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July 31, 2023
Chicago residents sound off on illegal immigrants in neighborhood: 'They disrespect us, rob us, harass us'
Residents of a Chicago-area neighborhood frustrated by the disruptive behaviors of illegal migrants at a local shelter sounded off to city leaders this week.
Neighbors said they "no longer [had] any tolerance" for migrants who were loitering, engaging in late-night partying, prostitution, littering and even fighting with community members, CBS2 Chicago reported.
Distraught residents told city officials in attendance that the migrants' behavior made them feel unsafe. "I would ask you all to go out there — go out there at night, in the middle of the night — and see what goes on," one emotional resident said. Another woman vented, "They disrespect us, they rob us, they harass us."
One local man threatened that if they didn't address the issue, neighbors would take it into their own hands. "Let me say this — they've got one more time to deal with it, because otherwise, next time they deal with it, they're going to deal with it from the streets. We're going to take over. Nobody is going to be able to stop us from what we're going to do to them."
Neighbors in another Chicago-area neighborhood also rallied against the city this week after leaders announced plans to move migrants into a community gym.
"Definitely a slap in face. Definitely not taking into consideration what the community wants," Edgewater resident Greer Gilmore told CBS2.
Frustrations over the migrant crisis boiled over during a monthly immigration committee hearing on Wednesday, where aldermen accused Mayor Brandon Johnson's office of not doing enough to address the safety issues.
42nd Ward Ald. Brendan Reilly described how at one hotel housing 1,400 migrants in Streeterville, "There were about 60 kids, guns in their waste bands, consuming alcohol and smoking marijuana on the public right-of-way, unchecked, and this is not a one-time occurrence," the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
As a sanctuary city, Chicago shields undocumented migrants from federal immigration enforcement and welcomes people regardless of their immigration status. (Fox 32 Chicago)
Alderman Jeanette Taylor of Chicago's 20th Ward reportedly said Mayor Johnson's aides were hiding the grim reality locals were facing.
"Tell the issue about the people who are outside threatening [residents]. Tell them about the sex trafficking that’s happening. The drug dealing that’s happening," she said. "They’re outside smoking weed. They’re outside having whole parties right in front of the senior building. And the police are scared. Let’s be honest."
Taylor also blasted city leaders for not taking the crisis seriously enough to bring it up with Biden administration officials when they were in town on Monday to discuss the city hosting the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
"So y’all didn’t think with the (Democratic National Convention) here, nobody bothered about discussing with Biden (and his) administration about the conditions that we’re having with the shelters and the asylum-seekers?" Taylor said, according to the Chicago Tribune.
"How? How when we're spending millions of dollars, and y'all brought this fancy presentation to make this sound pretty, and it's not. None of this is pretty. None of this is beautiful," she complained.
Alderman Ray Lopez of Chicago's Ward 15 also joined other aldermen in calling on Mayor Johnson to address the "ongoing migrant shelter/center issues" in a public letter published Wednesday.
Lopez said his constituents and law enforcement have witnessed migrants participating in "drug sales and usage, male and female prostitution and associated human trafficking as well as gang recruitment."
Migrants have also been disrespectful to residents and communities by "joyfully ignoring curfew and alcohol consumption rules in shelters," he said.
Lopez described the alarming behavior residents have witnessed from the migrants.
"Migrant asylum-seekers are now using their vehicles to block streets, perform sex acts and otherwise disrupt life in communities where this behavior wasn't the norm. To make matters worse, residents now feel that their only recourse is to take action against the migrant asylum-seekers. This is not the time for vigilantism — it is the time for you to step up and act," he demanded.
Mayor Johnson's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment addressing the backlash.
"We don’t want our story to be told that we were unable to house the unhoused or provide safe harbor for those who are seeking refuge here. Because there’s enough room for everyone in the city of Chicago, whether you are seeking asylum or you are looking for a fully funded neighborhood," Johnson said in May.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/chicago-residents-sound-off-illegal-immigrants-neighborhood-disrespect-rob-harass
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July 30, 2023
Migrants still being granted asylum after crossing border illegally — despite Biden tough talk
Migrants are still being approved to seek asylum and given free passes into the US after being caught illegally sneaking into the country, despite the Biden administration claiming they would be ejected and banned for five years, The Post has found.
Multiple sources including front-line border agents and the former mayor of El Paso — a Texas city which has been a flashpoint of the current migrant crisis — said the administration’s tough talk that anyone who turns up at the border requires an appointment made through the CBP One App is all bluster.
“They want to paint the picture that the only way in is with an appointment, but that’s not true,” A US Customs and Border Protection agent based in Texas told The Post.
The agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added he sees people arrested for illegally entering the country waved through “all the time.”
On the US side of the border The Post had no trouble finding a dozen migrants who had crossed the border illegally and handed themselves over to border patrol, been interviewed then released with papers to begin the asylum process.
Andres, a Venezuelan migrant who asked we not use his real name, showed his papers confirming he had cleared the initial steps and is now seeking asylum.
He stood among a group of migrants, some who had entered the US with a CBP One Appointment and others, like himself, who had rolled the dice and crossed illegally. “Look at me, I have the same paperwork as him even though he had an appointment and I didn’t,” Andres said pointing at a fellow migrant who entered the country with a CBP One appointment.
According to President Biden’s new rules introduced in May, Andres should have been kicked out of the US for entering without authorization, marked as ineligible for a special parole program for Venezuelans, and barred from the US for five years.
“If they attempt to cross into the United States unlawfully, they will be returned back to Mexico,” Pres. Biden said Jan. 5 when his administration first announced required use of the CBP One App.
“Do not — do not just show up at the border,” Biden continued. “Stay where you are and apply legally from there.
“If they arrive at our Southern Border, they will meet consequences,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said May 10, adding that some 83,000 migrants had used the app to seek asylum in the first four months of the year.
The Department of Homeland Security have also trumpeted CBP One’s success, saying it has led to less people trying to cross the border and doing so in an orderly fashion. It pointed to border figures from June which showed 144,600 encounters in total.
While about 45,000 of those encounters were with people who had CBP One appointments, 99,500 of them were others who were trying to illegally cross into the US between ports of entry.
Multiple sources said the administration’s tough talk that anyone who turns up at the border requires an appointment made through the CBP One App is all bluster.
When approached by The Post, CBP did not provide a statement about how often migrants who cross into the US illegally are released into the US to seek asylum.
In addition, at least 104,000 asylum-seekers are estimated to be waiting in Northern Mexico for a CBP One appointment.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/28/migrants-still-being-granted-asylum-after-crossing-border-illegally-despite-biden-tough-talk/
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July 28, 2023
Mayor Eric Adams’ meeting with DHS Secretary Mayorkas over migrant surge results in NYC liaison
Mayor Adams met with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Thursday — who promised to send a staffer to the Big Apple to help with its relentless migrant surge, The Post has learned.
The meager offer came in response to Hizzoner pleading for months for federal help in handling the mounting crisis that’s left city shelters brimming with 56,000 migrants in their care.
Adams was joined in Washington, DC, by powerhouse leaders of New York’s delegation, including US Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, for the more than hour-long meeting with Mayorkas.
A source familiar with the Capitol Hill meeting described the New York-based DHS liaison as a way to strengthen “communication” between City Hall and the Biden administration.
“This person would be the bridge,” said the source.
A City Hall spokesperson confirmed Thursday’s meeting in a statement to The Post and said the local leaders had a “productive conversation” with Mayorkas.
“Not only did we discuss the city’s federal funding needs, we also re-emphasized how crucial it is to expedite pathways to work authorization for those who are arriving and are already here,” the spokesperson said.
“Asylum seekers arriving to our country are seeking to build the American Dream, so it’s time we finally give them a shot at it.”
In September, Adams warned that the city was “nearing its breaking point” as migrants flooded in daily from the southern border.
“We are in urgent need of help, and it’s time for our state and federal partners to act — especially those in Congress who refuse to provide the financial resources or issue temporary work authorizations necessary for these individuals to live properly,” he said at the time.
A staggering 93,200 asylum seekers have arrived in the city since last spring — with more than 2,500 still pouring in weekly.
Adams issued yet another desperate plea for help earlier this week, saying, “We have stepped up and led the nation, but this national crisis should not fall on cities alone to navigate.
The crush of newcomers has forced the city to open 192 emergency sites across the five boroughs — including two mega shelters on the Upper West Side — as it looks to open even more.
In March, there were 103 shelters, meaning 83 new facilities had to be created within five months.
“Our shelter system has doubled in size, and although it’s no longer on the front pages of our daily tabloids, we are still dealing with a silent crisis,” Adams said earlier this month. “The numbers are increasing and it’s continued to be a heavy lift for this city.”
Adult migrants are now limited to staying in city-run shelters for just 60 days, under new rules implemented last week. Roughly 100 eviction-like notices have already been issued to asylum seekers.
So far, the Biden administration has approved just $104.6 million in relief aid for New York City.
But Adams’ budget office has projected costs of $4.3 billion over the next two years, as the city scrambles to provide housing, food and other services like legal help for its newfound migrant population.
Following his visit to DC, Adams will head to Houston for the National Urban League Conference, a mere 300 miles from the US-Mexican border.
In January, Hizzoner made a surprise visit to El Paso to tour migrant shelters and border processing facilities.
President Joe Biden’s administration is poised to deploy a special Department of Homeland Security staffer to work at City Hall and help Mayor Eric Adams handle the ongoing migrant crisis.
Adams trekked to Washington DC in a desperate bid to convince the Biden administration to curb its disastrous border policy.
He’s increased pressure on the federal government, calling out Biden directly by name to secure the borders.
Even rank and file Democrats across the Empire State are backing Adams’ plea, with a group of over 50 pols signing onto a missive addressed to the White House.
“Our city is at a breaking point. We take pride in New York being a beacon of hope for immigrants, but the influx of migrants is so great that the city is running out of resources,” reads the letter sent Wednesday, headed by Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar (D-Queens) who is also of South Asian descent.
The lawmakers want Biden to declare a federal state of emergency, expedite backlogs that are lasting over six months for work authorization, stem the number of people crossing the border illegally and provide more dollars for the city to handle the influx.
Adams has complained the five boroughs are running out of space, enlisting 192 taxpayer-funded emergency hotel and shelters to house a crush of individuals that have flooded the city since the spring of 2022. Over 90,000 individuals have arrived since then, either by bus, plane, or other forms of transportation, according to City Hall.
On Wednesday, Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom announced Gov. Kathy Hochul approved plans submitted by the NYC Office of Emergency to build migrant tents on the state-owned site of the defunct Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens.
In the past, the city erected similar tent city-like operations — such as the one formerly on Randall’s Island.
They’re also housed in landmark sites, such as the famed Midtown Roosevelt Hotel.
City Hall also started handing out notices to single adult migrants who have stayed in the shelter system “the longest” giving them a heads up that in 60 day’s time, they need to either find another place to live or reapply for shelters.
Adams has said it’s a way to free up beds for families with children, as thousands continue to arrive weekly.
“We are not going to have tents and encampments on our streets,” Hizzoner declared Monday.
He’s warned he doesn’t want the Big Apple to look like San Francisco or Seattle — cities where the homeless openly camp in tents on streets.
Adams sounded the alarm on the crisis nearly a year ago, claiming there was “no room at the inn” and begging Washington to send federal, emergency funding to help Gotham.
So far, the Biden administration has approved just $104.6 million in relief aid — peanuts compared to the multi-billion dollar cost pegged by Adams’ budget office.
Recent projections from Office of Management and Budget Director Jacques Jiha estimate between housing, feeding and providing other services like legal help, the crisis is on track to eat a $4.3 billion hole into the city’s coffers over the next two years.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/27/mayor-eric-adams-meeting-with-dhs-secretary-mayorkas-over-migrant-surge-results-in-nyc-liaison/
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July 27, 2023
Biden DOJ sues Texas, Gov. Abbott over Rio Grande buoy barriers presently helping keep illegal aliens from stealing into the US
The Department of Justice sued Texas and its Republican governor Monday over their attempt to do what the Biden administration appears unwilling to do: end the flood of illegal aliens into the United States by any and all practical means.
The Biden DOJ claims the marine floating barriers state officials have installed in the Rio Grande are unauthorized and in violation of federal law.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has indicated he's willing to take this fight to the Supreme Court, telling President Joe Biden in a letter Monday, "Texas will see you in court, Mr. President."
What's the background?
TheBlaze reported in early June that as part of Operation Lone Star, Texas had committed to installing marine floating barriers in the Rio Grande to discourage migrants from fording the river and entering the homeland.
The 1,000-foot barrier is made up of interconnected inflatable sphere buoys four feet wide that can be shifted and extended. When grabbed, the buoys spin, thereby preventing individuals from climbing over.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/biden-doj-sues-texas-gov-abbott-over-rio-grande-buoy-barriers-keeping-illegal-aliens-from-stealing-into-the-us
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July 26, 2023
Lawyers in Britain charging £10,000 to make fake asylum claims
Lawyers are charging thousands of pounds to submit false asylum and human rights claims for illegal immigrants.
Staff at solicitors’ firms readily agreed to help an undercover Mail reporter posing as an economic migrant get refugee status. This was despite being told he had no legitimate reason to stay in the UK after arriving on a small boat.
VP Lingajothy asked for £10,000 to invent a horrific back story to use in the asylum application. This included claims of sexual torture, beatings, slave labour, false imprisonment and death threats that left him suicidal and compelled to flee to the UK.
The legal adviser promised he could get a doctor’s report to back up the story and produced anti-depressants to be given to the Home Office as ‘evidence’ of psychological trauma.
At another firm a lawyer said he would have to ‘create the evidence’ to make it appear the reporter had a genuine fear of ‘persecution and assassination’ if he returned home.
He boasted of a success rate of more than 90 per cent with similar asylum cases. A third outlined the ‘fine ingredients of an asylum case’ he said he would use to make it appear the reporter feared for his life in India. This could include anti-government political allegiances, a love affair with someone from the wrong caste or being gay.
Two said they would falsely claim the Mail’s reporter was a ‘victim of human trafficking’ who had been fleeced, betrayed and abandoned by people smugglers.
Many of the law firm staff enjoy wealth and prestige, including Mr Lingajothy who owns a multi-million pound property empire with his wife, drives a BMW with personalised number plates and sent his son to Eton.
But while immigrants face jail for making false asylum claims, solicitors who encourage, facilitate and profit from them merely face professional sanctions.
One law firm sacked the representative the Mail spoke to and closed one of its offices after we revealed our findings. It said his actions breached the law and broke the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s code of conduct.
Our investigation also found:
Lawyers said they would help coach clients to make false asylum claims for Home Office interviews;
One solicitor who invented a story for our reporter to use also branded Home Secretary Suella Braverman ‘dumb’;
Another firm’s legal representative, who concocted a fake story for our undercover reporter, addressed the UN Human Rights Council last year and has in interviews berated the Home Office and immigration judges for not believing asylum claims.
The SRA says its members must act with ‘honesty and integrity’ and not ‘mislead or attempt to mislead’ a court, tribunal, regulator or others. Those found to be acting dishonestly face being struck off.
But our investigation discovered widespread and blatant abuse of the rules by lawyers and legal representatives at registered solicitors’ firms.
In most cases they suggested our journalist, who was originally from the Punjab, should pretend to be a supporter of a Sikh separatist movement banned in India – giving him grounds for asylum.
In two cases the solicitors, who charge between £4,000 and £10,000 for their services, invented elaborate fake stories to back up the claim.
One said he would scour the internet for extra information to bolster the concocted story and was happy to send the Home Office pictures of another man who looked similar to the reporter at anti-government protests in India.
There were 74,751 asylum applications, relating to nearly 90,000 people, in 2022 – more than twice the number of applications in 2019 – with just under half from people who arrived by small boat. Almost all of the one in four asylum claimants whose applications were rejected by the Home Office last year appealed.
Who is entitled to claim asylum in the UK?
Those unable to live safely in any part of their own country because they fear persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other social, cultural, religious or political situation that puts them at risk. They must also have failed to get protection from authorities in their own country.
Are solicitors allowed to submit an asylum claim they know to be false?
No. The Solicitors Regulation Authority says its members must act with ‘honesty and integrity’ and not ‘mislead or attempt to mislead’ a court, tribunal or regulator.
What are the legal penalties for fake asylum applications?
Immigrants face two years in prison or being ordered out of the UK if they give false information on an asylum application. Solicitors do not face any criminal penalty but those found to be acting dishonestly could be struck off.
It is understood that up to 40 solicitors’ firms are being monitored by the authorities amid suspected asylum claim ‘abuses’ and allegations of ‘carbon copy’ applications from different people represented by the same firms.
Tony Smith, a former head of the UK Border Force, called for stronger checks on ‘rogue solicitors’ who invent stories for immigration claims. He described it as ‘big business’ and said the legal representatives were ‘making profits out of other people’s misery’.
‘Coaching people to tell lies to gain an advantage in terms of an application they are making is quite wrong, because we should really be working on a basis of integrity from the lawyers,’ he said.
‘If we’re going to continue to allow lawyers to sit in on immigration interviews and represent immigrants in interviews about status, we need to be satisfied that they are properly accredited and that accreditation would demand a rigorous assessment of integrity.’
Alp Mehmet of Migration Watch, which campaigns for tougher border controls, added: ‘This is shocking. It is beyond belief that lawyers would pervert the course of justice by concocting stories for bogus asylum seekers and pocket huge sums by doing it.
‘It undermines the legal system and discredits the asylum process. Such lawyers are a disgrace to their profession.’
A spokesman for the SRA said last night: ‘All solicitors should uphold the high professional standards that we and the public expect of them. This is especially important in areas such as immigration where those involved may be among the most vulnerable in society
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12333013/Immigration-law-firms-LIE-authorities-win-asylum.html
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July 25, 2023
'Consider Another City' – NYC Mercilessly Trolled After Tapping Out on Sanctuary Status for Illegals
Deep-blue New York City is trading its sanctuary city status for a new policy of moving illegal immigrants down the road to somewhere, anywhere else.
And Twitter can’t laugh hard enough.
“Wait what happened to being a sanctuary city? Truly bizarre that New York would suddenly change their entire policy after being forced to deal with the consequences of their own actions,” Outkick sports writer Ian Miller tweeted in response to New York City’s aggressive push to stop illegal immigrants from coming there.
One part of the strategy was the development of posters claiming that since April 2022, more than 90,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in New York City. As noted by CNN, Texas began busing illegal immigrants to New York City in August of 2022.
The flyer warns that “The cost of food, transportation, and other necessities in NYC is the highest in the United States” and “There is no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals.” It concludes, “Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the U.S.”
Mayor Eric Adams announced the change in his longtime sanctuary city tune on Wednesday.
“We have no more room in the city,” he said, according to The New York Times.
“This is wrong that New York City is carrying the weight of a national problem,” Adams said Wednesday, according to Fox News.
The move to discourage immigrants was denounced by some, according to the Times. Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller, said the announcement contradicted “the defining role of New York as a beacon of promise inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty.”
“The idea that there’s some imaginary place that people are going to go off to besides city streets is just false,” Craig Hughes, a social worker with Mobilization for Justice, a nonprofit legal services group, said.
In June, Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said the city had “reached a tipping point. We now have more asylum seekers in our care than longtime New Yorkers … who were in our existing DHS system,” Fox News reported
As liberals seethed, conservatives chortled.
But the city’s tactics are no laughing matter in the Schenectady County community of Rotterdam, which this week was part of a less-publicized piece of New York City’s strategy for dealing with illegal immigrants by sending them into Upstate New York.
Residents of a motel were summarily booted a day before a busload of illegal immigrants from New York City arrived to claim their space.
Democratic state Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara accused Adams of “thoughtlessly sending buses with migrants to (the) Super 8 Motel in Rotterdam, completely disregarding the fact that many of the individuals already residing there were struggling with poverty themselves and are now displaced. I am absolutely outraged by what has transpired,” according to the Albany Times-Union.
“This level of disrespect and blatant lack of concern for our community by forcing this situation on us without notice and zero communication is unforgivable. The federal government must take action to put an end to this chaos,” he said.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/consider-another-city-nyc-mercilessly-trolled-tapping-sanctuary-status-illegals
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July 24, 2023
Texas’s Border Crackdown Bears Fruit: 422 Million Lethal Fentanyl Doses Seized, More Than 31,000 Criminals Arrested
Texas’s efforts to stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people into the United States under Operation Lone Star have borne fruit, according to data provided by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who pledged to continue deploying “every strategy” available to respond to the border crisis.
Operation Lone Star started in March 2021 in response to a surge in illegal immigration, as a combined effort of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas National Guard. The operation deployed air, ground, marine, and tactical border security assets to high-threat areas along the border in an effort to deny Mexican cartels and others the ability to smuggle people, weapons, and drugs into the country.
A little more than two years since the start of the border security initiative, Mr. Abbott on July 21 provided figures that hint at the fruits of the effort, while blaming President Joe Biden’s policies for the dire situation at the border.
The multi-agency effort has led to more than 394,200 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 31,300 criminal arrests, with reports of more than 29,100 felony charges brought, the data disclosed by Mr. Abbott show.
In the fight against deadly drugs pouring into the United States, Texas law enforcement has seized more than 422 million lethal doses of fentanyl during the border mission.
“President Biden’s open border policies created the humanitarian crisis at our southern border,” Mr. Abbott wrote on Twitter.
“Texas will continue to deploy every strategy to respond to this crisis.”
Texas has also bused nearly 30,000 illegal immigrants to a number of Democrat-led cities, both as a wake-up call to Washington and a way of fighting back against what Texas officials have said are the Biden administration’s lax border policies.
Texas has bused more than 10,400 illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C., and more than 10,300 to New York City since the start of Operation Lone Star.
In September 2022, when the migrant buses from the Lone Star State first grabbed headlines, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said his state was spending about $4 billion a year on border security and that it normally spends about $400 million.
“This is a financial burden on us. But more importantly, it’s an invasion of our state,” Mr. Patrick told Fox News in an interview that aired on Sept. 17, 2022.
“They’ve been dumping people in America for a long time, a long time. And now Texas is saying: ‘We’re fighting back. We’re going to send them to your neighborhood, and we’re going to keep those buses coming until, finally, this administration wakes up.’”
Republicans have blamed the Biden administration for policies they say encourage people to undertake the perilous trek north and cross the U.S.–Mexico border illegally.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/texas-border-crackdown-bears-fruit-422-million-lethal-fentanyl-doses-seized-over-31000-criminal-arrests-5416085
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23 July, 2023
Illegal Aliens Protest Demanding Free Housing and Paid Job Training
Thanks to the Biden Administration, illegal migrants feel as if they are entitled to reap the benefits of hard-working Americans despite entering the U.S. illegally.
This week, a group of illegal aliens protested in Chicago, demanding free housing, paid job training, and access to food, water, and “safe” neighborhoods.
The illegal protestors held signs that read, “We Need Paid Job Training,” “We Need Jobs,” and “We Need Housing.”
Another read, “You Promised Us Safe Living Conditions, But Our Rights Have Been Violated.”
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) has vowed to make Chicago a “sanctuary city,” allowing illegal migrants into Illinois despite violating federal immigration law.
Pritzker recently signed a bill into law that will allow the Illinois Human Rights Act to include “immigration status” as a protected class.
Illinois became the first U.S. state to force landlords to rent to illegal migrants despite the massive cost-of-living hikes across liberal cities. Landlords across the state cannot refuse future renters due to their immigration status alone, even though illegal immigrants are eligible for deportation under U.S. law.
Earlier this year, residents of a Chicago neighborhood took legal action against the city over plans to turn an old high school building into a migrant respite center.
The city declared a state of emergency after more than 8,000 illegal migrants fled Chicago since last August. Additionally, more than 200 illegal aliens have flooded the city daily, overwhelming law enforcement faster than the city can open shelters.
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/07/20/illegal-aliens-protest-demanding-free-housing-and-paid-job-training-n2625996
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21 July, 2023
Vast Majority of Americans Say Illegal Immigration Is Either ‘Crisis’ or ‘Major Problem’
Amid a historic wave of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully, an overwhelming majority of Americans polled say that illegal immigration is a crisis or—at best—a “major problem.”
A recent poll by Gallup found that 39 percent of Americans believe the border situation is a full-blown “crisis.” Another 33 percent think it’s a “major problem,” meaning that a whopping 72 percent believe the situation on the border is bad enough to be considered seriously problematic.
Views on illegal immigration held by Republicans—who have long opposed open borders—have remained mostly unchanged from 2019, when a similar poll was conducted by Gallup during the administration of then President Donald Trump.
The relatively stable share (88 percent in 2019 vs. 91 percent in 2023) of Republican respondents saying illegal immigration is at least a “major problem” suggests that porous borders are less of a partisan issue than a matter of deep conviction for those aligned with the GOP.
Democrats, on the other hand, have sharply raised their tolerance for illegal immigration between the Trump-era days and those of the administration of President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat.
In 2019, 68 percent of Democrats said it was a crisis or major problem, with that dropping to just 56 percent at the present time, suggesting Democrat views on the issue shift based on politics.
Republicans in Congress have blamed the Biden administration for policies they say encourage people to undertake the perilous trek north and cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
The Biden administration has blamed factors outside its control—like crime, corruption, and poverty in countries of origin—while blaming Mr. Trump for undermining the country’s asylum system, which the current administration says it’s trying to fix.
Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported this week that 144,607 encounters happened in June along the Southwest border, the lowest number since February 2021.
CBP officials credited the decline in part to the Biden administration’s expansion of legal pathways and processes for entry into the United States.
“Our sustained efforts to enforce consequences under our longstanding Title 8 authorities, combined with expanding access to lawful pathways and processes, have driven the number of migrant encounters along the Southwest border to their lowest levels in more than two years. We will remain vigilant,” Troy A. Miler, CBP Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner, said in a statement.
June marked the first full month since Title 42 restrictions expired on May 11 and were replaced with a new policy that, in many ways, resembled the one that ended.
Title 42 was a regulation designed to prevent the introduction of contagious diseases in the United States. The rule was issued by the Trump administration in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and was used over 2.5 million times to block asylum claims.
When Title 42 ended, the Biden administration rolled out a new rule (pdf), which essentially reinstates a Trump-era travel policy, stipulating that illegal immigrants would be disqualified from applying for asylum in the United States if they didn’t first seek protection in countries that they traveled through on their way to the United States, with limited exceptions.
The regulation is meant to decrease human smuggling activities at the southern border by encouraging asylum-seekers to use “lawful, safe, and orderly” pathways, such as seeking refuge in a country that they’ve passed through.
Hours before Title 42 was set to expire, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that smugglers had been spreading the word that the border would be open after Title 42 expired.
“I want to be very clear: our borders are not open,” he said at the time. “People who cross our border unlawfully and without a legal basis to remain will be promptly processed and removed.”
Issuing a warning to those considering making the trek to the border, he stressed: “Smugglers care only about profits, not people. Do not risk your life and life savings only to be removed from the United States if and when you arrive here.”
Since Mr. Biden took office, over 5 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border into the United States.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/vast-majority-of-americans-say-illegal-immigration-is-either-crisis-or-major-problem_5413025.html
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20 July, 2023
Rio Grande-Gate
Are Biden administration officials deliberately engaged in alien smuggling and are they subject to criminal prosecution?
Summary
My colleague Todd Bensman has uncovered what appears to be active participation in alien smuggling by the Department of Homeland Security — collusion with Mexican authorities to direct and facilitate the illegal entry of large numbers of aliens across the Rio Grande River — carried out in order to further the Biden administration’s immigration agenda.
The acts at the heart of these shocking allegations (if proven) would seemingly constitute criminal violations of the federal anti-alien-smuggling law, violations that carry with them potential punishment from a fine or one year’s imprisonment to life imprisonment or even the death penalty. Of course, the greatest culpability would lie with whoever in the Biden administration developed this scheme and ordered it to be carried out.
The lessons that congressional Democrats and Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh implored the nation to draw from the Iran/Contra Affair seem directly applicable here, among them being:
“The common ingredients of the Iran and Contra policies were secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law. A small group of senior officials believed that they alone knew what was right.”
Iran/Contra displayed “a vision of a government operated by persons convinced they have a monopoly on truth.”
With regards to Iran/Contra, “What may aptly be called the ‘cabal of the zealots’ was in charge.”
“Government officials must observe the law, even when they disagree with it.”
“The President must ‘take care’ that the laws be faithfully executed. This is both a moral and legal responsibility.”
“There is no place in Government for law breakers.”
“When a President ... chooses to skirt the laws or to circumvent them, it is incumbent upon his subordinates to resist, not join in.”
“[T]he failure to punish governmental lawbreakers feeds the perception that public officials are not wholly accountable for their actions.”
I can only hope that congressional Democrats will treat “Rio Grande-Gate” with the same seriousness they treated Iran/Contra, and apply their Iran/Contra lessons in good faith.
We surely cannot count on Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice to fairly investigate these allegations, if it even investigates them at all. Therefore, it is imperative that the attorney general appoint a special counsel to investigate and to bring prosecutions as appropriate, as he has already done in other instances.
If Attorney General Garland fails to appoint a special counsel, or appoints a special counsel whose work turns out to be compromised, it is imperative that the next administration launch an investigation and bring prosecutions as appropriate. It will certainly be able to do so (unless President Biden wins reelection), as the statute of limitation for federal alien smuggling crimes is at least five years.
https://cis.org/Report/Rio-GrandeGate
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19 July, 2023
Turning Immigration Law on Its Head
Biden says he can let in anyone he wants.
Determining how many, and which, foreigners are allowed to move to the United States is a core responsibility of the legislature. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is constructed such that Congress has given the president broad authority to keep out anyone he thinks should be excluded, but he is authorized to let in only those who are eligible under a complicated set of rules.
Presidents have been encroaching on Congress’s authority in this area—as in others—for some time, but the actions of the Biden administration are so egregious as to be different in kind.
In fact, it is fair to say that the left’s current approach to immigration is a complete inversion of the INA: They now claim that presidents have the authority to let in anyone they like—in whatever number they choose, for any reason whatsoever—but, as we saw during the prior administration, they may only keep foreigners out under very narrow and clearly delineated circumstances.
This is what we have been seeing at the border for two and half years now, with well over 2 million illegal border-jumpers taken into custody but then released into the U.S., ostensibly to apply for asylum. (The law requires that illegals claiming asylum be detained during the entire course of their proceedings.)
This has become so institutionalized that the DHS under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has gone beyond turning Border Patrol agents into the equivalent of Wal-Mart greeters at the border to requiring them to actually facilitate illegal border crossings. In the run-up to the end of Title 42, for instance, American border officers were coordinating with Mexican authorities on when to send groups of people illegally across the river.
And the Center for Immigration Studies’ indefatigable Todd Bensman reports that many border-jumpers, blocked from entering the U.S. by Texas state police stationed at the riverbank, are calling out for the Border Patrol to come and get them; as he notes, “They told us, ‘We want American immigración, because they will let us in.”
This executive usurpation of the power of deciding who gets to live here also underlies the latest White House effort to “reduce” illegal immigration by funneling inadmissible aliens through established ports of entry along the border using what might as well be called the OpenBorder app (with apologies to OpenTable). The app, actually named CBP One, is the linchpin of the Biden administration scheme to hide illegal immigration in plain sight by redefining it as “legal” (it’s not). And the administration has increased the daily number of people it admits via this ruse from 1,000 to 1,250 to 1,450, based on nothing but its say-so.
The basis of all these initiatives is something called “parole.” In the immigration context, parole is a narrow authority Congress gave the president to let in the occasional foreigner who has no right to be here in exceptional, temporary circumstances—a medical crisis, for example, or the need to testify at a trial. The Biden administration has abused this circumscribed power to create his own immigration system, untethered to the laws passed by Congress.
And this use of parole to turn the immigration law on its head is not limited to border questions. DHS recently announced it was expanding a made-up policy of “family unification parole” to four more countries, totally without basis in law.
Congress has placed numerical limits on various categories of legal immigration; to give just one example, the number of green cards for adult brothers and sisters of adult U.S. citizens is capped at 65,000 per year. Those caps mean that, when there is more demand than there is supply, which is most of the time, people have to wait for their number to come up. The State Department publishes a monthly document reporting when people in which categories will be able to come in.
This is often derided as a “backlog” by anti-borders activists, wanting you to imagine that lazy bureaucrats haven’t bothered to get to your file yet. On the contrary, these are just waiting lists, little different from standing in line for your turn to get on an amusement park roller coaster.
With the family reunification parole scheme, the Biden administration has decided that it is just going to let in as many people as it wants, Congress’s numerical limits be damned. This isn’t just a matter of cutting in line; instead of simply letting in different people, Biden’s DHS is letting in more people. To use the image of the amusement park line, the administration isn’t just giving a fast-pass to certain favored groups; it is actually stuffing three people into a two-person roller-coaster car.
Specifically, the new policy allows people from Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who have a relative in the U.S. that filed an application for them to immigrate to just come in regardless of the numerical caps. They are able to live and work here while they wait for their green card number to come up. (This expands a similar program started under the Obama administration for people from Cuba and Haiti.) It is true the five-year clock for citizenship won’t start until they actually get a green card, but that is a secondary concern for most immigrants. What they want is to get in and be able to work, and that is exactly what Biden is giving them.
But the point to Congress’s immigration limits is to limit—to limit the annual number of newcomers in order to protect American workers, reduce the burden on American taxpayers, and promote assimilation into the American mainstream. The Biden approach of ignoring those limits relegates Congress to the role of merely deciding what color photo ID a foreigner that the president let in gets to have: the pink-ish work permit or the green-ish permanent resident card.
It is time for Congress to take back the power to decide how many people move here from abroad. The most urgent step is to abolish parole and prohibit the president from giving work permits to people who aren’t explicitly eligible for them.
The Biden administration has openly rejected the idea of limits on immigration. Congress must stand our upside-down immigration law back on its feet.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/turning-immigration-law-on-its-head/
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18 July, 2023
UK relaxes immigration rules for construction workers as Brexit labour shortages bite
The government has been forced to relax immigration rules for construction workers after it was warned that new Brexit red tape is causing labour shortages on building sites.
Bricklayers, roofers, carpenters and plasterers are among occupations who will again find it easier to come and work in Britain after the Home Office added the trades to its “shortage occupation list”.
The government’s Migration Advisory Committee said in March that the “decision to leave the EU with the consequent ending of freedom of movement”, as well as Covid-19, had had “significant effects” on the industry.
Despite a push to train more domestic workers and attempts to improve recruitment and retention to fill vacancies, the construction sector was still suffering from “shortages which do not show signs of abating”, the committee said.
But under the latest change confirmed by the Home Office on Monday, businesses will now be able to recruit from abroad without having to meet such stringent sponsorship requirements.
Construction industry groups welcomed the change but said there were deeper problems that needed addressing to permanently close the labour shortfall and fill vacancies.
Opposition parties, meanwhile, accused the government of “tinkering” with a “bureaucratic” system.
The number of vacancies in the construction sector was 65 per cent higher in the three months to January 2023 compared to immediately before the pandemic in March 2020, the Migration Advisory Committee said.
Figures published separately by the Association of Professional Staffing Companies show there was a sharp climb in construction job vacancies at the end of last year, with 21,367 as of December 2022.
These numbers represented a 121 per cent rise compared with the previous month and a 199 per cent increase on December 2021.
“It is vital that construction is able to fill vacancies and quickly address shortages around particular roles, so we welcome the news that five occupations will be added to the Shortage Occupations List which will help the industry continue to deliver the schools, homes, hospitals and infrastructure that we need,” said Suzannah Nichol MBE, chief executive of industry body Build UK.
Rico Wojtulewicz, head of housing and planning policy at the National Federation of Builders, also welcomed the change but said long-term reform to planning and procurement was needed if UK companies were ever to be able to train their own workers.
“It’s great that the government is listening to the industry’s long campaign to add these desperately needed roles to the SOL. Foreign workers remain vital to make up for a shortfall in the UK construction workforce,” he told The Independent.
“However, that shortfall is worth exploring because while the government is correct in wanting to train British people, it cannot achieve that in any great number if the planning and procurement process remains broken.
“This is because SMEs train 7 in 10 construction apprentices and make up 90 per cent of training capacity, but as they cannot establish pipelines of work and struggle with a delay-ridden planning system, they ultimately cannot afford to train or retain enough staff as directly employed labour.”
Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said: “We need an economic migration system that works for the British economy, while treating everyone with dignity and respect.
“Tinkering with the edges of the shortage occupations list just papers over the cracks of the Conservatives’ awful system. Their rules are bureaucratic, arbitrary, and don’t allow employers to recruit the workers they need.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-immigration-labour-shortages-construction-b2376790.html
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17 July, 2023
DHS Creates Yet Another Parole Program for Aliens to Cut in Line
A Center for Immigration Studies analysis examines a new Biden administration “parole” program, that will allow nationals from four more countries to skip the line to enter the United States ahead of all other green card-eligible aliens, who must wait outside the country for an immigrant visa to become available.
This program, billed as promoting “family reunification” in the United States for aliens living in Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras with pending family-based green card applications, is inconsistent with the language and history of the parole statute.
These aliens, with no lawful mechanism to enter the United States, will be eligible to be paroled into the country and receive work authorization under this program. Annual green card issuances are subject to a numerical limit (cap) by statute, and therefore, many beneficiaries wait years to enter the United States as a green card holder. The annual limit for family-based categories depends on the previous year’s immigration levels and is set at a minimum of 226,000 visas.
Elizabeth Jacobs, the Center’s director of regulatory affairs and policy, writes, “Congress, not the Executive Branch, possesses plenary power over immigration under the Constitution. Entry under parole as an alternative to a visa for broad classes of aliens, such as aliens who have family in the United States and may one day be eligible for an immigrant visa, has expressly not been authorized by Congress.”
The parole statute provides DHS with limited authority to parole aliens into the United States, requiring entry to be a “case-by-case” basis for “urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit” reasons. The new program establishes specific eligibility requirements for participation, which may contradict the case-by-case approach envisioned by the statute. Historically, DHS has construed “urgent humanitarian reasons” as “urgent medical, family, and related needs” and “significant public benefit” as limited to situations as limited to “persons of law enforcement interest such as witnesses to judicial proceedings.”
Jacobs also discusses the Biden administration’s use of this new program to obscure data underlying the mass illegal immigration crisis in the United States. The new program allows the administration to further reduce the number of aliens apprehended between ports of entry reported by DHS each month, while still allowing large numbers of inadmissible aliens to enter, remain, and work in the United States without a visa. This will create a skewed representation of the true extent of the illegal immigration crisis.
https://cis.org/Jacobs/DHS-Creates-Yet-Another-Parole-Program-Aliens-Cut-Line
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16 July, 2023
Why Are We Spending Millions Housing Illegal Migrants While Americans Go Homeless?
While December's winter storm saw U.S. citizens frozen to death in their cars and fallen street side in snowbanks, our migrant-obsessed legislators sent another screw you to the American people in the form of beefed up assistance for illegal immigrants.
Year-round, millions of Americans are homeless or one paycheck away from being on the streets. Forty thousand veterans are homeless across the nation, and 40 percent of our homeless population is Black. So there is extra treachery in passing an omnibus spending bill that includes $800 million in grants to build shelters for foreigners and illegal aliens.
Theoretically, everyone deserves to have shelter and protection from the elements; yet it is not America's responsibility to house the world, particularly when our own homeless citizens have fought long and hard battles for access to clean and safe shelter.
It's time to call out the policies of President Biden, complicit legislators, and executives of so called "sanctuary cities" as the anti-American betrayal that they are.
According to economists at the University of Chicago, more than 500,000 Americans experience homelessness every day. But there are just over 300,000 beds for homeless Americans. That means just two out of three homeless people across the U.S. can find temporary housing; the remainder are literally unsheltered.
And yet, despite this crisis, homeless Americans are being displaced to house illegal migrants. Tensions flared last fall in New York City when homeless Black Americans were removed from their shelter to be replaced by illegal aliens. "I have no idea why we are being displaced for them. Why we are being moved and shuffled around?" One woman asked.
We have a housing crisis in this country, yet millions are being spent to house people who aren't American, while low income Americans go without. New York City has spent $600 million to house migrants, though its public housing residents live in squalor. "The city is going to put forth a ton of money for these people who aren't even citizens, but they forgot about the people who live in public housing right here," as one resident put it.
It's time to call this what it is: anti-Black racism committed by Democrats who for some reason have more compassion for people from other countries than their own fellow Americans.
https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-we-spending-millions-housing-illegal-migrants-while-americans-go-homeless-opinion-1770207
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13 July, 2023
Angel Mom: DeSantis Will Stop the Invasion and Secure Our Border
Millions of illegal aliens have entered the United States during Biden's administration, including criminal aliens and individuals suspected by the U.S. government of terrorism. And thanks to Biden, border patrol lacks the needed resources, manpower and policy support to do their job effectively.
The border wall isn’t close to being finished. Much of the border has no barrier at all. The Mexican drug cartels are trafficking humans and drugs across the border at record levels. Fentanyl is now the leading killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 50.
The long-term failure to secure our border has touched millions of Americans in their daily lives; I know this because it has touched my family, in the most severe way.
My family is an Angel Family. I am an Angel Mother.
In 2007, my son, Brandon was only three years out of high school and engaged to be married. On his lunch break, he was killed by a twice-deported illegal immigrant. At trial, the man who killed my son was sentenced to only two years in jail, and then deported for a third time.
No family should have to go through what we went through.
But this catastrophe isn’t just affecting American citizens; it’s also completely inhumane for the migrants themselves.
Through soft policies and softer public statements, the Biden Administration has told potential migrants that the door to the United States is open, so long as they make a dangerous journey in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Children are being brought across the border in the hands of unrelated adults and gangsters, who sometimes “rent” children from parents to have an easier time crossing.
This is wrong, and Governor DeSantis will put a stop to it. He will shut down illegal entries and build the wall, once and for all. He won’t make excuses—he’ll just get the job done. That’s what he’s done in Florida.
After Hurricane Ian, Pine Island in Florida was completely cut off from mainland Florida. Governor DeSantis got the repairs done in three days.
Governor DeSantis will end catch-and-release and reimpose Remain in Mexico to stop the flood of phony asylum claims. He will increase Border Patrol pay to recruit more agents make sure that even if illegal immigrants cross, they will be deported.
As for the cartels: he will designate them as Transnational Criminal Organizations, and sanction them, their leaders, and anyone helping them traffic drugs across our border.
He will also change the rules of engagement at the border to allow using force against cartel drug smugglers. Right now, cartel members cut through the border wall with impunity and poison our communities with fentanyl and other drugs; that ends on January 20, 2025.
As an Angel Mom, I’ve been advocating against illegal immigration and for border security for over fifteen years. In that time, I’ve heard plenty of talk from politicians from both parties about securing the border, but they never seem to follow through.
Seeing Governor DeSantis running for President gives me real hope that change is coming. He has a meaningful plan to secure our border, build the wall, and ultimately stop the invasion. But more than that, he has a record of wielding the power he earns effectively, and keeping his policy promises to the letter.
I lost my child to a twice-deported illegal alien. That shouldn’t happen in America. We need to bring the issue of our southern border to its conclusion. Governor DeSantis is the man to do that, and that’s why I’m supporting him for president.
https://townhall.com/columnists/state-rep-kiyan-michael/2023/07/04/angel-mom-desantis-will-stop-the-invasion-and-secure-our-border-n2625262
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12 July, 2023
Why Democrats Are Fuming Over Abbott's Plan to Stop Illegal Aliens
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) began rolling out the "marine barrier installation" to discourage illegal aliens from entering the country through the southern border.
As part of Operation Lone Star, the Republican announced his plan to place large orange buoys along the Rio Grande to reduce the number of undocumented immigrants in Texas.
"New marine barrier installation on the Rio Grande begins today. Texas DPS is overseeing the project in Eagle Pass. More to come," Abbott tweeted.
Texas officials praised Abbott's plan, saying that the buoys would make it difficult for illegal aliens to cross the river.
"Anytime they get in that water, it's a risk to the migrants. This is the deterrent from even coming in the water," Texas Department of Public Safety director Steve McCraw said.
The inflatable balls spin when one tries to climb them, "making it more difficult to cross the Rio Grande and reach the Texas side of the southern border," Abbott's office said in a press release.
However, liberal Left-wingers have criticized the governor's plan— claiming it is "unconstitutional."
The American Civil Liberties Union in Texas protested at the border earlier this week, holding a sign that read "defund the wall" and said a prayer for the river.
An attorney for the Left-wing group told CNN that "the latest in a chain of gifts from the state to private contractors to fuel the governor's manufactured crisis at the border."
He claimed the buoys are a "blight on Texas's moral conscience."
A Texas kayaking company filed a lawsuit against Abbott, claiming the governor's plan will hurt his business.
According to his lawsuit, Jessie Fuentes—Epi's Canoe & Kayak Team owner— said the buoys would cause his company to suffer "imminent and irreparable harm."
However, in response, Abbott vowed to fight back against the lawsuit.
"We will see you in court. And I don't think the Travis Co. Court will be the end of it. This is going to the Supreme Court. Texas has a constitutional right to secure our border," Abbott tweeted.
Since entering office, President Joe Biden's open border policies have caused Eagle Pass to see the second-highest number of illegal migrant crossings this fiscal year, with about 270,000 encounters.
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/07/09/why-democrats-are-fuming-over-abbotts-plan-to-stop-illegal-aliens-n2625478
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11 July, 2023
Horror in the Channel: cruel mystery of the missing small boats migrants
Every night for the last 18 months, Mustafa Mina has woken suddenly, convinced he can hear a knock at the door, or a phone call coming in from his son, who is still missing after he boarded a dinghy in northern France bound for the UK.
“We need a graveyard to visit, a body to come home, anything,” said Mustafa, his eyes filling with tears, his grief still raw. “We don’t know if he is under a rock in the sea, or buried beneath the sand. Maybe he is alive. We just need answers.”
At around midnight on 24 November 2021, his 20-year-old son Zanyar messaged him to say that he was under the control of a smuggler, and that he would attempt, for the ninth time, to cross the Channel.
“He asked me not to tell his mother – she would be too upset to sleep,” Mustafa said by videolink from Iraqi Kurdistan. “He said ‘Once I reach the UK, you can let her know.’’’
The next day, Mustafa spoke to the smuggler on the phone, who confirmed Zanyar’s safe arrival and requested payment for the Channel crossing. His wife went out to tell the neighbours in their close-knit community, buying sweets for the village to celebrate.
When they heard about the incident in the Channel, Mustafa said it was “every parent’s worst nightmare”.
“The pain, it is indescribable,” he said. “We are from Iraq – there are families here whose loved ones have been missing for 30 years, who are still waiting for them to turn up, but it is different when it happens to you. We just need answers.”
The incident on 24 November 2021 was the worst maritime incident to have taken place in the Channel for more than 30 years. Twenty-seven people are known to have died, with five still missing and two survivors.
“It is almost impossible to describe the impact not knowing has on you,” said Zana Mohammed, whose brother Twana, also from Iraqi Kurdistan, went missing in the shipwreck. “If anyone has any information – it could be a fisherman, anyone, even a piece of his body, anything that will help us to find some relief. Dead or alive, we need to find out either way, to find peace.”
It was initially believed by officials that the tragedy occurred in French waters due to where the bodies and survivors were found, but call records and coordinates released later as part of a French investigation confirmed that the boat crossed into British waters at around 2.30am.
While the Conservative Party has consistently said it is focused on stopping the boats, the opposition has called for safe and legal routes to be established. Stephen Kinnock, shadow immigration minister, said the case for a full public inquiry into the mass drownings on 24 November 2021 was “compelling” and called on the government to launch a “fully independent and transparent investigation”.
Mustafa, Zana and three other families, whose loved ones also went missing that night, have taken legal action against the French authorities which lawyers say is “progressing as expected, with arrests made”.
By contrast, an investigation launched on the UK side, led by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB), an independent body that works closely with HM Coastguard, is “thoroughly ineffective and inadequate”, said Maria Thomas, the lawyer representing the families of the victims.
“Whatever the outcome of the investigation, which we won’t know until the final report comes out, it will not be adequate,” said Thomas. “We don’t know who the MAIB has spoken to. It has all been conducted behind closed doors. It is beyond comprehension that there has been loss of life on this scale and that there’s even a question mark over whether a full public, statutory inquiry will be launched.”
A consultation period, during which the next of kin were invited to contribute, ended last week. The MAIB’s final report is due to be delivered by the end of the summer. This follows a two-page interim report, published in November 2022, when copy-and-paste letters were sent via WhatsApp to the family members, without mentioning the name of their loved one or addressing them personally.
The next-of-kin say they feel badly let down by the UK authorities and are calling for a full inquiry into what happened.
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/uk-news/small-boats-drown-migrants-missing-b2366667.html
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10 July, 2023
In Poland, Ukrainian refugees are finding hope amid a challenging exile
“Dzien dobry!” the Ukrainian children nearly shout with enthusiasm as we enter the room. As I walk into what recently served as a bank’s corporate headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, approximately 20 children between kindergarten and fifth grade lean forward in their school desks. They smile and wave at me and the dozen or so other visitors touring the makeshift refugee school.
Fearful of badly mispronouncing the Polish greeting in return, I smile back and say, “Hello!” Even more excited that they get to practice their English, the children blurt out in near-unison, “Good morning, friend!”
Searching the faces of the children in the room, I am amazed at the resiliency and cheerfulness of these innocent children. Most of these children have not seen their fathers in months. At such a young age, being suddenly separated from a parent must be very traumatic.
And yet, room after room of Ukrainian schoolchildren smile and wave and give greetings as we walk by.
Visiting Poland last month, I asked to visit one of the Ukrainian refugee camps that I thought must surely litter the countryside. “We don’t really have them,” my tour guide replied. Instead, Poland has opened its homes to people fleeing neighboring Ukraine. Poles with Ukrainian relatives are hosting them, but many Poles without Ukrainian relatives have taken Ukrainians into their homes, too. Those Ukrainian refugees who aren’t immediately welcomed into people’s homes are greeted with housing, education, and jobs arranged by charities and the Polish government.
The school I am touring is run by the Polish Center for International Aid and funded in large part by the Polish government. Ukrainian schoolteachers among the refugees have been hired as teachers for the makeshift school. Children are taught in their native Ukrainian language, with teachers introducing the students to the Polish and English languages as well. The goal is for the children to not fall behind in their education, and be able to reassimilate back in Ukraine after the war. If they can’t return to Ukraine, the goal is to prepare the children to assimilate successfully in Poland or learn enough English to assimilate successfully in other countries.
While the children spend the day in school, their parents — predominantly mothers — are either working in jobs found for them in Warsaw or are similarly learning the Polish language and customs.
Amazed at this hospitality, I asked, “Doesn’t this mass influx of Ukrainian refugees create burdens, problems, or resentment here?”
“Burdens and problems, yes,” the school’s host replies. “Resentments, not yet. What Ukraine is going through has happened to us in Poland before, and we know it could still happen to us again. That’s why so many Polish families have taken Ukrainians into our own homes. We hope Ukrainian refugees will quickly assimilate and be able to support themselves here soon.”
Despite the children’s smiles and cheerful greetings, life is difficult for refugee families in this foreign land. After leaving the former bank headquarters, I tour another facility, run by an American charity called Humanitarian Innovation Group, which serves as both temporary housing for newly arrived Ukrainian families and a school for Ukrainian children. Each family’s living quarters are essentially a small cubicle in the equivalent of a high school gymnasium. Privacy is at a minimum, living quarters are spartan, and there are very few amenities to ease the families’ plight. On the plus side, there is food, shelter, and safety.
Financed by private donations, the group aims to provide a bridge for refugees to find a successful new life in Poland. Most families find a source of income and private living arrangements within 60 days of arriving at the charity’s facilities.
In the meantime, the scenes are heartbreaking. Children’s artwork lines the walls. The drawings are a mix of unicorns and whimsical dreamscapes drawn by the younger children, and stark, brutal war scenes drawn by the older children. Elderly Ukrainians wander around with stunned, resigned looks on their faces. Most realize they may never see their homeland again.
Poland is willingly making sacrifices and performing an incredible service by helping Ukrainian refugees in this way. Even so, the horror of war remains front and center.
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4075557-in-poland-ukrainian-refugees-are-finding-hope-amid-a-challenging-exile/
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July 9, 2023
Four Illegal Migrants, Including an Infant, Died Trying to Cross the Rio Grande
Four people, including a baby, drowned while crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico to Texas over the weekend, Texas Department of Public Safety officials announced on Monday.
The baby girl and a woman were pulled from the river near Eagle Pass, Texas, along with two other individuals on Saturday. The individuals were transported to Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center where the infant and woman were pronounced deceased. The other two survived and were turned over to U.S. Border Patrol, according to Lt. Chris Olivarez, spokesperson for the department.
Within 48 hours, two more individuals were discovered. On Sunday, the body of a man was recovered from the treacherous river. On Monday, the body of a woman was found, Olivarez said. The identities of the deceased remain unknown since none possessed identifying documents.
The Rio Grande, known in Mexico as the El Río Bravo, meaning "the angry river" or "the fierce river" has been a hot spot for many illegal immigrant deaths as they attempt to cross the border into the U.S. These bodies were found in the same area that nine other deceased migrants were pulled from the dangerous river in September last year, AP News reported.
According to The Texas Tribune, lawmakers have allocated billions in the past few years to protect the border. Last month, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) unveiled a plan to place floating marine barriers, or buoys, along hotspots in the Rio Grande River in an attempt to discourage illegal migrants by making it impossible to cross the river.
The buoy strategy is the latest in Abbott’s attempts to stop illegal immigrants from coming to Texas in the overwhelming border crisis.
Over the weekend, Abbott sent another busload of migrants from the southern border to Los Angeles, part of a program that buses migrants to so-called “sanctuary cities,” places where illegal immigrants have additional protections.
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/jacob-mathews/2023/07/06/four-people-including-an-infant-died-this-weekend-crossing-the-rio-grande-into-texas-n2625323
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July 7, 2023
JOE LEGAL vs. JOSE ILLEGAL
You have two families: "Joe Legal" and "Jose Illegal". Both families have two parents, two children, and live in California . Joe Legal works in construction, has a Social Security Number and makes $25.00 per hour with taxes deducted.
Jose Illegal also works in construction, has NO Social Security Number, and gets paid $15.00 cash "under the table". Ready? Now pay attention...
Joe Legal: $25.00 per hour x 40 hours = $1000.00 per week, or $52,000.00 per year. Now take 30% away for state and federal tax; Joe Legal now has $31,231.00.
Jose Illegal: $15.00 per hour x 40 hours = $600.00 per week, or $31,200.00 per year. Jose Illegal pays no taxes. Jose Illegal now has $31,200.00.
Joe Legal pays medical and dental insurance with limited coverage for his family at $600.00 per month, or $7,200.00 per year. Joe Legal now has $24,031.00.
Jose Illegal has full medical and dental coverage through the state and local clinics at a cost of $0.00 per year. Jose Illegal still has $31,200.00.
Joe Legal makes too much money and is not eligible for food stamps or welfare. Joe Legal pays $500.00 per month for food, or $6,000.00 per year. Joe Legal now has $18,031.00.
Jose Illegal has no documented income and is eligible for food stamps and welfare. Jose Illegal still has $31,200.00.
Joe Legal pays rent of $1,200.00 per month, or $14,400.00 per year. Joe Legal now has $9,631.00.
Jose Illegal receives a $500.00 per month federal rent subsidy. Jose Illegal pays out that $500.00 per month, or $6,000.00 per year. Jose Illegal still has $ 31,200.00.
Joe Legal pays $200.00 per month, or $2,400.00 for insurance. Joe Legal now has $7,231.00.
Jose Illegal says, "We don't need no stinkin' insurance!" and still has $31,200.00.
Joe Legal has to make his $7,231.00 stretch to pay utilities, gasoline, etc.
Jose Illegal has to make his $31,200.00 stretch to pay utilities, gasoline, and what he sends out of the country every month.
Joe Legal now works overtime on Saturdays or gets a part time job after work.
Jose Illegal has nights and weekends off to enjoy with his family.
Joe Legal's and Jose Illegal's children both attend the same school.Joe Legal pays for his children's lunches while Jose Illegal's children get a government sponsored lunch.
Jose Illegal's children have an after school ESL program. Joe Legal's children go home.
Joe Legal and Jose Illegal both enjoy the same police and fire services, but Joe paid for them and Jose did not pay.
Do you get it, now? If you vote for or support any politician that supports illegal aliens... You are part of the problem!
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July 6, 2023
Government Report Faults Border Crisis for Premature Release of Suspected Terrorist
In an unusual, scathing, and much-redacted public report, the Department of Homeland Security’s independent Office of Inspector General has released the results of an investigation into one of several U.S. releases of border-crossing immigrants who flagged positive on the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist.
The report – titled “CBP Released a Migrant on a Terrorist Watchlist, and ICE Faced Information Sharing Challenges Planning and Conducting the Arrest” –describes a cavalcade of multi-agency mistakes that led to the April 19, 2022, release of an unnamed migrant who, after crossing two days earlier among the 30,000 a month then pouring through an unfinished, cancelled section of Trump administration border wall near Yuma, Ariz., initially flagged – inconclusively – as a suspected terrorist.
But the report states that because border agents “were busy processing an increased flow of migrants” who were clogging the area’s central processing center at the time, agents released the suspect into the interior before the inconclusive alert could be resolved, which normally would happen quickly under established inter-agency routines.
Instead, under the pressure of processing historic numbers of illegal aliens pouring through the Yuma Sector all that spring (28,681 that April, compared to 298 the same month in 2020), Border Patrol released the suspect with most of the rest on personal recognizance, a GPS tracking device, and an honor-system promise that they voluntarily report in later to an ICE office in the cities they chose to settle in.
Mass releases of illegal border-crossers from central processing centers (CPCs), which as quickly as possible hand out “notice to report” or “notice to appear” authorization papers, sometimes with electronic monitoring devices, have been customary all along the southern border since President Biden took office in January 2021, without letup to the present day, and is commonly understood as the main cause of the border crisis.
Only after CPC officers released this suspect to board a commercial flight from Palm Springs, Calif., to Tampa, Fla. – where pre-check routines confirmed the watch list hit – did agencies eventually realize the alien was a positive match on the Terrorist Watchlist. But it was too little, too late.
Not until after two more weeks of foul-ups did ICE agents track down and, on May 6, 2022, finally arrest the suspected terrorist in Tampa.
Although the OIG report does not name the suspect for ostensible privacy reasons, the case details bear close resemblance to details in a May 23, 2022, Fox News report by Adam Sabes and Bill Melugin, which described how DHS border agents inadvertently released Colombian national Isnardo Garcia-Amado and then arrested him two weeks later in Florida.
What Didn’t Happen
The OIG report lays out established government processes for handling illegal border-crossers who appear on the FBI’s Terrorism Watchlist, which track with programs described at far greater length in my 2021 book, America’s Covert Border War, The Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration.
It boils down like this: Cases when aliens flag on the watchlist after routine national security database checks inside Border Patrol stations and processing centers are forwarded for general reporting purposes (or confirmation) to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center in Virginia.
Terrorist Screening Center analysts may request additional identifying information like fingerprints or copies of travel or identity documents through U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center (NTC) or contact a Mexican intelligence group known as Grupo Conjunto de Inteligencia Fronteriza, that works closely with the American agencies on these cases.
Often in the end, federal agents, including the Border Patrol’s Tactical Terrorism Response Team, get dispatched to border holding facilities for face-to-face interviews with terrorism suspects to help with confirmations and to collect intelligence information.
The report found communications breakdowns at the NTC, as well as with overwhelmed CBP agents on the ground in Yuma’s central processing center, in large part due to the pressure from a human torrent that had been underway for months.
It’s long been customary that the FBI Screening Center request that the NTC facilitate an interview with the migrant before a release.
Neither the interview nor hit confirmation happened before release, at least in part because the NTC sent the request to an incorrect email distribution list for the Border Patrol’s Tactical Terrorism Response Team, but also because those in Yuma who did receive the request were too swamped to read it.
The same interview request went successfully to the emails of supervisors working in the Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector, according to footnote 17. Those Yuma supervisors never responded.
Why?
“A Yuma CPC [Central Processing Center] agent explained that he and his colleagues try to respond to NTC emails as quickly as possible but were busy processing an increased flow of migrants,” the report stated. “As a result, the Tactical Terrorism Response Team did not receive the NTC’s request and did not interview the migrant.
Elsewhere, the report noted that central processing center agents “explained that the Yuma CPC was over capacity following an increase in apprehensions, which created pressure to quickly process migrants and decreased the time available to review each file.”
The NTC also was clearly overwhelmed at the time, which would explain two other vital communications failures. At one point, the NTC asked for – and received the critical desired information – from the Mexican intelligence group it normally works with.
But two NTC officials who received it never forwarded it and “told us they did not recall why they did not forward it…,” the OIG report said.
And, when the now-freed terrorist suspect flagged a second time prior to boarding the flight to Tampa, the Transportation Security Administration at the Palm Springs airport notified the NTC that the match was positive.
This set in motion an arrest plan, but the mass-migration-related foul-ups did not end there, even as the clock was ticking on a potential national security event.
More Delays by an Overwhelmed Border Patrol Put the Nation at Risk
With the suspect free and roaming in Florida on April 22, 2022, the case went straight to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to arrest the suspect, who was supposed to voluntarily report in on June 1. ICE in Tampa changed it to an earlier date “because the migrant was a positive Terrorist Watchlist match, and the office was concerned that… the migrant could post a national security risk.”
Two other reasons are redacted.
Working with the FBI, ICE put a surveillance team on the suspect and asked for the all-important paper “Alien File,” from Border Patrol, which would include helpful photographs and potential evidence that would indicate whether the suspect had any history of violence or criminality.
But ICE officers couldn’t act because they didn’t get the file for eight days, even for a national security priority like this. That’s because Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector operation was unable to sort, box, and ship any more than a thousand files “once or twice a week” from that overwhelmed processing center to ICE offices across the country, the OIG report found.
They were tens of thousands behind.
One final snafu almost derailed the arrest. When the arresting ICE team showed up at the suspect’s residence and waited for the suspect to leave so they could do the arrest, they learned Border Patrol’s electronic monitoring (Alternatives to Detention) office didn’t open until 7 a.m. and also that system did not share GPS tracking information with ICE, which the team needed to confirm the suspect was in one of the vehicles that departed. The team made do by trailing the vehicle until an officer could call the ATD office when it opened at 7 a.m.
They arrested the suspect without incident at 7:30 a.m. on May 6, 2022.
Broader Implications for National Security
The OIG report is unique in addressing a national security threat caused by President Biden’s mass migration crisis that few Americans, pundits, or national security experts acknowledge as real. The crisis has broken records, including the apprehension of more than 200 aliens on the FBI Terror Watchlist since 2020, and continues into its third year.
Above all else, this OIG report confirms a long-held thesis of mine, which is that the mass migration crisis has seriously eroded normal counterterrorism security programs at the southern border and created an elevated threat level environment.
This case is not the only one where I have posited that counterterrorism border programs detailed in America’s Covert Border War are crumbling under this human onslaught. Americans live at higher risk of terror attack as a result.
As I have reported, for instance, a Lebanese Venezuelan migrant who swam the Rio Grande from Matamoros to Brownsville, Texas, in early December 2021 was on the FBI terror watch list. Amid the border chaos that month, the FBI recommended ICE keep him locked up until deportation due to "substantive high side derogatory intelligence," labeling him a "high risk" and a "flight risk."
But instead, ICE headquarters ordered the man released for fear that, due to his weight, he might catch COVID-19. He was free and pursuing an asylum claim in Detroit last I checked.
The breakdown is evident on the Mexican side too. In April 2021, Mexican immigration officials caught a watch-listed Yemeni named Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed just as he was about to cross into Del Rio, Texas. In normal times, U.S.-Mexico collaboration on terrorist travel threat issues runs deep. Between 2014 and 2019, Mexico deported 19 suspected migrant terrorists, very probably in collaboration with the FBI stationed in-country.
But not this time. Mexico ended up attempting to deport Ahmed, but he came right back in July 2021, the busiest month in the history of both nations up to that time. Rather than deport Ahmed a second time, the Mexicans simply let him go. In a hint as to just how problematic the Americans found this, Homeland Security issued a "be on the lookout" bulletin for Ahmed to law enforcement throughout Texas. It's unclear whether anyone ever found him.
A reasonable question to ask: Is DHS’s OIG investigating these cases too
https://cis.org/Bensman/Government-Report-Faults-Border-Crisis-Premature-Release-Suspected-Terrorist
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July 5, 2023
With Morale in ‘Tank,’ New Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens Has Work Cut Out for Him
Border Patrol agents are “overwhelmed,” Andrew Arthur, a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal.
“Improving morale amongst Border Patrol agents” will be Owens “biggest challenge,” Arthur said. Those agents, he said, “feel appropriately unappreciated by the Biden administration.”
“Morale must be in the tank,” Heritage Foundation scholar Simon Hankinson said.
Owens takes the helm of the Border Patrol on Friday with the retirement of Chief Raul Ortiz.
Concerns over morale stem in part from the loss of 17 U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees to suicide in 2022, the greatest number in over a decade.
Owens also steps into the chief’s position as encounters with illegal aliens at the southern and northern borders remain historically high compared to the numbers before President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol, reported encountering over 2 million illegal aliens on America’s borders since fiscal year 2023 began Oct. 1. By comparison, in all of fiscal 2020, the agency said it encountered 646,822 illegal aliens.
Critics note that the increase occurred after Biden named Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, parent agency to the Border Patrol and CPB.
“Taking over command of the U.S. Border Patrol under the leadership of Secretary Mayorkas will be a thankless task,” Hankinson, a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, said of Owens’ arrival. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)
Many congressional Republicans have joined Heritage and other conservative organizations in criticizing Mayorkas, arguing that the homeland security secretary has failed to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and Clay Higgins, R-La., introduced articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.
The Border Patrol always could use more resources, Hankinson said, but the problem isn’t a lack of trucks or staff, but “a deliberate policy by the Biden administration to allow as many illegal immigrants in as can physically be processed, and to use Border Patrol agents as social workers.”
The Biden administration pulled Border Patrol agents from the physical border to process the record number of illegal aliens entering the country, according to Mark Morgan, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration and now a visiting fellow in Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
Hankinson said he has witnessed “agents at the border handing out luggage tags, forming lines, entering data into a phone app, and helping inadmissible aliens get on buses.”
“Their role was more like Disney cast members than federal agents,” he said.
Hankinson added that the Biden administration’s policies likely harm morale:
The Border Patrol is being hamstrung in its core function—keeping out inadmissible aliens and goods—by their own leaders. No new chief can change that. The [Department of Homeland Security] has turned its resources from deterring and detaining inadmissible aliens towards processing them and moving them inland. Agents who signed on to defend their country are instead assisting illegal aliens to enter. They know this is contrary to the laws they were taught to enforce. Morale must be in the tank.
Given the high influx of migrants at America’s borders, Owens was likely the most apparent choice to take over for Ortiz.
Owens most recently served as chief of the Del Rio sector, consistently one of the busiest sections of the southern border.
He joined the Border Patrol in 1996 and has received numerous promotions throughout his tenure. In 2007, he became assistant chief at Border Patrol headquarters in Washington. After multiple transfers and promotions, he was named chief patrol agent of the Houlton sector, which covers the entire state of Maine.
Owen’s impressive resume indicates he is equipped to do the job, the Center for Immigration Studies’ Arthur said, because “the agents want to have one of their own in charge.”
Owens takes the helm of the Border Patrol less than two months after the public health measure known at Title 42 expired. The measure had allowed the Border Patrol under the Trump administration to quickly expel some illegal aliens from the southern border during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When Title 42 expired May 11, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security implemented new policies that Mayorkas said would allow illegal aliens to enter America through “lawful pathways.”
Mayorkas’ reference to “lawful pathways” includes use of a mobile app called CBP One, which allows illegal aliens to schedule an appointment at a port of entry to seek asylum.
Since the expiration of Title 42, the Biden administration says, illegal entries between ports of entry along the southwest border have dropped 70%.
But Morgan said the administration’s reports of “low” border encounters are “all smoke and mirrors.”
He said illegal aliens simply go to ports of entry and continue to be released into the United States. And CPB’s recent encounter numbers don’t show a dramatic decline in the number of illegal aliens entering the country.
CPB publishes the number of migrant encounters for each month on its website. Encounters by “Border Patrol” refer to encounters between ports of entry; encounters by the “Office of Field Operations” refer to those at ports of entry.
The official number of border encounters for May shows a slight decline compared to April in the number of migrants entering between ports of entry, but an increase in those arriving at ports of entry.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/29/improving-morale-greatest-challenge-new-border-patrol-chief-experts-say
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July 4, 2023
U.S. Planning Three Moves to Help H-1B Employers
Two reports indicate that the U.S. government plans to make three changes to make the program even easier for industry:
Postpone any raise in wages;
Postpone any fee increases; and
Make it possible for H-1B workers extending their visas to do so in the U.S. rather than in India, China, and other home countries.
The planned changes were reported in the SHRM website and the Tribune newspaper. According to the Tribune:
“[T]he United States Department of State is going to launch a pilot to adjudicate domestic renewals of certain petition-based temporary work visas later this year, including for Indian nationals with the intent to implement this for an expanded pool of H-1 and L visa holders," a senior Biden administration official said.
The programme would be eventually broadened to include other eligible categories. “It is good for people in India, good for people in the United States, really good for our businesses,” said the official.
The likelihood is that, should this change take place, the Department of Homeland Security would operate it within the U.S., not the State Department. L-1 visa holders are employees of international firms who are transferred to American jobs, a maneuver that allows the aliens to work in the U.S. without the complications and limitations of the H-1B lottery.
Making the H-1B and L-1 programs easier to handle, and cheaper, simply expands the number of American tech workers who lose good jobs because of them.
https://cis.org/North/US-Planning-Three-Moves-Help-H1B-Employers
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July 3, 2023
Just two Afghans promised safe haven by UK army brought from Pakistan in three months
Just two out of 1,049 Afghans offered refuge by the UK for their part in helping British forces have been brought to safety from Pakistan in the past three months, The Independent can reveal. A further 300 who did not work directly with UK forces are eligible to come to the UK through a separate programme.
Interpreters who worked for the British army are among those who have been invited to resettle in Britain after risking their lives to help coalition forces.
But they and their families, who have been stuck in hotels in Islamabad for months, are now “living as prisoners” and afraid to go out for fear of deportation back to the Taliban-run country.
In recent weeks, Pakistan’s authorities have cracked down on refugees, with at least 175 immigrants – mainly Afghans – detained and imprisoned. Earlier this year, more than 600 people were sent back to Afghanistan.
The UK’s failure to look after those it promised to help was blasted as “shameful” by the shadow defence secretary, while former army officer and Labour MP Dan Jarvis urged ministers to “get a grip” on the situation.
The revelation comes as The Independent is campaigning for an Afghan pilot, who served alongside coalition forces and has been threatened with deportation to Rwanda because he arrived in the UK on a small boat, to be granted refuge.
The military and diplomatic employees all worked for or with the British in the run-up to the fall of Kabul in August 2021.
They have all been given permission to come to the UK under the Ministry of Defence’s Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme (Arap), but are unable to get here as a result of the British government’s decision to stop chartering flights last November and its stipulation that they need to find their own accommodation in the UK before they can travel here.
They are currently living in hotels run by the UK government, with temporary Pakistani visas. The UK has spent £17m between April 2022 and March 2023 on housing them.
The latest government data shows that only two people were relocated to the UK from Pakistan between 1 March and 24 May this year. Eight people in total have been relocated to the UK from anywhere in the world during the three-month period covering March, April and May.
Those still stranded in Islamabad told The Independent they are terrified of being sent back to Taliban-run Afghanistan if the Pakistan authorities find out their visas have expired.
One former interpreter who was embedded with British troops in Helmand province said his visa had run out and that he would not go outside the hotel for fear of arrest.
The man, who has been waiting for more than a year in Islamabad, said: “We are now living as prisoners. Afghans are arrested and deported by the police every day. Life is very hard and no one listens to us or understands our problems.”
Another former interpreter, who has been in a hotel since April, asked his caseworker what would happen to him and his family now that their three-month Pakistani visas had run out.
He was told by the British High Commission caseworker that he shouldn’t leave the hotel and that, if he did, the police would arrest him or deport him back to Afghanistan.
“We are not good because we don’t know how long we will stay here. I don’t know who in the UK can help us with accommodation. Our visas have expired and the caseworker told me they would not be able to intervene if I am arrested,” he said.
The UK government has told the Afghans they will only be transferred if they can prove they have private accommodation in the UK and can show they have the funds to support themselves.
Shadow defence secretary John Healey said Britain has a “moral duty” to assist these Afghans.
He said: “Bringing only two Arap-eligible individuals to the UK in three months is simply shameful. It leaves hundreds of Afghans fleeing the Taliban stuck in Pakistan hotels without hope or proper support. Ministers must fix the failing Arap scheme.”
Labour MP Dan Jarvis said the government had failed to honour its commitment to these families, leaving them “in limbo in Pakistan”. He said: “Ministers need to get a grip on the situation and allow them safe and legal passage to the UK.”
Former Tory minister and Brexit Party MEP Ann Widdecombe said the situation was “a scandal”.
She added: “We had years to bring the interpreters over and we left everything until the last minute. We then encouraged people to cross into Pakistan, and we’ve now stopped running evacuation flights from there. We’ve just abandoned them.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/afghan-refugees-islamabad-pakistan-hotels-b2354066.html?
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July 2, 2023
Migrant workers said to be leaving Florida over restrictive new law
A controversial Florida law which took effect Saturday no longer recognizes driver's licenses issued to undocumented immigrants from other states, among other restrictions.
It is part of a sweeping immigration bill signed by Republican Florida governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis back in May that is prompting many to leave the state.
The run-up to the new law has sparked protests by immigrant workers, from those in the tourism and hospitality industry, to those who work in agricultural fields.
"We are hearing people are starting to leave," Yvette Cruz with the Farmworkers Association of Florida told CBS News of reports of migrant workers abandoning fields and construction projects. "We're just gonna keep seeing that more as the law will take effect."
The law also includes harsh penalties for those who try and hire or transport undocumented migrants, which critics say can include family members.
It also requires hospitals that receive Medicaid funds to ask for a patient's immigration status.
DeSantis claims the legislation is needed due to what he considers the Biden's administration's failure to secure the border.
"At the end of the day, you wouldn't have the illegal immigration problem if you didn't have a lot of people who were facilitating this in our country," DeSantis recently said during a campaign rally.
For farmworkers like Ofelia Aguilar, who is undocumented but has children who are U.S. citizens — including an 8-year-old son — the new law sparks fear of separation.
"I'm not going to leave my son behind," Aguilar said. "If I leave, my son is coming with me."
Aguilar said she recently fell off a truck while on the job, and was bedridden with a back injury for two weeks. However, she did not seek medical care for fear she'd be asked about her immigration status.
The Florida Policy Institute estimates that nearly 10% of workers in Florida's most labor-intensive industries are undocumented, leaving employers and workers uncertain about the future the new law will create.
The law was one of more than 200 signed by DeSantis which took effect Saturday and impact areas including abortion, education and guns.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/migrant-workers-said-to-be-leaving-florida-over-restrictive-new-law/ar-AA1djjFv
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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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