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31 March, 2010

Let's Get Serious About Immigration, Conservatives

A view from Warner Todd Huston

Immigration is a difficult issue for conservatives these days. It is fraught with emotions and passionate feelings. Worse, whenever someone tries to discuss the issue dispassionately, the old canard of "no true Scotsman" is employed against them. But conservatives need to continue to have this discussion and get their ducks in a row on the issue because the other side has a successful call to arms that we need to prove wrong. It is too easy for the left to claim that it has "compassion" for immigrants and we don't. We need to pull the debate away from faux "compassion" and toward the facts.

On the right we have at least two main ideas about immigration. Some want open borders and easy employment for illegals so that business has a quick and constant source of cheap labor. These business-oriented conservatives (some might call them country club Republicans) are less interested in social issues and more interested in money and economic growth. Opposing the open borders folks are those that might be called nativists, those that feel America should not have a wide open border and that America is for Americans.

The problem we have here is that there is no reason why conservatives cannot be both a nativist and an economic expansionist that wants to employ some foreign-born workers where they are needed. There is no reason why we can't be both strong border advocates and interested in making new Americans from immigrants. Our two sides do not necessarily have to be as diametrically opposed as they seem to be.

Of course, the passion erupts when we try to reconcile these two positions. The closed borders folks all too often employ a sort of "no true Scotsman" theory against anyone that wants to make some sense of this situation. If you seem to waver from their view you aren't a "real" conservative to too many of them. But nativists aren't the only ones to blame as the open borders crowd dismisses everyone on the other side as yahoos and hatemongers when the truth is that Nativists only want to follow the Constitution and protect American culture. We need to get past the name calling and remember that we need to be on the same page of this matter or the left will win making things unsuitable for all of us on the right.

Some of the open borders crowd have come to realize that open borders are no longer a good idea. Not long ago, for instance, I spoke to Richard Nadler, president of Americas Majority Foundation, and he realized that after 9/11, open borders was suicide. Nadler's group is a conservative pro immigrant-labor organization that specializes in minority outreach. Nadler feels that to be seen as the anti-Hispanic party will destroy the GOPs electoral future. He makes a good argument in many ways.

To my personal experience, I have seen many sons and daughters of immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- and these kids don't want to be Mexicans, or Guatemalans, or what have you. They might not mind visiting the country of their parent's birth but they generally would rather stay here and they think of themselves as Americans. But I will have to agree with Nadler that if these young people grow up thinking that the GOP is filled with people that hate them, then these new voters will reflexively vote Democrat in huge numbers. I believe Nadler is right that we could be committing electoral suicide if we allow this perception to grow.

But this need to seem more friendly to Americans of Hispanic origin does not mean we have to throw away American principles, our culture or our laws. Nor do we need to open the border wide and let just anyone come here. We have every right to try to put breakers on the flow of foreign immigrants and a responsibility to think of America first.

Now, many thousands of illegal immigrants have returned home over the last two years. This is because the economy is such that the easy jobs these people filled have dried up. But at some point our economy will pick up again and the influx of illegals will resume to fill the jobs a stronger economy creates. We need to try and solve this problem now, before our economy picks up and the influx resumes. So, at some point the left is right that now is an ideal time for comprehensive immigration reform. But let it be on our terms, not the lefts.

Here are some of the points we must consider:

• Tougher border security measures
• A logical path to citizenship for those here
• A robust guest worker program
• Broader enforcement of the laws already on the books
• Implementation of the e-verify system to determine whether a worker is a legal resident
• An end to welfare and free in-state tuition to illegals
• An end to automatic citizenship to babies of foreigners

Am I suggesting total amnesty? Certainly not. But this problem is bigger than just imagining it is possible to deport millions of people all at once. We are past the time when we can stick our fingers in our ears and yell “la,la,la” in hopes that the problem will go away. Our past politicians have failed us on this issue. It is up to us to fix it.

There is one final area that impinges on immigration that must be considered here: education.

Currently our educational system coddles illegals by teaching kids in Spanish only classes. Our schools also fail our society by downplaying American principles and eschewing American exceptionalism. We must return American principles to our schools. After all, if kids are taught that America is a bad place, why should they grow up to want to protect our American heritage? This is no less true for the child of a natural born citizens than that of a foreign born immigrant. Further, how do we expect the kids of immigrants to grow up to want to be acculturated to American ideals if we tell them that America is a bad place? An important place to make American citizens is in school. As conservatives we need to take back our schools from the extreme left that now runs them.

SOURCE



Border Rancher Rob Krentz And Dog Found Shot To Death After Aiding illegal alien

The body of Rancher Rob Krentz and his dog were found shot to death on his ranch. Krentz, who always was good-natured and willing to help people, had called in that he had found an illegal alien at one of his watering holes and was assisting him. That was the last that was heard from him before his body was discovered.

Rob Krentz was a lifelong rancher in Southeastern Arizona, 12 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border and 25 miles northeast of the city of Douglas. He was the father of three children. The ranch has been in his family for three generations, more than 100 years - since 1907, and sits on about 35,000 acres with 1,000 head of cattle. Running a ranch is hard work and with the influx of illegal aliens increasing, Rob was at ground zero of the stampede that is destroying the fragile desert landscape.

The Krentz family has received numerous threats in the past by illegal aliens trespassing on their property. In 2002, the family was physically threatened when one of them stumbled upon a group of 39 illegal aliens. They were told to get off the land and they made threats. The Border Patrol did catch the illegal aliens after they were called, but we all know that illegal aliens, if deported, come right back across.

In 1999, Krentz and his wife Susan did an interview with PBS when they came around asking about the issue of illegal immigration and its impacts on the local ranchers. "We've been broken into," Susan Krentz told PBS.

"One time," Rob said "You know, we've personally been broke in once. And they took about $700 worth of stuff. And you know, if they come in and ask for water, I'll still give them water. I - you know, that's just my nature."

In 2003, Congressman Tom Tancredo mentioned the challenges of the border ranchers, and in particular highlighted the the Krentz family's plight. "In the month of November, 2002, in the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol ... where the Krentz ranch is located, the Border Patrol apprehended 23,000 border crossers," Tancredo wrote. "many people would suggest that the [apprehension] ratio is just about maybe one in five, and that is a very conservative estimate. ... I think it is closer to one in ten".

That means in that sector alone for one month, 8 years ago, the most conservative estimate is that 115,000 illegal aliens crossed the border in that one chunk of land in the Tucson sector. All of the illegals are unknown.

Tancredo notes that the Krentz's did mention to him that they called the Border Patrol. In one instance illegal aliens had butchered one of his calves.

In February [2002] ... a calf was butchered by illegal alien trespassers. Two men responsible were caught. They were tried. They were found guilty. They served a total of 51 days in jail. They were also ordered to pay $200 in restitution to the Krentz ranch. The Krentz ranch has not seen a cent of that money; and, of course, our best guess is they will not because these people have been released. They either came back into the population up here in the U.S.A. or returned to Mexico.

Tancredo goes into the cases of deliberate sabotage of the Krentz ranch's water supply and the other impacts on the Krentz's by illegal aliens. You can read more, where Tancredo dubs the Krentzs American Homeland Heroes

6 years after the PBS interview, in 2005, Krentz did an interview with KOLD as the number of illegal aliens exploded. "We’re being over-run, and it’s costing us lots and lots of money," Krentz said.

"We figured it up over the last five years and it’s cost us over $8 million," Krentz said. "Cattle don’t like people walking through, so they move. So, cattle weight loss, destruction of fences, breaking our pipelines, they break them in two and (the pipes) run for two or three days before we find it."

Krentz went on to say that when he was a boy he actually knew the few illegal aliens that came through looking for work, he said it's nothing like that now as hundreds of unknown illegals stream across his land.

Rob Krentz is just one of the many people who live and work along our southern border. A tough, hard working man who was trying to make a living and doing what he loved. Those who support illegal aliens will talk about "human rights", but where were the "human rights" when it came to Rob Krentz? Where was the government to protect our border and prevent this from happening, though they've been told time and time again? They didn't protect his property rights, nor his civil rights.

This country failed Robert Krentz, his family and all who work for him. As they have failed countless families all across this country. The number of deaths is estimated to be from 15-25 deaths caused by illegal aliens each day in this country.

It is not known yet whether Krentz was specifically targeted or whether it was just one of the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who come across our border every year who have actual criminal records, but in the end does it matter? A hard working man was killed on his own land. And all for just trying to help out someone in need.

And that is simply outrageous. Rest in peace Robert Krentz, the country will surely miss a great and kind man like you.

SOURCE





30 March, 2010

Progress towards rationality in Canada

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney did a smiling impersonation of a warm and furry welcome mat on Monday, throwing open Canada's arms to a higher wave of refugees for resettlement here, the winners qualifying for up to two years of food and shelter on the government's tab.

But on Tuesday a harder-nosed Kenney will strap on steel-toed boots to kickstart a faster exit for system-clogging unqualified asylum-seekers who only qualify for a taxpayer-financed plane ticket.

His bill will target bogus and backlogged refugees for eviction within a year, dramatically shortening a process than can drag on through pointless appeals for more than two years while costing up to $50,000 before a handcuffed claimant is marched to a departure gate for deportation.

The plan will apparently free up funds to hire a beefed-up immigration security force and introduce a program to finance an early exit for those surrendering to the system who meekly want to go home.

It might also be a good bet for wannabe Canadians in Hungary to get moving on their paperwork because it sounds like they could be added to the visa-required list of countries today.

But the most contentious provision will be to divide the globe into ‘safe' and ‘dangerous' countries when a refugee's file is up for consideration.

Illegal asylum seekers from safe countries would be deported to their homeland on an accelerated basis. Those facing difficult or dangerous conditions would be given closer official scrutiny to ensure they are not at mortal risk if returned.

This makes obvious sense, but it has Can of Worms written all over it as the final list is drawn up, undoubtedly causing all sorts of diplomatic friction as good, bad or ugly labels are applied.

It would understate the obvious to suggest a crackdown on bogus refugees in Canada has been too long in the making and it would be wrong to give the Conservatives the gold star for fixing an ailing system which deteriorated badly under their watch.

But progress is noted in cutting the bloated 600,000-applicant overseas backlog. Visa requirements imposed on countries flooding Canada with bogus claimants have slowed the refugee influx, and moves to accept more of those who have skills for our economy have worked almost too well, as foreign processing centres are swamped by desirable applications.

Mr. Kenney's nudging a difficult file in a forward direction in a way that even Liberals confide is overdue, necessary and will be supported politically if the advance billing is correct.

Today's move will bring in another 2,500 of the world's most unfortunate people drawn from 10 million trapped, sometimes for their entire lives, in squalid camps inside the least developed countries. While it's a modest bump, increasing Canada's existing resettlement program by just 20 per cent with most of those covered by private sponsorships, it's a humanitarian move that's impossible to criticize.

But for the 60,000-plus who are waiting for Immigration and Refugee Board hearings or appeals to be heard in court, faster processing is on the way.

Mr. Kenney is musing about replacing Immigration and Refugee Boards, usually loaded with government patronage appointments, with his own departmental officials.

This would have the welcome effect of eliminating political considerations for immigration approvals, sometimes dictated by board member bias instead of an applicant's qualifications, to be replacing by cold-hearted verdicts from semi-neutral mandarins.

The poster villain in this mess is claimants who immediately pocket welfare benefits while dragging out their appeals. But the tough love proposal is actually good news for confused and huddled types who are not motivated just to milk the system.

Thousands of refugee applicants, many lured here by unethical immigration consultants abroad, get trapped on the waitlists for far too long, unable to get a decent job, settle down with a spouse or start a family until the system finally kicks them out.

It's not like Canada doesn't need immigration. The Liberal deep thinkers conference on the weekend was told in graphic terms that the best hope to cope with the looming shortage of skilled labor was aggressive and selective immigration.

The challenge for Jason Kenney is to roll out the welcome mat and then play bouncer, extending a welcome handshake to the skilled or those most desperate for humanitarian consideration, while turning away the unqualified or the undesirable.

SOURCE



Australia's refugee policy sunk by 100th boatload

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has reached an unwelcome milestone after the 100th boat carrying asylum seekers arrived under his watch. Yesterday's embarrassing century was immediately seized on by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who claimed Labor had lost control of Australia's borders. And with hundreds of boat people expected to arrive in coming months, the Government is bracing for a voter backlash when the election is held later this year.

Adding to the Government's concerns was yesterday's escape by three Chinese nationals from Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre. That takes to seven the number of escapes from the centre in the past month and eight for the year so far.

Anxious Government MPs admit voters are growing increasingly concerned about the breach of Australia's borders and many are demanding tougher action.

In the latest incident, two boats carrying a total of 85 asylum seekers were intercepted by naval vessels, one near Christmas Island yesterday and another near Ashmore Reef northwest of Western Australia on Sunday night. The refugees were last night on their way to Christmas Island.

With the election year less than three months old, a near record 32 boats have already arrived in Australian waters. They have carried 1574 asylum seekers - most from Afghanistan which has seen increased hostilities following the resurgence of the al-Qaeda-aligned Taliban.

The Rudd Government claims the surge in boat people arrivals is due to global factors, however the Opposition blamed what it called Mr Rudd's softer border policies.

Fresh from completing his weekend triathlon, Mr Abbott hit out at the Government for softening its immigration policies. "The Government plainly is at sixes and sevens over this," Mr Abbott said. "Today the 100th boat has arrived at Christmas Island since the Rudd Government abandoned the Howard government's border policies.

"We've had 89 asylum seekers transferred from Christmas Island to Villawood, allegedly for security reasons, and yet some are escaping. This really is a Government that has lost control of Australia's borders."

The Opposition reported that the hot button issue was causing major concerns in marginal seats, particularly in regional areas. It will run a tough election campaign arguing that Mr Rudd's decision to scrap the Coalition's tougher border-control measures had been a key factor in the increased arrivals.

Some Labor MPs are reporting an increase in community concern over the refugee issue. "It's not going to lose us an election but it is causing us grief," one senior Labor MP said.

But the Government is unlikely to revert to Mr Howard's tougher border protection measures, which included temporary protection visas and offshore processing under the so-called Pacific Solution.

The Government is now being forced to send planeloads of asylum seekers on to the mainland as it tries to prevent the Christmas Island detention centre from being clogged with new arrivals.

Apart from the 89 moved from Christmas Island to Villawood on Saturday, another 51 detainees were transferred to various mainland locations last week. The Immigration Department has a facility at Darwin on standby to take the spillover from Christmas Island but the Government is trying to avoid using this. Another transfer from Christmas Island is expected to be made today, with many of them granted visas.

Senator Evans has said the 89 already transferred to Villawood were on a "removal pathway" after having their claims for asylum rejected.

SOURCE





29 March, 2010

A Birthright? Maybe Not.

A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration.

To end the practice of "birthright citizenship," all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment's first sentence: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.

A parent from a poor country, writes professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas law school, "can hardly do more for a child than make him or her an American citizen, entitled to all the advantages of the American welfare state." Therefore, "It is difficult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry."

Writing in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, Graglia says this irrationality is rooted in a misunderstanding of the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." What was this intended or understood to mean by those who wrote it in 1866 and ratified it in 1868? The authors and ratifiers could not have intended birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants because in 1868 there were and never had been any illegal immigrants because no law ever had restricted immigration.

If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration -- and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration -- is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 begins with language from which the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause is derived: "All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." (Emphasis added.) The explicit exclusion of Indians from birthright citizenship was not repeated in the 14th Amendment because it was considered unnecessary. Although Indians were at least partially subject to U.S. jurisdiction, they owed allegiance to their tribes, not the United States. This reasoning -- divided allegiance -- applies equally to exclude the children of resident aliens, legal as well as illegal, from birthright citizenship. Indeed, today's regulations issued by the departments of Homeland Security and Justice stipulate:

"A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States, as a matter of international law, is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. That person is not a United States citizen under the 14th Amendment."

Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois was, Graglia writes, one of two "principal authors of the citizenship clauses in 1866 act and the 14th Amendment." He said that "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" meant subject to its "complete" jurisdiction, meaning "not owing allegiance to anybody else." Hence children whose Indian parents had tribal allegiances were excluded from birthright citizenship.

Appropriately, in 1884 the Supreme Court held that children born to Indian parents were not born "subject to" U.S. jurisdiction because, among other reasons, the person so born could not change his status by his "own will without the action or assent of the United States." And "no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent." Graglia says this decision "seemed to establish" that U.S. citizenship is "a consensual relation, requiring the consent of the United States." So: "This would clearly settle the question of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. There cannot be a more total or forceful denial of consent to a person's citizenship than to make the source of that person's presence in the nation illegal."

Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to illegal immigrant mothers. Graglia seems to establish that there is no constitutional impediment to Congress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to persons whose presence here is "not only without the government's consent but in violation of its law."

SOURCE



ObamaCare and Immigration Reform

You can't have open borders and a generous welfare state

Now that Congress has passed ObamaCare, some are pressing the White House to turn to immigration reform. Only hours before House Democrats voted on March 21 for a federal takeover of the U.S. health-care system, thousands of demonstrators led by liberal activists gathered on the National Mall to demand more open immigration policies and "Legalization Now!" for undocumented aliens.

But a larger welfare state is not conducive to comprehensive immigration reform. If foreigners start coming for handouts instead of economic opportunity, tighter restrictions will be justified.

American liberals have advocated the creation of a European-style welfare state since at least the 1960s. Yet according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Europe still spends twice as much as the U.S. on social programs—20% of gross domestic product versus 10%—and assistance aimed at the poor and the unemployed is especially generous. Also more generous, in the main, are European public pensions—wealth-redistribution mechanisms that effectively take from the affluent young and give to the old.

The U.S.-Europe welfare disparity to a large extent reflects different attitudes and preferences. Europeans tend to view the poor as hard-luck cases who aren't personally responsible for their situation, while Americans perceive welfare recipients as shiftless cheats. A 2005 World Values Survey found that 71% of Americans see poverty as a condition that can be overcome by dint of hard work, while only 40% of Europeans share that viewpoint.

As voters came to understand ObamaCare for what it is—another enormous, underfunded entitlement program that will expand the welfare state and increase dependency on government—it's no wonder that they turned against the bill. (A CNN poll on the day of the climactic House vote found that 59% of respondents opposed the legislation, versus 39% who favored it.)

And as taxes rise to subsidize higher health-care premiums, the program's unpopularity is likely to grow. The White House and Democrats in Congress don't seem to care what the polls show, but attitudes toward ObamaCare could bode ill for passing any immigration reform that includes legalizing the undocumented or lifting immigrant quotas to reduce pressure on the border.

Belief in social mobility has informed welfare and immigration policy from colonial times. In 1645 the Massachusetts Bay colony was already barring paupers. And in 1882, when Congress finally passed the country's first major piece of immigration legislation, it specifically prohibited entry to "any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge."

A problem that immigration reformers face is the public perception—fed by restrictionists and exacerbated during economic downturns—that the U.S. welfare state is already a magnet for poor immigrants in search of government assistance. It's true that the U.S. attracts poor people, but it's also true that they come here to work, not to go on the dole. We know this because the data consistently show that foreign nationals in the U.S. are more likely than natives to be employed and less likely than low-income natives to be receiving public benefits.

During the recent health-care debate, uninsured illegals were scapegoated for crowded emergency rooms and rising costs. In fact, the uninsured use the ER in rough proportion to their percentage of the population. It's a myth that undocumented immigrants are driving U.S. heath-care costs.

Even Harvard economist George Borjas, a prominent immigration restrictionist, concedes that the welfare magnet argument for sealing the border can't withstand scrutiny. "[T]here exists the possibility that welfare attracts persons who otherwise would not have migrated to the United States," he writes in "Heaven's Door," his influential book on immigration policy. "Although this is the magnetic effect that comes up most often in the immigration debate, it is also the one for which there is no empirical support."

While there's no evidence that immigrants come here for public assistance, that could change as the U.S. welfare state grows. And one consequence could be less-welcoming immigration policies. The European experience is instructive.

In countries such as France, Italy and the Netherlands, excessively generous public benefits have lured poor migrants who tend to be heavy users of welfare and less likely than natives to join the work force. Milton Friedman famously remarked, "you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." There is a tipping point, even if the U.S. has yet to reach it.

Due to the growth of existing entitlement programs to accommodate retiring baby boomers, the U.S. welfare state was destined to expand even before ObamaCare's excesses. And large-scale immigration reform this year was always a long shot with unemployment pushing 10% and midterm elections in November. But left-wing immigrant advocates should be mindful that the two issues aren't unrelated.

Immigrants to the U.S. historically have been significant contributors to the growth and vitality of our labor force because the vast majority come for the right reasons. Don't change the incentives.

SOURCE





28 March, 2010

Laughable British border controls

A one-man crimewave from Algeria who has twice been deported from Britain is facing jail after being arrested near one of his favourite hunting grounds. To the Home Office's huge embarrassment, prolific bag snatcher Hakim Benmakhlouf was detained by police at Heathrow Airport after slipping back into the country.

The father- of-two, who has a string of convictions for stealing from rich tourists at five- star hotels and airports, was confronted by officers after being spotted on CCTV.

The UK Border Agency is to launch an inquiry into how Benmakhlouf, who has 12 aliases, was able to make a mockery of Britain's border controls yet again. The 28-year-old, was first thrown out in July 2007 when, while serving a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for theft, he was given £3,000 by the Government to be released early and fly home to his native Algeria.

But 24 hours later he returned to London on Eurostar to continue his extraordinary crime wave.

Benmakhlouf was re-arrested in April 2008 and jailed for three years the following month after admitting two thefts and asking for five similar offences to be taken into consideration. But he was released last March after serving just a third of his sentence and flown home again at taxpayers' expense. And he is thought to have returned to London a few days later.

Detectives are furious at how Benmakhlouf, regarded as one of London's most prolific bag snatchers, has made a laughing stock of the UK Border Agency. One said: 'What's the point of deporting someone if he can come back effortlessly just a few days later? For him, deportation orders are like a revolving door.'

Benmakhlouf was cornered in a car park at Heathrow Airport last Saturday. At Uxbridge Magistrates Court on Monday he admitted assault on police, breach of a deportation order and breach of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. He will be sentenced on April 23.

The life and crimes of Benmakhlouf were laid bare at his May 2008 sentencing. Prosecutor Helen Thomas told Southwark Crown Court in London that Benmakhloufwas a 'prolific thief '. 'The defendant targets high class hotels or airports,' she added.

A UK Border Agency spokesperson said: 'We will look to remove this individual as soon as the judicial process is concluded. Those who come to the UK and break the rules will not be tolerated.'

SOURCE



Australian intelligence agency sinking under "asylum-seeker" workload

AUTHORITIES were last night preparing for another mass transfer of asylum-seekers from Christmas Island, as Australia's intelligence watchdog warned ASIO was struggling to cope with the deluge of security assessments on boatpeople.

The warning from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Ian Carnell, came as the authorities on Christmas Island readied for the arrival this morning of a Qantas Boeing 737, the third and largest charter flight to arrive on the island in four days.

Yesterday, Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison declared the transfer, the latest in a growing number of flights, marked the "end of universal offshore processing". "This is a significant departure of policy," Mr Morrison told The Weekend Australian. "They are implementing their plan to abolish universal offshore processing and that is a consequence of their failed policies on border protection," he said.

The arrival of today's jet, which seats about 190, comes after Customs delivered a further 68 people from two boats to the jetty yesterday. The charter is the latest in an increasing number of flights from Christmas Island, which is desperately overcrowded because of the surge in boat arrivals.

Today's charter follows a jet that took detainees to Perth on Wednesday, and another yesterday that delivered eight Indonesian crew and 51 asylum-seekers without visas into various forms of mainland detention in Brisbane and Melbourne.

It came as Mr Carnell told The Weekend Australian the number of complaints against ASIO has more than quadrupled, after a blowout in processing times for asylum-seeker security checks. And he warned ASIO had been forced to transfer skilled staff from other visa security screening categories to cope with the surge.

The Immigration Department said those transferred on Thursday were considered "vulnerable", meaning they were unaccompanied minors, family groups or crew. Those aboard today's flight will join more than 250 asylum-boat passengers and crew already on the Australian mainland.

The growing number of boatpeople detained on the mainland without visas has prompted the opposition to accuse the Rudd government of using the transfer to relieve the overcrowding on Christmas Island, a claim rejected by the government.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans has denied there is anything unusual about the transfers, noting that the Howard government also flew people at risk to the Australian mainland.

The stoush came as Mr Carnell said there had been a "major" increase in complaints against ASIO over the time it was taking to perform security checks.

Speaking to The Weekend Australian, Mr Carnell said this financial year alone his office had received 670 complaints. That compared with just 157 for all of 2008-09. "There's obviously a surge of work there," Mr Carnell said. "ASIO generally treat detention cases as priorities. To the extent they can, the Christmas Island cases have priority." One consequence of that priority was that ASIO had had to divert resources from other visa categories, such as onshore migrants, Mr Carnell said.

Writing in a parliamentary submission, the intelligence watchdog said: "It also seems that there has been an impact from the diversion within ASIO of resources to deal with increased numbers of irregular arrival cases. The large majority of irregular cases must, under the current criteria, be assessed from a security point of view."

But Mr Carnell defended the agency, saying the number of complaints was "not high" when set against the large number of assessments it was not required to perform.

And, in a parliamentary submission on the subject, he suggested asylum-seekers from one unnamed country might be making vexatious complaints against ASIO on the instructions of migration agents.

"It is notable that a large proportion of the recent complaints come from visa applicants in one particular country, and one possibility is that some migration agents are routinely advising clients to make a complaint after a visa application is made."

Mr Carnell said the surge in asylum checks presented a "conundrum" for ASIO. "The resources really sit in-house," he told The Weekend Australian. "For the complex cases you can't just recruit people off the street."

Yesterday, ASIO said the reason for the surge in complaints lay outside its control. But a spokeswoman for the agency refused to say if the demands posed by the surge in boat arrivals had forced ASIO to pull staff from other duties.

"We are unable to make comment on matters relating to operational requirements of the organisation," the spokeswoman told The Weekend Australian.

All told, there were 1966 people on the island yesterday, leaving just 74 spare beds. But another 130 people from three intercepted boats this week were on their way.

On board yesterday's charter flight were two families without visas - the department has increasingly used its discretion to transfer selected young people and families who are deemed to be vulnerable and close to receiving visas to the mainland.

Two babies and a young boy clutching a teddy bear were among the asylum-seekers who arrived at Christmas Island yesterday on board Customs vessel Triton. They were from boats intercepted near Ashmore Reef and Adele Island off the Kimberley coast and had undergone initial health checks aboard Triton. [Healthy parasites are welcome, apparently]

SOURCE





27 March, 2010

"Marching" report

From Roy Beck of of "NumbersUSA"

Our grassroots mobilization numbers are in for last weekend, and I have no doubt that there were far more of you standing up for 25 million Americans who can't find a full-time job than there were marchers on the National Mall demanding that the jobs stay with 8 million illegal aliens.

And when we just count voters among them and us, well . . . . . .

As has been well-documented, the big pro-amnesty march/rally on Sunday and the last two months of PR build-up across the country was backed by tens of millions of dollars from George Soros, Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation and the giant SEIU unions.

All that was available to back unemployed Americans was the volunteer personpower of compassionate, community-minded U.S. voters who answered our call to make their voices heard. And, boy, did you!

* More than 7,000 of you signed up to visit the home offices of more than 400 Members of Congress last Friday.

* More than 8,000 of you responded to our request for you to make phone calls into the DC offices of all 535 Members of Congress on Monday.

* More than 90,000 came onto our website on Sunday while we were webcasting our interviews and coverage of the pro-amnesty march.

* Our computerized telecommunication system processed 149,216 faxes into Congress during the Friday through Monday period.

Although some march enthusiasts have bandied about figures like 200,000 for the size of the march, most observers have put the number between 60,000 and 100,000. Our personal visits with officials who deal with these marches all the time and privately estimate based on how many big screens are put up, the parts of the Mall grid that are packed and the parts that are loosely filled, etc., it sounds like 60,000 is the more likely figure.

Whatever the actual number, which nobody knows, it was a big and impressive turnout.

And, as some of the pro-amnesty blogs have said in ridiculing NumbersUSA's efforts, riding a bus across America and spending a day or two in DC is a whole lot larger commitment than somebody sending a fax or phone call from home.

Nonetheless, candidates for office next fall ultimately have to care about only one thing about each person -- the vote. It doesn't matter whether the person behind the vote came to DC or made a phone call, it all boils down to one vote per voter.

And that is where the scales tip decidely in our favor. I can just about guarantee you that 98% or more of the people behind the numbers up there in those NumbersUSA bullet points are U.S. citizens who can vote.

On the Mall Sunday? Well, in order to vote, you have to be a U.S. citizen. To be a citizen, you have to pass an English test. We had a dozen people in multiple teams scattered throughout the rally and found that a high majority of those present could not communicate in English at all. Even if a lot of the marchers were legal residents, it is doubtful that many of them are citizens and voters.

The SEIU unions bused in a lot of mute human props (and I'm not talking about their mimes) for their theatre on the Mall. But will anybody in Congress really be more concerned about those non-voters than all the voters who visited, phoned and faxed their offices over our S.T.O.P. Amnesty in 4 Days campaign?

The pro-amnesty side may have the big bucks to generate a lot of op-eds from the elites and a lot of noise from non-voters, but most Members of Congress still know that most of their voters back home have views more in keeping with all the people who participated In NumbersUSA's four days of mobilized suppport for our 25 million Americans without a full-time job.

SOURCE



Sen. Graham: Obamacare Doomed Immigration Bill

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says Democrats' aggressive push for healthcare reform has "poisoned the well" for immigration reform, leaving it effectively "dead" in the Senate.

"When I say immigration's dead in the Senate, risk-aversion abounds," Graham told the media during a Capitol Hill news conference, "Some of my colleagues will lose over healthcare. The consequences of this vote are going to be long-lasting politically."

Graham's view that immigration reform had been torpedoed by healthcare reform should come as no surprise to leading Democrats.

Lindsey has crossed party lines to work with Democrats several times, most recently to hammer out a bipartisan deal with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on creating a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Some 12 million illegal aliens are believed to reside illegally in the United States.

According to Politico.com, Graham said that when he met with Schumer and the president to negotiate terms on immigration earlier this month, he expressed "In no uncertain terms, my belief that immigration reform could come to a halt for the year if health care reconciliation goes forward.”

Pushing healthcare reform through via reconciliation is precisely what the White House opted to do, however. And now Graham tells TheHill.com that a deal on immigration reform is virtually impossible, given the backlash over the partisan healthcare reform debate.

"If you think you've created a problem for yourself on healthcare, why would you move onto immigration?" Graham asked, indicating that centrist Democrats would shy away from working with Republicans on the controversial legislation.

Perhaps anticipating that Obama will pressure Congress for an immigration bill, Graham said: "To the president: If you want to deliver on your unwavering commitment to immigration reform, write a bill. You write the bill, send it to the House. See what happens, because I don't think you have much of a chance of getting it through the Senate."

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26 March, 2010

Turning immigration into a tool of social engineering

The British elite is Leftist and, like all Leftists, despises the society in which it lives. It has been using barely-controlled immigration as a way of destroying that society and asserting its own moral superiority

In recent decades, various UK governments at various different times allowed a certain number of migrants to enter Britain for economic reasons, in order to compensate for a lack of labour or to boost a flagging industry. Under the New Labour government of the past 13 years, something rather different, new and dangerous occurred: migrants were allowed into Britain for political reasons, to achieve social objectives rather than economic ones.

Under New Labour, the number of migrants entering Britain rose exponentially. ... Amongst the elite, taking a ‘pro-immigration’ stance has become a way of espousing its supposedly superior values of cosmopolitanism, liberalism, official tolerance and official anti-racism, and of disciplining and policing those who do not possess such values. Such cynical politicisation of immigration has potentially increased community tensions, further racialised everyday life, and contributed enormously to the contemporary distrust of mainstream politics.

Social objectives

In recent months there have been many interesting revelations about New Labour’s immigration policy, but in keeping with our era of dumbed-down political debate the revelations have either been downplayed or have been used to fuel conspiracy theories.

At the end of last year, a former government adviser revealed that ministers frequently discussed ‘open[ing] up the UK to mass migration’. But their aims were as much political and social as they were economic. Indeed there was a ‘driving political purpose’: ministers’ belief that bringing in more immigrants would make manifest their ideal of a ‘truly multicultural society’ and allow them to ‘rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’ (4). Here, we can see how ‘diversity’ is looked upon by New Labour as more than a fluffy value – it is also considered an explicitly political tool that might be used to boost Labour’s fortunes and denigrate its critics.

At the start of this year, government documents released under a Freedom of Information claim confirmed what the government adviser said. In one, written in 2000, officials discussed their desire to ‘maximise the contribution’ of migrants to achieving the government’s ‘social objectives’. The document makes clear that New Labour, unlike previous governments, is keen to exploit the ‘social benefits’ of increased immigration. It argues that it is ‘clearly correct that the government has both economic and social objectives for migration policy’, and lists the ‘social impacts’ of immigration as including ‘a widening of consumer choice and significant cultural contributions’. ‘Migration policy has both social and economic impacts and should be designed to contribute to the government’s overall objectives on both counts’, the document proposed, describing this as ‘a considerable advance on the previously existing situation [where immigrants were allowed in primarily for economic reasons]’ (5).

Unfortunately, these interesting revelations have not generated any interesting or serious debate about New Labour and immigration. Liberal commentators have brushed them aside as unimportant. Right-wing commentators talk about a vast conspiracy by the New Labour government to remake Britain in its own image. Incapable of political nuance, New Labour’s critics have railed against what one commentator describes as ‘The secret plot to destroy Britain’s identity’ (8). Others have accused Labour of ‘using immigration to turn Britain into a nation of Labour voters’ (immigrants are more likely to vote Labour than Tory), where Labour has ‘deliberately tried to re-engineer Britain for its own political advantage’ (9).

The idea that the government’s attraction to the ‘social benefits’ of immigration was driven by a simplistic desire to magic up readymade Labour voters both overestimates the elite’s internal coherence and underestimates the profound moral and political crises that have combined to reshape the immigration issue over the past decade. There has been no plot or conspiracy by the political elite – rather it is drawn instinctively to immigration because it is an issue that allows it to distance itself from Britain’s past and to redefine itself as cosmopolitan and constantly changing. And this is not about simply winning votes – rather the reshaping of immigration has been driven by an historic and profound crisis of values amongst an elite which now sees more virtue in what newcomers can bring to Britain than in what its own predecessor elites created and achieved.

Disavowing the past

Those who claim that New Labour relaxed immigration controls in order to remake Britain in its own image are missing the main point: that New Labour’s instinctive attraction to immigration is a product precisely of its lack of real values, of its cultural and political disorientation and uncertainty about what to make Britain into. What the elite likes most about the immigrant is the idea that his arrival and his presence constantly remakes Britain, so that the absence of core British political and moral values can be glossed over with the positive-sounding notion that ours is a nation of forever-changing values, reflecting, in the words of one government minister, ‘the influences of the many different communities who have made their home here’ (10). Indeed, there has been an important shift over the past 30 years from emphasising the assimilation of immigrants into the values of British society to celebrating British society’s assimilation of the immigrants’ values.

For the contemporary elite, taking a ‘pro-immigration’ stance is a way of creating a distance between itself and ‘Old Britain’, a way of disavowing elements of the past, whether it is imperial values, outdated ideas of ‘Great’ Britain, the old-style education system, or aspects of British culture. As the former government adviser said at the end of last year, one of the reasons ministers wanted to increase immigration was to ‘render [the old right’s] arguments out of date’ (11). In a speech and report published in 2001, New Labour argued that there was little fixed about ‘British identity’ and that the ‘changing ethnic composition of the British people themselves [through immigration]’ can only ‘strengthen and renew British identity’ (12). Behind the PC-sounding language, it is a profound discomfort with the ‘identity’ of Old Britain – fixed, homogenous, nationalistic – which leads the elite to celebrate the impact of immigration on British identity today.

In April 2001, Robin Cook, then New Labour foreign secretary, gave a key speech on immigration to the Social Market Foundation. The speech is best remembered for Cook’s line describing chicken tikka masala as ‘a true British national dish’, yet the rest of it was extremely revealing. Cook outlined the reasons why his government was determined to relax immigration controls and made clear his hostility to ‘outdated’ ideas about Britishness. ‘The British are not a race but a gathering of countless different races and communities’, he said. And this lack of a singular notion of Britishness is precisely what gives Britain its strength: ‘[Our] pluralism is not a burden that we must reluctantly accept. It is an immense asset that contributes to the cultural and economic vitality of our nation.’ (13)

The most striking aspect of Cook’s speech was the period in British history he was most keen to distance himself from: the 100 years from the Victorian era to the Second World War. With remarkable historical illiteracy, Cook argued that Britain had ‘always been multicultural’: ‘In the pre-industrial era… Britain was unusually open to external influence, first through foreign invasion, then through commerce and imperial expansion. It is not their purity that makes the British unique, but the sheer pluralism of their ancestry.’

However, there was a period when, unfortunately in Cook’s view, British identity was relatively homogenous: ‘The homogeneity of British identity that some people assume to be the norm was confined to a relatively brief period. It lasted from the Victorian era of imperial expansion to the aftermath of the Second World War and depended on the unifying force of those two extraordinary experiences.’ For Cook, New Labour’s celebration of diversity today is in keeping with an older British history, one that preceded and therefore was not tainted by the now largely discredited modern industrial era. ‘The diversity of modern Britain expressed through devolution and multiculturalism is more consistent with the historical experience of our islands’, he argued (14).

Here, we can see what underpins the contemporary elite’s embrace of immigration: a desire to distance itself from a past it feels increasingly estranged from, by elevating the contribution of external actors to British society and identity. Feeling ever-more alienated from the values and advances of modern, Victorian and post-Victorian Britain – from the growth of industry to the celebration of high culture, from old-style morality to values such as the ‘stiff upper lip’ – today’s elite contrasts the dynamism of the contemporary flow of ‘many cultures’ into the UK with the ‘homogeneity of British identity’ that existed in what is now seen as the problematic modern era.

For all Cook’s and others’ seemingly progressive attacks on ‘purity’ and ‘homogeneity’ in favour of ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’, what they are really questioning is the idea that there should be any overarching, defining values in British society. They are effectively dressing up Britain’s crisis of values, its uncertainty about what it stands for, in the positive language of a ‘constant churn’ of values from outside (15), where the immigrant is celebrated precisely for his lack of attachment to, and origins in, Britain’s traditional culture.

This is what underpins the ethos of multiculturalism itself: a desire to re-present a crisis of values as something positive. Fundamentally, multiculturalism is officialdom’s response to the profound identity crisis of Western society, brought about as a result of the collapse of common values, national institutions and political networks. Multiculturalism is about adding a positive gloss to this identity crisis, where the lack of common values is sexed up as ‘cultural pluralism’ and divisions within communities are relabelled ‘diversity’. Likewise, the contemporary elite’s celebration of society’s ‘continually changing values’ as a result of unpredictable migrant flows re-presents a crisis of core values as something purposeful and positive.

Indeed, the most striking thing about immigration over the past 10 to 15 years is how the elite now advertises its assimilation of immigrant culture rather than calling for immigrants to assimilate into British culture. One historian of immigration in Britain writes that in the 1950s and the 1960s, ‘The first official British response [to mass immigration] was to declare that immigrants must be assimilated to a unitary British culture’ (16).

Now, in New Labour’s words, ‘Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Our lifestyles and cultural horizons have also been broadened [by immigration]… it reaches into every aspect of our national life.’ (17) There were many problems with the old idea of immigrant assimilation, but it was at least built on the notion of a core society into which immigrants could be welcomed. The new idea of Britain ‘absorbing and adapting’ and being constantly altered by the arrival of migrants effectively says there is no such thing as society (updating Thatcher’s dictum), only various cultures.

Where the politics of assimilation spoke to a society that needed migrant workers and wanted them to be well-behaved, the politics of absorption speaks to something worse: a society that welcomes immigrants for the narrow political good of the elite, which hopes that the arrival of outsiders will somehow refresh and renew a corroded and confused nation alienated from its traditions. This is the political equivalent of slumming it.

Disciplining the working class

If the elite now expresses its discomfort with Old Britain through the immigration issue, it also expresses its disdain for the lower orders through it, too. In many ways a perfect issue for a fundamentally middle-class party like New Labour, the ‘pro-immigration’ stance allows the contemporary elite both to distance itself from the traditional elites of the past and from the working classes of today, from the old order and from the new masses.

For decades, the British elite used the politics of racism as a way of keeping the working classes in their place, ratcheting up immigration fears and racial tensions in an effort to win native workers’ loyalty. Now it uses the official politics of ‘anti-racism’ and ‘pro-immigration’ to do a similar job. One of the most effective ways in which the working classes are policed today is through the monitoring of their allegedly problematic attitudes to immigration and their failure to embrace the apparently superior cosmopolitan values of their rulers....

The ‘pro-immigration’ pose of the contemporary elite allows it to advertise its alleged moral superiority over the uneducated mob. Today, the elite defines itself as superior to the masses, not through its traditions, its role in history or its defence of Great Britain and British values, but through the very opposite: by affecting a cultural disdain for traditionalism, nationalism and sovereignty in favour of the modern values of cultural flux, cosmopolitanism and what Robin Cook described as a ‘modern notion of national identity [not] based on race and ethnicity’ (25).

It is the elite’s apparent ability to rise above the squalid traditions of the past that marks it out as superior today. And one of the key ways it does is this is by celebrating (controlled) immigration for ‘shaking up’ British values and forcing the illiberal lower orders to confront their prejudices or else have them fixed by a heavy dose of intervention by the Department of Communities....

Racialising everyday life

There are many problems with the elite’s adoption of a ‘pro-immigration’ stance for cynical social and political reasons. It is built on dishonesty and censorship, where the facts and the truth are kept away from the public lest they inflame our prejudicial instincts. It is driven by a disdain for some of the gains of the past and for the views of today’s working classes.

Most worryingly, it can only further racialise everyday life in Britain. Already, thanks to New Labour, virtually every aspect of our existences – from politics to schools to the workplace – has been racialised, where everyday interaction and speech is governed by a plethora of diversity codes and a super-sensitivity about racial matters. The politicisation of the immigrant, and his elevation as superior to the white working classes, threatens to take this racialisation to another level...

More here



Australian Immigration Blamed For Huge Population Surge

Australia's growth rate is 2.1% p.a., compared to 0.7% for the UK and 0.9% for the US, making Australia one of the fastest growing countries in the world. Lucky old Australia! Thank the Leftist Rudd government for Australia's shortage of affordable housing, its packed commuter trains and its ever more congested roads!

Australian immigration is once again being blamed for a hefty rise in the population of Australia as figures rose above 22 million. The figures released today, show that the population topped 22 million in September of last year. The actual figure is 22,066,000. Many critics of the Australian migration program are blaming immigrants to Australia for the rise.

Overseas migration for the year ending 30 September 2009 was 297,400, more than half of the overall increase for that year. This keeps the growth rate at 2.1%, compared to 0.7% for the UK and 0.9% for the US, making Australia one of the fastest growing countries in the world.

Western Australia, currently experiencing a mining boom and are actively recruiting migrant workers to fill skilled shortages, recorded the largest percentage gain at 2.9% whereas Tasmania had the smallest gain at 1.0%.

Critics argue that such a fast growth spurt could have devastating consequences for the economy as it struggles to support such a population surge. Environmentalists too are concerned on the impact of Australia’s fragile ecosystem and have urged population growth to be listed in the federal environmental laws as a threat to biodiversity.

This is all in contrast to Kevin Rudd’s plans for a “big Australia” as outlined in October of last year when he announced plans to sustain such a huge population growth: “This Government is building for the future – we call it nation-building for the future. But let’s be optimistic about the fact this country’s growing, so many around the world are heading the other way.” “I actually believe in a big Australia I make no apologies for that. I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing.”

Back then Mr Rudd was criticised for not having any sustainable plans for water infrastructure, the protection of the environment and maintaining quality of life and prosperity.

Former Premier of New South Wales Bob Carr has urged the government to slash the Australia immigration program by half and Federal Labour MP Kelvin Thomson has said that the figures are “a recipe for environmental devastation.”

The Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship have already tightened the immigration program, putting a cap on general skilled visas, raising the criteria for English language skills and overhauling the skilled occupation list.

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25 March, 2010

Immigration plan would create backlog

Agency not ready to process millions

The federal government is not equipped to process the flood of applications from a proposed immigration legalization bill and the agency that would oversee that program won't be ready for "a few years," the office of the Homeland Security Department's inspector general told Congress on Tuesday.

The warning, from Assistant Inspector General Frank Deffer, could severely complicate President Obama's new push to pass an immigration bill this year.

Mr. Deffer said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, is in the midst of trying to move from being a paper-based system to having electronic records. He warned that adding millions of new applications, as the bill would do, would be a bad idea.

"Adding 12 million more people to the system would be the mother of all backlogs. Clearly to us the systems could not handle it now," Mr. Deffer told the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee. "It's going to take a few years, so it's something for Congress to consider that, when they implement this, they don't have a date too soon."

Mr. Obama, in a video message last weekend, told tens of thousands of immigrant rights supporters rallying on the Mall that he wants to try to get a bipartisan immigration bill passed this year that would legalize the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.

USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas said flatly that his agency will be prepared to handle that task but that he anticipates Congress will give the agency more resources to handle a new program. "We will be ready for comprehensive immigration reform when it is enacted," he said after the hearing.

He said his confidence stemmed in part from the agency's ability to respond to the earthquake in Haiti, after which officials moved quickly to expedite travel for more than 1,000 Haitian orphans and accept applications for "temporary protected status" from tens of thousands of Haitians, both legal visitors and illegal immigrants, who were in the U.S. at the time of the disaster.

Temporary protected status lets those individuals remain in the U.S. and authorizes them to work while here. Mr. Mayorkas said his agency had received 33,000 applications for protected status from Haitians through the first two months since the Jan. 12 quake, and has handled those requests without hurting the agency's other duties.

The agency's ability to handle an influx of applications is critical, particularly after studies showed the last amnesty, in 1986, gave legal status to hundreds of thousands of criminals and others who should not have been allowed to stay under the conditions of the law.

More HERE



Australia's asylum spike bucks world trend: UN report

The number of refugees seeking asylum in Australia jumped by almost 30 per cent last year despite global numbers remaining steady, challenging Kevin Rudd's claim that instability abroad is behind the surge in refugee boats.

As Border Protection command yesterday intercepted two more asylum boats, the third in as many days, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees released its annual report on global asylum trends.

Yesterday's boats, which were carrying a total of 79 people, will push Christmas Island well beyond its official capacity of 2040 unless detainees are moved en masse to the mainland or the centre is once again expanded to house the growing population of detainees.

The UNHCR's report showed virtually no change in the number of people seeking asylum in the industrialised world, with 377,200 asylum applications last year compared with 377,100 in 2008.

But in figures that have fuelled claims the Rudd government has encouraged people-smugglers by softening Australia's refugee policies, the UNHCR reported a 29 per cent increase in asylum claims in Australia last year.

In a further complication for the government, Indonesian officials yesterday expressed concern at the growing number of its citizens who are incarcerated in Australian jails for crewing asylum boats.

Speaking to The Australian, a spokesman for the Indonesian embassy in Canberra said most of those caught were poor fishermen with no knowledge of the fate that awaited them once in Australian custody.

"Most of the Indonesians detained in Australia in connection with the arrival of boatpeople are poor traditional fishermen, lured by the promise of money (sometimes as little as $US150) from the organised people-smugglers to carry a boatload of passengers who originally come from as far away as Afghanistan," the spokesman said. "These fishermen are the boat crew and not the masterminds of people-smuggling."

Yesterday's figures provoked a statistical jousting match, with the opposition claiming the UNHCR's report put the lie to the Rudd government's claim that so-called "push" factors were behind the rising tide of boats.

But the UNHCR's regional representative, Richard Towle, said they showed nothing of the sort. Citing a 45 per cent increase in the number of Afghan asylum-seekers - the main group arriving in Australia by boat - Mr Towle said violence in source countries was to blame. "If you look at Afghans globally, there are striking increases of Afghans, particularly in Europe," Mr Towle told The Australian. "I wouldn't say that what's happening in Australia bucks the trend at all. I would say it's entirely consistent."

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the UNHCR's report made it plain the Rudd government's softened policies were drawing asylum-seekers to Australia's shores. "Afghanistan is hardly a regional neighbour of Australia," Mr Morrison said. "People are coming here because they believe they're going to get the outcome that they want as a result of the policies the government is pursuing."

While the number of Afghans seeking asylum worldwide increased, the number of Sri Lankans climbed by a modest 4 per cent, undermining government claims that an exodus of Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka was one of the reasons for the surge. The Rudd government has repeatedly blamed the fallout from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war for the rise in boat numbers.

Despite the concern over unauthorised boat arrivals, the UNHCR numbers showed most asylum claims lodged in Australia were made by Chinese with 1186 claims made last year. Afghans comprised the next biggest category (940) followed by Sri Lankans (533) and Zimbabweans (344).

Broken down by region, Europe experienced a 1 per cent increase in asylum claims last year, while North America had a decline of 5 per cent.

Mr Towle cautioned against comparing Australia's numbers with regional blocs. "If you want to disaggregate it you could look at Australia versus Greece or Australia versus Finland and Norway and you'd get completely different answers," he said.

Mr Towle added that Australia accounted for less than 2 per cent of asylum-seekers seeking refuge in the industrialised world. The US received 49,000 asylum claims, more than any other industrialised country. The US was followed by France (42,000), Canada (33,300) Britain (29,800) and Germany (27,600). This compared with Australia which received 6170 protection applications in 2009.

While an increase on 2008, last year's figures remained well below the high-water mark of 2000 when 13,100 people sought protection in Australia.

Yesterday, Border Protection Command intercepted two boats in two hours off Ashmore Reef and Adele Island. The first boat was carrying 19 passengers and three crew and the second was carrying 55 passengers and two crew.

According to the Immigration Department, there are 2008 people on Christmas Island. But the figure does not include the 79 intercepted yesterday or the 22 picked up on Sunday.

It is likely some desperately needed space will be cleared today when a regular charter plane comes to the island to collect staff, asylum-seekers who have been granted visas and possibly asylum-seekers who are deemed to be on "a visa pathway" and close to receiving refugee status.

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24 March, 2010

Ariz. House signals approval for immigration bill

The Arizona House gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a proposal that would criminalize the presence of illegal immigrants in the state.

Lawmakers didn't debate the bill's merits before endorsing the measure. The bill would make Arizona the only state to criminalize the presence of the state's estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants through an expansion of its trespassing law.

It also bans soft immigration policies in police agencies and require officers to try to determine people's immigration status when there's reasonable suspicion they are in the country illegally.

A similar bill cleared the Senate in February and is expected to be heard by committee in the House.

Source



Mass immigration kills Australian culture, says demographer

With support from both conservatives and the Greens

TRADITIONS based on heritage, sporting culture and common language are threatened by mass immigration, a leading demographer has warned. Monash University population expert Dr Bob Birrell has said the huge influx of people with few or no English skills had created social problems in Melbourne suburbs such as Dandenong, Sunshine and Broadmeadows and most major cities were feeling the population strain, the Herald Sun reported. "This is not a pretty picture," he said. "Social divisions are becoming more obvious and geographically concentrated and certain areas are being overlain by an ethnic identification."

Dr Birrell made the explosive comments in an article for Policy, a magazine published by the Centre for Independent Studies, a right-wing think tank. In a plea to the Rudd Government to slash the current immigrant intake of 180,000 a year, Dr Birrell warned that the predicted population of 35 million by 2050 would be a disaster for urban living and the environment. "One would have to wander deaf, dumb and blind through Australian capital cities to not notice how urban congestion has already reduced the quality of life," he said.

The intake dominated by people from non-English speaking backgrounds was transforming Australia, Dr Birrell said. "We are losing core elements of what was once shared. Almost all could once aspire to a house and land ... and sharing a common language, sporting culture and heritage," he said.

But mass migration was creating ethnic enclaves in suburbs with cheap housing, and planning rules were forcing Australian-born "losers" and non-English speaking background migrants to live in congested neighbourhoods, "cheek by jowl".

Kevin Rudd has made it clear that he believes in a big Australia. In a recent speech he declared that migration was "good for our national security, good for our long-term prosperity, good in enhancing our role in the region and the world".

But the Federal Opposition and the Greens said questions needed to be asked about Australia's immigration plans. Opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, told the ABC there should be an inquiry into how many people the nation can support. "It's about what the carrying capacity is," he said. "We need to get that perspective from regional areas as well as metropolitan areas, where issues of congestion and housing affordability are major problems as well as public transport.

"What's more important, is the process for planning. For example, the states and territories have no input into questions of immigration and migration intakes but they're the ones at the end of the day that have to service the needs that are created by it."

Greens Leader Bob Brown said there should be an independent national inquiry into Australia's population target. "So that politicians do have an idea of the carrying capacity of this country, its infrastructure, its ability to deal with those quite worrying projections of 35 million people by 2050," he said. "We've got to do better than just say well let it happen."

Other leading academics have also questioned the challenge that mass intake of migrants will pose. In their book Australia's Immigration Revolution, Andrew Markus, James Jupp and Peter McDonald agrue that while immigration "offers ‘the most immediate and simplest short term measure to deal with labour and skills shortages" it also comes with serious questions about social cohesion.

Prior to the 1950s 80 per cent of immigrants came from the United Kingdom. Between the 50s and the 1960s migrants from continental Europe became the majority.

After the abolition of the White Australia policy in the early 1970s the mixture of migration changed again. Today, the largest proportion of immigrants come from Asia and Oceania. China and India rival New Zealand and Britain as the biggest source of immigrants.

SOURCE





23 March, 2010

12 million illegals are OK but not one law-abiding Jewish mother?

Strange priorities

An Israeli woman whose husband was killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks is having trouble visiting her eight kids in Brooklyn due to immigration woes. On Feb. 5, US Customs and Border Protection agents at Kennedy Airport stopped 37-year-old Frumet Teitelbaum and said she had overused her visitor's visa by regularly traveling from her home in Israel to see her kids, who are staying with her late husband's family in Borough Park.

Authorities hit Teitelbaum with travel restrictions that limit how long she can stay in the United States and make it harder for her to lengthen her visits or gain residency, her lawyer told the Post. If Teitelbaum—whose husband was a rabbi who was murdered alongside seven others in the Indian city's Chabad Center—doesn't leave Brooklyn next month, she could be deported. Immigration officials cited privacy laws and declined to discuss her case with the tabloid, though an official said the agency can impose such restrictions on a case-by-case basis.

Teitelbaum's attorney, Michael Wildes, is launching a last-minute appeal to keep her in the United States under a law that gives the families of terror victims rights to greencards and permanent residency. "Nobody in her situation should be worried about legal affairs or papers, and should not be treated in this fashion. I have faith that the immigration authorities will do the right thing," he said.

SOURCE



Mexican flag has no place in an immigration march

Let's get this out of the way: I am the daughter of immigrants who fled Cuba in 1960. They arrived in this country with the blessing of the U.S. government, which generously offered people like my parents refuge from Castro's regime. My parents became fluent in English, became citizens as soon as they could and raised their four children on lechon asado (Cuban roast pork) and the Pledge of Allegiance.

It is a travesty that the government does not give more people the opportunities presented to my parents, and through them, to me. Instead, many people desperate for work or for freedom or both take the law into their own hands and enter the country illegally. I understand the feelings of the tens of thousands of people who marched on the National Mall yesterday in pursuit of immigration reform and, in particular, paths to citizenship for millions of undocumented workers. I understand their desire to live without fear of arrest, to simply do an honest day's work and to see their children thrive. I understand that our immigration system is haplessly dysfunctional and that major reforms are needed.

What I don't understand is the claim by some at the march that those here illegally are somehow victims.

Did they not choose to come to this country, and did they not know that they either entered illegally or illegally overstayed visas? Of course they did. Do they not appreciate that one of the things that makes this country great is the rule of law -- unlike, sadly, some of the countries we leave behind? If so, undocumented immigrants must take responsibility for their plight. Finally, I found it offensive that some people in yesterday's march waved the flags of Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador while demanding rights and privileges from this country. The flags and the demands for action "NOW!" suggested a sort of arrogance and entitlement when humility would have been more in order. Perhaps these marchers meant the flags as symbols of cultural or ethnic identity and not as political banners of foreign sovereigns. Perhaps they meant absolutely no offense and are at once proud of their heritage and sincere in their desire to become Americans. I trust that they did.

SOURCE





22 March, 2010

A high-tech, low-result border fence

It's a high-tech solution to the complex problem of illegal immigration. And so far, it doesn't work

It turns out the smart fence was kind of a dumb idea after all. The virtual border wall, a network of sensors, cameras and radar meant to help the Border Patrol nab illegal crossers, has never worked as planned, and according to the Government Accountability Office, even the tests designed to evaluate it are badly flawed. After ordering a reassessment of the project two months ago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday that she would freeze all funding for the 2005 Bush administration initiative until the probe is complete.

Bush believed that technology also could be used to secure the border. Hoping to placate Congress, which scoffed at his proposals on comprehensive immigration reform and seemed solely interested in halting the flow of immigrants, Bush called for a virtual fence that by 2011 was supposed to cover nearly the entire 2,000-mile southern border. Roughly $1 billion later, we have two testing sites in the Arizona desert, where drifting sagebrush and wildlife often set off the sensors. The system is so slow that on the rare occasions it does sense a human border crosser, by the time cameras can focus on the area, the lawbreaker is gone.

It would be great if there were a technological solution to illegal immigration. But it would be extraordinarily hard, not to mention expensive, to develop an effective technology that couldn't be speedily defeated by clever human smugglers. And even in the unlikely event that a foolproof fence could be built, it wouldn't address the huge number of immigrants who cross the border legally but then overstay their visas.

SOURCE



Australia's immigration detention centre has become 'a visa factory'

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says the number of asylum seekers on Christmas Island given refugee status this year is further proof of the Labor Government's failed border protection regime. The Federal Opposition has described the Christmas Island detention centre as a visa factory, following the release of new figures on visa approvals.

The Immigration Department says almost 660 asylum seekers detained on Christmas Island have been given refugee status so far this year, compared to last year's total of about 1,130.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says the figures are further proof of the Labor Government's failed border protection regime. "It backs up the claim that the Christmas Island has truly become a visa factory under the Rudd Government," he said. "Under the Rudd Government we've had 93 boats arrive now. We've got over 2,000 people now on Christmas Island. "Things are out of control and they continue to deny that they have a problem." Mr Morrison says he is concerned by "just how quickly these applications are being granted [and] what substantiation is being made to support the claims."

A Federal Government spokesman says there has been an increase in refugee visa approvals along with the increase in boat arrivals in Australian waters. He says all asylum seekers arriving by boat go through rigorous health, security and identity checks. [But no checks on whether they are really "endangered"?]

SOURCE





21 March, 2010

Latinos increasingly critical of Obama's record on immigration

As tens of thousands of immigrants and their supporters prepare to demonstrate in Washington on Sunday in favor of an immigration overhaul, the Obama administration is finding its relationship with this largely Latino community complicated by its mixed and misunderstood record on immigration enforcement.

Compared with the Bush administration, Obama officials have substantially cut back on job-site roundups of illegal workers in favor of less controversial measures, such as auditing employers' books and expanding programs that target unauthorized immigrants convicted of crimes. The number of workers arrested for being in the country illegally -- an administrative violation of immigration law -- through work-site raids dropped nearly 70 percent, from 5,184 to 1,644 in the 2009 fiscal year, prompting an outcry from some congressional Republicans.

"At best, it appears as though immigration enforcement is being shelved and the administration is attempting to enact some sort of selective amnesty under the cover of prioritization," said Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) at a House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee hearing Thursday. "We cannot allow a preoccupation with criminal aliens to obscure other critical ICE missions. . . . At a time of painfully high unemployment, how can we allow illegal immigrants to take jobs away from Americans who need them?"

Yet Obama officials have not halted work-site roundups altogether, and their other enforcement programs continue to sweep up tens of thousands of non-criminal illegal immigrants. This has fueled a growing sense of betrayal among many Latinos who voted for the president.

Criticism from both sides

John T. Morton, assistant secretary of Homeland Security in charge of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), acknowledged that Latino disillusionment can be as pronounced as conservatives' unhappiness. "I can get criticized on the same issue from both sides on the same day," he said.

Among the advocates, much of the frustration stems from the stalled effort to legalize unauthorized immigrants as well as gnawing doubts about the president's commitment to push it through Congress this year. But perhaps no aspect of the immigration issue arouses more passion than the administration's enforcement record, because it is the one area over which the president has full control. "When Obama said [during the campaign] it's un-American to tear a mother from her child, we believed him," said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which has brought several hundred protesters to Washington. "We never imagined that a year later, we'd be denouncing his administration for surpassing the Bush administration on enforcement."

In recent months, a drumbeat of reports about small-scale work-site raids by ICE, including an operation targeting two Maryland restaurants last week in which agents arrested 29 foreigners, has also created an exaggerated impression of the extent to which such actions still take place.

A recent government report that grossly overstated the rate of deportations didn't help matters, incorrectly asserting that deportations were up 47 percent in Obama's first year. This month, immigrant advocates seized on that statistic at a Washington news conference. But as ICE officials clarified that day, deportations have increased by 5 percent, reaching 387,790 removals in fiscal year 2009. The increase in removals is due to a 19 percent rise in deportation of criminal immigrants, but two-thirds of those removed were still non-criminals, and the total reached a record high.

Morton said the statistics reflect ICE's priorities: to protect against national security threats, remove the most dangerous criminal offenders, and target unscrupulous employers first, but without ignoring the law against illegal immigrant workers.

More HERE



Wave of refugees arriving in Australian waters fast becoming a tsunami

Late last year the Rudd Government was handed a secret report warning of an emerging powder keg at the Christmas Island detention centre. This followed a riot between Tamil and Afghan refugees at the centre and highlighted the risk of further violence. Since then another 24 boat-loads of asylum seekers have sailed into Australian waters, adding 1200 to the Government's $400 million offshore processing centre. There are now 239 people living in tents and just 140 spare beds.

Despite the pleas of officials, including Immigration Minister Chris Evans, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has adopted a stubborn approach to the asylum seeker problem. He wants to avoid "onshore" processing at all costs. Allowing new arrivals to be processed in Darwin or at Curtin in West Australia would be an admission that his policy has failed and would be pounced on by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott with a simple "soft on queue-jumpers" line.

Abbott knows that the first onshore processing would allow a return to the hard "we decide who comes here" rhetoric of his mentor John Howard. This is what Rudd fears - a return to the "Tampa" politics of the 2001 election.

Pushing boat people out to Christmas Island allows Rudd to play the tough guy but the strategy is about to undergo its biggest test yet - two large boats, carrying several hundred people, are due to sail into Australian waters. If and when that happens, the Government will be forced to upload between 300 and 500 people from Christmas Island and deliver them to Darwin by charter aircraft.

Evans hinted at the Government's fall-back strategy in January: "I've always made clear we have a detention centre at Darwin with capacity for 500 that is purpose-built and been used in the past. If we need to do that for the final stages of processing (we can). They'll be treated as offshore entry arrivals."

But Evans has been unable to sell the strategy to Rudd and officials in the Department of Immigration are worried. "We can't force any more sardines into the tin," one source said. Immigration officials know that the reopening of Darwin's 500 beds is inevitable. They would prefer to conduct the operation in an orderly and safe fashion on their terms but they fear it will become a mad scramble dictated by the arrival of new vessels. "We will have to move 600 people at the last minute and that will lead to mistakes," the source said.

Meanwhile, tensions build on the island, within and outside the detention centre. "Tents burn, people do foolish things," one senior official warned.

SOURCE





20 March, 2010

Obama backs amnesty for illegals

President Obama gave a thumbs up Thursday to the outline of a plan to legalize illegal immigrants and create a flow of low-skilled foreign workers for the future, saying the immigration bill being worked on by a Republican and a Democrat is "promising."

In their broad blueprint, Sens. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, call for illegal immigrants to be put on a path to citizenship, offer green cards to keep high-skilled foreign university graduates and would create a temporary program for low-skilled workers, with some also getting the chance to become citizens.

The senators also proposed to turn all Social Security cards into tamper-proof IDs to be checked by employers when they are about to hire a worker. The cards would include biometric information designed to prevent counterfeiting -- but the senators said the information would not be stored in a government database. "I congratulate Senators Schumer and Graham for their leadership, and pledge to do everything in my power to forge a bipartisan consensus this year on this important issue so we can continue to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform," Mr. Obama said in a statement soon after the two senators published their blueprint in a column submitted to The Washington Post.

The carefully orchestrated rollout came just three days before immigrant-rights advocates expect at least 50,000 supporters to rally and march in Washington, D.C., calling for Congress to act. The organizers of the rally had met with Mr. Obama last week and told him he needed to embrace a bill or else the thousands of marchers would be told that he had failed to live up to his promises on this issue.

But the outline is just a first step in what's still a very rocky legislative path. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said flatly that it can't pass. "The bill doesn't have a prayer, because the American people oppose rewarding lawbreakers, which then encourages illegal immigration," he said. "Allowing millions of illegal immigrants to stay and take jobs away from citizens is like giving a burglar a key to the house. Illegal immigrants should return home and play by the rules like millions of legal immigrants."

And adding to the bill's troubles, Mr. Graham has warned Democrats and Mr. Obama that if they use the budget process to push health care through Congress -- known as reconciliation -- that could poison any chance for bipartisan cooperation on immigration.

Also, the blueprint is broad, and doesn't delve into many key details that could still split the coalition of labor, business, religious and ethnic groups that have joined together to try to pass a bill.

More HERE



UKIP makes freeze on immigration central to election campaign

A five-year freeze on immigration will be the centrepiece of the UK Independence Party’s election campaign, as the party’s former leader compared the fight against the EU to the struggle against Hitler in the 1930s. A doubling of prison places, workfare for benefit claimants, support for a free Tibet and a campaign for “real matrons" also feature in the party’s first full manifesto.

Launching the document in Milton Keynes today, Nigel Farage, the party’s former leader, said the main parties’ willingness to cede power to the EU would make the coming election, "the most boring, pointless, futile general election that has ever been held in the history of this country". Dismissing David Cameron as ‘the friendly game show host that leads the Conservative Party’, Mr Farage said that only UKIP could be trusted to give voters a real say in how Britain is governed.

"Straight talking" will be the campaign slogan, and Mr Farage said that other parties were unwilling to tell the truth about immigration. "We’re already overcrowded and we don’t want the population to go to 70 million," he said. "The only people who should decide who settles here should be the British people, but they can’t do that in the EU."

Mr Farage won cheers from the hall when he mentioned his recent harangue in the European Parliament, during which he compared the new president of the European Council, Herman von Rompuy, to a "damp rag" and a "low-grade bank clerk". "I will apologise to bank clerks the world over but I will not apologise to the president of Europe," he said today, before comparing the vilification he had received for the speech to the treatment of those who spoke out against the threat of Nazi Germany. "Those that were prepared to speak out were condemned in exactly the same terms. The entire political class said “we mustn’t be nasty to that nice Mr Hitler”’, he said.

To cries of ‘not yet’ from the hall, he added: "I am not pretending that the EU poses us a military threat - certainly not with Baroness Ashton in charge of the European army."

Mr Farage will give the party its first realistic change of a Westminster seat when he challenges the Speaker, John Bercow, in Buckingham. Mr Farage, who resigned as party leader to contest the seat, said he was standing because "I think he as Speaker of the House of Commons epitomises what is wrong with our professional class of career politicians."

In 2005 UKIP won just over 2 per cent of the vote, but party strategists are hoping for four times that share this time around as they capitalise on anger over the expenses scandal and public distrust of politicians. UKIP is also less divided now than it was five years ago, when it was rocked by battles over Robert Kilroy-Silk, the MEP and former daytime TV host, who defected to form his own party. The party’s election co-ordinator, James Pryor, urged the delegates to "end the infighting" for the campaign, adding to laughter, "We can start again after the election".

UKIP's first election posters focus on immigration, with the slogan "5,000 new people settle here every week. Say no to mass immigration".

But for the first time, the party has developed policies across the range of Westminster responsibilities, proposing a law and order crackdown, with new rights for homeowners to defend their property, longer prison sentences, a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule for persistent offenders and repeal of the Human Rights Act. UKIP has also committed to banning the burka and promoting a pro-British policy of ‘uniculturalism’ instead of ‘multiculturalism and political correctness’. Saving imperial weights and measures and a sceptical stance on global warming are also promised.

Once outside the EU, the party aims to build closer links to the Commonwealth and promote democracy around the world, including Tibet, Taiwan and Burma.

The party would allow private companies to bid to provide NHS services and the deputy leader, David Campbell Bannerman, promised to ‘bring back real matrons, not pretend ones’ with greater powers to keep hospitals free of super bugs.

SOURCE





19 March, 2010

Immigration & the SPLC

New Report Finds Stopping 'Hate' is Really about Stopping Debate

After the collapse of the Senate amnesty bill in 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) joined with the National Council of La Raza and others to launch a campaign to smear the three largest mainstream groups making a case for tighter enforcement and lower immigration. At the center of this campaign was the designation of the Federation for American Immigration Reform as a “hate group” and the spread of that taint to Numbers USA and the Center for Immigration Studies. The announced goal was to pressure journalists and policymakers not to meet or speak with these organizations. Touted as an effort to 'stop the hate,' it was a thinly disguised move to stifle debate.

The Center for Immigration Studies has released a new report examining the SPLC and its role in this campaign. 'Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors,' authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jerry Kammer, now a Senior Research Fellow at CIS.

Among the findings:

* While the SPLC presented itself as a public-interest watchdog, it became a propaganda arm of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). Its designation of FAIR as a 'hate group' was a publicity stunt in the service of La Raza's 'Stop the Hate Campaign.' That campaign, formally launched in early 2008, is actually an effort to stop the debate on national immigration policy.

* The SPLC had demeaned FAIR for years, without tarring it with the toxic 'hate group' smear. It tried to justify its timing of the hate group announcement – the month before the 'Stop the Hate' campaign was launched – with a drummed-up accusation that FAIR had 'crossed the Rubicon of hate' with a meeting between a single FAIR official and a delegation from a right-wing Belgian political party that was visiting Washington.

* When the SPLC designates an organization as a 'hate group,' it places that organization on a list already occupied by such notorious groups as the Ku Klux Klan and racist skinheads. Yet SPLC director of research Heidi Beirich acknowledged that 'we do not have a formal written criteria' for assigning a label intended to bring disgrace to its recipients. Beirich said this in a radio interview: 'You qualify as a hate group if you treat an entire group of people for their internal characteristics, or their inherent characteristics, or you demean them in some way.' The report observes: 'A definition this flexible and imprecise could summon the SPLC Hate Patrol to the door of nearly any group of football fans, political activists, or Apple computer enthusiasts.' It says such laxity is an invitation for the malice and mischief that are characteristic of the SPLC.

* The SPLC's attacks on Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, are a classic guilt-by-association smear based on Beck's relationship with FAIR founder John Tanton. Noting that Beck says he is not a racist, the SPLC has acknowledged that 'his website and other writings do not contradict that.' Meanwhile, the SPLC ignores a large body of evidence that demonstrates his rejection of immigrant-bashing and his search for measured public debate.

* The SPLC is equally reckless in its evaluation of Otis Graham, the most important figure in the founding of CIS and a member (and former chairman) of the CIS board. Graham is a respected scholar with a long history as an advocate of civil rights and environmental protections. In his 2008 memoir he reflected on his efforts to seek reduced immigration, 'without disparaging immigrants or their cultures, reserving condemnation for our own incompetent and shortsighted public officials and ethnocentric lobbyists rather than the immigrants caught in the mighty currents of globalization.'

* Because of Tanton's role as the founder of FAIR, and because he was instrumental in the establishment of CIS and NumbersUSA, he can rightly be described as the father of the modern movement to restrict immigration. But the SPLC caricature of Tanton as a sinister 'Puppeteer' manipulating the groups at will is absurd. Nevertheless, the CIS report also criticizes Tanton, describing his big-tent philosophy that embraces some figures who do not play a constructive role in the immigration debate. It also says that he has 'a tin ear for the sensitivities of immigration.'

* The report shows that the SPLC has distorted many of Tanton's comments, egregiously taking them out of context to justify their claims of bigotry. It shows that many of Tanton's concerns have also been raised by serious students of immigration.

* The SPLC/La Raza campaign to delegitimize FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS diverts attention from substantial issues about immigration policy. The report cites the work of journalists and scholars who acknowledge that there are sound, respectable reasons to want to restrict immigration, both legal and illegal.

* Laird Wilcox, an archivist of volatile political movements who has studied the SPLC, called it a prime example of the 'anti-racist industry afoot in the United States that has attracted bullying, moralizing fanatics.' He said the SPLC has benefited from the work of cooperative reporters who have written about the 'hate group' accusation without questioning the SPLC's tactics and claims and without reporting that the SPLC is an ally of the NCLR 'Stop the Hate' campaign.

* The SPLC has parroted the NCLR line in denying the complexity of the effects of immigration. It has also helped NCLR gloss over the historically and culturally charged meaning of 'La Raza.' The term comes from Mexican nationalist and intellectual Jose Vasconcelos, who wrote of the special qualities of 'la raza cosmica.' In the 1960s the term was adopted by Mexican-American nationalism as it adopted a radical posture of resistance.

* Mexican American leaders such as Cesar Chavez and Rep. Henry Gonzalez were sharply critical of the political uses of the term 'la raza.' Chavez warned, 'Some people don't look at it as racism, but when you say la raza, you are saying an anti-gringo thing, and our fear is that it won't stop there.'

* The report acknowledges that the SPLC and founder Morris Dees have done admirable work in combating the Ku Klux Klan. But it cites journalistic exposés that show how the SPLC has milked that early success to raise tens of millions of dollars. In a 1994 editorial, the Montgomery Advertiser wrote that the SPLC 'focuses on the anti-Klan theme not because the Klan is a major threat, but because it plays well with liberal donors.'

* The attack on FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS is consistent with Morris Dees' long history of sensationalism and dishonesty in arousing fear among his liberal donors. As Dees said in 1988, 'The people who will give big money through the mail are either on the Far Right or the Far Left. They're true believers. You can't fire them up with a middle-of-the-road cause or candidate. You've got to have someone who can arouse people.'

* The report calls the SPLC 'the cult of Morris Dees.' It cites a fundraising appeal from December 15, 2009 – Dees' 73rd birthday. It says the e-mailed appeal featured 'the SPLC's trademark concoction of joyful celebration, somber sentiment, cold commerce, and cult-like glorification of Dees.'

* The report concludes that the SPLC smear campaign, 'demonstrates that the Southern Poverty Law Center has become a peddler of its own brand of self-righteous hate. It is a center of intolerance, marked by a poverty of ideas, a dependence on dishonesty, and a lack of fundamental decency.'

The report is available online here

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Jerry Kammer, 202-466-8185, gjk@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.



Even super tolerant Canada is not tolerant enough, apparently

The corrupt and moronic United Nations at work again. How about looking at the treatment of immigrants in Saudi Arabia? Now THAT would reveal real abuses

Canada's record for accepting and integrating minorities and newcomers is imperfect but undeserving of criticism levelled in a new United Nations report, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Wednesday. Kenney said that rather than taking Canada to task over its treatment of minorities, the UN should be looking at the "dozens of regimes around the world that are engaged in widespread and systematic violation of minority rights."

The report, released Tuesday, was written by Gay McDougall, the UN's Independent Expert on Minority Issues. McDougall, who spent 10 days travelling across Canada last fall, said that although diversity is celebrated in Canada, minorities are victims of disproportionate levels of poverty, discrimination in the workplace and job market, and racial profiling by police.

Kenney acknowledged domestic reports from such agencies as Statistics Canada have said immigrants are worse off than their Canadian-born counterparts. "We always need to make more progress in creating opportunities for members of our cultural communities, for newcomers, for visible minorities," he said. All levels of government and many agencies have taken up the challenge, he said. "We're not perfect, but we're pretty darn good," he told reporters on Parliament Hill.

During a parliamentary committee hearing Tuesday, Kenney said Canada does not have the capacity to process and absorb the tens of thousands of refugees who want to come to Canada to escape persecution in their native countries. "People from around the world, from minority communities, want to come to Canada precisely because they see this as a model of protection for their rights to maintain their identity," he said. "I just think they (the UN) have got their priorities wrong."

SOURCE





18 March, 2010

Labor opposed to U.S. immigration deal

Sen. Lindsey Graham walked out of his immigration meeting with President Obama last week and said the president needs to pressure labor unions to accept a temporary-worker program as part of any bill. Less than a day later, the AFL-CIO said that was a no-go.

Among all the other potential pitfalls, the divide over how to handle the future flow of foreign workers, which has bedeviled the immigration issue for years, once again threatens to halt any progress on immigration reform. "By taking this position, the AFL-CIO ends any realistic chance of legislation this year," U.S. Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President Randel K. Johnson said this weekend, only deepening the rift between businesses and unions.

Businesses say they need to make sure they can get access to foreign workers because there are jobs Americans won't take. But labor unions fear such a program would depress wages for American workers, and in the current economy, with unemployment hovering at 10 percent, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said a new temporary-worker program "would be political suicide."

It's such a bitter dispute that those who are fighting against an immigration bill say they can sit back and watch the two sides implode while fighting each other. "Can you feel my smile? It's great not to be needed," said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations at NumbersUSA, which rallied opponents to flood senators' offices with calls and faxes during the 2006 and 2007 immigration-reform debates.

Josh Bernstein, director of immigration for the Service Employees International Union, which is heavily involved in negotiations, said he doesn't read too much into the back-and-forth between the AFL-CIO and the Chamber, saying the business group overreacted to one part of a statement.

He has sat in on many of the key immigration conversations, and said he's encouraged. "The vast majority of those in labor and the vast majority of those in business really desire to come up with a solution, a comprehensive solution, for immigration reform, because it's good for the economy, and that's good for all of us," he said.

More HERE



How to stop the boats with kindness (NOT)

By Andrew Bolt, writing from Australia

Promises, promises. Before the last election, Kevin Rudd said he had a plan to stop boats of “asylum seekers” from getting here. “You’d turn ‘em back.”

Oooh, tough talk. So how many of last year’s 61 boats - or the 24 that have reached us this year already - has the Prime Minister turned around? Um, not one, actually. Yes, he did once ship a few boat people to Indonesia on our Oceanic Viking, but even then he soon took them back.

Result? The boats this year are now arriving at a rate faster than anything we’ve seen in decades.



You see, in July 2008, election safely won, Rudd changed his tone. No more Mr Tough Guy, he decided. He’d instead undo the strict laws the Howard government had set in place to stem the flood of boat people - laws that had cut the number of boats to just 18 in all the previous six years. My red dot on the Department of Immigration graph above marks the day that the Rudd Government announced it was going soft.

Rudd had already scrapped the temporary protection visas, which allowed us to send back boat people once their countries were again safe. He’d also abolished the “Pacific Solution”, under which boat people were sent to Nauru and Manus Island with no guarantee they’d be let into Australia.

And on July 29, 2008 - that red dot day - he told the world the era of wicked John Howard was truly over. There would now be no more automatic detention of boat people. Children and adults cleared of security risk would be set free while the Government worked out if they really were refugees. And rather than make boat people prove they were no threat, the Government would have to prove they actually were to keep them in detention.

Look at the Government’s own graph. In indisputable numbers it tells yet another insulation-style story of fine talk resulting in disaster.

SOURCE





17 March, 2010

U.S. Senator Encourages Illegal Immigrants to Submit Census Forms

Forget abiding by that pesky little thing called law. There's money on the line!

...Or at least that's what Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is telling illegal immigrants living in her state. The New York Daily News reports:

Stand and be counted - or we can't get government cash.

That's the word from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and New York Secretary of State Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez, who said Monday that it's safe for undocumented immigrants to fill out 2010 U.S. Census forms that will hit city residents' mailboxes this week.

"Invisible people do not count in this country," Cortes-Vazquez told reporters at a lower Manhattan news conference. "Invisible people do not have a voice." ...

Census figures help determine where government cash goes for hospitals, school services, public housing, social services, food stamps and other programs, and how many seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Census form has 10 questions and takes less than 10 minutes to fill out, said Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) By law, the responses are confidential; other federal agencies aren't allowed to see them. ...

"For Latinos, the fear is immigration authorities," said Hispanic Federation President Lillian Rodriguez Lopez. "We're working to make sure (fears of) immigration raids don't put a damper on Census participation."

SOURCE



Back to the border battle

Spring break is coming. Soon college students will flock to the beach parties. But authorities hope fewer will flock as far south as Mexico this year. Early this month, the Texas Department of Public Safety urged "spring breakers" to avoid Mexican border towns. Why? Too dangerous. How bad is it? Bad enough that the U.S. State Department has now closed its consular office in Reynosa. The gun battles in that border town were just too commonplace.

The danger sometimes spills north of the border. Last fall, stray bullets from a cartel firefight struck a parked car and campus building at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

Border violence has not been much in the news of late. That will change in a New York minute when the administration reintroduces an "amnesty" bill to grant permanent status to the millions living in the United States unlawfully. Immigration policy has major consequences, not just on national sovereignty issues, but on public safety and border security as well. When Congress granted amnesty in the 1986 immigration reform act, the border immediately got more, not less, porous. Amnesties just encourage more illegal border crossing.

This year, the administration will promise to do more to secure the border. Again. And the anti-amnesty faction will insist that the security improvements happen first, before any movement on amnesty.

Neither side is likely to offer any new ideas. That's because border security debates now start by time-warping back to 2006, before the U.S. government amped up its presence on the border.

Those opposing amnesty will likely clamor for more border walls and more border guards. The problem is that Washington has already "been there, done that." Since 2006, we've built hundreds of miles of wall and hired thousands of border patrol agents.

That is not to say that these investments were not worth it. It makes sense to build physical obstacles where the geography is right. When backed by a guard force, obstacles constructed at crossings close to population centers and transportation networks can cut down illegal traffic quite effectively.

But, those investments have already been made at the most promising locations. Taxpayers will get a very low return on any future investment in even more fencing and more hiring of border agents.

The debate should move to new approaches that can keep up with the threat. Topping that list is technology: the kinds that can find tunnels, track smugglers and spot small groups crossing rough terrain at night far across the border.

Don't think of it as a "virtual fence." That term has been much maligned, mostly because the idea was poorly understood and poorly implemented. But the Homeland Security Department really does need technologies that can guide border agents to the right place at the right time to thwart creative, innovative and adaptive criminals.

Specifically, security demands: fixed towers with sensors on established smuggling routes, mobile sensors that can be shifted around rough terrain, and unmanned aerial vehicles both short and long range. These systems must be able to share information with each other in real time.

We also need the right kind of boots on the ground. State and local police are vital to combating illegal border activity. Federal, state and local officers should work cooperatively in Border Enforcement Security task forces.

Finally, we need to help Mexico. The Bush administration started an aid program called the Merida Initiative. The Obama White House should follow up with a full-blown plan of strategic cooperation to help the Mexican government fight back.

When immigration reform heats up in a few weeks, the last thing we should be talking about is "the wall."

SOURCE





17 March, 2010

U.S. Senator Encourages Illegal Immigrants to Submit Census Forms

Forget abiding by that pesky little thing called law. There's money on the line!

...Or at least that's what Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is telling illegal immigrants living in her state. The New York Daily News reports:

Stand and be counted - or we can't get government cash.

That's the word from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and New York Secretary of State Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez, who said Monday that it's safe for undocumented immigrants to fill out 2010 U.S. Census forms that will hit city residents' mailboxes this week.

"Invisible people do not count in this country," Cortes-Vazquez told reporters at a lower Manhattan news conference. "Invisible people do not have a voice." ...

Census figures help determine where government cash goes for hospitals, school services, public housing, social services, food stamps and other programs, and how many seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Census form has 10 questions and takes less than 10 minutes to fill out, said Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) By law, the responses are confidential; other federal agencies aren't allowed to see them. ...

"For Latinos, the fear is immigration authorities," said Hispanic Federation President Lillian Rodriguez Lopez. "We're working to make sure (fears of) immigration raids don't put a damper on Census participation."

SOURCE



Back to the border battle

Spring break is coming. Soon college students will flock to the beach parties. But authorities hope fewer will flock as far south as Mexico this year. Early this month, the Texas Department of Public Safety urged "spring breakers" to avoid Mexican border towns. Why? Too dangerous. How bad is it? Bad enough that the U.S. State Department has now closed its consular office in Reynosa. The gun battles in that border town were just too commonplace.

The danger sometimes spills north of the border. Last fall, stray bullets from a cartel firefight struck a parked car and campus building at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

Border violence has not been much in the news of late. That will change in a New York minute when the administration reintroduces an "amnesty" bill to grant permanent status to the millions living in the United States unlawfully. Immigration policy has major consequences, not just on national sovereignty issues, but on public safety and border security as well. When Congress granted amnesty in the 1986 immigration reform act, the border immediately got more, not less, porous. Amnesties just encourage more illegal border crossing.

This year, the administration will promise to do more to secure the border. Again. And the anti-amnesty faction will insist that the security improvements happen first, before any movement on amnesty.

Neither side is likely to offer any new ideas. That's because border security debates now start by time-warping back to 2006, before the U.S. government amped up its presence on the border.

Those opposing amnesty will likely clamor for more border walls and more border guards. The problem is that Washington has already "been there, done that." Since 2006, we've built hundreds of miles of wall and hired thousands of border patrol agents.

That is not to say that these investments were not worth it. It makes sense to build physical obstacles where the geography is right. When backed by a guard force, obstacles constructed at crossings close to population centers and transportation networks can cut down illegal traffic quite effectively.

But, those investments have already been made at the most promising locations. Taxpayers will get a very low return on any future investment in even more fencing and more hiring of border agents.

The debate should move to new approaches that can keep up with the threat. Topping that list is technology: the kinds that can find tunnels, track smugglers and spot small groups crossing rough terrain at night far across the border.

Don't think of it as a "virtual fence." That term has been much maligned, mostly because the idea was poorly understood and poorly implemented. But the Homeland Security Department really does need technologies that can guide border agents to the right place at the right time to thwart creative, innovative and adaptive criminals.

Specifically, security demands: fixed towers with sensors on established smuggling routes, mobile sensors that can be shifted around rough terrain, and unmanned aerial vehicles both short and long range. These systems must be able to share information with each other in real time.

We also need the right kind of boots on the ground. State and local police are vital to combating illegal border activity. Federal, state and local officers should work cooperatively in Border Enforcement Security task forces.

Finally, we need to help Mexico. The Bush administration started an aid program called the Merida Initiative. The Obama White House should follow up with a full-blown plan of strategic cooperation to help the Mexican government fight back.

When immigration reform heats up in a few weeks, the last thing we should be talking about is "the wall."

SOURCE





16 March, 2010

Flood of "boat people" heads to Australia



SEVERAL hundred boat people are expected to arrive within days aboard two illegal vessels, triggering a mass transfer of refugees from Christmas Island to the mainland. The likely influx will trigger a huge taxpayer-financed operation and be seized upon by the Opposition as Kevin Rudd's "Tampa".

Darwin's immigration detention centre is on alert for the arrival of the asylum seekers who will be moved near the city after being processed at the overcrowded Christmas Island. "If one of the big boats arrives, then Christmas Island will be blown out of the water," a source said.

According to intelligence reports the illegal vessels, carrying several hundred people each, are expected to make for the Ashmore Reef area off northwest Australia rather than directly to Christmas Island, south of Java. The Customs vessel Oceanic Viking and charter aircraft are on stand-by to transfer more than 300 people to Darwin within 72 hours after either of the vessels is intercepted. If both make it to Australia then up to 600 people will be moved to the mainland.

The transfer of asylum seekers to the mainland will be politically explosive, reinforcing concerns the Prime Minister broke his election promise to turn back the boats. Private Coalition polling shows up to 85 per cent of voters in marginal seats believe Mr Rudd has not delivered on a pledge to maintain a tough refugee policy. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has repeatedly said Labor's softer border protection scheme is proving a magnet for people smugglers.

The numbers of boat people arriving in Australian waters has accelerated in recent months, with the Government saying it was a global trend. This year, almost 1200 boat people have arrived on 24 vessels - nearly half the number of asylum seekers that arrived last year. For the first time since the latest boat people crisis began, the Darwin centre on old Defence Department land at Berrimah will become a holding centre for refugees waiting to obtain protection visas.

The Federal Government has been keen to avoid having to process asylum seekers on the mainland. High-level sources said the delicate balance of 140 spare beds on Christmas Island had been the result of good luck rather than good management, but that luck was about to run out. "We are ready to use Darwin when a big boat arrives," a source said.

Boat people have to be processed "offshore" on Christmas Island for legal reasons, so new arrivals cannot be taken directly to Darwin.

SOURCE



CIS roundup

1. Fox News debate with Steven Camarota

Fox News Channel, March 12, 2010

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2. Health Care and Immigration: The View from the White House

Excerpt: There was an interesting exchange yesterday between White House senior adviser David Axelrod and reporter Candy Crowley on CNN's program, 'State of the Union.' (See it here, starting at 1:55.) It begins with a question from Crowley about a statement from Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Illinois:

CROWLEY: A new thing has come up, at least a new old thing, from Congressman Gutierrez. I want to read it to you. 'It's no secret that I have been critical of proposals that would exclude our nation's hard-working immigrants from the health care exchange, and I would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to vote for any measure that denies undocumented workers health care purchased with their own dollars.' Again, Democrat Congressman Luis Gutierrez. Is the president OK with a provision in the Senate bill which refuses to allow undocumented workers to buy with their own money health care insurance?

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3. No Box Scores for the DHS Immigration Appeals Board

Excerpt: The in-house immigration appeals agency in the Department of Homeland Security, the Administrative Appeals Office, does not provide statistics on what it does. This is in complete contrast to the abundant set of statistics produced by the somewhat similar entity in the Justice Department, the Executive Office of Immigration Review, whose most recent annual report was described in a recent blog of mine.

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4. What Bill of Health?

Excerpt: The immigration issue could put health reform at risk once again, as it did last fall. Then, President Obama had to do some fancy footwork after an unceremonious challenge during his speech to a joint session of Congress. Rep. Joe Wilson was right, and the House bill held gaping loopholes that pretty much guaranteed illegal aliens would benefit under health reform. Ultimately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi added a modicum of eligibility verification to the House bill, and Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the relatively stronger verification provisions in his Senate version.

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5. Illegal Alien Gets Workers' Comp – Is That the Right Call?

Excerpt: A Nebraska Appeals Court late last year decided that an illegal alien who was hurt while working in a meat plant should get workers' compensation benefits, according to an article in the Lincoln Journal Star.

From the point of view of restrictionists, is that the right call? Why should a person working illegally get legally mandated benefits for his injuries and his lost time in the factory? Such a person is not legally entitled to unemployment insurance or to cash assistance of any kind. Why should it be different with workers' comp?

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6. A Tale of Two Programs: Secure Communities vs. 287(g)

Excerpt: Statistics recently released by the Harris County (Texas) Sheriff's Office provide an interesting point of comparison for two of ICE's programs that identify and flag criminal aliens for removal – Secure Communities and 287(g).

Harris is the nation's third most-populous county; it includes Houston and has one of the largest concentrations of illegal aliens. It has implemented both Secure Communities and 287(g). Both programs identify and place detainers on aliens who have been arrested by local officers and deputies, putting these offenders on the path to removal rather than allowing them to remain here to commit more crimes. Secure Communities is an automated screening system that runs the fingerprints of everyone booked into participating jails through immigration databases and then forwards the hits to ICE technicians, who select criminal aliens for removal processing. Under 287(g), specially trained local officers screen and process aliens who have been arrested in that jurisdiction.

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7. Visa Waiver Program for Tourists from Near-Bankrupt Greece – Really?

Excerpt: DHS Secretary Napolitano decided earlier this week to allow Greece to join the Visa Waiver program, so beloved by our tourist industry and other Open Borders types. As one consular official (who will remain unnamed) e-mailed: 'Let me get this straight. In the middle of the biggest financial meltdown to hit a European country in decades, we have added them to visa waiver?'

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8. Mideast Counterfeit Bust Shows ICE Needs to Tighten Student Program

Excerpt: This past week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted a rather unusual bust using a new spin on visa fraud. This time it was not a fraudulent school masquerading as legitimate and siphoning money for student visas for a curriculum that did not exist, as was the March 4, 2010, bust of a Miami language school that resulted in arrests of 81 student violators and $2.4 million forfeited in illicit cash received. Nor was it referencing the three counterfeit document rings taken out in the last few days. These include a bust in Milwaukee on March 5, 2010, and two March 4 busts -- one in Fresno and the other in Panama City, Fla.

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9. The Hidden Immigration Decision-Makers: 'Black Dragons' Within State Dept.

Excerpt: In addition to the prominent immigration policy decision-makers – the president, the chairs of the congressional committees and the presidential appointees in the Executive Branch – there are many other sets of less obvious policy players, located deep in the federal bureaucracy.

Today I learned of a group whose leanings were known to me, but for whom I had no name. They are the quietly Open Borders officials within the State Department, termed the 'Black Dragons' in a recent article.

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10. Missing the Elephant in the Room

Excerpt: Well, that much is obviously true. Unfortunately, he doesn't even mention the one step that would cost nothing and use the market in 'fighting crime, alleviating poverty and inculcating the habits essential to long-term success.' Namely, tightening the labor market by reducing immigration, both permanent and 'temporary,' legal and illegal, something Congress can do any time it feels like. Despite the recession, the federal immigration program continues to legally import something like 100,000 working-age people from abroad each month, disproportionately less-skilled, who will compete directly with the very less-skilled Americans (and earlier immigrants) that Salam is rightly concerned about. Just since 2000, immigration (legal and illegal combined) has increased the supply of high school dropouts by something like 15 percent.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org.





15 March, 2010

Quebec tough on Muslim immigrants

In the struggle to integrate newcomers to Canada, Quebec has distanced itself from other provinces with its hardline stand against religious face coverings, which is likely to earn it a reputation as either a far-sighted pioneer or intolerant loner. Provincial governments in the rest of the country appear leery about setting rules imiting access to public services for people who wear certain forms of religious attire, as Quebec did earlier this week.

Immigration Department officials in the province expelled a Muslim woman from government-sponsored language classes after she refused to remove her niqab, a Muslim face covering that reveals only the eyes. It was the second time the Quebec government confronted the woman, prompting Immigration Minister Yolande James to declare: "If you want to assist at (attend) our classes, if you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values." "We want to see your face."

Not so in other parts of the country. Like Quebec, Ontario also sponsors language courses for immigrants. But unlike Quebec, newcomers to Ontario are allowed face coverings, such as a niqab, in their courses. "We are an open Ontario," said Indira Naidoo-Harris, a spokeswoman for Ontario Citizenship and Immigration Minister Eric Hoskins. "We are committed to creating an open society where all Ontarians are respected."

That openness, however, is hypothetical. Naidoo-Harris said her department has never been faced with a case similar to the one in Quebec. The same holds true for British Columbia, which like many other provinces doesn't have a defined policy on face coverings in government-funded language courses.

Outside Quebec, governments seem more hesitant about regulating what people wear. "In Nova Scotia people have a right to express themselves anyway they wish around their faith," said that province's immigration minister, Ramona Jennex.

But inside Quebec, such sartorial matters have political consequences and are understood as part of the long-running debate over how to reasonably accommodate minorities. The issue became so heated that the Liberal government was forced to call a public inquiry on the topic in 2007. Its recommendations were largely ignored, but since the niqab story was revealed, Premier Jean Charest has faced a daily barrage of questions about his government's commitment to protecting Quebec values.

"The issue of reasonable accommodation has been more acute in Quebec because of its history in terms of the francophone majority being a vulnerable minority," said Morton Weinfeld, who holds the chair in Canadian-Ethnic Studies at McGill University. "It is very concerned about its cultural integrity and survival."

Contributing to the issue is Quebec's relative lack of ethnic diversity compared with the rest of Canada's. According to the latest Statistics Canada report, only 16 per cent of Montreal's population was non-white in 2006. That number was actually well below 10 per cent in other population centres, including Quebec City (two per cent) and Saguenay (one per cent). Both Vancouver and Toronto have non-white populations of more than 40 per cent.

"The niqab issue has legs because it is linked to Islamophobia," said Weinfeld. "But such issues are not unique to Quebec."

Given the same Statistics Canada report predicted visible minorities would account for one-third of the country's population by 2031, Quebec's problems could be a harbinger for the rest of Canada, Weinfeld added.

Other provinces declined to comment about the steps taken by Quebec's immigration minister, though provincial government officials in Manitoba acknowledged they were monitoring the situation there. They could be given a taste of their options in the coming weeks, as Charest's government has promised concrete measures to deal with accommodation issues.

It has so far been mum on the details but James provided some clues as to what they might entail. "In Quebec, we receive services with the face uncovered and we give services with the face uncovered," she said in the legislature.

As Canada's minority population continues to grow, other provinces will have to decide whether Quebec's approach is the model they want to follow.

SOURCE



Australia: Call to Send asylum seekers to the back of the queue

Family First Senator Steve Fielding says the Federal Government should consider sending asylum seekers who arrive by boat to refugee camps in other countries because they are "jumping the queue".

The Government has been dealing with an influx of asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat, with the 21st vessel this year being intercepted yesterday. The Christmas Island detention centre has been expanded to cope with the increase, but is nearing capacity.

Senator Fielding says while his proposal is "controversial", people smugglers are exploiting asylum seekers because Australia has become a "soft touch". He says his idea should be considered to stop the "tidal wave" of boats coming to Australia. "I think Australians would like the idea of the process of saying, 'If you're going to try and jump the queue you go to the back of the queue and wait in a refugee camp and wait your turn to come to Australia," he said.

When asked by reporters if his proposal would contravene Australia's obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees, Senator Fielding replied: "I think you can still work with the UNHCR on that issue because if they're fleeing for their lives why wouldn't they want to be waiting in a refugee camp where they're safe and sound?"

A spokesman for Senator Fielding says he is not proposing to send asylum seekers back to their home country. Senator Fielding says Australia could negotiate with countries that have refugee camps to send the asylum seekers there.

Dr Graham Thom, refugee coordinator for Amnesty International Australia says the proposal breaches international law. "It is also completely impractical and unrealistic," he said. "Australia would be trying to return refugees to countries such as Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia who are already completely overburdened with refugees.

And Dr Thom says refugee camps are far from safe. "In the camps on the Syria/Iraqi border which I visited in 2008, the conditions were appalling and extremely unsafe In these camps," he said. "Women had been burnt to death when their tents caught on fire, children had been hit and killed by passing trucks and refugees faced extreme weather conditions with little protection."

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Evans declined to comment on the idea. After coming to power in 2007, the Rudd Government dismantled the Howard government's Pacific Solution and abolished temporary protection visas. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has signalled that a Coalition government would "turn the boats back" and bring back a form of a temporary visa.

SOURCE





14 March, 2010

British judge bans anti-immigration party from taking on any new members

In good Nazi fashion, the Leftist British establishment is using the law to hound an opposing party out of existence

The British National Party was ordered to stop taking new members yesterday after a judge said its rules were loaded against non-whites. Judge Paul Collins said that despite attempts by the far-Right group to clean up its constitution to comply with the law, the rules were still racist. While it is not illegal to hold racist views, it is against the Race Relations Act for a political party's recruitment rules to be based on discrimination, the judge said. Judge Collins instructed the party to close its membership list until the constitution had been re-written.

He told Central London County Court he believed the BNP was 'likely to commit unlawful acts of discrimination... in the terms on which they are prepared to admit persons to membership under the 12th addition of their constitution'.

The ruling and an injunction preventing new members follows a challenge to BNP rules from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). Last month the party abandoned its whites-only policy to try to comply with the law - but Judge Collins said the move was cosmetic. In particular he pointed to new rules which require new members to be vetted by existing members in their homes.

He also referred to a series of newly established core party organisations that appear to have been set up to ensure new ethnic minority members cannot influence BNP policies or leadership. Of the first rule, the judge said: ' Unsurprisingly it was argued on behalf of the commission that the purpose of this provision was to be intimidatory.' On the second, he said that one of the new core groups was able to veto any changes to the constitution.

'This veto may have been inserted as insurance against the possibility that large numbers of non-indigenous British might join the BNP to vote its essential principles out of existence,' the judge said. He warned that any breach of the injunction on members could result in a prison sentence for officials or seizure of BNP assets.

Party leader Nick Griffin, who was jeered by demonstrators at the court, said the judgement 'has given an organ of the state the power to interfere in the aims and objectives of any political party'. Mr Griffin said people who did not agree with the party's principles would not be allowed to join.

Susie Uppal, of the EHRC, said: 'The commission is glad that the judgment confirms our view that both the BNP's 11th constitution and the amended 12th constitution are unlawful. 'Political parties, like any other organisation, are obliged to respect the law and not discriminate against people who wish to become members. 'The BNP will now have to take the necessary steps to ensure that it complies with the Race Relations Act.'

SOURCE



Weasel words about illegal immigrants to Australia

With Christmas Island full to the gunwales, the boatpeople issue is set to re-emerge, and language will play a crucial role in this political debate

In the long-running controversy about people-smuggling, language often has been misused to disguise what is going on. Instead of relaying the facts about people-smuggling, carefully chosen words are creating an entirely false impression. George Orwell would be turning in his grave.

We have long debated the term "illegal arrivals". Unfair labelling was the call, and most people now use the bureaucratic "unauthorised boat arrivals" or the less precise "asylum-seekers" - less precise because there is an important distinction between these asylum-seekers and those camped in, say, Sudan; namely that the former have circumvented normal processes and arrived on our shores without visas.

When people downplay the boat arrivals issue by trumpeting the numbers of asylum-seekers who arrive by plane they neatly skirt around this point: that those arriving by plane arrive legally, with visas in hand. They may illegally overstay those visas and then claim asylum, but the fact remains they arrived legally, with authorities knowing who they were and where they came from.

Orwell believed language should be used to simply and directly convey what we mean. He identified that sloppy use of language could contaminate political debate, and vice versa: "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."

And so it is that every few days or so we are alerted to another boat load of asylum-seekers being intercepted by Australian customs or navy patrols. This is a most misleading use of the English language. The skippers of these people-smuggling boats know exactly where they are going and what they want. They head for Australian waters, usually near Ashmore Reef or Christmas Island, and their aim is to be met by an Australian vessel and taken for processing.

Whatever individual Australians think about changes to our border protection regime, rest assured the smugglers and their customers know the new rules: no trip to Nauru; no detention in the desert; no temporary protection visa; three months maximum in the Christmas Island centre; then off to mainland Australia with a visa.

So these boats and their passengers are not intercepted by Australian vessels, they seek them out. To say they are intercepted is to say I was intercepted at the Martin Place station in Sydney yesterday by the train to Central. Lucky I had a ticket ready.

The latest example of this came on Thursday. Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor issued a formulaic media release saying, "Border Protection Command today successfully intercepted a suspected irregular entry vessel." It went on to say that the group of 47 people would be taken to Christmas Island where they: "will undergo security, identity and health checks. Their reasons for travel will also be established."

To save the minister some time, allow me to suggest their reason for travel was to get to Christmas Island and receive visas to live in Australia.

The same formulation was used two days earlier for a group of 57 people, three days earlier for a boat with 47 people on board, four days before that with 13 people, two days with 45, and again just six days earlier for a vessel with 50 on board. Five days before that there was another arrival, but this time the media release trumpeted: "Border Protection Command Rescues 45 people."

This underscores the point. When the boats are not intercepted in good time, they ring for help and arrange a rescue. You will not be surprised that, according to the minister's media release: "The people on board the vessel have indicated they wish to come to Australia and will be taken to Christmas Island." These announcements are farcical.

There is a bit of self-censorship of these arrivals going on in the media, so that quite often the arrivals receive little or no coverage. But, when they do, the government's language is usually repeated by journalists and it gives a false impression. Newspapers, websites and radio bulletins proclaim that "Australian authorities intercepted the boat" or that a boat "has been intercepted".

Whether we agree with the government's policies or not, let's not create the impression that our vessels are out there intercepting unauthorised boats, preventing them coming to Australia. Let's not pretend these rendezvous are not welcomed by the asylum-seekers. Let's not confuse rescues and interceptions with successful deliveries of asylum-seekers into the hands of Australian authorities.

This is not to say the Australian personnel don't have a difficult and dangerous job. As we have seen, confusion and miscommunication can have disastrous consequences, especially when the expectation is a simple tow to Christmas Island.

But let us be clear. The only intercepting that occurs is at Christmas Island if arrivals are found not to be legitimate asylum-seekers.

SOURCE





13 March, 2010

Senators give Obama a "bipartisan" plan on immigration

The president is encouraged, but healthcare politics could jeopardize the proposal

Reporting from Washington - A pair of influential senators presented President Obama with a three-page blueprint for a bipartisan agreement to overhaul the nation's immigration system, but the proposal's viability is threatened by politics surrounding the healthcare debate. Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), in a 45-minute meeting Thursday in the Oval Office, also asked for Obama's help in rounding up enough Republican votes to pass an immigration bill this year.

Although details of their blueprint were not released, Graham said the elements included tougher border security, a program to admit temporary immigrant workers and a biometric Social Security card that would prevent people here illegally from getting jobs. Graham also said the proposal included "a rational plan to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States." He did not elaborate on what the plan would be. But in a recent interview, he suggested that onerous measures were unrealistic. "We're not going to mass-deport people and put them in jail, nor should we," Graham said. "But we need a system so they don't get an advantage over others for citizenship."

In a statement after the Obama meeting, Graham predicted that their effort would collapse if Senate Democrats proceeded with a strategy to pass a healthcare bill through a simple majority vote -- a process known as "reconciliation." Senate leaders say they are committed to doing just that. "I expressed, in no uncertain terms, my belief that immigration reform could come to a halt for the year if healthcare reconciliation goes forward," said Graham, who portrayed the document handed to Obama as "a work in progress." Graham added: "For more than a year, healthcare has sucked most of the energy out of the room. Using reconciliation to push healthcare through will make it much harder for Congress to come together on a topic as important as immigration."

In their own statements, Obama and Schumer sounded more upbeat.

The president said: "Today I met with Sens. Schumer and Graham and was pleased to learn of their progress in forging a proposal to fix our broken immigration system. I look forward to reviewing their promising framework, and every American should applaud their efforts to reach across party lines and find common sense answers to one of our most vexing problems."

Immigration has gotten scant attention of late. Obama had initially promised to address the issue in his first year, but the deadline slipped as he struggled to pass a healthcare bill. Latino voters, who were a crucial piece of Obama's winning coalition in the 2008 campaign, have grown impatient. Some advocates of an immigration overhaul warn that Latino voters will stay home in the November mid-term elections if the issue is delayed again.

In an attempt to defuse the anger, Obama met with a group of 14 immigration advocates in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, hours before his meeting with the two senators. Afterward, some of the guests described the atmosphere in the room as tense. They said they told Obama that families were being severed by widespread deportations. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the U.S. deported 388,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Department of Homeland Security -- up from 369,000 the year before. "I don't think the president liked hearing that the immigration system is tearing apart families. But that's our reality," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, who attended the meeting.

Obama agreed to have them meet with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to discuss deportation policies, the White House said.

Even without the healthcare obstacle, passing an immigration bill would be difficult. Schumer has been trying to line up additional Republican co-sponsors in hopes of broadening the bill's bipartisan support. None has signed up. Those who attended the meeting said that Obama committed to helping find Republican votes. But he also conceded that in a polarized Senate, that was a difficult mission. "He was very frank about the challenge of moving this or anything else in the U.S. Congress," said John Wilhelm, president of the labor union Unite Here.

Source



The only politician with the guts to speak out about immigration: Frank Field reveals his candid opinion on the future of Britain

Surprisingly, it's not just ambitious Tory MPs with dreams of ministerial office who will be waiting by their phones the day after the General Election if David Cameron becomes Prime Minister. The maverick Labour MP Frank Field, who has had turbulent relations with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, may also receive a call.

During Mr Field's 30 years as an MP, hundreds of ministers have come and gone - few are remembered. Field himself was a minister for only 18 months in Tony Blair's first government. But far from being an also-ran, he is now - at the age of 67 - at the peak of his powers. More pertinently, he is one of only a handful of politicians in Britain with the courage to break the cross-party silence on immigration and propel it to the centre of the political stage.

With a rock- solid Merseyside seat, and a thick skin after three decades in public life, he doesn't care who knows that he thinks Mr Brown is a disaster who should never have been Chancellor, let alone Prime Minister. They repeatedly clashed when he was the minister charged by Mr Blair with 'thinking the unthinkable' on welfare reform back in the days of the first New Labour government.

So, with no chance of a return to office under Labour, what about serving David Cameron, who has pledged to mend 'Broken Britain' by radically overhauling the benefits system? 'If the Tories want to talk to me about a job, I will be happy to,' says Field. 'My door is open to any party to develop ideas. Tory, Liberal, or my own. I will always put the interests of my country and constituents before my party. I have never refused to speak to people on the other side.'

Pressed on whether he would take a ministerial job, he says: 'I would love to be asked by the Prime Minister, especially my own, to take on a role to help convince the world we are serious about our debts, getting immigration under control, and reforming welfare. I am up for that challenge.' So why not talk to our current PM? 'I would love to talk to him,' says Field, 'but he won't speak to me.'

Mr Field tips the scales at barely 11 stone, the same weight as when he was first elected, yet he never goes to the gym. He eats too much, and likes red wine. He rarely watches TV or goes to the theatre. He prefers to relax by reading political tomes such as the latest biography on Churchill. He represents one of Labour's safest seats, Birkenhead.

Even 20 years after the fall of Margaret Thatcher, she is still a hate figure among swathes of his electorate. Yet long before Mr Brown also professed his admiration for her, Field was hugely impressed by the woman he thinks was the most radical British leader since Clement Attlee's post-war government, which created the NHS. 'I have a good relationship with her. She has become much nicer as she has got older. In fact, I'm having coffee with her tomorrow.' His late father, a building labourer, and mother, a classroom assistant, would approve. They voted Tory.

Mr Field makes no apologies for being willing to talk to the Tories. His mission has been to create a Labour Party that speaks to ordinary working people, gets the poor off benefits, reduces state spending, and has full employment as a goal - admirable objectives, which his party has failed to achieve. So if the Tories can achieve them, he will engage with them....

It's inflammatory stuff for a Labour MP. But by his own admission, Field is a serial rebel in the Commons. 'On issues I really know about, I sadly usually disagree with the Government. For that reason, I try not to find out about the other issues so I can put in a reasonable number of votes on behalf of my party.' ...

But it was his decision to set up Balanced Migration, a cross-party political group to campaign against mass immigration, which has thrust him to the fore once more. According to government statistics, one immigrant arrives every minute, and a new British passport is issued every three. In the past ten years, almost 750,000 British people have left the country, and 2.5 million immigrants have arrived. The rate of inflow is 25 times higher than any previous period of immigration since the Norman Conquest.

Last month it emerged, under the Freedom of Information Act, that far from being unexpected, this massive increase was sanctioned by the Blair Cabinet - not least to ensure a strong backing for Labour from the new immigrants at successive elections. 'You can count on less than two hands the number of brave Labour MPs who have said we have to stop growing our population by immigration,' Field says. 'For his part, David Cameron has proposed a cap on immigration. He must put a figure on that.' Field proposes cutting it to 30,000 a year from 90,000. 'When people who have worked all their lives are unemployed because of the recession, we can't continue to have free movement from the countries that have recently become a part of the European Union. We have to withdraw temporarily from that.'

He warns that unless British people are put first, the Government risks serious outbreaks of civil unrest on a scale similar to the inner- city race riots that took place under Thatcher's first administration. 'It's like a drought. The tinder is very dry across Britain, particularly in areas which are most up against it. Despite what politicians say, the NHS and education budgets will all be cut. 'Yet schools will have to find new classrooms and teachers because we continue to grow our population through immigration.

'Parents know their children are not achieving what they might, despite unimaginable increases in the education budget, because teachers are disproportionately trying to make sure the new arrivals catch up with everyone else.'

The flashpoints could come in cities such as Bradford and in East London where the BNP is seeking to capitalise on simmering unrest among workingclass whites. 'The migrants come here and then people get nasty because they have created their own local villages in the inner cities. The charge sheets for this should be laid against the political elite who allowed this. 'The headlines will be dominated in the next few years by how we survive financially. Yet we won't survive longer term unless we put down the foundations for a new citizenship. 'And that must start with the fundamental truth that until you fulfil duties as a citizen there can never be anything such as rights. You should only get rights to benefits, for instance, if you have paid your contributions.

'We should ensure that the people who come here to work don't then have 300 members of their families who want to come, too. I don't think the British voters are going to put up with this for much longer. 'There is a risk of civil unrest. We have to turn off the immigration tap, so we can say to people: "You haven't trusted us in the past, but we are at least not going to make it any worse.'' '

As the polls point to the closest election fight since 1992, Mr Field is clear that although he might consider an approach from a Cameron government, he wants Labour to win. Even under Gordon Brown? 'I am looking forward to the election of a Labour government,' he says. Yes, but what about Mr Brown personally? 'I want to see Labour win,' he repeats. With Mr Brown at the helm? 'I want to see a Labour PM.'

His point is clear. Indeed, not only will he not endorse Mr Brown as PM, he has already identified his favoured candidate if there is a change of leader after polling day. 'If we have to look for a safe pair of hands, Alistair Darling has quietly put himself into the ring. He is quietly authoritative and has stood up to Brown.'

Frank Field predicts that the country is about to enter its stormiest waters since postwar reconstruction in 1945. 'I am not sure the country will necessarily be OK. But a country that was able to stand alone and beat the Nazis must have enormous inner reserves. We're going to need them.'

Source





12 March, 2010

Indonesia to jail people-smugglers for five years

People-smugglers caught in Indonesia will face five years' jail under tough anti-trafficking measures unveiled yesterday during a historic speech to federal parliament by visiting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. In the first speech by an Indonesian leader to Australia's parliament, Dr Yudhoyono announced that a new law would make people-smuggling a crime in Indonesia - a move designed to discourage the Indonesian fishermen who have carried thousands of asylum-seekers into Australian waters.

The President's announcement followed a day of high drama in which Indonesian counter-terrorism police confirmed the death of the country's most wanted terrorist, Bali bombing mastermind Dulmatin, on Tuesday during a raid targeting a militant hideout in Jakarta.

Dr Yudhoyono was reading an earlier speech to a state luncheon in the Great Hall at Parliament House in Canberra when a military aide passed him a note. "I have great news to announce to you," the President told guests. "After a successful police raid against a terrorist hideout in Jakarta, we can confirm that one of those killed was Mr Dulmatin, one of the top Southeast Asian terrorists that we've been looking for," he said through an interpreter.

At 2.30pm, the President was escorted into a House of Representatives chamber packed with MPs from both houses, where he was introduced by the Speaker, Harry Jenkins.

Praising the Australia-Indonesia relationship as "solid and strong", Dr Yudhoyono warned of new "non-traditional" threats posed by terrorism, people-smuggling, drugs and natural disasters, for which Canberra and Jakarta should be prepared. He said both governments acknowledged that the vexed issue of people-smuggling was a regional problem, requiring a regional solution. "And to strengthen our legal instruments, the Indonesian government will soon introduce to parliament a law that will criminalise those involved in people-smuggling - those found guilty will be sent to prison for five years," Dr Yudhoyono pledged to loud applause.

His promise came as Australia's Border Protection Command confirmed the interception of the 21st asylum-seeker boat this year.

The Australian understands Indonesian authorities are preparing to deal with another situation - the 248 Australia-bound Sri Lankan Tamils refusing to get off their boat in the Indonesian port of Merak after a four-month standoff. This newspaper has been told Indonesia is preparing to remove the Sri Lankans by force if necessary, and send them to Tanjung Pinang immigration detention centre for processing by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "These people will be transferred to another location in West Java soon," a senior Indonesian official said. Dr Yudhoyono described a "love-hate relationship" between two countries, which he said had evolved into a model partnership - not without its challenges, but one that was drawing world envy.

He said government-to-government ties between Jakarta and Canberra had never been better. But Dr Yudhoyono warned against complacency. He said he was personally concerned about ill-informed perceptions of Indonesian society by Australians, and vice-versa. "There are Australians who still see Indonesia as an authoritarian country or a military dictatorship or as a hotbed of Islamic extremism, or even as an expansionist power," the President said.

On the other hand, there were Indonesians afflicted by what he called "Australia-phobia - those who believe that the notion of White Australia still persists, that Australia harbours ill-intention towards Indonesia," he said. "We must expunge these preposterous mental caricatures if we are to achieve a more resilient partnership."

Earlier, Mr Rudd heaped lavish praise on Indonesia's achievements following the end of the Suharto regime in 1998. "The people of Indonesia enjoy a free media, an open society and religious tolerance," Mr Rudd said. "They live in a multi-party democracy in which transitions to power take place according to law. "In Indonesia, democracy now has strong foundations."

During talks earlier yesterday morning, Mr Rudd and Dr Yudhoyono agreed to further strengthen relations with an annual leaders' retreat and a meeting of foreign and defence ministers.

Tony Abbott said he supported Mr Rudd's remarks but used his speech in parliament to criticise Labor's policy on border protection.

In a three-hour meeting yesterday morning, Dr Yudhoyono and the Prime Minister discussed the three Australian drug smugglers facing the death penalty in Indonesia. "He indicated to the President that should any member of the group seek clemency, he would support the request directly with the President," a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said last night.

Work will soon start on a prisoner exchange agreement between Indonesia and Australia.

Both leaders also discussed the 1975 killings of the Balibo Five journalists and expressed sympathy for those bereaved by the tragedy.

The Indonesian leader flew out of Canberra last night to Sydney for talks with business leaders aimed at boosting trade links.

SOURCE



Immigration & the SPLC

Panel: Stopping 'Hate' Is Really about Stopping Debate

After the collapse of the Senate amnesty bill in 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) joined with the National Council of La Raza and others to launch a campaign to smear the three largest mainstream groups making a case for tighter enforcement and lower immigration. At the center of this campaign was the designation of the Federation for American Immigration Reform as a 'hate group' and the spread of that taint to Numbers USA and the Center for Immigration Studies. The announced goal was to pressure journalists and policymakers not to meet or speak with these organizations. Touted as an effort to 'stop the hate,' it was a thinly disguised move to stifle debate.

CIS will release a report next week examining the SPLC and its role in this campaign. “Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors,” authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Jerry Kammer, will be released at a panel discussion on Thursday, March 18, at 9:30 a.m. at the Murrow Room of the National Press Club, 14th & F streets NW. The report will be online at www.cis.org.

The panel will include:

* Jerry Kammer, author of “Immigration and the SPLC” and Senior Research Fellow at CIS. Prior to joining CIS, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his work in helping uncover the Duke Cunningham congressional bribery scandal. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for humanitarian journalism for his work in Mexico for the Arizona Republic.

* Ken Silverstein, Washington Editor for Harper's Magazine and author of “The Church of Morris Dees” in the November 2000 issue of the magazine.

* Carol Swain, Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University and author of The New White Nationalism in America (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and editor of Debating Immigration (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

* Moderator: Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of CIS.

RSVP for the panel to press@cis.org. For information about the report, contact Jerry Kammer, 202-466-8185, gjk@cis.org

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org.





11 March, 2010

Search for GOP Backing Delays Senate Immigration Bill

Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer said Wednesday he and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham are “getting real close” to a deal on a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

Schumer said the two major unresolved issues are finding a second Republican sponsor and getting unions and business “on the same side” regarding how to handle the future flow of low-skill workers.

Schumer said finding more than one Republican to sponsor the bill — something Graham has insisted on — has been difficult. He said there are “four or five prospects we’re working on,” including John Cornyn of Texas. “We will not pass an immigration bill unless it’s bipartisan,” said, D-N.Y.

Graham, R-S.C., sounded less optimistic about the bill’s prospects. “There’s not a whole lot of appetite for immigration reform right now” among moderate Democrats and Republicans, Graham said. He added: “the president is going to have get more involved.”

Schumer and Graham are scheduled to meet Thursday with President Obama at the White House regarding the immigration bill.

Democrats face increasing pressure for signs of progress from immigration advocacy and Latino groups, who say a legislative blueprint should be made public prior to a March 21 rally to be held on the Capitol grounds. A coalition of grassroots immigration advocacy groups warned at a March 8 press conference at the National Press Club that Latino voters are growing frustrated.

“Millions of citizens and new Americans voted for change, and what they got, as far as immigration is concerned, is more, much more, of the same,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles.

SOURCE



The Democrat advantage on immigration reform is fading

Immigration reform advocates have been abuzz with the news that President Obama is to meet with Republican senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic senator Charles Schumer at the White House later this week. But insiders say the closed door meeting, which the president requested, is largely for show. Officially, Graham and Schumer say they need two more GOP co-sponsors for their bill, which includes a sweeping legalisation programme for undocumented immigrants, and stepped up border and workplace enforcement. But with mid-term elections just eight months away, and the campaign season likely to start in early May, there's not much time left to make legislative headway.

Republicans have been racking up one election victory after another and would rather deal with immigration from a position of strength, with their own party leaders chairing judiciary and other key congressional committees (which they will, if the GOP takes back one or both chambers). And for GOP nativists, further delay, followed by a Republican consolidation of power, is their best hope for derailing the Democrats' dreaded "amnesty" programme. In fact, neither party has the luxury of waiting much longer to address the nation's most contentious policy issue after healthcare. Obama's Latino support – he beat John McCain 2-1, reversing the GOP inroads made with Latinos under Bush – is shrinking. And not just because he has continually delayed action on immigration reform.

Latinos, in fact, are moderate voters, and they typically split their political preferences among Democrats (35-40%), Republicans (20-25%), and Independents (35-40%). That means Latinos are falling away from Obama for the same reason other swing voters are: disenchantment with his handling of healthcare, rising deficit, and joblessness. But they are not falling away as fast or as hard because Latinos still see Democrats as their friends on immigration, and most Republicans, as adversaries.

But that perception could soon change, depending on how Republicans act. GOP gubernatorial candidates who won in Virginia and New Jersey, and more recently Scott Brown in Massachusetts, were able to capture an enormous share of the independent vote because they not only emphasised bread and butter issues, but also soft-pedalled their opposition to abortion and illegal immigration, and reached out to ethnic minorities. In pre-election polls, Bob McDonnell, the GOP candidate in Virginia, ran virtually neck-and-neck with Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds among Latinos – an astounding turnaround from Obama's drubbing of McCain two years ago.

Republicans at the national level are also taking note of the need for a new approach to immigration, lest the party lose Latinos for an entire generation, or longer. To capitalise on recent Republican gains, GOP chairman Michael Steele is urging his party to include Hispanics as an integral part of GOP campaign planning. And even Sarah Palin is getting in on the act, telling a TV interviewer last month that immigration was part of America's "legacy" and the GOP needed to get back to "welcoming" immigrants, rather than "excluding" them. Alas, for the Democrats, the days when Republicans could be counted on to try to use immigration as a "wedge" issue – only to have it blow up in their face – may finally be over.

But for the GOP, turning their immigrant-friendly posturing into party-wide support for immigration reform is still a work in progress. It's certainly news to the Tea Party, the grassroots conservative movement that Palin, among others, is assiduously courting to attract new GOP voters. Tea Partiers are staunch critics of immigration policies that, in their view, favour liberal pressure groups at the expense of "mainstream" America. That's why Hispanic Marco Rubio, who is running for the Florida Senate seat vacated by fellow Cuban-American Mel Martinez, is not just a bright light for the Tea Party, and for the GOP, but also a potential challenge. He's a patriotic American, and a staunch defender of private enterprise and smaller government. But his parents were dirt poor peasants who migrated to America thanks to a fast-track legalisation programme that treats the Cuban-born as an elite class of immigrant exempt from "normal" entry rules.

Many Cubans Rubio's age periodically try to make the perilous journey to America aboard makeshift rafts. Mexican "illegals" that lack the Cuban privilege make just as perilous a journey by land to reach America safely. There's not much difference there. That's why Rubio's Cuban-American counterparts in the House, all staunch Republicans, have long supported immigration reform. Assuming Rubio wins this November, he'll be hard pressed to resist reform of some kind, and so will the GOP.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are beginning to make the same mistake they made in the pre-Bush years when they took the Latino vote for granted. Latino leaders are furious that the White House enlisted them in the healthcare reform debate, then stabbed them in the back by agreeing to GOP demands that illegal immigrants be barred from receiving healthcare benefits. The White House tried to mollify the leadership by promising to push immigration reform, which would allow illegal immigrants to get healthcare once they became legal residents. But the administration, still bogged down on healthcare, and unable to reverse the nation's jobless rate, hasn't lived up to its side of the bargain.

Hence, this week's White House showpiece meeting with Schumer and Graham. It's meant to say to Latinos and to immigration advocates, "I am still with you". But for Latinos, long accustomed to being courted, then shunted to the side, all it really says is: "Mañana."

SOURCE





10 March, 2010

The Corrosive Effects of Illegal Immigration

Most Americans realize that our federal government's deliberate refusal to control the influx of illegal aliens, primarily from Mexico, has had a deleterious effect on our nation's economy. Scores of California hospitals have had to close their doors because of a tsunami of illegals seeking "free" health care -- and receiving it.

Schools across the country are being forced to deal with the children of those here illegally, with many states now fighting over whether to offer these children in-state tuition to attend state colleges and universities.

Two of the largest business associations in the country are at odds over this issue. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which sees cheap, illegal labor as a boon for big business, favors a program that keeps our southern border open. But the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small business owners, says its members frequently see illegals as competition with legitimate enterprise.

We even see sharp divisions in our politics over this issue, as challengers such as former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth take on former Republican presidential candidate John McCain in that state's primary election this year for the GOP nomination for McCain's Senate seat.

But these are only the most obvious consequences of a misguided policy that has overburdened the most prosperous society on earth, and now the corrosive effects of not enforcing our immigration laws is taking a toll on our body politic at a whole new level.

In my home state of Nebraska, Republican Gov. Dave Heineman currently enjoys sky-high approval ratings from constituents, thanks in large part to his stubborn resistance to tax increases, his principled opposition to Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson's "Cornhusker Kickback," and his veto of a bill that would have provided in-state college tuition for the children of illegals -- a stand that helped him beat back a 2006 primary challenge from former congressman and Nebraska football deity Tom Osborne. Now Heineman has taken another courageous position on behalf of taxpayers by threatening to veto a bill in the Legislature that would provide state-funded prenatal care for illegal immigrants.

Unfortunately, Nebraska's Catholic Bishops have come out in favor of the legislation, thereby causing a powerful, Catholic-dominated pro-life group, Nebraska Right-to-Life, to issue an ultimatum: candidates opposing the bill will not receive their endorsement in the upcoming fall election campaign. "We want to assure that innocent, unborn children will receive prenatal services," says Brenda Eller, president of the group. The group's board voted unanimously to support the bill. "This is the right thing to do from a pro-life position, regardless of the immigration status," Eller declares.

But Gov. Heineman is standing firm. "After a careful and thoughtful review of the various aspects of this issue, we are opposed to illegal immigrants receiving taxpayer-funded benefits," the governor said in a letter read at a public hearing on the prenatal care plan. This once again stands him in good stead with Nebraskans.

"The idea that society is responsible for people who are breaking the law is completely ridiculous and completely false," says Dimitri Krynsky, who emigrated legally from Czechoslovakia thirty years ago. "What the state should do is make sure these people do not find work here, do not find apartments here," he says. "Nebraska should create an environment that will send them home."

Krynsky speaks for the overwhelming majority of Nebraskans, including the many legal immigrants who resent the fact that illegals are being granted all the rights of citizenship without having complied with the law. Since immigration is a federal issue, and it has become obvious that bureaucrats at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have no intention of enforcing the law, state officials have two choices. They can capitulate to the pro-illegal cause or defend the law. Gov. Heineman is one leader who has chosen to do the latter.

SOURCE



Activists tell Obama to protect illegals

Immigrant rights groups on Monday demanded that President Obama impose a full moratorium on deportations of illegal immigrants, arguing that his policies have been worse for their cause than those of his Republican predecessor.

Saying they've been "betrayed" by and lost patience with Mr. Obama, the advocates suggested that the president could regain their support by leading a fight on Capitol Hill for a bill to legalize illegal immigrants. Mr. Obama took the first step toward legalization during a meeting Monday at the White House with two lawmakers working on a bill.

But a bill could take months to pass. In the meantime, the immigrant rights groups say, Mr. Obama must end deportations altogether. "We demand an immediate stop to all deportations, because each one of these deportations, each one of these numbers, equals a life destroyed and a family devastated," Angelica Sala, executive director of the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said at a news conference in Washington.

The government reported 387,790 deportations in fiscal 2009, which spanned the last few months of the George W. Bush administration and more than eight months of the Obama administration. That marked a small increase over fiscal 2008, when deportations totaled 369,221.

The Obama administration insists that its enforcement policies target unscrupulous employers and stop abusive practices that target illegal immigrants. "This administration is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that focuses first on those dangerous criminal aliens who present the greatest risk to the security of our communities, not sweeps or raids to target undocumented immigrants indiscriminately," said Homeland Security Department spokesman Matt Chandler.

Legalization versus enforcement has driven tense debate for years. After his immigration proposal died in the Senate in 2007, Mr. Bush stepped up enforcement and deportations. He said Americans would not accept legalization because they did not trust the government to enforce the laws. Last year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said enforcement was sufficient and that the focus should turn back to legalization.

Immigrant rights advocates are planning a major march on Washington on March 21 to pressure Congress to pass a legalization bill. "It is showdown time," said Emma Lozano, executive director of Centro Sin Fronteras (Center Without Borders), a Chicago-based rights group. Several participants said they are raising money to transport people to the march from across the country. One woman said children from Chicago churches are performing in the streets to raise money for some of the thousands of buses that organizers there are planning.

It's unclear whether Congress is ready for another battle on the politically volatile immigration issue. The 2007 effort failed when a majority of senators joined a filibuster to block a legalization bill.

Immigrant rights groups were furious when Mr. Obama dedicated just a few seconds of his State of the Union address in late January to the issue. The White House insists that it is taking action behind the scenes, including Mr. Obama's meeting Monday with Sens. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who are working on a bipartisan immigration bill.

Ahead of the meeting, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro reiterated Mr. Obama's principles: "He believes we must resolve the status of the 12 million people who are here illegally, that they should have to register, pay a penalty for breaking the law and meet other obligations of legal immigrants, such as learning English and paying taxes, or leave the country."

The news conference Monday highlighted a split on the issue of immigration enforcement. The immigrant rights groups said they had thought Mr. Obama would reduce, not increase, enforcement. They warned Democrats that Hispanic and immigrant voters, who supported Mr. Obama and other Democrats by wide margins in the 2008 elections, might search for new champions. Many of the biggest immigration rights coalitions were absent from the news conference, signaling that they are focusing their efforts on legislation rather than publicly criticizing the administration.

Ms. Napolitano told Congress in recent weeks that her department had racked up "massive amounts" of audits of businesses and that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had set a record for deportations. "We have deported more criminal aliens this year than ever before. We have removed more aliens from this country than ever before. Our numbers at ICE are unbelievable," she told a Senate hearing Feb. 24.

Homeland Security officials say they have curtailed, though not ended, raids on businesses, but have tried to force employers to let illegal immigrants go. They also have restructured agreements that allow state and local police to enforce immigration laws.

Immigrant rights advocates said they knew Mr. Obama would want to prove that he can enforce immigration laws before embarking on a major reform but expected a stronger push for an immigration bill in Congress. "The Obama administration intentionally set out to show he was tougher than Bush," said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

SOURCE





9 March, 2010

CIS roundup

1. White House Meeting Today on Immigration Reform

Excerpt: President Obama is due to meet today with the two senators who have been trying to plot a legislative course to an immigration reform bill, and the National Council of La Raza is impatient for clear signs of movement.

'If the meeting is just to 'hear more,' it's not going to cut it,' Clarissa Martinez of La Raza said in Huffington Post. Martinez wants a clear sign of movement from Obama's meeting with Sens. Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham.

********

2. Social Security, Verify Thyself! The IG Inspects the E-Verifiers

Excerpt: The Social Security Administration, along with the Department of Homeland Security, operates the E-Verify screening program to identify potential illegal alien workers.

But, according to the SSA's own Inspector General, in a recent report the SSA, as a large employer, did not fully use the E-Verify system to screen it own employees.

********

3. Why Should Private, For-Profit Language Schools Authorize Visas?

Excerpt: Today's New York Times carries a story about a private-for-profit language school in Florida that 'was a front for the sale of fraudulent applications for student visas.'

A total of 80 people, including the managers of the Florida Language Institute in Miami, were arrested, the Times reported.

********

4. Hurtt Not So Good

Excerpt: Sources inside and outside ICE are reporting that the agency leadership intends to install an embattled ex-police chief known for his obstruction of immigration law enforcement as its liaison to the local law enforcement community. Former Houston police chief Harold Hurtt is reportedly the top candidate to lead the agency’s Office of State and Local Coordination. That office’s main responsibility is the 287(g) program, of which Hurtt has been outspokenly critical.

********

5. Health Reform Push

Excerpt: President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders are working hard to line up enough votes and plot a path to get their version of health reform across the goal line. Though immigration hasn't been raised as much as other bubbling controversies like abortion, this issue remains alive.

********

6. A Rave Review for a Justice Dept. Report on Immigration Decisions

Excerpt: The report deals with two administrative appeals agencies central to the implementation of immigration policy; EOIR has the nationwide set of several hundred immigration judges, who handle about a third of a million deportation (now called removal) and other cases each year. EOIR also houses the Board of Immigration Appeals, an entity that handles appeals from the immigration judges and from some USCIS decisions.

********

7. Calderon's Latin American Initiative: A Few Concerns

Excerpt: Last month, as Mexican President Felipe Calderon hosted a meeting where Latin American and Caribbean leaders agreed to form a new regional organization that will include Cuba while excluding the United States and Canada, the initiative received little attention in the U.S.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org.





8 March, 2010

Scotland: Fashion guru urges Tories to get 'selfish' on immigration



The Conservative Party's latest high profile supporter has claimed that Britain needs to start being "more selfish" over immigration policy. Tessa Hartmann, the woman behind Scottish Fashion Week, was unveiled by the Tories yesterday as the latest influential figure to back the party north of the Border. The mother-of-four was also the writer and producer of Scotland's first 3D CGI film Sir Billi, and attracted the blockbuster talents of Sir Sean Connery, Dame Shirley Bassey and Alan Cumming.

Yesterday she entered the political sphere for the first time, declaring herself a Conservative supporter because of fears she has over the economy. She said as far as the Labour government was concerned "enough is enough", and that she agreed with the apocalyptic assessment made by the Tory leadership last week that Britain would be bankrupted with five more years of Gordon Brown in Downing Street. Ms Hartmann said: "Just look at what happened to the pound last week when we had the prospect of a Labour government again. That shows you what the rest of the world thinks of this current government."

She added: "We simply can't afford another five years of this Labour government – just look at how the value of the pound slumped when the polls gave Labour a chance. For too long they have taken the Scottish vote for granted. That must come to an end."

However, in an interview with The Scotsman she appeared to conform to the "mean" stereotype the Conservative Party's opponents have been trying to use to portray them.

Despite Mr Cameron having pledged that the foreign aid budget would remain untouched from cuts expected to bring down the national debt of over £1 trillion, Ms Hartmann suggested this was one area which should be looked at. She added that more needed to be done about controlling immigration. "We should be looking after ourselves at home to start with," she said. "We need to start being a bit more selfish."

Her comments were seized on by the Labour Party as portraying the real face of the Tories. A spokesman for Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy said: "This just shows how out of touch the Conservatives still are. Their values are at odds with the generosity of Scots. They are a risk that Scotland cannot afford to take."

Ms Hartmann's support follows the switch last year of leading Scottish QC Paul McBride from Labour to the Conservatives. The Tories hope that high-profile backing will help them in a push for 11 Scottish target seats where they need to make gains. There are fears that if once they return just one seat again north of the Border then Scottish nationalism will be given a boost with a Conservative government in Westminster.

But, Ms Hartmann said that the problem the Conservatives had was people voting traditionally in Scotland and not thinking about what the parties stand for. "Often it is a case of voting for who your grandparents and parents voted for," she said. And she also raised concerns that many would not bother to vote at all, adding: "We have got to get over the message that a Conservative vote is not a wasted vote and that it is the party that can deliver change in the UK."

SOURCE



Asylum-seekers 'on the beaches', Australian conservatives claim

"Asylum-seekers" could soon breach Australia's borders and arrive "on our beaches" if the latest boat arrival off the coast of Western Australia is any guide, the opposition claimed yesterday. Two boat arrivals in 24 hours, with more than 100 passengers on board, have prompted concerns that the government's offshore processing centre at Christmas Island could soon reach capacity. The latest boat arrived 25 nautical miles northwest of Adele Island, which is about 100km off the Kimberley coast, carrying 28 passengers and two crew.

"This boat was intercepted only a stone's throw from Western Australia's coast," opposition border and customs spokesman Michael Keenan said yesterday. "How much longer will it be before they begin to arrive on our beaches? "The public deserves an explanation as to how this latest arrival was allowed to get within 100km of Western Australia."

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the Rudd government was on track for record boat arrivals following the watering down of the Coalition's border control policies since the election -- a claim the government dismissed yesterday as using selective data. There are 1914 asylum-seekers and 28 crew being held on Christmas Island, which has a current capacity of 2040. Those numbers do not include the 31 passengers and crew picked up yesterday near Adele Island.

The government remains committed to offshore processing on Christmas Island because this allows the commonwealth to restrict the legal avenues asylum-seekers have to appeal against rejected claims for refugee status.

But West Australian Premier Colin Barnett warned yesterday that the government's policies were "falling short", and said boatpeople were being sent the wrong message. "Australia may well need to look at another detention area," Mr Barnett said. "I would prefer not on the mainland. Once people get on to the Australian mainland they automatically get a further set of rights, and this is putting huge cost to the Australian community," the Premier said.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship is already using tents to ease Christmas Island's accommodation shortage and hopes to buy more land to build staff accommodation. If the department can build new accommodation, asylum-seeker family groups could be moved out of a cramped construction camp and into some of the department-owned accommodation where 288 immigration workers now live.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said yesterday the conflicts in Asia were responsible for the surge in asylum-seekers. "We are expanding capacity at Christmas Island to meet anticipated needs," Ms Gillard said.

SOURCE





7 March, 2010

Two more "asylum seeker" boats intercepted in Australian waters

The Federal Government's border protection policies are again under scrutiny after two boats of asylum seekers were intercepted in two days. Authorities picked up a boat carrying 28 passengers and two crew, not far from tourist town Broome, in the early hours of this morning. Yesterday, authorities intercepted a boat carrying 80 passengers and three crew. Both boats are being taken to detention facilities on Christmas Island. A total of 20 boats have arrived so far this year.

The opposition's spokesman for Immigration and Citizenship, Scott Morrison, said more than 4000 people had arrived illegally on boats since the Rudd government changed its border protection policies. The government's policies were enticing asylum seekers, Mr Morrison said. "There is no shortage of potential customers for people smugglers under the Rudd government's policies," Mr Morrison said in a statement.

But Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said "situations around the world" meant there were large numbers of displaced people looking for resettlement. [So how come illegal immigration into America is declining? It's certainly NOT due to toughened controls by the Obama administration. Obama has in fact significantly cut back enforcement]

SOURCE



Australians work twice as long to pay for a house as they did 50 years ago

High levels of immigration and Greenie-inspired land-use restrictions can principally be blamed for that. The immigrants have got to live somewhere but State and local government regulations severely ration the locations on which new houses can be built. So inadequate supply causes prices to shoot up, as it always does. Greenies and "asylum seeker" advocates have hit the pockets of Australians hard.

As Miranda Devine says:

"To fulfil Kevin Rudd's "big Australia" promise of 60 per cent population growth by 2050, Sydney will bear the brunt of the expansion, almost doubling in size to 7 million people. We must "embrace" this inevitability, a forum of planners, bureaucrats and business types agreed this week. Since all those new people have to live somewhere and the state government won't release more land in greenfields areas, prepare yourself for more backyard infills and congestion, according to the Committee for Sydney forum at the Park Hyatt. And yesterday, Infrastructure Australia confirmed as much, with a report showing Sydney is the most congested city in the country. Those of us who live here don't need a report to tell us Sydney's once envied livability status is heading downhill, with worldwide indexes recording the slippage. Even Melbourne beats us now".

AUSTRALIANS have to work almost three times harder to pay off the average family home than they did 50 years ago. Figures compiled by CommSec for The Sunday Telegraph reveal homebuyers on the average income now have to work for 19,374 hours to buy the average Australian house with the average mortgage.

Based on an eight-hour day and a five-day working week, that equates to about 10 years of work. In reality, it takes much longer to own a home, because wages must pay for all living expenses, not just housing. In 1960, it took homebuyers just 7500 hours to pay off the average mortgage.

CommSec chief economist Craig James said that half a century ago, average wage-earners took home the equivalent of $1.08 an hour. They needed to work 25 hours to meet the monthly mortgage repayment of $25, based on an average five per cent interest rate and a mortgage of $4620. Today, the average worker earning $30.04 an hour spends 70.7 hours - or almost two weeks of the month - at work to cover the monthly mortgage repayment for an average $283,000 loan at a 6.64 per cent interest rate.

The figures show rising costs and growing property prices have largely outstripped wages and young couples today need to work longer and harder to achieve the great Australian dream of owning their homes. Whereas homes were once affordable on a single wage, families now realistically need two incomes to fund a mortgage. "This is your single biggest purchase," Mr James said. "This is where people are living. "We're building bigger and better homes, so it was always likely we were going to be paying more in terms of the mortgage - and we're certainly working longer to pay for that. "We're working longer, but we're probably working more flexibly and in jobs that we like."

Mr James said that in Australia, unlike other countries, there was a lot of pressure to buy rather than rent and homeowners often saw their mortgages as a method of saving. "Records from the Commonwealth Bank suggest more than 70 per cent of people are paying more than they need to in terms of their home loans, so they're ahead of their loans. "People see the home as a way of saving; they see it as an outlet for their finances. In other parts of the world, that's not the case, but Australia has always had an affinity with the home.

"In the 1960s, it was a simpler life. Now more money is spent on housing, computers, the internet, mobile phones, whereas before it was food, clothing, transport. "We do have more opportunities now, but whether we're happier remains to be seen."

Sydney University anthropologist and author Stephen Juan said it now took two incomes and 30 years to pay off the average home. Half a century ago, it was one income and 15 years. Mortgages costing the average household 29 per cent of its income put huge strains on the family unit, Dr Juan said. "With that kind of inflation for the biggest item a middle-class family buys in their lifetime, which is the family home, when you have that kind of colossal increase that has been greater than the percentage increase in salaries - that's the reason we have the crunch. "There's so much pressure on us. We're losing our leisure time, we're losing our time for families, we're having to commute further and further to get to work, we're finding it more and more difficult to pay our mortgages. "Economically, we're being really stressed, and there's not enough time to do everything we have to do."

Dr Juan said that 50 years ago, promises of technology brought predictions of an easier life and more time available for family and healthier lifestyles. "It was said we would have more time and be a leisure class because the machines would do the work," he said. "What has happened, however, is that you have to pay for these materials and for this technology. "We've got better technology and better leisure-time activities available, but we don't have the leisure time. It's a catch-22."

SOURCE





6 March, 2010

Open-Borders Lobby Lost a Lot In Final Obama Healthcare Bill

By Roy Beck

The virulently open-border Congressional Hispanic Caucus appears poised to vote FOR health care verification requirements that they vehemently oppose. And that is both a great irony of this protracted debate and a sign that grassroots activists for sensible immigration policies can take at least some satisfaction for all of their efforts this past year to make sure that whatever happens on health care, there won't be big extra incentives for breaking immigration laws.

We have to take some pleasure watching the Caucus and other pro-illegal-immigration organizations in a final frenzy of pressure this week against congressional Democratic leaders and against Pres. Obama, begging them to make it easier for illegal aliens to benefit from the latest national health care proposal, if it passes. It is fairly evident that the verification procedures they oppose are going to stay in the final health care bill.

Some of my staff who have been most involved with this fight have outlined an interesting review of what we won and where we fell short in this nearly year-long battle to keep any change in health care policy from enticing more illegal immigration.

IMMIGRATION OUR ONLY HORSE IN THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE

As everyone should know, NumbersUSA is a single-issue organization. We work on immigration, and nothing but immigration. We sometimes get urged to weigh in on other issues, from the conservative and liberal directions. But unless there’s a sufficiently strong impact on legal or illegal immigration levels, we decline.

Our sole mission is to restore American immigration to traditional levels and to reduce the size of the illegal population through an “Attrition Through Enforcement” strategy. We’re all immigration all the time — no other issue.

But because of the sheer numeric exposure from covering illegal aliens under health reform legislation, NumbersUSA did get involved in part of the health care debate. We supported efforts to beef up verification of eligibility based on immigration status.

Enrollment in government health programs such as Medicaid, without first verifying someone is not an illegal alien, would create too great of a reward for an alien’s illegal act. The absence of verification requirements would also produce an added incentive to sneak across the border illegally.

OUR/YOUR FIGHT LAST SUMMER IN THE HOUSE

We thus backed efforts by Reps. Nathan Deal and Dean Heller in the House health care debate to add eligibility verification requirements.

* Rep. Deal’s amendment would have required checking Medicaid and CHIP applicants in the SAVE system.

* Rep. Heller’s amendment would have required SAVE usage to screen those getting taxpayer-subsidized health coverage and the premium subsidy in the “exchange.”

Our allies lost those battles in committee, but partially won the next battle.

After Rep. Joe Wilson forced President Obama’s hand on whether or not illegal aliens would get government health care, Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced a new House bill. The Pelosi version included a verification provision. It’s a very weak, vague requirement and only applies to the “exchange,” premium subsidy, and “public option,” but our effort helped force her hand.

NumbersUSA activists sent House members tens of thousands of faxes demanding verification. Wilson, Deal, and Heller were vindicated. And our issue caused House leadership to blink — at least a little bit.

THE BATTLE IN THE SENATE

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was paying attention, and the Senate bill he drafted included a better eligibility verification requirement than the one in the House legislation. The Senate bill requires enrollees to be screened to ensure eligibility on immigration status for the “exchange,” public plan, and premium subsidy. Unfortunately, though the Senate bill makes electronic verification a requirement, it sets up a new, loophole-prone system instead of simply requiring usage of the SAVE system.

So, our people achieved some progress in the Senate-passed bill over the House bill.

The House Hispanic Caucus commented in December that the Senate verification provisions were more than they could support.

But we couldn't be fully happy with the provisions, either. Both bills make it easier to enroll people in Medicaid, so both bills create some possibility of rewards for illegal immigration.

FINAL WHITE HOUSE PROPOSAL

Now, the White House is trying to push health reform across the goal line. And Pres. Obama appears to have been pushed by popular demand to stick with the more immigration-restrictive Senate bill.

And while the President is tweaking the Senate bill to make it more palatable to liberal Democrats, he does not seem to have made any of the immigration changes sought by the Hispanic Caucus. Thus, my staff experts tell me, the relatively better eligibility verification measures of the Senate-passed bill will be the rules should a bill pass. It isn't as good as we would have written it. But it does represent a huge improvement over the permissive rules the leadership had planned last summer.

HISPANIC CAUCUS LIKELY FURTHER DEMORALIZED BY HAVING TO VOTE FOR EXTRA VERIFICATION

So, where do things stand? The Democratic leadership and the president have said they will use the budget reconciliation process in order to get around a Senate filibuster. They’re still lining up votes in the House. Recall that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus members voted for the House bill last fall, and this new version cannot pass without the Caucus's support. Despite all the Caucus's huff and bluff, it will not risk deep enmity from the Party Leadership by killing the healthcare bill over the verification issue, I am told.

More HERE



Train young Australians to replace immigrant workers, says Deputy PM

A commendable idea and mildly surprising from a Leftist government but how is she going to do it? For many young Australians it is a rational decision to live on the dole and go to the beach rather than undertake any kind of training. I am afraid this is just more Leftist hot air. The Rudd government and the Obama government are remarkably similar in that respect. They both claim that they can solve big problems but in reality have only the most superficial ideas about how to do so

YOUNG Australians should start filling many of the jobs currently taken by imported labour, the Federal Government says. The current reliance on imported labour will not help young Australians find work in future, Education and Employment Minister Julia Gillard says. "Obviously, with skilled migration we are dealing with the skills challenges of today," Ms Gillard said.

"But for the future, I don't want us to be in a country where we are desperately scouring the world for skilled labour, and to get people to come here and do jobs, whilst at the same time young Australians are unemployed and can't get a start. "We want to make sure that we are getting those young Australians a start, so they can fill those jobs."

Ms Gillard was speaking after the launch of Australian Workforce Futures: A National Workforce Development Strategy. It is a report by Skills Australia, an independent statutory body providing advice to the education minister on the skills needed for Australia's workforce and how to develop them.

In a speech at the launch, she said the global financial crisis had reduced the need for technicians and trade workers, and created demand for more professional jobs. "Essentially, there is a long-term trend of growth in demand for higher skills, and a reduction in the share of low and unskilled jobs," Ms Gillard said. In the 12 months to November 2009, Australia shed 97,000 technical and trade jobs, she said. At the same time 78,300 professional jobs had been created. Youth unemployment was unacceptably high in regional Australia and in areas that had relied on manufacturing for generation after generation, she said.

Addressing the problem would require lifting literacy and numeracy skills, and encouraging Australians to further their education. "The more you learn, the more you earn," Ms Gillard said. "There is a benefit to individuals in full-time employment of approximately $100 per week for each extra year of education beyond compulsory schooling. "A person with a bachelor degree earns about 24 per cent above average earnings. "A person leaving school before finishing Year 11 tends to earn 20 per cent below average earnings. "And those with post-school qualifications are also able to work around seven years longer than those without post-school qualifications." [Faulty logic there. It's the brighter kids who undertake further education and they would probably do better anyway]

SOURCE





5 March, 2010

Obama looking to give new life to immigration reform

In an effort to advance a bill through Congress before midterm elections, the president meets with two senators who have spent months trying to craft legislation

Despite steep odds, the White House has discussed prospects for reviving a major overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, a commitment that President Obama has postponed once already. Obama took up the issue privately with his staff Monday in a bid to advance a bill through Congress before lawmakers become too distracted by approaching midterm elections.

In the session, Obama and members of his Domestic Policy Council outlined ways to resuscitate the effort in a White House meeting with two senators -- Democrat Charles E. Schumer of New York and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- who have spent months trying to craft a bill.

According to a person familiar with the meeting, the White House may ask Schumer and Graham to at least produce a blueprint that could be turned into legislative language. The basis of a bill would include a path toward citizenship for the 10.8 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Citizenship would not be granted lightly, the White House said. Undocumented workers would need to register, pay taxes and pay a penalty for violating the law. Failure to comply might result in deportation.

Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, said the president's support for an immigration bill, which would also include improved border security, was "unwavering."

Participants in the White House gathering also pointed to an immigration rally set for March 21 in Washington as a way to spotlight the issue and build needed momentum.

Though proponents of an immigration overhaul were pleased that the White House wasn't abandoning the effort, they also wanted Obama to take on a more assertive role, rather than leave it to Congress to work out a compromise.

Immigration is a delicate issue for the White House. After promising to revamp in his first year of office what many see as a fractured system, Obama risks angering a growing, politically potent Latino constituency if he defers the goal until 2011. But with the healthcare debate still unresolved, Democrats are wary of plunging into another polarizing issue. "Right now we have a little problem with the 'Chicken Little' mentality: The sky is falling and consequently we can't do anything," Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said in an interview.

Republicans are unlikely to co-operate. On Capitol Hill, Republicans said that partisan tensions had only gotten worse since Obama signaled this week that he would push forward with a healthcare bill, whether he could get GOP votes or not. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said in an interview, "The things you hear from the administration won't be well received."

Schumer, speaking as he walked quickly through the Capitol, said he was having trouble rounding up Republican supporters apart from Graham. "It's tough finding someone, but we're trying," Schumer said. On Thursday, Schumer met with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who oversees the government's immigration efforts, to strategize over potential Republican co-sponsors. "We're very hopeful we can get a bill done. We have all the pieces in place. We just need a second Republican," Schumer said in a statement.

Among proponents, there is a consensus that a proposal must move by April or early May to have a realistic chance of passing this year. If that deadline slips, Congress' focus is likely to shift to the November elections, making it impossible to take up major legislation. "There's no question that this is a heavy lift and the window is narrowing," said Janet Murguia, president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.

When it comes to immigration, Obama's strategy echoes that of healthcare. He has deferred heavily to Congress, leaving it up to Schumer and Graham to reach a breakthrough with the idea that he would put his weight behind the resulting compromise.

SOURCE



Singapore cutting back

Reading between the lines, Singaporeans are reasonably happy with more Chinese immigrants but are not so happy with Malays and Indonesians. And there IS a difference. The Singapore emphasis on "merit" in the immigrants accepted should however go a long way towards ameliorating any problems

The Singapore government recognises the concerns of its citizens over the rapid increase of foreigners in the country in recent years. As a result, it has reviewed its process of granting permanent residency and citizenship. Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng said as Singaporeans are not replacing themselves, the country also needs to tap on immigration to augment its population.

Speaking in Parliament during the Committee of Supply debate for the Prime Minister's Office, Mr Wong explained that tackling population challenges are about finding the right dynamic balance and trade-offs.

36-year-old researcher Dr Xue Bo came from China five years ago. He started life here like any other expatriate living in a condominium with his family. But in 2007, Dr Xue moved to the heartlands into public housing. That's where he met Alan Lim who opened his eyes to all things Singaporean. Not ony did Mr Lim help Dr Xue's family orientate themselves in the new neighbourhood, he also included them in his social circles and introduced them to his friends.

Mr Lim said: "Most of the time we bring him to church on weekends and we bring him to visit places like Sentosa and also to educate him about the Peranakan culture. I think most Singaporeans should go out of their way more to help the immigrants. “Put yourself in his condition. You come to a place where you don't know anybody. So I think it's good if you can help the person to settle down. You don't gain anything but you will find that the person is more receptive to you and as the days go by you will find that the person will be a good friend to you."

Dr Xue Bo said: "Without their help, we won't have the feeling of being at home. Now we treat them really as family members. Now we consider Singapore as second hometown." Today, Dr Xue and his family are all PRs and his story is a familiar one.

Last year, the government granted 59,500 permanent residency and 19,900 citizenships. That's about 20,000 fewer PRs and some 600 fewer citizenships granted in 2008. Mr Wong said the number of permanent residency granted will be reduced although there will be no absolute cap to this and there will be up to 20,000 new citizens a year. The number is derived from Singapore's low fertility rate of 1.23 - among the lowest in the world.

Mr Wong said: "Immigration is a key source of population augmentation which we cannot afford to do without. In a nutshell, we need 60,000 babies just to replace our resident population. But we only have about 37,000 babies per year. This is why we need about 20,000 new citizens in order to keep our citizen core.

But still, as MPs point out, there are concerns on the ground. MP for Tanjong Pagar GRC Indranee Rajah said: "If you think of Singapore as a family, the Singapore citizen is the biological child asking why do you care for my foster brother and sister more than me?

MP for MacPherson Mathias Yao, said: "Singaporeans began to feel that the Singaporean way of life was being encroached on or even slowly changed. Some do not like it. While they have no problem living in a multiracial, multi cultural society, and indeed that is what Singapore is, they nevertheless feel that it has to be a Singaporean society and not a new imported society that is alien to those born and bred here," said

Mr Wong added the government will ensure that those who sink their roots here contribute to Singapore economically and integrate well into society. The National Integration Council is already spearheading efforts for that. There was also an assurance that the government will stand by the principle that Singaporeans come first in their own country. But not at the expense of meritocracy and turning away suitable foreign talents.

Mr Wong said: "We need to be sensible and balanced about how we go about this. For instance, we should never undermine the principle of meritocracy which makes us competitive and which ensures communal harmony and social cohesion. “We must also avoid making ourselves so unattractive that suitable foreigners are deterred from sinking roots and becoming a part of Singapore. There is a global competition for good people with talent and if we make Singapore an inhospitable place, we will lose out. “We will do ourselves great harm if others outside Singapore have the wrong impression that we are xenophobic. This will be against our national interest".

So Mr Wong said finding the right balance is crucial. He added: "Singapore grew and prospered since its founding because of our great-grandparents, grandparents and parents were allowed to come and settle to make a better life and in the process contribute to Singapore's growth. Had they been denied the opportunity to do so at that time, we would not be born here and Singapore would not be what it is today. "In future, the children and grandchildren of today's immigrants who take root here will grow up with our children and grandchildren. Together they will be the next generation of Singaporeans and Singapore will be their home as much as it is our home today."

Most foreigners in Singapore are transient workers. They number 1.25 million out of a total population of about five million. Mr Wong said such workers make up an important part of the workforce and their economic contributions to Singapore's growth are real and significant. He explained: "Transient foreign workers are here to work and will eventually return to their home countries. Most of them do not sink roots. We should appreciate their contributions to Singapore as they have helped us to grow our GDP.

“In turn, with economic growth, we have the resources to develop infrastructure and support programmes which have raised the quality of life of Singaporeans. “Economic growth has also enabled us to accumulate reserves in good times which we have been able to rely on to sustain and support Singaporeans during lean and tough times.”

SOURCE





4 March, 2010

AZ may criminalize presence of illegal immigrants

Over the past several years, immigration hard-liners at the Arizona Legislature persuaded their colleagues to criminalize the presence of illegal border-crossers in the state and ban soft immigration policies in police agencies — only to be thwarted by vetoes from a Democratic governor. This year, their prospects have improved. A proposal to draw local police deeper into the fight against illegal immigration has momentum, and even opponents expect the new Republican governor to sign off on the changes.

The proposal would make Arizona the only state to criminalize the presence of illegal immigrants through an expansion of its trespassing law. It also would require police to try to determine people's immigration status when there's reasonable suspicion they are in the country illegally. An estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants live in the state.

"The greatest threat to our neighborhoods is the illegal alien invasion," said Republican Sen. Russell Pearce of Mesa, sponsor of the proposal, explaining that some illegal immigrants who are criminals bring violence and other crimes to the United States.

Supporters say the new rules are needed because the federal government has done a lousy job of trying seal the border and crack down on immigrants in the country's interior. Opponents say such new duties would be costly and lead to racial profiling. The proposal passed the Senate two weeks ago, and a similar bill could come to a vote of the full House as early as this week.

Paul Senseman, spokesman for Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, said the governor doesn't comment on pending legislation but generally supports pragmatic immigration laws. Her predecessor, Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, vetoed similar proposals.

Many of the state's local police bosses have long resisted suggestions that their officers conduct day-to-day immigration enforcement, saying it would distract them from investigating other crimes and sow distrust among immigrants, who might not help officers investigating crimes because they fear being sent home. "We are not anti-immigration enforcement," said Kingman Police Chief Robert DeVries, who opposes the bill. "We are just concerned about some of the responsibilities that are being pushed on us and how it affects our ability to provide day-to-day services in our communities."

Immigrant rights advocates are especially concerned about the trespassing expansion, saying it would inevitably lead to hassles for U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who would be approached by police because of their skin color. "Bills like this that cast a net so wide are guaranteed to trap U.S. citizens," said Jennifer Allen, director of the Border Action Network, an immigrant rights group based in southern Arizona.

Pearce said he doesn't see the trespassing expansion being used on a wide scale and said officers wouldn't be required to arrest all illegal immigrants under such a law. Pearce said officers could turn illegal immigrants over to federal authorities, as police now routinely do, or they could use the trespassing expansion to hold onto illegal immigrants who are suspects in crimes.

First-offense trespassing by an illegal immigrant would be a top-tier misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. Subsequent violations would be mid-tier felonies that would carry a penalty of one-and-a-half to three years in prison.

One element of the proposal would ban what anti-immigration groups call sanctuary polices — local rules that discourage or restrict officers from questioning immigrants. Supporters of the bill say the policies — enacted by cities — create areas of "sanctuary" for illegal immigrants. The bill would let any person file a lawsuit to challenge the polices. If a judge finds a city restricted enforcement, the city could face civil penalties of $1,000 to $5,000 for each day the policy remains in effect after the lawsuit is filed.

Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema of Phoenix, an opponent of the measure, disputes that cities and counties have any written or de facto policies that make them sanctuaries. "It's just not true," Sinema said.

SOURCE



Early returns show anti-immigration party win in Dutch city

Early returns in Dutch local elections Wednesday showed an anti-immigrant, anti-Islam party making big gains in a result seen as a possible foreshadowing of national elections in June. Wednesday's voting in 394 cities in theory elects city councils to deal with matters such as parking fees and taxes on dog ownership. But with national elections slated for June 9, Dutch media and politicians are treating the event as a dress rehearsal.

The Freedom Party of prominent anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders was leading handily with a quarter of the votes counted in the medium-sized city of Almere, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) northeast of Amsterdam. Voting was conducted with paper and pencil, and full results are not expected before Thursday morning.

Wilders has drawn comparisons with populists such as Jorg Haider in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. He is facing prosecution for allegedly inciting racial hatred with remarks that include describing the Qur'an a "fascist" book and calling for it to be banned. His relatively new party is only running in Almere and The Hague, where it is expected to finish second.

An opinion poll commissioned by state broadcaster NOS found that if national elections had been held Wednesday, the result would have been inconclusive. The country's two largest parties, the conservative Christian Democrats and left-leaning Labor, both lost ground. They have sworn not to join forces again after Labor walked out of their coalition Cabinet last month over Dutch involvement in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's centrist government collapsed, forcing the recall of 1,600 Dutch soldiers in the province of Uruzgan at the end of their mission in August.

Immigration issues have dominated the Dutch domestic political landscape for a decade. Muslims make up about 6 per cent of the population, and Wilders says their presence threatens the Dutch way of life.

Political observes said that, with the Christian Democrats and Labor at odds, and other parties split equally between left and right, it may prove extremely difficult for either side to build a workable coalition. Most left-leaning parties have said flatly they will not work with Wilders, whose party is now the third-largest nationally according to the NOS poll.

SOURCE





3 March, 2010

Canadian Immigration Minister pulled homosexual rights from citizenship guide, documents show

A judgment that a matter concerning about 2% of the population is not among the important things that one need to know about Canada would seem defensible

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney blocked any reference to gay rights in a new study guide for immigrants applying for Canadian citizenship, The Canadian Press has learned. Internal documents show an early draft of the guide contained sections noting that homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969; that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation; and that same-sex marriage was legalized nationally in 2005.

But Mr. Kenney, who fought same-sex marriage when it was debated in Parliament, ordered those key sections removed when his office sent its comments to the department last June. Senior department officials duly cut out the material - but made a last-ditch plea with Mr. Kenney in early August to have it reinstated.

"Recommend the re-insertion of the text boxes related to ... the decriminalization of homosexual sex/recognition of same-sex marriage," says a memorandum to Mr. Kenney from deputy minister Neil Yeates. "Recommend the addition of 'equality rights' under list of rights. Had noted earlier that this bullet should be reinserted into the list as a means of noting the equality of all based on race, gender, sexual orientation etc ..."

In the end, however, Mr. Kenney's view trumped that of the bureaucrats. The 63-page guide, released with fanfare last November, contains no mention of gay and lesbian rights. About 500,000 copies were printed and citizenship applicants will start being tested on its contents March 15.

The $400,000 project substantially updated an earlier edition of the guide created in 1995. The new version significantly expands sections on Canada's military past and on aboriginals, drawing on the views of a panel of prominent Canadians. The new guide got generally positive reviews when it was launched, though some immediately noted the absence of gay rights, including same-sex marriage.

The publication does include a picture of Olympic gold medal swimmer Mark Tewksbury, however, with a caption saying he is a "prominent activist for gay and lesbian Canadians."

SOURCE



Tell us again why we need population growth

The article below is from Australia but I gather that the situation is similar in other Western countries. The writer uses "punters" to mean ordinary Australians -- as in people who bet on horse races

The political class is on a collision course with the punters they are elected to represent over the issue of population growth, because they are failing to engage the public in a meaningful, mature debate.

While the major political parties have signed up to the official long-term projections of 36 million by 2050, the public overwhelmingly thinks that’s way too many. In response, the politicians bat on with the reflexive response “There is No Alternative”.

This dissonance highlights much that is wrong with our political system. It also opens up big opportunities for both the extreme Right and the environmental Left over the coming years.

The numbers speak for themselves, people are rejecting the idea of big population growth by a factor of two to one. I think the reason is that the public is struggling with this debate is that the arguments in favour of growth and loaded with internal inconsistencies which are too often served up as truisms. If you were to chart a discussion between the punters and the pollies on population, it would go something like this.

Punters: The cities are bursting at the seams, the roads are clogged, the trains don’t work; we need to build more power stations to keep things running: why on earth would we want more people?

Pollies: We need more people so we can build our economy, creating more job opportunities and more economic growth.

Punters: But isn’t growth the problem? Why do we need growth, if all we are going to do with it is pay for things like cleaners and cabs and the things we need to deal with a faster, busier life?

Pollies: But if we don’t have economic growth, we won’t build up the tax base so that we have enough money to pay for the aging population, all those Baby Boomers who are about to exit the workforce and expect to receive a pension to keep them going for another 30 years.

Punters: But you have spent the last ten years making massive surpluses and handing all the money back to us in cheques we never asked for. Now you are spending billions on school canteens and insulation batts that no one ever asked for – surely we could just save a bit more money now. Even better, pump up the superannuation to 15 per cent so we can pay our own way.

Pollies – But these injections of funds are important to stimulate the economy and keep it growing.

Punters; But who said we wanted to grow?

Pollies: And while we are at it, the insulation problem is part of the effort to make our cities more environmentally sustainable.

Punters: Don’t talk to us about the environment. If you cared about the environment you would not be trying to truck in millions of more people into our fragile continent. Adelaide is already running dry, droughts are becoming more regular – surely millions more people is not the environmental solution.

Pollies: Its actually pretty simple: with a larger population, you’ll be able to generate the economic activity to come up with environmental solutions.

Punters; You are talking about growth again, can you just explain to me why growth is good?

Pollies: Well, if you went to university like we did, you would know that basic economics dictate that economies that grow create wealth and jobs and those that contract are miserable and dangerous places where the common currency is the banana.

Punter: But you keep telling us we have a skills shortage, why would be creating jobs that we can fill?

Pollies: That’s precisely why we need to increase out population base, so we have enough workers to drive are growing economy.

Punter: You’re not listening to us.

Pollies: You are too stupid to understand the big picture.

Punter: Wankers.

Sadly, that’s where our national debate on population is right now.

SOURCE





2 March, 2010

CIS roundup

1. An Examination of Minority Voters’ Views on Immigration

Excerpt: While it is sometimes assumed that minorities, particularly Hispanics, favor increased immigration and legalization for illegal immigrants, a new Zogby survey finds that minority voters’ views are more complex. The poll of Hispanic, Asian-American, and African-American likely voters finds some support for legalization. But overall each of these groups prefers enforcement and for illegal immigrants to return home. Moreover, significant majorities of all three groups think that the current level of immigration is too high. These views are in sharp contrast to the leaders of most ethnic advocacy organizations, who argue for increased immigration and legalization of illegal immigrants. The survey used neutral language, avoiding such terms as “amnesty,” “illegal alien,” or “undocumented.”

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2. Rep. Becerra Connects Health Reform to Immigration Reform

Excerpt: California Democratic Congressman Xavier Becerra on Sunday spoke of the connection between President Obama’s efforts to reform medical care and Obama's commitment to reforming immigration law. Becerra sees the two as complementary.

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3. How Does USCIS' Appeals Body Handle Disputes about Religious Visas?

Excerpt: What happens when an obscure USCIS appellate body handles disputes about visas for religious workers?

In my review of the 62 decisions made in 2009 made by the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) the answer appears to be – carefully and narrowly.

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4. Professor Investigates Corporate Rhetoric on H-1Bs

Excerpt: We often read about how the nation's high-tech corporations say they use the H-1B program to bring the world's best and brightest to the U.S.

But is that how they really use the program? Only some of them do, according to Prof. Ron Hira of the Rochester Institute of Technology; the rest use it as a handy source of relatively low-cost talent.

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5. The E-Verify Glass Is Half Full

Excerpt: An evaluation of the E-Verify program conducted about two years ago has just been released. (The 338-page pdf is here.) It estimates, among other things, that about half of illegal aliens who were screened between April and June 2008 managed to foil the system and get approved for employment, and opponents of immigration enforcement are tickled pink. Chuck Schumer, who is taking the lead on amnesty, said 'This is a wake-up call to anyone who thinks E-Verify is an effective remedy to stop the hiring of illegal immigrants.' Likewise, former Kennedy staffer Marc Rosenblum said, 'Clearly it means it's not doing its No. 1 job well enough.'

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6. USCIS Starting to Do the Right Thing on H-1B? Some Promising Signs

Excerpt: Sometimes it is hard to tell the significance of a government document just by reading it.

Sometimes the true impact becomes clear only when the activists speak out. A case in point: the recent USCIS announcement regarding employer-employee relationships in the H-1B program.

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7. E-Verify Participating Employers

Excerpt: The Department of Homeland Security recently released the latest figures on E-Verify use by state, specifically the number of employers, worksites, and queries so far this fiscal year (since October 1, 2009), as of February 20, 2010.

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8. White House Plan Mum on Illegal Health Coverage

Excerpt: The White House unveiled its latest health reform scheme Monday, but the materials make no mention of whether it would cover or bar illegal aliens under various health programs or require enrollees' eligibility verification based on citizenship or immigrant status.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org.





1 March, 2010

E-Verify Is Much Stronger Than This Week's Negative News Reports -- But SAVE Act Needed

By Roy Beck

I hope very critical news reports about E-Verify this week did not shake your confidence in mandatory workplace verification. I will tell you there is more to the story, but also that the weaknesses in E-Verify are why we call for the passage of the SAVE Act which has extra provisions to combat identity fraud. . . . Mark Krikorian over at the Center for Immigration Studies summarizes the general tone of news stories this week:

An evaluation of the E-Verify program conducted about two years ago has just been released. (The 338-page pdf is here.) It estimates, among other things, that about half of illegal aliens who were screened between April and June 2008 managed to foil the system and get approved for employment, and opponents of immigration enforcement are tickled pink. Chuck Schumer, who is taking the lead on amnesty, said "This is a wake-up call to anyone who thinks E-Verify is an effective remedy to stop the hiring of illegal immigrants." Likewise, former Kennedy staffer Marc Rosenblum said, "Clearly it means it's not doing its No. 1 job well enough."

My NumbersUSA staff immediately provided these key points to me to put these news stories and the "new" study into perspective:

* This report uses old data (April-June, 2008); newer data gives E-Verify a lower error rate (though it hasn't been used to measure the success rate of catching unauthorized workers);

* Since June 2008, USCIS has been expanding their Photo Security Tool, which should greatly enhance E-Verify's ability to catch identity thieves;

* The SSA could close the ID Theft loophole almost entirely if it would simply notify workers with more than one employer making contributions to their social security account numbers and ask them to report if they were not actually working for each of those employers. SSA, however, has a policy of not informing the victims of identity theft.

It is this last point that may be the most important.

While NumbersUSA talks about the need for a universal mandate for using E-Verify, what we specifically urge is the passage of the SAVE Act (H.R. 3308 by Democrat Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina and S. 1505 by Democrat Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas).

The SAVE Act does require all employers to use E-Verify for all new hires and for all pre-existing employees. But it does much more, including requiring notification of every person whose social security number is being used at multiple workplaces. This, alongside improvements being made regularly in E-Verify, can largely deal with the identity theft issue that the old study in the news this week refers to.

The politicians and newspapers that have opposed passage of the SAVE Act are now out in full force this week suggesting that E-Verify should be scrapped because it doesn't do the things that we know the SAVE Act would handle. These critics have the gall to say we should have zero verification because the present system doesn't screen out 100% of the illegal aliens.

Krikorian has a couple of other comments that pointed to items in the report that the news stories missed:

This new report finds that only 9 percent of SSNs used nine times or more between 2004 and 2008 were kicked out by the system as illegal aliens; obviously, almost all of them were being misused by illegal aliens. As the authors noted, "it does not seem plausible to the evaluation team that only 9 percent of the cases in which workers used SSNs or A-numbers on the Transaction Database nine or more times were for unauthorized workers." This is why photos from green cards and Employment Authorization Documents now pop up when someone presents one of those (passport pics are coming online soon), and also why states need to provide driver's license photos when those documents are used (some states are resisting, even though they share with each other).

In other words, E-Verify needs a robust ID system underlying it, which is why Congress passed the REAL ID Act, which some states and open-borders interests are still resisting.

Finally, the report notes that "Mandating the use of E-Verify is expected to make the Program more effective in preventing unauthorized employment." Yes, it is. And the best example of such a mandate is Arizona, but its experience with the program was not assessed in this report; "the evaluation team did not have adequate data for estimating the impact of E-Verify on unauthorized employment in Arizona, the only state that has implemented E-Verify for all employers."

More than 110 Members of Congress have co-sponsored the SAVE Act. Check here to see if your three Members are on the list.

SOURCE



Britain's Tories need to talk about immigration

As the Tories prepare to head to the seaside, Tim Montgomerie has published a ten point plan to get the Tory campaign back on track. The plan is already causing much discussion in Tory circles. His main points are that the Tories need to sharpen their economic message, use William Hague more, sort out the structure of the campaign, warn of the dangers of a hung parliament and ram home to voters just how badly Labour has failed.

What is getting the most attention, though, is Tim’s suggestion that the Tories should talk about immigration. I tend to agree with Tim on this point. It was a strategic mistake in 2005 to talk about immigration so much but it would be an equally large mistake not to talk about it at all this time round. I also think that ‘detoxifying the brand’ has worked sufficiently for it to be easier for the Tories to get a hearing when they talk about this topic. However, the problem is that the Tories can’t start talking about immigration now; it would look like a panic response to the polls. But as soon as the Tory numbers go up and again, as I expect they will, they should take the opportunity to do a big speech on it. Andy Coulson’s instinct that Sayeeda Warsi is the best messenger for the Tories on this subject is sound.

There is one point on which I disagree with Tim, though. He says that the Tories should stop announcing new policies. My view is that they should carry on rolling out policy as it gives the campaign momentum and provides the positive part of the message to go alongside the concentration on Labour’s failings.

SOURCE








Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.


The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:

1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.

2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.

3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.

4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.

5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: You usually CAN buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.

6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.

I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.