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29 February, 2024

Immigrants in U.S. Doctoral Programs

Immigrants received nearly half of all doctoral degrees issued in the U.S. in 2022. Despite their overrepresentation, immigrants are relatively average as doctorate recipients — neither the towering geniuses of advocates’ imagination nor the unqualified cheap labor that critics denounce. Current policy may cause natives to be crowded out of doctoral programs by foreign students whose skills are merely ordinary. Broader implications for “staple a green card” and other skill-based immigration proposals are discussed.

Introduction

Anyone who has spent time in a university setting in the past few decades has probably noticed the large share of immigrants among the doctoral students there. The federal government’s Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) confirms that observation. While the number of doctorates earned by natives has risen only slightly since 1974, the number of doctorates issued to immigrants has increased much more.1 This increase is overwhelmingly among temporary immigrants who likely have student visas. In fact, temporary immigrants received 35 percent of all doctorates in the U.S. in 2022, including 75 percent of immigrant doctorates.

The student visa program naturally leads to immigrants earning a share of U.S. doctorates that exceeds their share of the population. Figure 2 quantifies the effect by combining SED data with the 2018 American Community Survey (ACS) and population figures published by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).2 Natives are underrepresented among U.S. doctorate recipients, while naturalized or permanent resident immigrants receive a proportional share, and temporary immigrants are vastly overrepresented due to student visas.

https://cis.org/Report/Immigrants-US-Doctoral-Programs

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28 February, 2024

Longest-serving NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly cautioned Sunday that New York City’s quality of life “has really deteriorated.”

Migrant crime is a major reason.

Venezuela’s notorious Tren de Aragua gang and El Salvador’s feared MS-13 — what retired FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker calls “prison-spawned gangs” — are threatening to take over American cities.

They’re the “most dangerous gangs on the planet,” warns Swecker, who speculates that Latin countries are emptying their prisons deliberately.

Gang leaders setting up crime rings in America “come out of the muck and the slime of the South American prisons.”

While law-enforcement officials here are warning us about the collapse of public safety, left-wing pols deny there’s a problem.

Ana Maria Archila, co-director of New York’s Working Families Party, says people are feeling a “false sense of chaos and insecurity,” The New York Times reports.

She blames it on racism and xenophobia, not reality.

Open your eyes, Ms. Archila.

Public safety is visibly spiraling downward: migrants beating cops in Times Square, migrants running prostitution rings, migrants on mopeds robbing pedestrians, migrants shoplifting and stripping retail stores.

And now a migrant who recently left New York has been arrested for killing a Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley.

Not everyone violating the border is a hardened criminal, but President Biden’s open borders are allowing the worst to get in.

When Mayor Adams was asked last week about stabbing incidents and violence against cops at the Randall’s Island shelter, he said that “even the most peaceful person, being confined to an area with 3,000 people, . . . there comes a time where it just irritates you.”

Irritates?

Adams is downplaying a serious threat.

New York’s misguided “sanctuary city” policy makes the danger worse.

If a migrant is arrested in the Big Apple, the NYPD is barred from communicating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement to determine whether the migrant should be deported, jailed or allowed back on the street.

Adams stated clearly Monday that sanctuary status must be changed so migrants who commit felonies can be picked up by ICE and deported.

He’s said it before. Now it needs to happen.

Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, entered the United States from Venezuela illegally in September 2022, was granted “parole” under Biden’s policy and came to New York on a bus.

While here, he was arrested once but not detained.

Now he’s charged with murdering Riley, who was out jogging on the University of Georgia campus.

FBI’s Swecker suggests that “this man did not burst spontaneously into a criminal overnight. This is someone who has committed crimes before.”

Athens put out an arrest warrant for Ibarra in December when he skipped a court appearance in a shoplifting case.

Athens is also a sanctuary city, and he was merely cited for shoplifting.

At CPAC Saturday, Donald Trump likened “migrant crime” to the deeds of fictional killer Hannibal Lecter, who eats victims.

Not such a stretch in Ibarra’s case, considering he’s also charged with aggravated battery for bludgeoning Riley’s body until her skull was disfigured.

The vicious gang MS-13 is resurging and may join forces with Tren de Aragua.

In 2016 and 2017, an MS-13 gang hacked and beheaded four Long Island teens, using machetes, knives and a chisel. Gruesome.

The left denies migrant crime is a problem.

The public knows better.

A new Pew Research Center report says 57% of Americans believe the huge influx of migrants is leading to more crime.

Adams stood Saturday in Times Square, boasting that it’s safe.

But saying it doesn’t make it so.

Just two days earlier, a teenager visiting the “Crossroads of the World” for the first time was knifed by a gang of masked attackers, including several migrants.

He was taken to Bellevue Hospital with a collapsed lung.

Migrant gangs pose the biggest danger, but pervasive sex trafficking is also a scourge.

Watch at about 6 p.m. as women exit shelters and get picked up in cars, leaving their kids behind for the night.

It’s happening in all five boroughs, according to Homeland Security Investigations Deputy Agent in Charge Darren McCormack.

Are neighbors who criticize what’s happening xenophobic and racist? No. They just want a decent life, and they see it disappearing fast.

https://nypost.com/2024/02/27/opinion/the-migrant-surge-brings-killers-and-criminal-gangs-victimizing-innocents-like-laken-riley/

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27 February, 2024

Somehow, Biden’s Immigration and Border Polling Gets Worse

Americans’ approval of the job President Biden is doing on immigration and the border has never been strong, but somehow the most recent polls show satisfaction with the president’s handling of those topics is declining. More saliently, however, Biden’s poor handling of those subjects is taking Americans’ satisfaction with the level of immigration to this country down with it, and increasing the calls for his DHS secretary to be impeached.

The Economist/YouGov. Between February 18 and 20, polling outfit YouGov surveyed 1,562 U.S. adults — including 1,353 voters — for UK journal The Economist and asked them their thoughts on the president’s handling of immigration.

Among Americans aged 18 and older, 57 percent disapproved of the job Biden is doing on immigration, while just 34 percent approved. Biden’s showing was both better and worse among registered voters, 59 percent of whom disapproved and 35 percent of whom approved.

As with most Economist/YouGov polls, this one was Democrat-heavy, which is likely why this is one of the better polls for Biden on immigration. And two-thirds of those Democrats polled, 66 percent, approved of the president’s handling of immigration, while just 26 percent disapproved.

By comparison, 60 percent of Independent voters disapproved of Biden’s immigration performance, and just 23 percent approved. Not surprisingly, 88 percent of GOP voters disapproved of the job that Biden was doing — it was more of a shock that 10 percent of them approved.

Those statistics are indicative of a larger divide between Democratic voters and the rest of the electorate on immigration. Respondents were asked which of 15 separate issues was the most important to them, and immigration came in third overall (chosen by 12 percent of those polled), trailing just inflation/prices (20 percent) and health care (14 percent).

Immigration lagged only those two issues for Independents as well, the choice of 10 percent of the politically unaligned (22 percent of whom worry most about inflation, and 15 percent of whom considered health care their most important issue), while among Republicans, immigration tied with inflation as the top issue, each issue chosen by 25 percent of voters who affiliate with the GOP.

Contrast that with Democratic respondents. Just 2 percent of the president’s fellow partisans named immigration as their top issue, tying it in second-to-last place with “criminal justice reform” and “civil liberties”, and just ahead of “foreign policy” (at 1 percent).

I’ve made the point many times before, but it bears repeating: The crisis at the border is the result of Biden administration policies that are wildly unpopular with most Americans as a whole, but those policies are unlikely to change because they are popular with the president’s Democratic base.

Monmouth University. Monmouth University polled 902 U.S. adults between February 8 and 12, and the results were even worse for Biden. In that poll, 71 percent of registered voters disapproved of how Biden has handled immigration as president, while just 26 percent approved.

Had it not been for the Democrats surveyed — 54 percent of whom approved of Biden’s handling of immigration and 42 percent of whom disapproved — those results would have been even worse for the incumbent.

That’s because 74 percent of Independents and 97 percent of Republicans disapproved of Biden’s performance when it comes to immigration, compared to just 21 percent and 2 percent of those two cohorts who approved of Biden’s performance on immigration, respectively.

Biden’s overall approval on immigration has stayed steady since the last time Monmouth asked this question (in December), but his disapproval has climbed 2 points in the interim. That’s because the percentage of respondents who weren’t quite sure about the issue has fallen, from 5 percent to 3 percent. The more people find out about Biden’s handling of immigration, the less they like it.

Note that in a September 2022 Monmouth poll, “just” 63 percent of respondents disapproved of Biden’s immigration performance, and 31 percent approved. That’s a 13-point swing in 17 months, and likely attributable to the fact that the media had largely ignored the Southwest border crisis until Senate negotiators began considering reforms in November.

The proposal those negotiators presented would simply have made the situation at the border worse, which is why it quickly went down in flames, leaving the president no viable political option aside from attempting to shift the blame to the GOP for the crisis. As this poll shows, that gambit hasn’t worked.

In any event, that 26 percent approval to 71 percent disapproval split on Biden’s handling of immigration is the biggest vulnerability for the president in a poll that shows he’s underwater on every key political issue: jobs — 48 percent approve, 49 percent disapprove; infrastructure — 43 percent approve, 53 percent disapprove; climate change — 41 percent approve, 53 percent disapprove; inflation — 34 percent approve, 63 percent disapprove; foreign policy — 33 percent approve, 65 percent disapprove.

Harvard Harris. On February 26, the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University, The Harris Poll, and Harris-X released the results of their latest survey, conducted between February 21 and 22, which took the political pulse of 2,022 registered voters.

As with their January poll, it revealed that “immigration” remains the top concern of U.S. voters, identified as a key worry by 36 percent of respondents (a one-point increase over January), with inflation (at 33 percent) taking second place.

Notably, more than half — 51 percent — of GOP voters surveyed identified immigration as among the most important issues facing the country, and 56 percent of those aged 65 years and older did the same. Again, by contrast, just 21 percent of Democratic voters were concerned about immigration.

Note also that a solid majority, 59 percent, of respondents to that poll agreed with the statement: “I miss Donald Trump's policies on the economy, immigration and crime.” That’s plainly not good for the Biden re-election campaign.

American voters have plainly awakened to what’s occurring at the Southwest border, and don’t like what they’re seeing: Some 63 percent of respondents — and 65 percent of Independents — believe that the immigration problem at the border is getting worse.

And they want a change, with 71 percent of voters calling on the White House to make it tougher for migrants to get into the United States illegally (including 76 percent of Independents and 56 percent of Democrats) compared to 29 percent (including 44 percent of Democrats) who want the president to maintain his current border policies.

While the president claims he needs Congress to give him new powers to deal with the border surge, 54 percent of respondents believe he has all the authority he needs to control the border — including 51 percent of Democrats — although Independents were evenly split, 50-50, on that question.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Somehow-Bidens-Immigration-and-Border-Polling-Gets-Worse

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26 February, 2024

Immigration impacts labor market outcomes

The Chamber of Commerce has its stable of high-immigration talking points — telling us, for example, that the official unemployment rate is low, that immigrants are “filling gaps” and boosting GDP, and that enforcing immigration law would be “draconian”.

This week, however, the purveyor of those same tropes is the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented think tank whose scholars once had a more nuanced view of immigration and its impact on workers and the country. We live in strange political times, when it seems that nearly everyone on the left endorses high immigration without a hint of reservation. In any case, the EPI post, written by Daniel Costa and Heidi Shierholz, criticizes my recent report comparing immigrant and native job growth, so I want to make a few points in response.

First, Costa and Shierholz’s assertion that immigration has no impact on labor market outcomes for U.S.-born workers is simply wrong. The 2017 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study of immigration lists numerous studies showing negative wage impacts, especially on the less-educated. A 2019 review of over 50 studies by Anthony Edo in the Journal of Economic Surveys comes to similar conclusions. But we need not rely solely on academics. Business groups like the Chamber of Commerce have openly pushed for more immigration in order to slow the inflation supposedly caused by high wages. In fact, inflation has led immigration advocates over the last couple of years to argue not only that immigration holds down wages, but it’s good that it does!

Second, the EPI authors’ argument that the labor force participation rate for “prime-age” U.S.-born men (25 to 54) has improved since the low of 2020 is not reassuring. The figure below comes directly from our recent employment report and shows the labor force participation of prime-age U.S.-born men. The rate for these men has certainly improved since the depths of Covid, but it remains below the level of 2019 and is well below the prior peaks in 2006 and 2000. In fact, participation has been declining for these men going back to 1960, when more than 90 percent were in the labor force. The recent increases, while encouraging, in no way to fix this very longstanding problem.

Labor Force Participation for Immigrants and U.S.-Born Men (Ages 25 to 54) Without a Bachelor's Degree, 2000 to 2023

Source: Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the Current Population Survey public-use files for every year from the fourth quarter of 2000 to the fourth quarter of 2023. All figures are seasonally unadjusted and are for non-institutionalized civilians, which does not include those in institutions such as prisons and nursing homes. "Immigrant" matches the Census Bureau's definition of "foreign-born" and includes all persons who were not U.S. citizens at birth. Those in the labor force are working or looking for work. Figure excludes all those with a bachelor's degree or higher.
Equally important, to argue that immigration can reduce labor force participation or wages of natives is not the same as saying it is the only factor that ever matters, or that things can never improve for workers during a period of high immigration. To suggest, as Costa and Shierholz do, that the recent improvement in labor force participation for less-educated men means immigration has no impact on these workers makes no sense. Moreover, their assertion that the increase in labor force participation among less-educated men is “beating expectations” is persuasive only if one has very low expectations.

Third, is whether concern about immigration is really a “distraction from dynamics that are actually hurting working people”, such as weak labor standards and unions, as Costa and Shierholz allege. These “dynamics”, they write, have put “too much power in the hands of corporations and employers”. But increasing the supply of workers through immigration is exactly one of those dynamics. Why the particular dynamic of immigration no longer concerns the EPI authors is not clear, especially when one considers the history of the labor movement.

As the late Vernon Briggs, a strong supporter of unions, argued in his book, Immigration and American Unionism, “Unions thrive (membership grows) when immigration is low or levels are contracting; unions falter (membership declines) during periods when immigration is high or levels are increasing.” Briggs adds that union leaders for most of American history “intuitively believed this to be the case and acted accordingly”. Costa and Shierholz would do well to consider what labor leaders knew in decades past: Immigration is generally not in the interests of American workers. To be sure, immigration is by no means the only issue confronting American workers, but it should not be dismissed as a “distraction” when all of the evidence indicates otherwise.

https://cis.org/Camarota/Responding-Chamber-Commerce-and-Economic-Policy-Institute

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25 February, 2024

UN Budgets Millions for U.S.-Bound Migrants in 2024

Early on in America’s historic border crisis, now entering its fourth record-smashing year, some Republican lawmakers named a significant enabling culprit other than the usual Mexican cartel smugglers. They named the U.S. taxpayer-funded United Nations as essentially a co-smuggler after seeing my reports that the UN was handing out debit cards and cash vouchers to aspiring illegal border crossers on their way north.

One outraged group of 21 border-security-minded lawmakers even pitched a bill that would require the United States, the UN’s largest donor, to turn off the taxpayer money spigot. H.R. 6155 never caught fire, though, in no small part because “fact checks” claiming to debunk other reports like mine in the conservative press dissuaded broader media interest and left the American public in the dark.

But now the UN’s 2024 update to the “Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan” (RMRP for short), a planning and budget document for handing out nearly $1.6 billion in 17 Latin America countries, can cast a broad confirming light on the cash giveaways and much more aid for 2024 ahead — with the helping hands of 248 named non-governmental organizations. Despite the RMRP plan title naming Venezuelans as recipients of this aid operation, the document’s fine print (footnote on p. 14 and paragraph on p. 43, for instance) says the largesse goes to “all nationalities” and “multiple other nationalities”.

The documents clear up any mystery about what the UN and NGOs are doing on the migrant trails and leave no room for supposedly debunking “fact checks”.

In a nutshell, the UN and its advocacy partners are planning to spread $372 million in “Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA)”, and “Multipurpose Cash Assistance (MCA)” to some 624,000 immigrants in-transit to the United States during 2024. That money is most often handed out, other UN documents show, as pre-paid, rechargeable debit cards, but also hard “cash in envelopes”, bank transfers, and mobile transfers the U.S. border-bound travelers can use for whatever they want.

The $372 million in planned cash giveaways to the 624,000 immigrants moving north and illegally crossing national borders “represents a significantly greater share of the financial requirements” for 2024, the RMRP says, but it is still only one part of much broader UN hemisphere-wide vision that aims to spend $1.59 billion assisting about three million people in 17 countries who emigrated from their home nations. Most will be “in-destination” recipients already supposedly settled in third countries, albeit in declining numbers, but a rising share of cash will go to the spiking numbers of “in-transit” immigrants launching journeys from those accommodating countries north to the United States.

Without distinction, both populations get access to UN cash but also “humanitarian transportation”, shelter, food, legal advice, personal hygiene products, health care, and “protection” against threats like human smuggling, and much more besides cash in envelopes or debit cards.

The cash handouts will be in the mix during 2024 as the UN and its private partners incorporate an “increased use of CVA” in, for instance, the $184 million it plans to provide 1.2 million people, $122 million for rent support and also “temporary collective shelter” for 473,000 people, and $25.8 million for “humanitarian transportation” to 129,000 people crossing borders. There’ll also be “expanded use of multi-purpose cash” for those claiming “gender-based violence”.

https://cis.org/Bensman/UN-Budgets-Millions-USBound-Migrants-2024

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22 February, 2024

Hispanics Trust Trump over Biden on Economy, Immigration, Ukraine, and Israel by over 20 Points

Amidst the most chaotic border crisis in our nation’s history, the skyrocketing cost of living, a housing crisis, and a series of destabilizing international events, President Joe Biden’s approval rating sits at a record low. Biden’s poor performance among minorities – particularly Hispanics – is a crucial factor in his dwindling support, with new polls showing Biden losing to former President Donald Trump among Hispanics after winning them by 33 points in 2020.

There is no shortage of evidence that Biden is rapidly losing support among key coalitions of the Democratic party, including young people, women, and minorities, but these trends do not appear to be reversing anytime soon.

A recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll finds a harrowing uphill battle for Biden when it comes to recovering ground with minorities – especially hyper-critical Hispanics who may abandon him altogether in November according to public opinion polls.

The USA Today poll reveals Trump is now leading Biden among Hispanics by 5 percentage-points – 39% to 34% – after Biden won Hispanics by 33 points in 2020. This amounts to a close to 40-point swing away from Biden, a number so startling it would almost be unbelievable – if it weren’t for the fact that Hispanics have been giving Biden increasingly harsh performance rankings for the past three and a half years.

A February Morning Consult poll found Hispanics say their financial situation was better off under Trump than Biden by 24 points – just six points shy of the share of Whites who say the same thing.   

The poll also found wide, double-digit preferences for Trump among Hispanics when it comes to handling a variety of issues from crime to the economy, the border, Ukraine, and Israel. Hispanics are also much closer to whites on most of these issues than they have been in the past.

Hispanics trust Trump to handle the economy over Biden by 25 points – 54% to 29%. This is nearly identical to the share of whites who feel the same way, with whites trusting Trump over Biden on the economy by 27 points.  

The same poll finds that despite the best attempts of Open Borders proponents to portray Trump as an extremist on immigration, Hispanics largely agree with Trump and want to secure the southern border. Hispanics trust Trump to handle immigration over Biden by 23 points – 52% to 29%. This number is just nine points lower than the share of whites who trust Trump over Biden on the border.

On crime, Hispanics trust Trump over Biden by 14 points – 47% to 33% – while whites trust Trump over Biden by 28 points, a 14-point difference.

Hispanics narrowly trust Trump more to handle the housing crisis, with Hispanics saying they trust Trump over Biden to handle housing by two points – 40% to 38%. Whites trust Trump by 16 points to handle housing.    

Hispanics also broadly trust Trump over Biden on both the Israel-Hamas war and the Russia-Ukraine war. Hispanics trust Trump over Biden on Israel by 22 points – 48% to 26%. This is once again nearly identical to the share of whites who trust Trump more. Whites trust Trump over Biden by 23 points on the Israel-Hamas war.

Hispanics also place much more trust in Trump to navigate the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with Hispanics saying they trust Trump over Biden by 20 points – 48% to 28%. This is close to the share of whites who feel the same way, with whites trusting Trump over Biden on the Ukraine conflict by 20 points, 50% to 30%.

Interestingly, Hispanics trust Trump the most on the issue of U.S.-China relations, and they trust him slightly more than whites do. The poll finds Hispanics trust Trump by 28 points – 53% to 25% – on China. This is slightly greater than the share of whites who trust Trump on China, with whites trusting Trump over Biden by 26 points.    

The fact that Biden is on track to lose double-digits with Hispanics according to recent polls is less far-fetched when considering just how poorly Hispanics view Biden’s handling of the country. From the economy to the border crisis to relations in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and China, Hispanics broadly trust Former President Trump over Biden. Given that Hispanics have historically favored Democrats, this deterioration in support could be catastrophic for the left, and may not be easily corrected.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/02/hispanics-trust-trump-over-biden-on-economy-immigration-ukraine-and-israel-by-over-20-points/

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21 February, 2024

Home Office SACKS borders inspector after he voiced concerns about hundreds of 'high-risk' aircraft landing in Britain without security checks

The Home Office tonight sacked the independent borders inspector after he voiced concerns about 'high-risk' aircraft landing in Britain without security checks.

David Neal will immediately leave his role as the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration after being fired by Home Secretary James Cleverly.

It comes after Mr Neal shared his fears about a 'scandal' of unchecked private jet flights at UK airports.

This may have seen gangsters, illegal immigrants, trafficking victims and even extremists enter the country without even rudimentary scrutiny, he warned.

Mr Neal, who spoke to the Daily Mail about his worries, revealed he had decided to go public because of the 'massive public interest'.

But his whistleblowing has now cost him his job after he lost the confidence of Mr Cleverly.

Labour this evening accused the Government of having 'lost control of our borders' and claimed ministers were 'seeking to hide the truth'.

They also demanded the Home Office release 15 unpublished reports by Mr Neal, stretching back to April last year.

Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the Tories had 'lost control of our borders'

A Home Office spokesperson said: 'We have terminated the appointment of David Neal, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, after he breached the terms of appointment and lost the confidence of the Home Secretary.

'The planned recruitment process for the next Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration is in progress.'

Mr Neal had already been due to leave his role on 21 March but has now left with immediate effect.

Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: 'This is total Tory chaos on borders and immigration.

'A series of Conservative home secretaries have sought to bury uncomfortable truths revealed by the chief inspector about our broken borders, and shockingly they are still sitting on 15 unpublished reports - stretching back to April last year.

'The Home Secretary must now publish those reports in full.

'The Conservatives have lost control of our borders, are seeking to hide the truth, and are putting border security at risk.'

Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael, the party's home affairs spokesperson, said: 'This is a desperate move from a Conservative Government terrified of proper scrutiny of their record of failure on borders and immigration.

'Conservative ministers must publish these reports without delay.

'From the failed Rwanda scheme to the broken asylum system, it's no surprise this Government is trying to cover up their failures.'

Mr Neal warned of 'dangerous' failings at a prominent London airport which potentially allowed thousands of passengers to evade passport controls.

Home Office data provided to him showed the UK Border Force failed to check the occupants of hundreds of private jets arriving at just one airport last year.

The debacle meant gangsters, illegal immigrants, trafficking victims and even extremists may have entered the UK without even rudimentary scrutiny.

Mr Neal voiced concerns the problem may be duplicated at other airports which handle private and chartered aircraft.

Passengers aboard such flights, known as 'general aviation', who are not met by Border Force, are allowed to leave the airport with no further checks.

Border Force officers are supposed to check 100 per cent of general aviation flights which they have classified as 'high-risk'.

But last year, just 21 per cent were inspected by immigration officers at London City airport, Mr Neal told the Mail.

It handled 1,305 general aviation flights in all last year, with 687 categorised as high-risk, he said.

Only 144 of those were checked by Border Force, and 543 – about ten a week – underwent no passport inspections at all, according to figures provided to him by Border Force last month.

The remainder of general aviation flights are classified as 'low-risk' with 30 per cent supposed to be checked, according to guidelines.

But last year just 9.7 per cent of those into London City, in the east of the capital, were inspected by officers, the watchdog found during a routine inspection.

The problems were uncovered at a spot inspection at London City by Mr Neal's team just over two weeks ago.

His completed report was sent to the Home Secretary last week.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13105461/Home-Office-SACKS-borders-inspector-voiced-concerns-hundreds-high-risk-aircraft-landing-Britain-without-security-checks.html

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February 20, 2024

Dozens of Chinese migrants spotted entering US illegally in California border town of Jacumba

Shocking images and video taken in California this weekend show Chinese migrants lined up at the border town of Jacumba and telling reporters shamelessly how they're here to 'take the money'.

Dozens and dozens, possibly up to hundreds of migrants, crossed the international boundary, according to Griff Jenkins of Fox News, who recorded the footage.

'This is one of the largest groups of Chinese I have ever come across and there were [...] two groups at the same time crossing in Jacumba, CA,' the correspondent tweeted last week.

More than 150 Chinese nationals a day are sneaking into the US illegally since October, according to startling new US Customs and Border Protection statistics

More than 150 Chinese nationals a day have been sneaking into the US illegally since October, according to startling US Customs and Border Protection statistics.

The 2023 fiscal year reportedly saw over 37,000 Chinese migrants encountered at the border - with a staggering 20,000 more since October, when the 2024 fiscal year began.

The Chinese surge is part of a historic and overwhelming wave of migrants across the Southern Border of the country since 2021.

The US is seeing more migrants - and from more countries - than ever before, federal data shows.

The migrants are headed to the west coast because that's may be their final destination, Border Congressman Tony Gonzales (R, Texas) told DailyMail.com.

'As I've spoken to different agencies about why some communities (groups of migrants) go one place and others go another, one: it depends on what cartel controls that pipeline,' Gonzales explained.

'It's very clear that the Sinaloa Cartel is the one controlling that operation and sending Chinese more towards the California corridor...California/Arizona corridor that they control. That's half of the equation.

'The other half is where is the population going to go. Where are the large populations of Asian Americans tend to be-- in California, New York is another area, but that West Coast area is a big population center for them.'

The Chinese arrivals have raised concern with elected officials about why the citizens for a US foe are coming here in increasing numbers.

'It's tough to put everybody in the same box: that they're all tourist, they're all coming all gang members, they're all bad actors,' the Republican added.

'At the same time, you can't say they're all coming here for opportunity and fleeing Xi's repressive regime.

'This is once again, why is its so important that we allow zero people to come over illegally, and any of these people seeking asylum, they get their cases heard immediately.

'Regardless of what ethnicity or what country you're coming from, you get your day in court and if you don't qualify, you get deported back to China, Venezuela or wherever the hell you came from.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/us-border-crisis/article-13101039/Startling-photo-shows-large-group-Chinese-migrants-California-crossing-border-illegally-Mexico-numbers-continue-rise.html

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19 February, 2024

Censored again

I am getting a lot of censorship from Google these days.  The latest post to be obliterated was one I put up here on 13th.  It was a transcript of an article on a mainstream conservative site so I am rather surprised.  The original article is here:

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/12/democrats-shower-illegal-aliens-valentines-citizens-take-arrows/

It argues that illegal immigrants are getting better treatment than native-born Americans

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18 February, 2024

Biden’s Border Chaos Lets Foreign Criminals Live Here Indefinitely

In France last June, an unnamed Syrian “refugee” stabbed six people on a playground. He had applied for asylum in France but was rejected—because he had already received asylum in Sweden a few years earlier.

In Switzerland last week, a man with an ax took passengers hostage on a train until police shot him. Thought to be Iranian, he had been “assigned to an asylum-seeker center,” according to reports.

In London this month, an Afghan named Abdul Ezedi threw acid on a woman and her daughters. Ezedi sneaked into Britain in 2016 and was twice rejected for asylum. He was charged with sex offenses in 2017 and 2018 but didn’t go to prison. On his third asylum application, he claimed a conversion to Christianity and got asylum on the basis that he’d be persecuted if sent home.

Here in the U.S., Ethiopian Bazen Berhe was just sentenced to 100 years for stabbing a co-worker to death in a Target parking lot in Virginia back in April 2021. According to the Washington Post, Berhe’s motive was apparently “absolute anger” at having his asylum application refused. Berhe said he “would have stabbed anyone … even a 4-year-old kid” in his rage.

Then, there was Ahmed Shihab, an Iraqi who came to the U.S. on a tourist visa and claimed asylum in 2020, after which he began to plot to bring ISIS terrorists into the U.S.  to assassinate former President George W. Bush.

Recently, we had young gang members who entered the U.S. illegally—ostensibly to claim asylum—but who are actually robbing people’s phones and bank accounts. The ringleader and suspects arrested so far are all Venezuelans who operated from the comfort of taxpayer-provided migrant shelters in New York City.

What do all these stories have in common? They all involve foreign nationals during or after completing their asylum process. Due to an ongoing flood of economic migrants cloaked in bogus asylum claims (economic reasons are not sufficient for claiming asylum), desirable countries like the U.S. have a massive population of aliens living here indefinitely as they wait years for their asylum hearings. And even when they are refused asylum and ordered deported, many remain as “asylum zombies,” with their legal options to stay stone dead but still physically here.

For the most part, we have no idea of their criminal or mental health histories. Governments that fail to deport bogus asylum-seekers, or at least those who are known dangers, force their unwitting citizens to bear the serious risks of assaults like those above.

Like ours, Europe’s asylum system not only fails to distinguish between people fleeing for their lives and migrants looking for jobs, it fails to deport most of those who don’t qualify for asylum. Around a million people claimed asylum last year in the EU, and just over 40% received it. Yet last year, only 65,000 out of 400,000 deportation orders in the European Union were carried out. That means most refused asylum applicants, including some obvious threats to law and order, simply stick around.

The Venezuelan gangs that are robbing New Yorkers are theoretically in the asylum process. That means they will claim that they can’t go home because they’d be persecuted for political, religious, or other protected grounds. Their cases could take many years to resolve. Meanwhile, New York City police said they are “essentially ghost criminals. No criminal history. No photos. No cellphone. No social media. Sometimes we’re even unclear on name or a date of birth.”

This utterly contradicts Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’ claim that illegal immigrants are “vetted” before being released into our communities much less his statements that the Department of Homeland Security is applying “tougher consequences for unlawful entry.”

A majority of the millions now pouring over the open U.S. border are unlikely to qualify for asylum. Yet some of them are getting their first court date—just to schedule future court dates—years into the future. If they want to go to San Antonio, Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Chicago, Washington, or Denver, they don’t have to show up until March 2027. If they choose New York City, they can delay their first hearing until 2033.

Once they finally start the court process that will end with them either getting asylum or being ordered deported, the proceedings will take at least four years—and, given the numbers entering the clogged system, likely much longer.

In the U.S., there are already over 1.2 million foreigners with final orders of removal from an immigration judge. Of these, over 400,000 have been convicted of crimes in the U.S. Yet, under Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security has been instructed to not enforce most immigration laws. Now, the Biden administration has threatened that unless the White House gets the supplemental budget money it wants from Congress, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s resources, particularly those used for detention, will be slashed.

President Joe Biden tried to force Congress to approve $60 billion for Ukraine aid by jamming it into a giant supplemental budget package along with aid for Israel as well as border security. (The “border security” in the package mostly meant spending another $20 billion to mass release and then grant benefits to more illegal aliens).

That overstuffed spending package failed to pass at first run last week, but the Senate stripped the border and immigration policy changes and passed funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and “refugees and entrants” to the U.S. on the second try.  

Now, the president’s message to the House of Representatives is “Nice country you have here—would be a pity if anything should happen to it.” Not only does he already refuse to use his existing, fully sufficient executive powers to quickly slow the rush of illegal entry at the border, but Biden threatens to further slow-walk detaining, arresting, and removing illegal aliens already here.

Exposing American citizens to the risks of violence from those with no legal right to remain here is bad enough. To do so for political reasons smells a lot like extortion. Biden should use the ample powers and funds he has to secure the border. And he should tell Mayorkas to rescind his (non)enforcement memo and let ICE do its job: Arrest, detain, and deport illegal aliens, prioritizing the most dangerous, but sparing none for purely political considerations.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/15/bidens-border-chaos-lets-foreign-criminals-live-here-indefinitely-borderline/

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15 February, 2024

Massachusetts couple volunteers to host migrants, four show up an hour later: ‘We really knew nothing’

A Massachusetts couple who volunteered to take in illegal immigrants was surprised when a family of four showed up at the doorstep less than an hour after signing up.

With state shelters hitting capacity and migrant families sleeping overnight inside Boston Logan International Airport, Colin and Jessica Stokes of Brookline, Massachusetts, decided to step up and try to make a difference.

“I was like, I have to get sheets on the beds. How many people are coming? Where are they from? What ages? We really knew nothing,” Jessica told WBZ News on Friday.

“The need is so clearly overwhelming,” Colin chimed in.

The family of four was one of the migrant groups that had been sleeping at the airport.

The parents and two children had traveled all the way from Chile to Texas before heading to Massachusetts.

The two kids are currently waiting to be put in a school.The parents stressed that while they are looking to work, the proper authorization forms will likely take several months to be received and approved.

Jessica said it is incredible to observe how challenging the situation is from the front lines.

“The family is lovely. They are so appreciative. It has been wonderful,” she added.

The migrant crisis has been complex for Massachusetts. The state’s newest emergency shelter, located in Roxbury, a neighborhood in Boston, reached its capacity (400 people) in just one week.

Gov. Maura Healey’s office said in late January the decision to move migrants into the state-owned Melnea Cass Recreation Center was “just born out of necessity” as other facilities in the state that have served as housing shelters, including the Logan Airport, have become overwhelmed.

“We just have to do what we have to do at this time,” she added.

Local officials are looking into a Boston Seaport office building as the location for another shelter, but Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn said the lack of running water at the site makes it a “non-starter.”

The Stokes hope that other families use them as a case study and decide to put migrants up in their own homes.

“Just the dysfunction is really disheartening, and I know that really well-intentioned people are working as hard as they can; it’s a state of emergency. But it is distressing to see the volume,” Jessica said.

https://nypost.com/2024/02/15/us-news/massachusetts-couple-volunteers-to-host-migrants-four-show-up-an-hour-later/

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14 February, 2024

Repatriated Albanians Find New Routes Back to Britain

In 2022, when thousands of Albanian migrants made headlines in Britain by crossing the Channel in small speedboats, Blerand was among them. And when British authorities cracked down and fast-tracked their return, Blerand found himself on a plane back to Albania and the tiny, remote village in the northern mountains where he grew up.

He was repatriated in September 2023. Yet when BIRN contacted Blerand, he replied: “For three months now I’m in Manchester.” He had returned to Britain, once more by speedboat.

Though numbers are significantly down on 2022, when some 12,000 Albanians crossed the sea between France and Britain by small boat, authorities and experts in Albania say the dream among young people in northern regions like Kukes and Has is far from extinguished.

For some, the fast-track repatriation procedures agreed between Albania and Britain in December 2022 are little deterrent when compared with the get-rich-quick potential of a job cultivating cannabis in Britain in what has become known in Albania as Shtepite e barit, or ‘weed houses’.

Growing cannabis is notoriously labour-intensive, requiring continuous care to prune plants and prevent them from flowering; this increases their THC concentration and the price they can command on the street.

Many Albanians who have been repatriated see little alternative but to try again in order to pay for the expenses incurred in the first failed attempt. They become victims of debt bondage, said Jahir Cahani, a local activist in Kukes.

“Some have sold the meagre property they had, their flocks [of sheep]… Others used money from loans to pay for the trip,” said local Kukes activist Jahir Cahani.

“This makes it impossible for them to leave behind the indoor cannabis facilities.”

https://balkaninsight.com/2024/02/14/repatriated-albanians-find-new-routes-back-to-britain/

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13 February, 2024

Democrats Lavish Illegal Immigrants With Valentines. Citizens Take the Arrows

They’re just not that into you.  Today’s Democrats treat the American people like a spouse who has grown routine, sometimes ungrateful, and decreasingly alluring. And they cannot forgive America for running off for four years with that damn contractor.

But Democrats swoon over the 8.8 million illegal aliens who they have helped invade the country on President Joe Biden’s watch.

These arrivistes are like a collective paramour who blends excitement, the exotic, and a stiff whiff of danger. And, before long, odds are that they will vote Democrat. In a word: HOT!

That’s why American citizens lately feel jilted, if not abused by Democrats, even as illegal aliens gasp beneath the gifts that the Left piles on. “More free stuff?” they must ask. “We must be dating, but we just wanted something casual.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, just cooked up a $53 million giveaway of free debit cards for illegal alien families with kids. They will receive $1,000 per month to buy baby supplies and food, including “culturally relevant” cuisine.

Meanwhile, Adams chopped the Education Department’s food budget by $60 million. This month, students who enjoyed chicken thighs, grab-and-go salads, and cookies now endure cheaper fare: pizza, hummus and crackers, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Gotham’s classrooms are 41.1% Hispanic, 23.7% black, and 16.5% of Asian descent. Schools that are only 14.7% white, on average, should expect more social justice than this. Instead, Adams feeds illegal aliens while depriving his voters’ children.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, also a Democrat, seized the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex in Boston’s 55.6% black Roxbury district and turned it into an illegal alien shelter. That will leave at-risk youths with one less place to avoid trouble and seniors one less spot to gather safely.

According to NECN.com news, the expropriated facility on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard will provide illegal aliens with “wrap-around services until May 31.”

Healey, accompanied by Boston’s far Left Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu, visited the institution on Jan. 31. One local man approached Healey in front of the building and asked, “Maura, why do you think it’s OK to take away resources from the citizens of Massachusetts?”

She flippantly replied, “We need a housing bill passed.”

Sounding betrayed, former City Council candidate Shawn Nelson complained, “The only time they want us is when they want a vote, and as soon as they get that vote, they don’t need us anymore.”

“Rubin Report” host Dave Rubin flew through Miami last month. “This is the state of absolute insanity happening at our airports,” he commented via X. “I’m in the Pre-TSA line, where migrants don’t have to have an ID to get through security, and it’s their choice whether they want their picture taken.”

Illegal aliens need not show IDs to board planes. Those with arrest warrants may use those as ID, if they wish.

As for American citizens, let’s see those ID cards!

* Army veteran Frank Tammaro, 94, was disappointed when his Staten Island senior center closed last March and booted 52 others. Tammaro grew enraged when he learned last summer that the facility reopened, to house illegal aliens—for free.

* The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has taken well-deserved incoming for processing $94.3 million in illegal aliens’ health claims in fiscal year 2022, up 27.4% from $74 million in fiscal year 2021. Meanwhile, U.S. veterans’ wait-listed health claims swelled from 150,000 in fiscal year 2022 to 417,855 in fiscal year 2023—up 178.6%.

 Biden is “taking resources away from our veterans to facilitate health care for illegal migrants,” said House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R—Ill. “As a Marine, I believe any dollar taken away from a veteran is a promise broken to those who served.”

Biden and the Democrats have turned America into a First World country with second-class citizens and pampered foreign invaders. Americans who dislike the Democrats’ cold shoulders should go to Mexico, rush north across the “border,” and fall into the warm, illegal alien-loving arms of today’s Democratic Party.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/12/democrats-shower-illegal-aliens-valentines-citizens-take-arrows/

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12 February, 2024

Texas on track to build more border wall in state than Trump, Gov. Abbotts says

Texas is on track to build more of Donald Trump’s infamous border wall than the former president’s own administration put up in the state, Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday.

“Texas is the first and only state in the history of the United States of America to build our own border wall,” Abbott said during a press conference in Shelby Park.

“If you look at the amount of wall already constructed and the amount of wall that is going to be under construction, Texas will have built more of the Trump border wall than even Trump built in the state of Texas,” the governor boasted.

The Lone Star State has additionally erected roughly 160 miles of barriers — including razor wire fencing, anti-climb barriers, Conex boxes and buoys in the river — that do not include the wall, according to Abbott.

Texas has also been ramping up its enforcement along the southern border amid the ongoing migrant crisis, which Abbott declared is “the biggest border crisis since America had borders.”

“If you look at the amount of wall already constructed and the amount of wall that is going to be under construction, Texas will have built more of the Trump border wall than even Trump built in the state of Texas,” Abbott said Thursday.

While Texas covers about two-thirds of the US-Mexico border, less than one-third of border crossings now happen in the state — a change that has happened only in the past half year or so, Abbott said.

The Texas Department of Public Safety has made over 39,000 criminal arrests, apprehended more than 480,000 migrants in the country illegally, deterred more than 95,000 illegal entries, engaged in more than 4,300 bailouts and filed more than 19,000 charges for smuggling, according to the governor.

The Texas National Guard has also turned back more than 90,000 people who were trying to cross the border illegally, Abbott said.

The combination of those measures has proven successful at trimming the number of people crossing into the US through the state.

“The results are amazing,” Abbott told reporters.

“Now, unlike before, migrants are choosing to go to states other than Texas and that’s because Texas has put up the resistance that it has,” Abbott said. “Early on in the Biden administration, most of the migrants were coming through Texas. That’s [no longer] true.”

One of the most telling signs of Texas’ success at stemming illegal entries into the country is the data on Shelby Park — once a hive of unlawful border crossings.

Since Texas has taken control of the Eagle Pass Park from the US Department of Homeland Security, the number of illegal crossings has drastically declined.

The Lone Star State has erected roughly 160 miles of barriers — including razor wire fencing, anti-climb barriers, Conex boxes and buoys in the river — separate from its border wall.

“If you look at this massive park area, this is an area where you would regularly see 2,000, 3,000, maybe 4,000 people crossing the border illegally,” Abbott said inside Shelby Park. “Since this park has been taken over by the [Texas] National Guard, the daily average is under 10 a day.

“It shows that deterrents can achieve results at decreasing illegal immigration,” he added. “The only reason why it’s not happening is because the president of the United States is not enforcing the laws that are already on the books.”

https://nypost.com/2024/02/09/news/texas-on-track-to-build-more-border-wall-in-state-than-trump-gov-abbotts-says/

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11 February, 2024

Louisiana Sending National Guard to Texas Amid Border Crisis

Lousiana has pledged to send National Guard troops to Texas to bolster local efforts to secure the southern border amid the Lone Star’s state ongoing dispute with the Biden administration over border security.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, announced the move at a Feb. 8 press conference in Baton Rouge, amid Congressional failure to secure a border deal.

“Because the president will not do his job, because the federal government will not act, because Congress refuses to put in place a solid immigration plan that protects this country and allows people to come in and out of this country the way that it’s been done since the beginning, then the states are going to act,” Mr. Landry said.

Mr. Landry said Louisiana would send 150 National Guard troops, who will work in three 50-man rotations, for a 90-day deployment to Texas.

He added that the deployment—scheduled for March at a cost of roughly $3 million—was needed to help Texas tackle issues like cross-border human trafficking and the fentanyl crisis.

“There are 125,000 Americans that we are losing on an annual basis due to this crisis,” he said, citing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent announcement that 30,000 pounds of fentanyl had been seized at the border in Texas.

The Louisiana governor said President Joe Biden’s attitude and policies on the border were encouraging waves of illegal immigration. He accused the Biden administration of having basically “dog-whistled those who are trying to come into the country illegally by saying, ‘Listen, if you swim across the Rio Grande, we will let you in that way.”

Brig. Gen. Michael Greer, the director of the Lousiana Military Department, who spoke alongside Mr. Landry at Thursday’s press conference, was asked about what actions the Lousiana National Guard troops would be authorized to take once deployed.

Mr. Greer said the Louisiana troops would not be detaining any illegal border crossers that they might encounter. “We will refer those to local law enforcement, who have the responsibility to make those arrests,” he said.

The governor also addressed the “dysfunction” on Capitol Hill, where a border bill that included funding for the Ukraine war failed to pass.

“We are standing here today because the federal government refuses to act, because the President refuses to do his job,” Mr. Landry said, adding that he believes there’s too much focus in Washington on securing Ukraine’s borders but “no one wants to talk about the amount of deadly drugs, human trafficking, the women and children that are being trafficked through an open border.”

With the move to deploy the National Guard to Texas, Louisiana joins other Republican-led states including Florida and Indiana that have sent or pledged troops.

A coalition of 27 states has formed to support Texas’s right to defend itself after the Supreme Court ruled that federal agents can remove the razor wire put up by Texas to prevent the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Florida, Indiana Sending Troops

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced plans to deploy even more National Guard, State Guard, and Highway Patrol officers to assist Texas in securing its southern border.
“If we don’t have a border, then we are not a sovereign country,” Mr. DeSantis said in Jacksonville on Feb. 1. “You either have a border, or you don’t. You’re either a sovereign country, or you’re not.

“So what we’re doing today is we’re stepping up yet again. We’re helping, and I know other states have done a lot, and I’m pretty sure some of these other states are going to do more,” he added.

Mr. DeSantis said that Florida stands ready to deploy members of its own State Guard and up to a full battalion of its National Guard, which is roughly 1,000 soldiers.

Florida has been helping Texas secure its border since 2021, deploying more than 700 members of Florida’s National Guard.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said on Feb. 9 that he had ordered the deployment of 50 Indiana National Guard troops to Texas to assist with border security efforts.

“I am sending 50 #Hoosier Guardsmen to the southern border to support the Texas National Guard on their security mission,” Mr. Holcomb wrote in a social media post on Friday morning. “These soldiers will begin mobilizing for the mission immediately and will arrive in Texas in mid-March.”

The Indiana governor’s office announced the 50 Indiana National Guard troops selected for the mission will spend a week at the Camp Atterbury Indiana National Guard base training for the operation. They will then be deployed to Texas for ten months.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/louisiana-sending-national-guard-to-texas-amid-border-crisis-5584659

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8 February, 2024

‘We Are a Happy People’: What I Saw at Trucker Convoy Rally to ‘Close the Border’

QUEMADO, Texas— Hundreds of trucks and vehicles arrived in western Texas Friday night as part of the Take Our Border Back Convoy.  

Americans from Tennessee, Maryland, New York, Missouri, Ohio, New Mexico, and many other states gathered Friday night and Saturday in Quemado, Texas, about 150 miles west of San Antonio, to call on elected officials to secure the border.  

“Close the border,” Sharisa Hoke, 50, told The Daily Signal as the convoy arrived at Cornerstone Children’s Ranch on Friday. “Deport everybody who came here illegally, and I think we even need a moratorium on immigration for just a little bit to even it all back out,” she said.  

Hoke and her family traveled with the convoy for two days from their home in Aledo, Texas.

Asked what her message is to the Biden administration and U.S. elected leaders, Hoke said, “I would like them to follow the law, but mostly, read our Constitution and give the people back their voice. It just amazes me that they can do whatever they want nowadays, and nobody is held accountable,” she said. “So I’d just like them to start with closing the border actually, like the law says.”

It took the convoy over an hour for the trucks and cars to pull into the ranch hosting the gathering since it was reportedly five miles long according to organizers, but The Daily Signal could not verify this.  

“I came here because for me, this is a situation that is unacceptable in our country,” Daniel Demoura, 33, told The Daily Signal. “We’re Americans,” he added, “we’re not a foreign nation. We need to defend our nation and show support for the Constitution, show support for the law. We don’t want people that are breaking the law to come here illegally.”

Demoura, who is originally from Boston, drove with the convoy for part of the journey to Texas and the experience “was really fun. A lot of people waving along the road, a lot of people supporting, screaming, showing flags, and honking. A lot of people [were] happy. So this is the conservative movement. This is America. We are a happy people.”  

The Texas bound convoy, one of four convoys, began its journey Jan. 29 from Virginia Beach, Virginia. The other convoys set out from locations in Texas, New Mexico, and California and ended with rallies in Arizona and New Mexico.  

The Take Our Border Back Convoy organizers stressed on the group’s website that the gatherings were peaceful, and “strongly” condemned any violence.  

“This convoy is meant to bring our country together in love, kindness and in peace,” the convoy’s declaration reads.  

There were concerns over opportunists with negative intentions taking advantage of the situation and causing violence at the rally on Saturday. But the arrival of the convoy Friday night and the rally Saturday remained peaceful and without incident. Police were at the entrance of the event Saturday.  

The first hour of the rally resembled a church service with contemporary worship music, prayer, and exaltations to “love your neighbor” and serve the Lord. The event turned to speeches later in the afternoon from border security advocates, conservative activists, and elected leaders.  

“Let me tell you, in Joe Biden’s America, you get 8 million illegal immigrants in three years,” Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told the crowd of about 200 on Saturday, adding, “you get 100,000 minors have been lost across the United States. You get enough fentanyl crossing the border to kill the entire world’s population. You get sex trafficking and cartels that control the southern border.”  

The site of the trucker convoy rally was 30 minutes north of Eagle Pass, Texas, a city that has become a flashpoint between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Texas National Guard has taken control of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass and is no longer allowing Border Patrol to use the park as a staging area for illegal aliens after they cross the Rio Grande. Biden has demanded Texas surrender the park back to federal authorities, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has denied the request.  

Eagle Pass has been a busy crossing point for illegal aliens for years, which led Customs and Border Protection to build a temporary processing center there in 2022. The facility, known as Firefly, was originally intended to process about 1,500 illegal aliens at a time, according to a source The Daily Signal spoke with who used to work inside the facility. But at its height, the center was processing as many as 5,000 illegal aliens a day, the former Firefly worker said.  

Since the start of the Biden administration, more than 8.5 million illegal aliens have been encountered on America’s borders. In December, a record 371,036 illegal aliens were encountered at and between U.S. ports of entry.  

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/04/hundreds-gather-trucker-convoy-rally-call-elected-leaders-close-border

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7 February, 2024

The gang-rape horror that has reignited Italy's immigration row

'I beg you, I beg you, don't hurt me... Please let me go.'

Those were the words uttered by a helpless 13-year-old girl as she was allegedly dragged into a public bathroom by a group of Egyptian migrants in Catania on the Italian island of Sicily last week.

Her pleas were ignored.  

Instead, she claims two of the migrants - both minors - brutally raped her for half an hour while the rest of the gang allegedly restrained her desperate boyfriend and forced him to watch the horror unfold.

All seven of the suspects arrived in Italy as illegal migrants by boat, but were granted temporary residency as Italian law does not permit the expulsion of minors.  

News of the heinous attack prompted immediate fury, with Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini calling for the perpetrators to be chemically castrated and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni vowing 'justice will be done'.

The gang in question has since been shackled after DNA testing confirmed at least one minor had sexually abused the girl, and only because the eldest of the group was so disturbed by the actions of his underlings that he confessed to authorities.

But the horrendous incident has also sparked a fresh row over immigration policy in Italy, which saw a 50% increase in illegal migrant landings last year versus 2022 according to the Interior Ministry.

The Prime Minister's commitment to strengthening immigration policy was a cornerstone of her campaign for office which saw her call for the EU to launch a 'naval blockade' of African shores to turn back migrant boats.

But Italy's shores remain the primary point of arrival for migrants journeying from North Africa.

Almost 156,000 migrants arrived by sea last year alone - 17,000 of which were unaccompanied minors - versus 103,846 in 2022.

Fabio Cantarella, the former environment and urban security councillor of Catania, said: 'The national government has his responsibilities, above all the Minister of the Interior (Matteo Piantedosi), who should find the courage to return to implementing the policies of his predecessor, Matteo Salvini, against uncontrolled immigration.'

Salvini, the former Interior Minister and now deputy PM, was one of the most outspoken critics of illegal migration in Italy and is currently on trial after he banned an NGO rescue ship from docking in any Italian port in 2019.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050769/The-gang-rape-horror-reignited-Italys-immigration-row-Degrading-attack-13-year-old-youths-illegally-entered-country-minors-poured-fuel-flames-migrant-crisis.html

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6 February, 2024

Texas Can Keep Securing the Border. Supreme Court Didn’t Prevent It

Critics such as Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, claim that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s intention to continue securing the border, including with barbed wire, is “unconstitutional” and that he is violating the Supreme Court’s Jan. 22 order. They’re wrong. There has been no such finding by the Supreme Court, and nothing in that order prevents the governor from trying to protect Texans from the massive wave of aliens illegally crossing the border with the connivance of the Biden administration.

This lawsuit was actually initiated by Texas against the Biden administration after the Border Patrol started destroying the barbed or concertina wire barrier that the state had placed along 29 miles of Eagle Pass, one of the most heavily trafficked crossings in Texas. Texas claimed that the Biden administration was trespassing and destroying its property since the wire barrier was only on municipal or private property, not federal property.

The federal district court’s factual findings were all in favor of Texas and cited the federal government’s refusal to enforce immigration law. In fact, as Texas outlined its brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, the district court concluded that the evidence “amply demonstrates the utter failure of the Defendants to deter, prevent, and halt unlawful entry into the United States.” The district court criticized the Biden administration for seeking “judicial blessing of practices that both directly contravene those same [federal] statutory obligations and require the destruction of the Plaintiff’s property.”

But the district court refused to issue an injunction because it believed the federal government was immune from suit under applicable federal law. Texas filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which concluded that the district court’s interpretation of the law was incorrect. The 5th Circuit issued an injunction on Dec. 19 against the federal government pending further appeal with one exception—the right to “cut or move” the wire “if necessary to address any medical emergency.”

The Biden administration then filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court asking that the injunction be vacated (dissolved). The Supreme Court issued a 5-to-4, two-sentence order simply vacating the injunction while the case is on appeal. This was not a decision on the merits of Texas’s claim against the federal government, which will continue to be litigated in the lower courts.

Significantly, there is nothing in the Supreme Court’s order that prevents Texas from continuing to place barbed wire or other barriers along the border on state or private property. But while the case is pending, there is nothing preventing the federal government from tearing down the wire fencing.

So it may end up becoming a race between Texas putting in effective measures to seal off the border, while the Biden administration does everything it can to remove those barriers so the border remains an open sieve as part and parcel of the administration's deliberate policy of flooding the country with as many illegal aliens as possible.

There is no doubt that Texas’s placement of a barbed-wire barrier has been effective. The district court found that the “the wire was so successful that illegal border crossings dropped to less than a third of their previous levels.” The Biden administration knows this is an effective way of diminishing and deterring illegal border crossings—as Texas pointed out in its brief, the “federal government also uses [the same barbed] wire fencing to deter illegal crossings and route migrants to lawful ports of entry."

Yet the district court found that video evidence showed federal agents “cutting multiple holes in the concertina wire for no apparent purpose other than to allow migrants easier entrance further inland.” The video not only showed them cutting holes in the fence, but it also showed them installing a “climbing rope” to make it easier for the aliens to get across the border.

A Border Patrol boat in the middle of the river was just “passively” watching aliens crossing the river, making no attempt whatsoever to stop them from entering the U.S. Once they were across the border, the Border Patrol told the aliens to walk inland “with no supervision in hopes they would proceed to the nearest immigration processing center.”

When Texas officers tried to record what the federal agents were doing, the agents told the Texas law enforcement officers to “back the f*** off” and claimed they were “not authorized to take any pictures.” In other words, the Biden administration was trying to hide what it was doing.

Despite the Supreme Court’s order, Texas has a strong possibility of ultimately winning this case on the merits. Contrary to the Biden administration’s claims, Texas is not interfering in the federal government’s enforcement of federal immigration law. All of the concertina wire was placed on state or private property whose owners granted Texas an easement on their property. It is the federal government that is trespassing and destroying state-owned or private property.

Moreover, under the Supreme Court’s 2011 holding in Chamber of Commerce v Whiting, state laws are not preempted by federal immigration law unless they contravene federal law. There is no provision in any federal law that explicitly or implicitly prohibits the state from erecting barriers on private property. This is especially true given the fact that the illegal entry of aliens is already prohibited by federal law, 8 U.S.C. § 1325. How can Texas make it more difficult for aliens to enter the country illegally violate that or any other provision?

Clearly, the actions that Texas is taking help the federal government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and the ban on illegal entry. But the whole reason for the Biden administration’s actions in this case is to make sure federal immigration laws are not enforced.

The bottom line here is that this case is far from over. While the Biden administration may have won one round, there are a lot more to go. Hopefully, when this case gets to the Supreme Court on the merits, Texas will win by a knockout.

If it doesn’t, aliens, drugs, smugglers, terrorists, and human traffickers will continue flooding across the Texas border and making their way to every city and county throughout the country. And the Biden administration is just fine with that.

https://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/texas-can-keep-securing-the-border-supreme-court-didnt-prevent-it

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5 February, 2024

The Senate Border Deal Is a Horror Show

The Senate’s border deal has been released, and it’s a horror show. It’s a $118 billion package tied to more aid for Ukraine that does next to nothing to solve the current crisis at the southern border. Don’t let the billions more in border security fool you. More funding for border agents is Biden-speak for more personnel to process the asylum claims, not to deport people who shouldn’t be here.

And while the bar for would-be asylum seekers has been raised in the bill, there are other provisions in the legislation that ensure Democrats have plenty of talking points for when they make their mass amnesty push, which has been the Left’s long-term goal (via NYT)

 The plan features some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress has contemplated in years, including making it more difficult to claim asylum, vastly expanding detention capacity and effectively shutting down the border to new entrants if more than an average of 5,000 migrants per day try to cross over the course of a week, or more than 8,500 attempt to cross in any given day. Encounters would have to fall to 75 percent of those thresholds for a week before those processes could be restarted.

But it falls short of several Republican demands, including limiting parole and related programs that allow migrants to live and work legally in the United States without visas while they await a hearing on their immigration claims — sometimes for years.

[…]

With the new border measures, the price tag of the new bill is expected to be $118.3 billion — about $13 billion more than Mr. Biden initially asked for. The measure includes $60.1 billion to help Ukraine in its war with Russia, $14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel, $10 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones including Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine, and $20.2 billion for improvements to border security.

[…]

Mr. Biden had included $13.6 billion for border security in his request, an indication that he and Democrats in Congress saw the situation at the border as a potential political liability in an election year. In the weeks that followed, their willingness to negotiate with Republicans about major policy changes to clamp down on unauthorized border crossings reflected a growing sense in the party of an untenable status quo, with a record-setting influx of migrants arriving in the United States without visas and the resulting crowding at shelters across the country.

[…]

The bill would raise the bar for migrants claiming a “credible fear” of persecution if returned to their home countries and would create a new voluntary repatriation program for the government to fly migrants back home on commercial airlines.

But it would also direct that migrants who can claim a credible fear be released to live and work in the country, and allow immigration officers to grant asylum status on the spot to migrants presenting especially compelling cases. The bill also creates a review board to hear any appeals of the decisions, with the goal of making final asylum determinations within six months.

It also includes a measure to provide a government-funded lawyer to any unaccompanied children age 13 or under, and give any migrant put into expedited removal proceedings 72 hours to find a lawyer to contest deportation.

The bill would create 50,000 new green-card-eligible visas per year, for five years, 32,000 of which would be for families and 18,000 of which would be employment-based visas. Additionally, it ensures that the children of H-1B visa holders do not lose their green card eligibility once they become adults, and creates a new temporary visa category to let noncitizens visit U.S.-based family.

The bill also includes a version of the Afghan Adjustment Act, which creates a pathway to citizenship for Afghans who fled to the United States after the Taliban takeover.

Of course, The New York Times buried the portions about the kids of H-1B visa holders and a pathway to citizenship for Afghan refugees. Also, we will pay for the legal representation of any migrant under 13. The bill also adds 250,000 new visas over the next five years. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the bill was dead on arrival. House Republicans released a standalone Israel funding package to deliver a body blow to this Senate bill.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/02/04/immigration-text-n2634754

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4 February, 2024

The Moral Case for border control

Every year of Joe Biden’s administration, more than 100,000 Americans have died from drug overdoses. That’s nearly 300 Americans dying every day. Much of this tragedy can be traced back to the deadly Chinese fentanyl that is coming across the southern border.

Imagine for a moment that one Boeing 757 with approximately 300 people on board crashed every single day. That would be a national emergency.

A door blew off a jet recently, and everyone was justifiably upset. Federal bureaucrats jumped into action. Well, what do you think we would be doing if one passenger jet crashed, killing everyone on board, day after day after day?

That’s essentially what’s happening with the epidemic of drug overdoses that is fueled by the left’s open borders policies. But our elites and the neo-Marxist left won’t do a thing to stop it.

Many of the people dying from illegal drugs are working-class folks who were barely hanging on. This is part of a phenomenon that became known as “deaths of despair.”

But we know what leftist elites think of them. Barack Obama called them “bitter clingers.” Hillary Clinton called them “deplorable and irredeemable.” Joe Biden, who has yet to visit East Palestine, Ohio, called them “semi-fascist.”

In a number of states, Democrats have managed to camouflage themselves enough to get elected. One of the most disappointing examples occurred just this past November when a solid conservative candidate for governor lost in Kentucky.

Where are the Democrat governors and senators on the border crisis? They’re AWOL. That’s because the Democrat Party is increasingly neo-Marxist. Anyone playing in that sandbox claiming to be a “moderate” is lying or delusional.

At the same time, Republicans who say they are “tired of all the drama” need to understand what they are saying. Drama is what happens when a conservative seriously fights the left’s “fundamental transformation of America.”

Democrats love “no drama” Republicans because it means those Republicans really aren’t fighting at all against open borders, trade policies that hurt American workers, threats to religious liberty and the radical indoctrination in our schools.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/103981-the-moral-case-2024-01-30

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
    
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
 
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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