to look like a take-charge leader. But it also tossed him into the national spotlight on one of the most politically incendiary issues of the day. His initial handling of the situation won praise from some political observers. Patrick has walked a fine line between expre sing concern for those directly affected by the raid, while also acknowledging that laws must be enforced, according to Watanabe, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

Patrick has said it had “taken more calls to Washington than it ought to have taken” to get access to the detainees by social workers. “He was very careful in not making a judgment about whether it was legitimate to attempt to enforce those laws as opposed to how it was done,” said Watanabe. “After a couple of very rough weeks, this reflected what at least some felt was the best promise of Patrick.”

Not everyone is convinced Patrick has been clear enough that much of the blame should go to those who were in the country illegally. As heartbreaking as the images of children separated from their parents might be, federal immigration officials aren’t the problem, according to Massachusetts House GOP leader Brad Jones, R-North Reading. “When you break the law, you not only put yourself at risk, but you put your family at risk,” he said. “Just because you have children doesn’t mean you should be held to a different standard.”

Illegal immigration isn’t a new issue for Patrick. During the campaign he said he favored letting illegal immigrants obtain driver’s licenses, saying it would be an effective way for the government to document the immigrants, but later backed away from that position. Shortly after taking his oath of office, Patrick scaled back an agreement ex-Gov. Mitt Romney had signed just weeks earlier with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to have state police take on immigration enforcement duties.

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Arizona raids follow Mass. and Calif. raids

Federal authorities on Friday raided a construction company accused of hiring illegal immigrants, detaining eight undocumented workers and arresting several other employees. Scores of agents fanned out in Douglas, along the Mexico border, and in Sierra Vista, about 50 miles northwest, in the raid on Sun Dry Wall & Stucco Inc.’s offices, a foreman’s home, the home of a suspected counterfeiter and eight work sites.

Company president Ivan Hardt, 44; the firm’s human resources manager, Carol Hill, 42; and four other employees were taken into custody on federal counts of conspiring to knowingly hire illegal workers and harboring illegal workers, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Immigration officials were processing the eight detained workers, all from Mexico. Three other people were charged in state court with supplying workers with counterfeit work documents, officials said. A message left at the Sierra Vista-based firm was not immediately returned. Federal authorities in Arizona set up a hot line to help families inquire about relatives who may have been arrested.

The arrests came three days after federal agents raided a leather factory in Massachusetts and detained more than 300 illegal workers. Those arrests drew criticism over the children left behind at schools and day-care centers after parents were detained. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick called it a “humanitarian crisis.” Dozens of those workers were later released for humanitarian reasons, most related to child care. They still must appear before a judge for immigration hearings.

Authorities alleged the leather company, Michael Bianco Inc. in New Bedford, used sweatshop conditions to meet the demands of $91 million in military contracts to make products including safety vests and lightweight backpacks. The Defense Logistics Agency said Thursday it was suspending the company from bidding on future contracts.

Federal agents also raided a party rental company in Southern California on Thursday and arrested 11 workers on immigration violations, authorities said. That company did work at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, and the raid was part of an effort by immigration authorities in San Diego to review employment records of military contractors.

In Arizona, immigration agents had promised stepped-up examinations of construction, agricultural, landscaping and service-industry businesses in hopes of deterring illegal hiring and lessening the economic incentive for immigrants to illegally cross the border. The Pew Hispanic Center has estimated that 10 percent of all workers in Arizona’s economy are illegal immigrants, a figure that federal officials have called conservative.

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Canadian procedures a concern

U.S. officials should watch how Canada enforces its immigration rules to see if the neighbour to the north is being tough enough, an American analyst told a Congress committee this week. “We should always keep an eye on what the Canadians are doing with their immigration controls and their visa policies,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Because if they get sloppy or their civil liberties concerns get even more paramount in their own thinking, we may need to worry about tightening up that border even more.”

Canada’s procedures are “not airtight,” he told a homeland security subcommittee in the House of Representatives. “They’re not as good as ours. The Canadians do have this Commonwealth issue. There are a lot of would-be terrorists who live in Bri ain, not to mention Pakistan and south Asia (with direct access to the Canada).” “So I do think we have to be at least a little nervous.”

Several experts at Thursday’s hearing testified that Americans can’t ignore security at the northern border just because illegal immigrants at the Mexican line are such a big problem. “I believe we need to close the entire circle,” said Representative Loretta Sanchez of California, who chairs the committee. “I don’t mean fence everything . . . But close it . . . so we have a pretty high level of confidence that we do have a say in who’s coming in and going out.”

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Missouri confusion

Arrests this week of 22 illegal immigrants working as janitors in state office buildings illustrate the entrenched, complicated problem. The episode also makes the case for comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level. People without proper documents are even cleaning up after state legislators like those in Missouri, who are considering several bills aimed at deterring illegal immigration.

Misconceptions abound, particularly with so many politicians grandstanding on the subject. For one thing, immigrant workers are not necessarily new arrivals. According to the attorney for the recently arrested workers, for example, most had roots in the Jefferson City area. Many have families. Most received low bond amounts, an indication they had no prior problems with the law.

Gov. Matt Blunt has ordered all agencies to audit contractors. This may sound good, but he’ll soon discover it is a costly, time-consuming endeavor that may eat up the savings contractors are supposed to provide. Current government systems can not provide all the necessary information, either. This shows why comprehensive federal reforms are needed. States alone can’t do the job.

Blunt seemed far too eager to grab publicity for the raids in an effort to look “tough” on illegal immigrants. Given the fact that the arrested individuals had been working in state facilities, this hardly seems like something the governor should be celebrating. Shouldn’t he be embarrassed?

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A small twitch of law enforcement in San Francisco area

Federal agents arrested at least 30 alleged illegal immigrants in San Rafael and Novato Tuesday and Wednesday during immigration raids, authorities said. In response, scores of other undocumented immigrants skipped work and kept their children home from school out of fear they too would be detained, community leaders said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lori Haley confirmed that agents were conducting arrests in San Rafael and Novato but would not say how many people had been picked up.

The raids are part of an ongoing campaign, “Operation Return to Sender,” to arrest illegal immigrants who are convicted criminals or have ignored deportation orders. Since it began last spring, however, many other immigration violators also have been arrested in the course of the operation.

Immigration agents notified San Rafael police early Wednesday that they were serving deportation warrants at residences, and later said 30 people had been arrested, said city spokeswoman Lydia Romero. “We understand ICE has a job to do, but we don’t condone the methods they use,” said Romero. “Though they are federal police, we do not agree with them identifying themselves as ‘police.’ Local police have fostered a relationship with the community for many years and this destroys it in a knock.”

Tom Wilson, director of the Canal Alliance, a nonprofit group serving the largely immigrant San Rafael neighborhood, said in a letter to the community that some men had been taken from their beds in handcuffs and boxer shorts without a chance to put on their pants. “The actions taken by federal agents are fraudulent, destructive and unnecessarily violent,” he said, calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop arresting people they encounter at residences when those people are not the targets named in the warrants. Agents arrested 838 people in Northern and Central California from Oct. 1, 2006, to Jan. 26, of whom 500 were fugitives and 319 had criminal records, Haley said.

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Tennessee Senate passes English-only test bill

The state Senate passed a bill 22-5 to put driver’s license tests in English-only Monday, much to the chagrin of the Bredesen administration and some Democra s that say it does not address illegal immigration. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro), would put written driver’s license exams in English-only, except for when the applicant has federal documentation that shows they are in the country legally. At that point, the applicant could take the test in the three languages besides English that are currently offered - Japanese, Korean and Spanish. Ketron said allowing that exception would “take care” of the concerns of foreign companies investing in Tennessee, such as Bridgestone and Nissan. “I firmly feel that this sets the right tone in what people want to see in the state of Tennessee,” Ketron told his Senate colleagues in the Senate chamber.

But high-ranking Democrats, such as Gov. Phil Bredesen, Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Matt Kisber, House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh (D-Covington) and Senate Democratic Leader Jim Kyle (D-Memphis), are concerned that the bill sends the wrong message to foreign companies that may want to come to Tennessee and does not affect the problem of illegal immigration. The Department of Safety’s current policy is to not grant licenses to applicants who cannot prove they are in the country legally.

Monday on the Senate floor, Kyle spoke in opposition to the bill, saying the safety department is already doing “everything this bill purports to do.” “This bill does not deal with illegal immigration,” Kyle said. “It deals with foreign nationals. That’s what it deals with — people who are invited to this country. “I will tell you that a state that holds itself out as being business friendly, and is not friendly to foreign nationals, is not friendly to business.”

But the bill passed 22-5… While the bill got the Senate’s approval, it still faces a Democratic-controlled House whose leadership is against the measure, saying it sends the “wrong message” to foreign companies. Naifeh has said the bill is a “detriment to what this state should stand for.”

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British professor ‘hounded over immigration claim’

An Oxford University professor at the centre of a debate on academic freedom said last night that he was being hounded because he had dared to challenge the Establishment’s views on immigration. David Coleman, a co-founder of the think-tank MigrationWatch, has faced calls to be sacked from his job as professor of demography after being targeted by students opposed to his questioning of the benefits of large-scale immigration.

The Oxford Student Association for Refugees, part of a group that receives substantial funding from the Government and the National Lottery, said that the academic is ringing the university into disrepute.

Professor Coleman said last night: “My feelings about the motives of those behind these misrepresentations and their desire to suppress opinions that they do not share are at best left to the imagination. “The breathtaking mendacity of their claim that this affair is not `personal’, they are not actually seeking my removal, or that they really want a `debate” is beneath contempt.” Writing in The Daily Telegraph today he said that he had become involved in MigrationWatch after being concerned with the increasing tendency of official spokesmen to analyse the advantages of the economic and demographic effects of migration which tended to ignore the drawbacks.

“It seemed to me to be leading to the creation of an establishment consensus in the `respectable’ media and elsewhere intolerant of dissenting interpretations, regarding them almost axiomatically to be heretical or malevolent,” he wrote. “Naturally there is disagreement within academic circles on the benefits and costs of migration, here and internationally. But those disagreements are (mostly) conducted in a decorous fashion on a rational basis.”

He added: “Those who have some specific knowledge on matters of public interest should try to keep a balanced interpretation in public view. “That is not to say, of course, that various eminent economists and other experts do not endorse the economic and other merits of large scale immigration, or that my views are infallible. But they are based, I hope, on evidence and logic.”

Professor Coleman said that he is puzzled at the students’ objections to his fellowship of the Galton Institute, previously called the Eugenics Society. He says the group, whose membership has included three Nobel prizewinners, aims to promote and debate the ethical aspects of human hereditary and helped to “invent” demography in Britain.

Professor Coleman has been targeted because he acts as honorary adviser to MigrationWatch and sits on its council. The group, chaired by Sir Andrew Green, a retired diplomat, has been criticised by the Home Office for its forecasts of the level of migration into Britain and for questioning the economic benefits of migrants. The Oxford Student Association for Refugees is particularly critical of the claim by MigrationWatch in January that immigrants contribute the equivalent of a Mars bar a month to the UK.

However, fellow academics have condemned the campaign to oust the don. One, Dennis Hayes, president of the University and College Union, said: “The students should be arguing with Professor Coleman, not calling for his sacking.” The Tories have asked for an inquiry into the funding of the Oxford group’s parent body, Student Action for Refugees, which has had lottery cash.

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Senior British Minister: Illegal immigration ‘is theft from taxpayers’

Part of a feeble attempt to crack down on illegals

Home Secretary John Reid today branded illegal immigration as theft from the taxpayer. He was defending plans to introduce a text messaging scheme to warn visitors to the UK of the penalties of overstaying their visas as part of a new crackdown on “grossly unfair” illegal immigration. The “get tough” policy has been branded unrealistic and inhumane by campaigners, who said it threatened to leave up to half a million people destitute, forcing many into crime or the black economy.

However, the Airdrie and Shotts MP said plans for a text messaging pilot scheme to remind immigrants about their visas were a “tiny” part of a new enforcement strategy designed to “block the benefits” of Britain to those in the country illegally. He also attacked the Tories’ opposition to plans to introduce ID cards for all foreigners coming into the country from 2008, saying it was crucial to the tracking of illegal immigrants.

Dr Reid said: “Illegal immigration harms the minimum wage, it is not fair, it undermines the rights of British workers, it steals taxpayers’ money, by taking benefits, by taking services through the NHS or otherwise … provided by the British people, British taxpayers for British people themselves. “So it is grossly unfair, and we intend, year on year, to make it harder and harder to get benefits, or services, or work, if you are an illegal immigrant.”

New measures include a “watch list” of illegal immigrants to alert government agencies if someone applies for services to which they are not entitled; workplace enforcement teams to track down bosses employing people who should not be in the country; and pilots in three NHS trusts to ensure migrants pay for care where required.

Immigration crime partnerships will be created between local authorities, police, HM Revenue and Customs and local agencies to detect those in the country illegally and block benefits. Landlords could be fined up to 20,000 pounds for housing illegal immigrants in overcrowded flats. And new systems could be put in place to identify illegal immigrants fraudulently applying for driving licences.

Habib Rahman, chief executive of the Joint Council for Welfare of Immigrants chief executive, said: “Barring up to half a million irregular migrants from access to rights and services is not a realistic or humane response to irregular migration to this country. “All the tough talk we are hearing from ministers does not mean there is any practical possibility of the Government detaining or deporting anything like this number of people in the near future. “In the meantime, rendering them destitute will not encourage or enable them to return to countries riven by human rights abuses, conflict and poverty. It will force many on to the doorsteps of already stressed charities and churches, or into the arms of criminals facilitating forced labour.”

Shadow home secretary David Davis said: “John Reid is effectively giving up on trying to deport the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in this country, preferring instead to spam them with text messages.”

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Bill Gates wants more skilled immigrants

If America were not flooded with low-skill illegals, there would be less resistance to his getting them

Do you believe Bill Gates’ message that the United States has a tech-talent shortage — near term and long term? The answer should shape your reaction to three main issues Microsoft’s chairman discussed during congressional testimony this week: H-1B visiting worker visas, tech education, and immigration.

Short term, expect the chorus for increasing the H-1B cap to get louder over the next month, writes Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, with the approach of the April 1 date when companies can submit petitions for visas. In recent years that cap has been filled in a matter of months. Gates, in calling to raise the cap, says this year’s visas will run out before degree candidates graduate. “So for the first time ever, we will not be able to seek H-1Bs for this year’s graduating students,” he told Congress.

On the education front, Gates’ message is that we need to pour resources into math, science, and tech education: double the number of graduates by 2015, and add 10,000 teachers in those fields. Again, expect more on this theme — business groups are rallying behind these numbers. In his testimony, though, Gates leaves one big question hanging. Why, if science, math, and tech offer the world’s most dynamic and promising education and career path, do kids not want to go into it? We’ve taken up this issue in the past , and last week InformationWeek editor-in-chief Rob Preston laid some of the blame on tech employers.

Gates’ third major point is perhaps the most interesting of all, and one less often discussed: immigration. People rail against H-1B temp workers taking jobs, and they nod in agreement for better education in the United States, but permanent immigration is less often discussed. Gates urges two major reforms: making it much easier for foreign students to study here and stay here, and expediting the process of getting permanent residency for highly skilled workers. Immigration is more complicated policy work than raising the H-1B caps, or adding 25,000 science and math scholarships, which is why it’s more likely to be neglected. If Social Security is the dreaded third rail of politics, immigration is its downed electrical wire: a problem everyone knows about, but no one’s sure how to fix, so they just walk away.

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History to repeat itself?

Anyone who has studied immigration history has probably heard or read Teddy Kennedy’s arrogant comments made at the time of America’s 1965 immigration reform law — an unfortunate moment dangerously similar to the one we are living today. Even as he fervently supported the bill, which would change America’s ethnic, social and political makeup for all time, he derisively insisted to the bill’s many critics: “First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Second, the ethnic mix will not be upset.”

In fact, his “assurances” were incredibly false and absurd on every level. The 1965 bill took traditional quotas away from skilled workers and Europeans, the founders of the American state, and gave them to the unskilled from the poor Third World. As tens of thousands of Third Worlders from Latin America, Africa and Asia did indeed flood America, by 1986 the problem of illegal aliens in America had become so intense that, again, the country felt it had to act. Thus came the even more controversial IRCA, or Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Edward Kennedy’s second experiment with America.

The idea behind IRCA was stunningly similar to the one the ever-busy Teddy is pushing today, as the problem of illegal immigration again grows larger and more intense. But first, let’s be clear about that 1986 experience, because the future of our nation may well hang on how the reality of that law is now interpreted. It made possible the legalization and citizenship of approximately 2.8 million men and women, plus imposed employer sanctions, supposedly to stop such numbers from ever overwhelming America again. The act was to be the end of illegal immigration; America would rationally contain itself and humanely, but firmly, control its borders and its citizenry, as all civilized nations do.

But by 1995, we were again hearing that the number of illegals in the country was 3 million, then 5 million — until today, the numbers are calculated conservatively at between 12 million and 20 million.

And would you take bets on who is behind the new “amnesty” for them? Lawmakers don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is. None other than that same old Teddy Kennedy is now pushing in the Congress, much of the time in secret meetings, for up to 20 million people, who entered this country illegally and whose backgrounds we know not, to become overnight citizens.

Worse, with failure after failure from Iraq to Afghanistan to our deficits and debts, immigration reform has become the issue du jour for both Republicans and Democrats. It’s a way for both the administration and the Congress to show the American people that they’re finally doing something, regardless of what it will do to the country. In short, we are about to exchange real painful action on Iraq and our guilt for that hapless war with an amnesty for illegal aliens that will make certain circles in America feel good.

But what are we really talking about? First, the only sectors of American society that benefit from illegal immigration are the “cheap labor” big corporations. (Oh, it also benefits the Mexican rich, who are deliberately deporting their overpopulation in order to keep from reforming the country.) Otherwise, illegal immigration corrupts everything and everybody it touches.

Second, we are now a country of 300 million. If this amnesty goes through, we will not only be talking about legalizing between 12 million and 20 million foreigners. The “family reunification” laws in our immigration statutes also give citizenship to tens of thousands of children, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers of these people. The Heritage Foundation scholars analyze our population would grow by at least 103 million within 25 years. This would mean, above all, a massive cultural change in America, and we should not have to feel guilty about saying this. One can love Mexico, as I do, and not want Mexico City in Portland, either Oregon or Maine. The Mexicans do not want Des Moines or Dallas in Mexico City or Merida. And indeed, why should they?

Interesting point: With the 1986 amnesty, which was to solve the problem forever, only one-third of those granted the “precious” privilege of American citizenship deemed it worth taking. Two-thirds did not apply for it. The explanation is actually a healthy one: Most illegals come here to work, make money and go home, not to become Americans. But the U.S. Congress, led by the eternal Teddy and supported by a White House desperate for a victory — somewhere — seems to want to continue with the “Balkanization” of America.

There are other ways to deal with this problem, ways that are humane, clear and reasonable to all sides. Homeland Security has put forward the idea of a “temporary legal status” for illegal or temporary workers in place of citizenship. Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo says the problem could be solved by enforcing the laws against employing illegals, plus a natural attrition process. Our famous historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argued until the day he died for immigration control, fearing, as in the title of one of his books, “The Disuniting of America.” Arthur Schlesinger died last week. Let’s hope that the things that he believed in are not dying, too.

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“Seek to”??

Agents arrested 363 illegal immigrants in New Jersey during the first two months of the year, officials said Monday. Of those arrested, 48 had criminal records, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Fugitives will remain in custody until they are deported, while the agency will seek to deport the others. The immigrants are from 26 different countries, including Mexico, Ecuador, Malaysia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Egypt, Brazil, India, Slovenia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Albania and Honduras. The arrests were the latest in a national effort called Operation Return to Sender. Source

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Britain: Anti-immigration professor under attack

An MP has defended the rights of academics’ free speech after students called for an Oxford don to be sacked because of his links to a migration thinktank and a charity devoted to the selective breeding of humans. Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, said provided the views of the don were “legal and delivered lawfully he had every right to express them without fear or retribution from his employer.” Dr Harris spoke out after David Coleman, a professor of demography, became the third academic in the last eight months to find himself at the centre of a row over freedom of speech.

Last November, London School of Economics lecturer and evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa was accused of reviving the politics of eugenics when a journal published his paper alleging that African states were poor and suffered ill-health because their populations were less intelligent than people in richer countries. Four months earlier, Frank Ellis at Leeds University became the first university lecturer to be suspended under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. His suspension came after he told his student newspaper that black people and women were genetically intellectually inferior. Dr Ellis took early retirement last summer.

In the latest row over academics and free speech Professor Coleman hit back at the students who are trying to get him sacked. He accused them of bringing the university into disrepute and said the freedom of informed comment and analysis was something academia should “cherish.” Prof Coleman retaliated after student members of the Student Action for Refugees (STAR) launched a petition calling on the university to “consider the suitability of Coleman’s continued tenure as a professor of the university in light of his well-known opinions and affiliations relating to immigration and eugenics.” The petition referred to the don’s honorary consultant role with the migration watchdog and thinktank, MigrationWatch UK. The students are also unhappy about his membership of the Galton Institute - a charity focusing on eugenics.

Professor Coleman told the Oxford student newspaper Cherwell: “Under no circumstances will I refrain from using my academic title.” He criticised those students campaigning against him and said they should consider their own future at the university. He said: “It is a shameful attempt of the most intolerant and totalitarian kind, to suppress the freedom of analysis and informed comment which it is the function of universities to cherish.” “I am ashamed that Oxford students should behave in this way. It is the signatories who will bring this university into disrepute, and it is they who should reconsider their membership of this university,” he added.

Kieran Hutchinson Dean, the student who helped organise the petition, told Cherwell that STAR did not expect the university to agree to its demands for Professor Coleman to go. But he said: “By offering interviews as a ‘professor of Oxford University’ he lends credibility to his political viewpoint. “The main point of the petition is to raise awareness of his views and affiliations amongst students. We do not expect anyone to agree, but think that it is an interesting and important debate to have.”

Commenting on the row MP Dr Harris said it was important that academics maintain their right to free speech. In a letter to Cherwell he wrote: “As long as he (Coleman) does not claim to speak on behalf of the university, he is at liberty to set out his academic background. “The price of us all enjoying academic freedom and free expressing is that we provide those freedoms even to those with whom we disagree, and this campaign is illiberal and totally counter-productive.”

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A parable

“Imagine we had only a single, government-chartered financial institution: the First National Bank. Imagine it had begun a new policy: Henceforth, the vault would remain open and stocked to the brim with no guard on site.

It remained illegal, of course, for anyone without deposits in the institution to remove funds. Indeed, account holders were expected to comply with longstanding rules: standing in line to transact with tellers, paying fees to transact at ATMs, filing burdensome currency-transaction reports, being penalized for bouncing checks or overdrawing their accounts. New customers, moreover, were turned away unless they verified their identities to the satisfaction of the institution and met threshold deposit requirements.

But the vault remained open and stocked. The doors of the bank remained open to anyone with the gumption to walk right in and grab with both hands.

Naturally, “anyone” turned out to be an awful lot of people. First National, though, was a monopoly with the ability to print treasury notes as needed. Its vault remained open. To discourage the human waves, the bank finally posted a sentinel or two. But the tide was overwhelming, and even arresting the occasional thief proved pointless because the prize was too enticing, the chance of suffering any real penalty too unlikely.

Theft was rampant and currency dramatically devalued as new money was minted, leading to a spiral of unintended consequences. Old customers fumed. New depositors dried up - for what was the point of adhering to the rules?

The bank, meanwhile, half-heartedly blocked sections of its perimeter with chain-link fencing and “virtual” impediments, like cameras. It even added a couple of guards. But these disincentives proved trifling for . the vault remained open. The hordes kept coming.

To appease growing outrage among depositors and a surrounding neighborhood teeming with intruders, First National finally added requirements to encourage presentation of a bankbook or some other customer identification. The bank’s systems, however, were not up to checking identities. Quickly, word spread that the new verification mandates were a joke. At the vault, the green light stayed on. The thieves kept coming - now bolstered by cottage industries in identification fraud and human-traffic direction.

At long last, the United States Congress stirred itself to action. Its proposal? A comprehensive solution.

There were, Congress assessed, far, far too many culprits to prosecute. No hope of getting the ill-gotten gains back. So for one time and - the statesmen insisted - one time only, they were going to forgive the malfeasance. And on top of that, to extinguish the unseemliness of uncontrolled lawlessness, they undertook to wipe the slate clean: Henceforth, all the thieves would become established depositors, possessed of shiny, new, legitimate bankbooks. Under existing law, that meant all their family members could eventually earn bankbooks too.

“Amnesty?” howled the law-abiding, beleaguered citizens. “That’s your solution?”

“Well, you could call it that,’ the worldly legislators sighed, “but better to think of it as the carrot that paves the way for some real sticks.” That, they told us, was why it was called comprehensive reform. That was why it was so very prudent. The penalties for stealing were increased (now that amnesty had left no one to penalize). More crucially, the lawmakers promised that the magnet for all this would end, pronto: The bank was told to close the vault and open it only for legitimate customers.

Why, moaned the citizenry, do you need to have carrots for those sticks? And why oh why did it take you so long to fi ure out something so simple? Just close the vault. Surely that law could be enforced without goodies for the lawbreakers. And if the bank had just closed the vault, none of the other problems would ever have happened.

You’re not getting this, tut-tutted Congress. The lawbreakers have a lot of friends here on the Hill, and the laws you say are so obvious are actually not on the books right now. You want the vault closed? Fine . but then we need to eat the amnesty.

Alright, the citizens mumbled. We’ll swallow the amnesty this one time. But just make sure that vault gets closed and stays closed.

Absolutely, assured the Congress.

The vault, of course, was never closed.

There were feints at enforcement, nabbing the occasional handful of thieves. But it was a drop in the ocean. The resources devoted were sparse, and the same agency was saddled with the additional responsibility of issuing all the new bankbooks. It was instantly overwhelmed. And, as any sentient person could have told you, as long as the vault stayed open, the rush would be on.

Except, now the rush was worse. The amnesty told the world that thievery was not only tolerated, it was actively rewarded. The mob, already immense before comprehensive reform, grew geometrically - to more than four times its original size.

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Open door closing in Europe

“Decades of open-door immigration policies have transformed Europe through the arrival of several million immigrants, mostly Muslims, from North Africa, Turkey and Southwest Asia. But as the region became one of the most multicultural regions on Earth, its people have gradually turned against the policies that made it this way. From Amsterdam to Paris and Brussels to Berlin, politicians want to restrict immigration and force recent arrivals to integrate more thoroughly into their new homelands.

The Netherlands, where 6% of the country’s 16 million people come from Islamic countries, has found itself at the forefront of a general hardening of European attitudes toward Muslim minorities. In the two years since Mr. van Gogh’s murder, the Dutch government has adopted sweeping reforms aimed at forcing immigrants to integrate more fully into society. Immigrants must now pass a language test within five years of arrival or risk being deported. They must also take special integration classes when they apply for a visa. Rotterdam has published a code of conduct suggesting that immigrants speak Dutch when out in public and the government runs courses to train imams in Western values.

This week, elections in the Netherlands seemed to reinforce the growing distrust between the native and immigrant populations when the Freedom Party, a previously insignificant far-right fringe group, won nine seats in parliament. Led by Geert Wilders, a strident radical who goes out of his way to insult Muslims and warn that the Netherlands is about to be engulfed by an “Islamic tsunami ” the Freedom Party is now the fifth- largest in the Dutch parliament. Mr. Wilders is the political heir of Pim Fortuyn, a populist politician who campaigned on immigration issues and was assassinated in 2002 just before elections.

This time around, Mr. Wilders called for an end to immigration and demanded bans on building religious schools and mosques. “We need more decency in this country, more education and less Islam,” he recently told Dutch television. “We have had enough Islam in the Netherlands. I believe Islam is a violent religion and the Koran is a violent book. There is no such thing as moderate Islam.”

Similar far-right movements are flourishing, along with large Muslim immigrant populations, in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Italy. In France, one citizen in five voted for right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 presidential election. Now, Nicolas Sarkozy, the hardline Interior Minister who hopes to represent the centre-right in next April’s presidential contest, has begun to court the anti-immigrant vote, unveiling a proposed immigration act that is a virtual copy of the Dutch regulations. “The French way of integration no longer works,” he said recently, referring to last year’s riots in immigrant neighbourhoods, the worst civil unrest in the country in decades.

But it’s not just the far right that is declaring the death of multiculturalism. Britain’s ruling Labour party has abandoned the laissez-faire pluralism of the past and introduced a U.S.-style citizenship ceremony, complete with declarations of loyalty. Naturalizing immigrants must also pass language and citizenship tests. More recently, Jack Straw, a former foreign secretary, created a huge controversy when he declared he wanted Muslim women to abandon the veil. He insisted he didn’t want to be “prescriptive,” but felt that covering people’s faces makes it more difficult to communicate. “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers — people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able to pass the time of day,” he said. “That’s made more difficult if people are wearing a veil.”

The comments caused many Muslims to insist they are being persecuted simply for being different. “The implication is clear: niqab- or hijab-wearing women, and, through them, European Muslims are being asked to submit not to the law of the land, but to each country’s dominant way of life,” Naima Bouteldja, a French journalist, wrote in The Guardian newspaper. “The mounting campaign against multiculturalism by politicians, pundits and the press, in Britain and across Europe, is neither innocent nor innocuous,” said Ambalavaner Sivanandan, director of Britain’s Institute of Race Relations. “It is a prelude to a policy that deems there is one dominant culture, one unique set of values, one nativist loyalty — a policy of assimilation.”

Still, in the wake of last summer’s suicide bombings on London’s transit system by home-grown terrorists, there are growing fears multiculturalism protects and preserves every culture — except the host culture. The native-born terrorist has become a symbol of multiculturalism’s failure. Usually, these new extremists do not feel at home in the West but have only the most tenuous ties to their families’ original homelands. As a result, they are susceptible to arguments of religious certainty and promises of eternal glory. The cultural isolation encouraged by multiculturalism also lets Islamist activists find refuge and anonymity in Europe’s immigrant communities. “The fruits of 30 years of state-endorsed multiculturalism have only increased inter-racial tension and inter-racial sectarianism,” analyst Patrick West wrote in a recent report for the British think-tank Civitas. “The fact that th London suicide bombers of July 7 [2005] were born and bred in Britain — and encouraged by the state to be different — illustrates that hard multiculturalism has the capacity to be not only divisive but decidedly lethal.

On the other hand, Trevor Phillips, a black political journalist who heads Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality, suggests multiculturalism is outdated because it fails to address cultural differences or reinforce common values. Britain could be “sleepwalking” towards segregation, he warns, saying, “We have allowed tolerance of diversity to harden into the effective isolation of communities.” “The multiculturalism beloved by our political and civic bureaucracies has not only failed to deliver peace, but is the partial cause of alienation and extremism,” said Michael Nazir-Ali, the Pakistani-born Anglican Bishop of Rochester.

When that isolation and extremism combine with the simmering resentments of Europe’s immigrants, neither tolerance nor understanding are likely. In such a globalized clash of cultures, multiculturalism seems doomed to be eclipsed by anger and fear.

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China tough on illegal internal immigrants

China is trying to do what most Greenies advocate — limit by law and regulation the population growth of cities. And the result is as mixed-up and as tyrannical as you would expect

Cha Guoqun left his village to work doing odd jobs in the city of Hangzhou, in eastern China. When a cut on his leg got infected in November 2006, and prevented him from working, he visited a state hospital. As Cha had no health insurance, the doctor gave him two options. Either pay 1000 yuan (US$120) a day for treatment, the equivalent of his entire monthly income, or have his leg amputated. In this instance Cha got lucky. He received subsidized treatment from a Christian charity hospital, and was able to save his leg. As he said, “I was lucky this time, but on the whole, medical treatment is too expensive for people like me.”(1)

This case describes the plight of just one of the estimated 150-200 million rural-to-urban migrants who have moved to China’s cities in search of work and better lives in what has been called “the world’s largest ever peacetime migration”.(2) This report will call these people `”internal migrants” and will document how they are treated as second class citizens within their own country. Also referred to as the “floating population”, the “mobile population”, “peasant-workers”, “migrant workers”, “rural migrants”, and “temporary migrants”, their number has risen rapidly from just two million in the 1980s(3) and is expected to grow even further, with some estimating 300 million by 2015. While they have se ved as the back-bone labourers fuelling China’s economic take-off, the majority of internal migrants never gain permanent residency in urban areas. Having built China’s modern, gleaming, metropolises the majority eventually return to the countryside, having served and then been sent away from urban centres of privilege.

Tens of millions of migrants are denied rights to adequate health care and housing, and are excluded from the wide array of state benefits available to permanent urban residents.(4) They experience discrimination in the workplace, and are routinely exposed to some of the most exploitative conditions of work. Internal migrants’ insecure legal status, social isolation, sense of cultural inferiority and relative lack of knowledge of their rights leaves them particularly vulnerable, enabling employers to deny their rights with impunity. The children of internal migrants do not have equal access to free, compulsory, education, and many of them have to be left behind in the countryside.

According to Wang Yuancheng, a member of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), and one of the lucky internal migrants to became a successful businessman: “(t)he lives of migrant workers are miserable. They have to live in makeshift shelters, eat the cheapest bean curd and cabbage. They have no insurance and their wages are often delayed. And most of all, they are discriminated against by urban people.”(5)

While internal migrants from rural areas are now able to work in the cities, unlike during the Maoist era when they were all but shut out, they are required to register as temporary residents there, a process which a majority find difficult or impossible to complete. Many migrant workers are thus not able to complete all the required documentation for being properly registered, with the result that from the perspective of state authorities they are in the cities illegally. This makes them vulnerable to exploitation by the police, landlords, employers, local officials, as well as permanent urban residents. “Undocumented” internal migrants in China continue to risk arrest and forcible removal back to their home-towns.

Thus, rather than rewarding, or at least respecting the rights of those individuals who have demonstrated the willingness to leave home-often leaving family and loved ones behind, to fill the gaps in the labour market wherever they might be, and to labour in the most difficult and gruelling conditions, a succession of Chinese administrations have maintained the administrative and regulatory system that underpins discrimination against them.

While the central government is taking more seriously the plight of internal migrant workers, and has passed regulatory measures seeking to improve their working and living conditions, Amnesty International considers that change has been slow and implementation inadequate.

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Hispanics killing blacks

Once again it is the children of illegals who are the problem. Since Leftists love both blacks and Hispanics, it should be amusing to hear where they place the blame for this: On whites, no doubt

It took political officials nearly a month to respond to the slaying of Cheryl Green. Since then, the 14-year-old African American girl has become the face of brown-on-black violence in this city. The FBI has joined the Los Angeles Police Department in cracking down on gangs. The Police Department, breaking with tradition, has publicly named the city’s worst 11 gangs. And a city-sponsored report has called for an anti-gang Marshall Plan, a reference to the post-World War II strategy of making massive investments to win the peace in former enemy territory. The racially motivated shooting of the eighth-grader, which occurred Dec. 15 in broad daylight as she chatted with friends, was one of 269 gang-related murders citywide in 2006.

Outside the African American community, widespread outrage that a schoolgirl could be killed because of her color was muffled by the cacophony of the holiday season. “She was my baby,” Charlene Lovett said recently of the youngest of her four children. “She wasn’t raised to see colors. I couldn’t understand how everyone wouldn’t be horrified by this.” African American activists came to her aid, holding rallies to call attention to similar attacks in South Los Angeles neighborhoods where Latinos have supplanted African Americans as the dominant group.

Hate crimes rose 34 percent in 2005 in Los Angeles, the latest year for which statistics are available, and African Americans were the main target. Overall crime is down in the city for the fifth straight year, but gang crime rose 14 percent in 2006. On Jan. 18, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa held a news conference near where the teenager was killed to announce a plan to “dismantle” the Latino gang blamed for the girl’s slaying. He was joined by Police Chief William Bratton and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

By then, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had delivered his second inaugural address, which he began by boasting that “people from all over the world live in harmony” in California. In an interview with The Bee two weeks later, the governor conceded “we have a big gang problem.” But he said the girl’s death did not represent a larger problem in California. “No matter which country you go to, you always have some instances like that,” he said. “You know, the Russian mafia or some kind of gang violence in some country. “Or if it is soccer fans going crazy and trying to kill each other on the soccer field. … You know, there’s crazy things all over the world.”

Members of the California Legislative Black Caucus responded to Schwarzenegger’s comments with dismay. The governor, said state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, needs “to raise his IQ about the problem.” “This is an urgent matter and it needs to be addressed,” the Los Angeles Democrat said, adding that the Senate Public Safety Committee on which he sits would take up the issue.

Assemblywoman Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, said that during town hall meetings she held in black communities around the state she collected “anecdotal” evidence that brown-on-black crime is on the rise elsewhere. “We know that every time there is a study about hate crime, that African Americans are the No. 1 figure,” she said when the caucus recently released its “State of California” report. “I think it’s absolutely important that we address that.”

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, told the caucus that racial violence is escalating in other cities as well and will require a unified response. “We’ve got to put our heads together and work hard to eliminate what we’re seeing in places like Oakland, San Diego, Fresno, Santa Ana and Los Angeles, where we see far too much brown-on-black crime,” Nunez said. “We have to put an end to that.”

Cheryl Green was gunned down in a hail of bullets while standing near her scooter in the Harbor Gateway area of Los Angeles, east of Torrance. She was with a group of friends when they were approached by two men. Witnesses and police said that without a word, one man pulled a gun and opened fire, killing Green and wounding three others.

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Credit cards for illegals

With the government showing only the most casual interest in enforcing its laws, one can hardly blame a bank for a casual attitude towards the same matter

When Bank of America Corp. said it was testing a new credit card available to customers who may be illegal immigrants, the reaction was predictably harsh. Outspoken critics of illegal immigration called for a boycott and said the bank could be supporting terrorists and drug traffickers. Some outraged customers closed accounts and sent back their cards, chopped into little pieces. The bank’s chief executive, Ken Lewis, admitted that ”finding oneself in the middle of a heated national debate is never pleasant.”

But Bank of America isn’t the first to offer such a card: Citigroup Inc. said it has done so for years, and Wells Fargo & Co. says it’s thinking about it. The cards are merely the latest progression for an industry that has spent millions of dollars to attract customers in the country’s growing Latino community — and among the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

They reflect a fact faced by every retail business in the United States. While they can’t legally employ undocumented workers, there are few, if any, restrictions on welcoming them as customers. ”As a business owner, you sell to whomever comes into your store. You sell to whomever buys from you online. It’s easy, normally,” said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. ”Just in some cases where specific identification is needed, like in financial services, it’s more complicated.”

But getting less so. Last month, Bank of America said it had started a pilot program in the Los Angeles area late last year that didn’t require a Social Security number to sign up for a credit card. The Charlotte-based bank insists the card isn’t specifically designed to attract illegal immigrants, and says that so far, it has not. The bank hasn’t decided if it will offer the card elsewhere, but it would likely be popular with a population that generally lacks access to something as common in most American wallets as the dollar bill and a driver’s license. ”It’s a no brainer. It’s a very large market,” said Jim J hnson, director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ”The bank is just the latest example of a major corporation recognizing the impact of doing business with Hispanics.”

In 2005, the nation’s 6.6 million illegal immigrant families had an average annual income of $29,500 and accounted for nearly $200 billion in purchasing power, a figure that’s only expected to grow, said Pew Hispanic Center demographer Jeff Passel. ”They are impacting the economy,” Passel said. ”The unauthorized are explicitly coming for an economic basis.”

While credit card use among the nation’s 42 million Hispanics is on the rise, a substantial number of Latino households don’t have access to credit, according a survey conducted by the National Council of La Raza, which found that 80 percent of American households use credit cards compared with only 56 percent of Hispanic households. For years, U.S. banks have made attracting immigrants a major focus of their business strategy, working to sell services that include everything from traditional checking accounts to wire transfers used to send money to relatives back home. Customers don’t typically need a Social Security number to open a standard banking account. Instead, they can identify themselves by using an ID card provided by the Mexican Consulate to its citizens, known as a matricula consular, or an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number issued by the Internal Revenue Service.

At Bank of America, the pilot program in Los Angeles allows customers to use such forms of identification to also sign up for a credit card. The card is similar to secured cards offered to those with poor credit: it requires customers to have an account with the bank that’s been in good standing for at least three months and comes with a reimbursable upfront fee of $99. ”This initiative lets customers build a solid credit history with a leading bank,” Bank of America spokeswoman Betsy Weinberger said….

The attention has rattled America’s largest retail bank. Lewis responded to the controversy in a column in The Wall Street Journal, writing the bank is complying with the provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which set up the guidelines that allows the bank to accept official identification sources issued by foreign governments — including the matricula consular. ”And I observe no shortage of irony in the efforts of those whose first concern is national security, but who seek to undermine a regulatory structure that was designed in large part to thwart terrorism,” Lewis wrote. He said only 16 percent of customers to sign up for the card so far lack a Social Security number. ”We believe we have an obligation to serve all those in our country who are legally eligible to receive services,” Lewis wrote. ”To do less would be discriminatory and unfair.”

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Sales of legitimate IDs play into immigration problem

Asked by a federal judge why she sold her birth certificate, Rosie Medellin said she needed a few bucks and didn’t really think it through. Bobby Joe Flores said he sold his ID documents to buy drugs. Margarita Moya and her son did it to raise money for medicine for a loved one. Their documents were destined for illegal immigrants. In all, seven defendants pleaded guilty in Corpus Christi this past week to charges of selling their birth certificates and Social Security cards for $100 each. Seven other defendants pleaded guilty to buying or reselling those documents as part of a ring that sold documents to illegal immigrants seeking jobs in Dodge City, Kansas.

The federal government’s attention has been on stolen or fabricated identity documents, and officials say they know little about people who sell their own legitimate documents. Defense attorneys said prosecution for selling an ID may be something new. “I’ve been practicing criminal law for years and this is the first I’ve seen in our Southern District,” said Grant Jones, who represents a roofer with sporadic employment. “If they’ve (the government) been aware in the past, they’ve now decided to enforce the law.” However, Jones said his client told him that document selling was a well-known way to earn a quick buck.

Prosecutors declined to talk about the case until a sentencing hearing in May before U.S. District Judge Hayden Head Jr. in Corpus Christi. The defendants face anywhere from probation to five years in prison.

Jones considers it just a twist on the more familiar cases of identity theft. “Maybe 10, 15 years ago somebody had to come up with a new idea: Why steal them? Why not just buy them?” he said. “They pick out people who are in need, who don’t care. You’re a poor person living down in the barrio, some guy says ‘Hey, listen, I’ll give you a hundred dollars. The guy says ‘OK, I need a hundred dollars.”‘

In this case, the defendants ended up with the cash - and a double holding a job in Kansas. Government raids at meatpacking plants in six states in December stemmed from an investigation that uncovered up to 4,300 workers with questionable documentation.

Tim Counts, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman in Bloomington, Minn., said that investigation revealed documents were available for a price in places as open as Kmart parking lots. He said genuine documents were the most expensive, costing up to $1,500, and the most effective against detection. “We don’t have an all-inclusive picture of it,” he said. “What we do have is evidence and information from individual cases. … We definitely know it happens.”

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How come Colorado cannot do what Australia can?

The article below has a fairly reasonable conclusion but the subtext is that the USA needs its illegals to get harvesting done. The subtext is wrong. Australia has virtually no illegals and certainly no mass of Hispanics picking fruit. Yet Australia is a major agricultural exporter and all its crops normally get picked. How come? Mechanization is part of it and itinerant labour by students and others is another part. So the problems described below are essentially transitional rather than permanent. If immigrant labor became permanently unavailble, other ways of getting the work done would be found. That might sound Pollyanna-ish but Australia shows that it is not.

In the 2004 satirical film “A Day Without a Mexican,” California wakes up to discover that its Latinos have mysteriously vanished, and a society deeply reliant on migrant labor starts to crumble. Life is imitating art in Colorado. After passing what might be the nation’s toughest anti-immigrant laws, the state is having its beleaguered day with fewer immigrants.

With no one left to pick them, crops are rotting in the fields, and the construction industry and other businesses that rely on low-skilled labor are experiencing a worker shortage. The situation is so bad for the state’s growers that officials plan to send prison inmates out to harvest crops. How very 19th century.

Immigrants are fleeing Colorado because of harsh laws passed during a special session of the Legislature last summer that require state identification for government services and allow police to check suspects’ immigration status. The ID laws have raised the ire even of many native-born people, who complain about hassles for those trying to get a driver’s license.

If chasing away immigrants has caused problems in Colorado, imagine the economic chaos it would bring to California, where immigrants make up about a third of the workforce and the agriculture industry dwarfs Colorado’s. The Rocky Mountain blues are also demonstrating that, contrary to nativist rhetoric, there really are jobs that Americans won’t do. In Pueblo, Colo., desperate farmers are offering up to $9.60 an hour for pickers — well in excess of the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour and more than they have paid migrants in the past — but there are few takers.

Turning prisoners into farmers is no solution. People aren’t sentenced to hard labor anymore, so only volunteers are available for prison work programs. And not too many inmates will do backbreaking field work for 60 cents a day — the going rate for prisoners under Colorado’s pilot program.

Colorado is learning a painful lesson about the foolishness of a piecemeal, state-by-state response to illegal immigration and about the economic effect of a strictly punitive approach. The only solution with a chance of working is comprehensive federal legislation that would document immigrants already in this country as guest workers and provide them with a path to citizenship, as well as tightening border security. Election-year politics torpedoed President Bush’s efforts to pass such reforms last year. To see the result of the opposite approach, look no further than Pueblo.

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Mexico’s own illegal immigration problem

Mexico is a middle-income country by world standards

Mexican President Felipe Calderon hopes to show visiting US President George W. Bush that he can accomplish the sweeping immigration reform Washington has failed to adopt — not just cracking down on the southern border but also creating a guest-worker program and improving conditions for illegal Central American migrants. Proving that controlled, regulated migration is possible is the immediate political goal of Calderon, who is unveiling the ambitious reforms shortly before Bush’s March 13 to March 14 visit.

Calderon’s migration agency announced the first phase late on Tuesday, pledging improvements to 48 detention centers in response to criticism that illegal Central American migrants are denied the same respect Mexico demands for its citizens in the US. And the Interior Department said it will soon reveal details of its “Safe Southern Border Program” to crack down on illegal crossers, violent gangs in the border zone and abuse of migrants by authorities throughout Mexico. “We have a porous, southern border with little control of who comes in from Central America and other regions,” said Florencio Salazar, the department’s deputy secretary of migration affairs.

Calderon will also push Mexico’s Congress to make being undocumented a civil violation, rather than a crime, Salazar said. Republicans in the US Congress have gone in the opposite direction, seeking to treat undocumented migrants as felons.

Meanwhile, Calderon has also promised a new, more formal guest-worker program for Central American workers in Mexico. “Just as we demand respect for the human rights of our countrymen, we have the ethical and legal responsibility to respect the human rights and the dignity of those who come from Central and South America and who cross our southern border,” Calderon said shortly after taking office.

Details have not been released but migration experts expect an expansion of Mexico’s long-standing seasonal farm worker program, which issues at least 40,000 temporary visas a year, mostly to Guatemalans. Most work in coffee plantations in southern Chiapas State, and many often face problems getting payment, medical care and housing. Migration experts say Calderon wants to stop those abuses while also allowing Central Americans to work in construction and service industries along the southern border.

Bush supports Mexico’s call for a US immigration accord allowing Mexicans to seek temporary US work visas, but Congress has instead voted only to harden the border and increase security. Washington also has urged Mexico to do more to stop the Central and South Americans who hop freight trains north and tap into Mexico’s extensive network of human smugglers to sneak into the US, and US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the Bush administration has offered to advise Mexico on ways of securing its southern border. Mexico said it detained 182,705 illegal migrants last year, a small fraction of the more than a million people caught by the US illegally crossing Mexico’s northern border.

Calderon sees this as a law-and-order problem: entral American gangs operate on both sides of the border Mexico shares with Guatemala, robbing migrants and running drugs, and migrants are also mistreated by Mexican police and immigration officials. Last year, 187 migration officials were disciplined, most for “lack of respect for human rights,” said Cecilia Romero, Mexico’s top immigration official. Her department aims “to entirely eliminate this terrible situation” by improving detainees’ access to lawyers and human rights defenders and prohibiting undocumented migrants from being held in common jails, among other reforms. “It’s harder to go through Mexico than getting into the US,” said Richard Garcia, a Honduran immigrant waiting to catch another northbound train in this industrial hub outside Mexico City. “At least in the US they just pick you up and return you. Here you get robbed, beat up. You never know what will happen. If you go through here, you better be in a big group,” he said. Garcia, 31, said at least a dozen men from his tiny Atlantic coast village of Triunfo de la Cruz have lost limbs riding trains across Mexico.

Riding with him this time was Dilcia Ortiz, a 27-year-old mother of four from Tela, Honduras who was trying to reach her husband in New York City. Eighteen days into their trip, she had already paid a US$45 bribe to Mexican immigration officials and watched a female traveler slice her foot in half trying to jump on a train. Wairon Adalis, 18, from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, said his friend turned back after gang members robbed him and fired a bullet that skimmed his head. Adalis said he knows the risks, but that nothing would stop him from meeting his family in Houston, Texas — even the opportunity to work legally in Mexico where wages are usually double what they are in Honduras.

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Europe and its Muslim immigrants

Excerpt from Daniel Pipes

The late Oriana Fallaci observed that, with the passage of time, “Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam.” The historian Bat Ye’or has dubbed this colony “Eurabia.” Walter Laqueur predicts in his forthcoming Last Days of Europe that Europe as we know it is bound to change. Mark Steyn, in America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, goes further and argues that much of the Western world “will not survive the twenty-first entury, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries.” Three factors – faith, demography, and a sense of heritage – argue for Europe being Islamized.

Faith: An extreme secularism predominates in Europe, especially among its elites, to the point that believing Christians (such as George W. Bush) are seen as mentally unbalanced and unfit for public office. In 2005, Rocco Buttiliglione, a distinguished Italian politician and Catholic believer, was denied a position as Italy’s European Union commissioner because of his views on such issues as homosexuality. Entrenched secularism also means empty churches: in London, researchers estimate, more Muslims attend mosques on Friday than do Christians churches on Sunday, although the city is home to roughly 7 times more born-Christians than born-Muslims. As Christianity fades, Islam beckons; Prince Charles exemplifies the fascination of many Europeans with Islam. Many conversions could be in Europe’s future, for as the saying is ascribed to G.K. Chesterton, “When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”

Europe’s secularism shapes its discourse in ways quite unfamiliar to Americans. Hugh Fitzgerald, formerly vice president of JihadWatch.org, illustrates one dimension of this difference:

The most memorable utterances of American presidents have almost always included recognizable Biblical phrases. … This source of rhetorical strength was on display this past February [2003] when the Columbia shuttle blew up. Had it not been an American but a French shuttle that had blown up, and were Jacques Chirac having to give such a speech, he might well have used the fact that there were seven astronauts, and evoked an image of the Pleiades first named in pagan antiquity. The American President, at a solemn national ceremony that began and ended with Biblical Hebrew, did things differently. He took his text from Isaiah 40:26, which led to a seamless transition from mingled wonder and awe at the heavenly hosts brought forth by the Creator, to consolation for the earthly loss of the crew.

The buoyant faith of Muslims, with its attendant jihadi sensibility and Islamic supremacism, could not differ more from that of lapsed European Christians. This contrast leads many Muslims to see Europe as a continent ripe for conversion and domination. Outrageous supremacist claims result, such as the statement of Omar Bakri Mohammed, “I want Britain to become an Islamic state. I want to see the flag of Islam raised in 10 Downing Street.” Or the prediction of a Belgium-based imam: “Soon we will take power in this country. Those who criticize us now, will regret it. They will have to serve us. Prepare, for the hour is near.”[1]

Population: Demographic collapse also points to Europe being Islamized. The total fertility rate in Europe today averages about 1.4 per woman, whereas sustaining one’s population requires just over two children per couple, or 2.1 children per woman. The existing rate is just two-thirds of what it needs to be; one-third of the requisite population is simply not being born.

To avoid a severe diminution of population, with all the woes that implies – and specifically, an absence of workers to fund generous pension plans – Europe needs immigrants – lots of them. That imported third of the population tends to be Muslim, in part because Muslims are close by – it’s only thirteen kilometers from Morocco to Spain, only a couple of hundred to Italy from Albania or Libya; in part because colonial ties continue to bind South Asia to Britain or the Maghrib to France; and in part because of the violence, tyranny, and poverty so prevalent in the Muslim world today, which prompts wave after wave of emigration.

Likewise, the high fertility of Muslims complements the paucity of children among indigenous Christians. Although the Muslim fertility rate is falling, it remains significantly higher than that of Europe’s indigenous population. No doubt, the high birth rates have something to do with the premodern circumstances in which many Muslim women of Europe find themselves. In Brussels, “Muhammad” has for some years been the most popular name given to infant boys, while Amsterdam and Rotterdam are on track to be, by about 2015, the first major European cities with majority Muslim populations. The French analyst Michel Gurfinkiel estimates an ethnic street war in France would find the children of indig่nes and of immigrants in a roughly one-to-one ratio. Current predictions see a Muslim majority in Russia’s army by 2015 and in the country as a whole by about 2050.

Sense of heritage: What often is depicted as Europe’s political correctness reflects what I believe is a deeper phenomenon, namely, the alienation of many Europeans from their civilization, a sense that their historic culture is not worth fighting for or even saving. It’s striking to note differences within Europe in this regard. Perhaps the country least prone to this alienation is France, where traditional nationalism still holds sway and the French take pride in their identity. Britain is the most alienated country, as symbolized by the plaintive government program, “ICONS - A Portrait of England,” that lamely hopes to rekindle patriotism by connecting Britons to their “national treasures,” such as Winnie-the-Pooh and the miniskirt.

This diffidence has had direct and adverse implications for Muslim immigrants, as Aatish Taseer explained in Prospect magazine.

Britishness is the most nominal aspect of identity to many young British Pakistanis. … If you denigrate your own culture you face the risk of your newer arrivals looking for one elsewhere. So far afield in this case, that for many second-generation British Pakistanis, the desert culture of the Arabs held more appeal than either British or subcontinental culture. Three times removed from a durable sense of identity, the energised extra-national worldview of radical Islam became one available identity for second-generation Pakistanis.

Immigrant Muslims widely disdain Western civilization, and especially its sexuality (pornography, divorce, homosexuality). Nowhere in Europe are Muslims being assimilated, rarely does intermarriage take place. Here is one colorful example, from Canada: The mother of the notorious Khadr brood, known as the country’s first family of terrorism, returned to Canada from Afghanistan and Pakistan in April 2004 with one of her sons. Despite her seeking refuge in Canada, she publicly insisted just a month earlier that Al-Qaeda-sponsored training camps were the best place for her children. “Would you like me to raise my child in Canada to be, by the time he’s 12 or 13 years old, to be on drugs or having some homosexual relationship? Is it better?”

(Ironically, in centuries past, as the historian Norman Daniel has documented, Christian Europeans looked down at Muslims with their multiple wives and harems as overly-sexualized, and therefore felt morally superior.)

To sum up: this first argument holds that Europe will be Islamized, quietly submitting to the dhimmi status or converting to Islam, because the yin of Europe and yang of Muslims fit so well: low and high religiosity, low and high fertility, low and high cultural confidence.[2] Europe is an open door through which Muslims are walking.

Immigration and crime — disastrous new study

Just a quick debunking of a recent research report that has been widely misrepresented in the press. The study is:Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment Among First- and Second-Generation Young Men by Ruben G. Rumbaut, Roberto G. Gonzales, Golnaz Komaie, and Charlie V. Morgan, University of California, Irvine

The take-home message of the article is that Hispanics in the USA have a LOW rate of criminality. That is however, not at all what the article shows.   Have a look at their Table 1 and you will see what most people know already — that Hispanics lie in between blacks and whites in crime-rate.

The only novelty of the article is this: It points out that it is the CHILDREN of the illegals who are the problem. The illegals themselves are too busy earning money to be much involved with crime.

This is of course VERY bad news — as it is conventionally assumed that the children of immigrants will adopt the characteristics of the host society.

The ECONOMIC advantages of immigration must therefore be balanced against the SOCIAL disadvantages of allowing in on a permanent basis such a troublesome group.

The study is being hailed as good news for the pro-immigrant camp. It is very much the reverse.

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Bush the Democrat

Democrats sought assurances Wednesday that President Bush will deliver Republican votes for putting illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship and creating a guest worker program. The Senate, with Bush’s backing, passed a bill last year that did both, but it wilted into campaign fodder for November’s midterm elections after House Republicans staged hearings around the country opposing it. “Without the administration’s earnest engagement on this issue, our efforts are likely to suffer the same fate they did last year,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy said at a hearing he called to weigh the administration’s support.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told the committee that Bush is committed to seeing a sweeping immigration bill become law, though they were careful not to wade too much into details. “Secretary Chertoff and I come before you today on behalf of the president with a simple message: We believe that with some hard work a solution can be found, and we pledge to roll up our sleeves and work with you on a bipartisan basis,” Gutierrez said.

Supporters of allowing some of the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants to remain in the United States are expected to unveil an immigration bill as early as next week. Closed-door meetings to draft the legislation have been going on for months with Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., and Reps. Luis Gutierrez , D-Ill., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.

“There aren’t many issues where President Bush and this Congress are going to be able to come together. … It’s an opportunity that none of us can afford to squander,” Flake said. Bush has raised the immigration issue several times this year. He named it the issue on which he would find most agreement with Democrats after they won control of Congress last November.

A sticking point is whether to allow immigrants who come as guest workers in the future to remain in the country and seek legal residency after a prescribed period of work. Many conservatives and immigration-control groups think they should have to return home. Some Democrats also have trouble with bringing in additional immigrants to work because of labor union concerns that they will take job away from Americans. “What interests should be served, the interests of poor people or those around the world … or shouldn’t it be the interests of the people of the United States?” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Kennedy said the U.S. already grants employers of high-skilled immigrants a chance to seek legal residency for the worker. Last year’s Senate bill divided illegal immigrants into three groups based on how long they had been in the country and set up different criteria for each. Those in the country less than two years had to leave. “Whatever measures are passed must work in the real world,” Chertoff said.

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Optimism about job effects

Economist says immigration makes Anglos into bosses. Hard to see that he can show what would have happened to jobs overall if there had been NO immigration, however. Undoubtedly, though, the effective deregulation of the labor market that illegals provide does benefit the economy — and hence the overall population — economically. Cheaper services means a higher standard of living for existing citizens. It is existing American citizens of marginal employability — particularly blacks — who are most likely to be adversely affected

A study released Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants who arrived in the state between 1990 and 2004 increased wages for native workers by an average 4%. UC Davis economist Giovanni Peri, who conducted the study, said the benefits were shared by all native-born workers, from high school dropouts to college graduates, because immigrants generally perform complementary rather than competitive work. As immigrants filled lower-skilled jobs, they pushed natives up the economic ladder into employment that required more English or know-how of the U.S. system, he said. “The big message is that there is no big loss from immigration,” Peri said. “There are gains, and these are enjoyed by a much bigger share of the population than is commonly believed.”……

Steven Camarota of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies said the wage study, by examining immigrants only in California, failed to consider their effect on the rest of the country. Immigrants working for lower wages in a California factory, for instance, could keep wages down in a competing enterprise staffed by native-born citizens in another state, he said. Immigrants, who make up one-third of California’s labor force, could also be discouraging natives from moving to the state and taking advantage of higher-paying job opportunities, Camarota said.

And, by examining only wage effects, the study failed to address the declining percentage of native-born adults working in California, Camarota said. Their share of the workforce declined from 65% in 2000 to 62% in 2005, one of the lowest in t e country, which could be caused by competition from immigrants, he said. “The idea that immigrants compete only with other immigrants is absurd on its face,” he said, adding that no industry in America employs only immigrants.

Peri said, however, that his study’s more detailed analysis of California’s employment trends showed no displacement of native-born workers. Other studies have shown that immigration has had a negative effect on African American high school dropouts. But those conclusions were rooted in different assessments of whether blacks performed the same work as immigrants, he said.

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