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31 May, 2008

Some surprising help from a Democrat

As the "open borders" WSJ tells it

Republicans in Congress are usually to blame for blocking immigration reform. So it's worth noting that last week's effort to fix a broken guest-worker program for migrant farm workers died at the hands of a Democrat.

Earlier this month, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the Emergency Agricultural Relief Act with a bipartisan vote of 17 to 12. Introduced by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the measure would have modified the broken H-2A visa program for migrant farmhands by, among other things, streamlining the application process to encourage participation.

The amendment also would have given temporary legal status to the illegal farm workers already here if they passed a background check and met other requirements. No one wants to reward lawbreaking. But the reality is that an estimated three-quarters of the agriculture labor force is here illegally. Congress is kidding itself if it thinks Americans in an economy with 5% unemployment and better job opportunities would do this work if only these Mexicans would return home. The far more likely scenario is that growers will continue to move operations south of the border if they can't find labor in the U.S. at a price that allows growers to stay competitive.

In any case, we're now stuck with the status quo thanks to Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who objected on the Senate floor and thus had the reform struck from a larger spending bill. His office says he thwarted the reform because the "provisions were tilted in favor of businesses while doing too little to help immigrant workers." This is hard to believe, because the amendment had been negotiated with both growers and farm workers, which is why it had the support of industry groups like the American Farm Bureau, as well as labor outfits like the United Farm Workers of America.

The likely story is that Mr. Menendez was carrying water for Hispanic political activists who dislike this kind of piecemeal reform, even if it solves a genuine problem and would help millions of migrant workers. Such groups as the National Council of La Raza figure they can wait until next year when Democrats will probably run the entire government and they won't have to make any compromises on citizenship. They give immigration reformers a bad name. It's also possible Mr. Menendez was doing Majority Leader Harry Reid's handiwork by denying Republicans any achievement this year.

H-2A reform has been knocking around the Senate since 2006, and there's little doubt that it would pass if it ever got a Senate vote. Its failure, despite such support, is one more example of why voters so loathe Washington. Senator Menendez has now shown that GOP restrictionists aren't the only ones more interested in playing politics with immigration than in solving the problem.

Source



Sarkozy presses EU immigration, climate agenda in Vienna

French President Nicolas Sarkozy pressed his agenda for France's upcoming presidency of the European Union, including an immigration and a climate package, during a brief visit to Austria Friday. "We need immigration but we don't want illegal immigration," he told journalists during a joint press conference with Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer in Vienna.

Europe needs a common policy to ensure that all member states follow the same rules in accepting or rejecting asylum seekers, he said. "Is it normal that a political refugee can apply for asylum in 27 different countries? Is it normal that Austria can say no and France say yes, or vice versa?" he asked.

The two leaders also emphasized their agreement on other key priorities of France's six-month presidency, which starts on July 1, including climate change. The two countries traditionally disagree over nuclear power, which France favors but Austria is staunchly opposed to. But Sarkozy assured: "At the same time, we're both for cutting down greenhouse gas emissions." "Austria is following its path, France is following another path: we complement each other, we're not in opposition."

Gusenbauer said he was confident the French presidency would pass an EU climate package and move forward on immigration and transportation policies. "After years of looking inwards, it's important to address real burning questions" during France's term as head of the bloc, he said.

More here





30 May, 2008

Spanish Becoming the Primary Language in Miami

Melissa Green's mother spoke Spanish, but she never learned -- her father forbid it. Today, that's a frequent problem in this city where the English-speaking population is outnumbered. The 49-year-old flower shop owner and Miami native said her inability to speak "Espanol" makes it difficult to conduct business, seek help at stores and even ask directions. She finds it "frustrating." "It makes it hard for some people to find a job because they don't speak Spanish, and I don't think that it is right," said Green, who sometimes calls a Spanish-speaking friend to translate for customers who don't speak English. "Sometimes I think they should learn it," she said.

In many areas of Miami, Spanish has become the predominant language, replacing English in everyday life. Anyone from Latin America could feel at home on the streets, without having to pronounce a single word in English. In stores, shopkeepers wait on their clients in Spanish. Universities offer programs for Spanish speakers. And in supermarkets, banks, restaurants -- even at the post office and government offices -- information is given and assistance is offered in Spanish. In Miami, doctors and nurses speak Spanish with their patients and a large portion of advertising is in Spanish. Daily newspapers and radio and television stations cater to the Hispanic public.

But this situation, so pleasing to Latin American immigrants, makes some English speakers feel marginalized. In the 1950s, it's estimated that more than 80 percent of Miami-Dade County residents were non-Hispanic whites. But in 2006, the Census Bureau estimates that number was only 18.5 percent, and in 2015 it is forecast to be 14 percent. Hispanics now make up about 60 percent. "The Anglo population is leaving," said Juan Clark, a sociology professor at Miami Dade College. "One of the reactions is to emigrate toward the north. They resent the fact that (an American) has to learn Spanish in order to have advantages to work. If one doesn't speak Spanish, it's a disadvantage."

According to the Census, 58.5 percent of the county's 2.4 million residents speak Spanish -- and half of those say they don't speak English well. English-only speakers make up 27.2 percent of the county's residents. In the mainly Cuban city of Hialeah and in the Miami neighborhood of Little Havana, 94 percent of residents identified themselves as Hispanic.

Andrew Lynch, an expert on linguistics and bilingualism at the University of Miami, said that the presence of Spanish-speakers first became an issue in Miami-Dade County in the 1960s and '70s with the arrival of Cuban immigrants and intensified in the '80s with immigrants from not just Cuba, but Argentina, Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America. The exodus of English speakers soon followed.

James McCleary, his wife and two children left Miami in 1987 for Vermont, where he is now a farmer. McCleary, 58, said his inability to speak Spanish made it difficult for him to find work -- it once took seven months to get hired as a cook. "The job market was very tough. It was very, very difficult," he said. His wife, Lauren, was born and raised in Miami and they visit at least twice a year, but she feels that it's no longer her hometown. "I don't like being there anymore. It is very, very different," she said. "I cannot live there anymore, I can't speak their language." Nevertheless, she likes the diversity of the population of South Florida and regrets not learning Spanish in school.

Librarian Martha Phillips, 61, believes those who speak Spanish will continue to have more opportunities and she doesn't think that's necessarily fair. Phillips said she is sorry to see non-Spanish-speakers abandoning Miami, and said she's concerned that the area "will be like a branch of Latin America." "I do resent the fact that people seem to expect that the people who live here adjust to their ways, rather than learning English and making adjustments," she said. "Obviously I don't expect an older person to learn to speak English, but younger people come in and they don't seem to make much of an effort to learn to adapt to this country and they expect us to adapt to them."

Some Spanish speakers say they have their own trouble with those who only speak English. Mary Bravo, a 37-year-old Venezuelan business owner, moved to Miami nine years ago. She understands English but only speaks a little. "This land is theirs. We should try to speak English," she said, "but they don't even try to understand us."

Source



Swiss face controversial immigration vote

Swiss voters will decide on Sunday whether to back a controversial proposal that would give individual communities the authority to award Swiss passports. More than a fifth of Switzerland's 7.5 million residents are foreigners, according to Federal Statistics Office 2006 data, a higher proportion than almost any other European country and due in part to the difficulty of becoming a naturalized citizen.

A proposal by the populist Swiss People's Party (SVP), which has plastered the country with posters featuring yellow and black hands grabbing at Swiss passports, could make that process more difficult. The SVP is calling for the naturalization of immigrants to be decided by a popular vote in the commune where the immigrant lives, a procedure banned five years ago after a number of communities repeatedly blocked passport applications. "The decision about who should become Swiss or not must be able to be decided by the voters in the communities, they know the candidates better than courts or authorities," the SVP said in a statement.

But the SVP, Switzerland's most popular party with nearly 29 percent of the vote in last year's general election, faces an uphill struggle in this referendum, with 56 percent opposing the motion in the latest survey by polling organization gfs Bern. Opponents of the proposal say private details about applicants would have to be sent to thousands of voters if it were accepted. "This is a gross invasion of someone's private life. No Swiss person would tolerate this and strip themselves bare in front of their communities," the Social Democratic (SP) party said in a pre-referendum flyer.

The SVP is backed by billionaire industrialist Christoph Blocher and has increased its power over the last 10 years by focusing on worries about immigration. It has sent out literature detailing various crimes committed by immigrants who had been granted Swiss citizenship. The party drew accusations of racism by rights groups and the United Nations during last October's election campaign for its posters showing a black sheep being kicked off a Swiss flag by three white sheep.



And its latest campaign contrasts with publicity from the tourist board, welcoming hundreds of thousands of soccer fans who will travel in June to Switzerland and neighboring Austria for the Euro 2008 soccer tournament.

Source





29 May, 2008

MSNBC excuses fraud

Identity theft, defrauding the federal government, and illegal immigration are serious criminal matters. But if you're the Web editor for MSNBC.com, stolen Social Security numbers are merely "shared" with "undocumented workers" stuck in a web of "federal employment laws." From the subheadline for the front page tease to the May 27 edition of "Red Tape Chronicles"

Millions of Americans find themselves sharing Social Security identies with others, mostly undocumented workers looking to get around federal employment laws.

Of course, you're lucky if just one person is "sharing" your Social Security Number (SSN). MSNBC.com blogger Bob Sullivan noted one Chicago woman who had 37 other people fraudulently claiming her number. Yet at no point in his 33-paragraph post did Sullivan describe the claiming of other people's SSNs as "fraud." What's more, Sullivan turned to an "immigration rights advocate" who painted the illegal immigrant fraudsters themselves as victims:

San Diego-based immigration rights advocate Lilia Velasquez sees similar cases in her practice all the time. Imposters run the spectrum from hardened criminals who ultimately take out loans in the victim's name to well-intentioned Mexicans who are simply doing what they need to do to get a job and feed their families. "It's not that these people intentionally and maliciously stole someone's name and identity. ... They may feel that they are using the number out of sheer need," she said.

Source



South Carolina Lawmakers Compromise on Illegal Immigration Bill

The House and Senate have finally reached an agreement on an illegal immigration reform bill, and Governor Mark Sanford has indicated he will sign it into law. It still needs official approval from both bodies, but lawmakers who've been working on a compromise say that's just a formality at this point.

The sticking point for weeks has been how businesses would verify whether their workers are here legally. The House wanted businesses to use as an option E-Verify, a federal system for checking workers' status online. But the Senate wanted to create a new state version of a form similar to the federal I-9 form. Senators have now agreed with using E-Verify.

The bill will create a 24-hour telephone hotline and website to report illegal immigrants. It will require all employers to verify their employees' status by making sure they have a valid SC driver's license, a license from another state that has the same eligibility requirements as SC, or through the E-Verify system.

Employers with 500 or more workers will have to start complying by January 1, 2009. Those with between 100 and 500 employees will have to comply by July 1, 2009. Smaller businesses will have to comply by January 1, 2010.

The bill will also require verification for anyone seeking public assistance and bar illegal immigrants from attending public colleges and universities. It also will allow a lawsuit against any company that fires a legal worker for the purpose of hiring an illegal one.

Source





28 May, 2008

More than 300 L.A.-area arrests made in crackdown on immigration violations

In an ongoing push to deport immigration violators, federal officers have arrested more than 300 immigrants in the Los Angeles area in the last three weeks. The statewide operation resulted in the arrests of more than 900 immigrants, most of whom committed crimes, ignored deportation orders or returned to the U.S. after being removed, according to federal authorities. Half of those arrested have since been deported to their native countries, authorities said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has regularly sent out "fugitive operations" teams since the program's inception in 2003, but this was the first time all 13 teams in California had traveled the state together, said Brian DeMore, acting field office director of detention and removal operations in Los Angeles. A total of 905 immigrants were arrested, including 327 in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. "Overall it was a great success," DeMore said. Immigrants rights advocates criticized the operation, saying that many non-criminals were swept up. During the operation, from May 5 to May 23, arrestees included dozens who did not have criminal records or outstanding deportation orders.

"This is one of the most shameful things our government is doing," said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. "In many instances they don't get the people they are looking for, so one of the things they do to up their numbers is arrest bystanders."

Advocates also say that the immigrants' criminal records may be from decades earlier and that they are now working, paying taxes and contributing to society. Some were green card holders whose residence was revoked because of the crimes.

DeMore said the arrests are not random, but based on investigation. The teams target immigrants who may be a threat to national security or public safety. In the Los Angeles area, 244 of the people arrested had criminal records, ignored judges' orders or illegally reentered the country after deportation, according to the agency.

Immigration officials said among those arrested was a previously deported Mexican who was convicted in the 1990s of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14, and a Briton with convictions for burglary, robbery and forgery who had been ordered deported. "The officers in the field are focused on arresting fugitives and criminals and use discretion during their operations," DeMore said.

Some of those who had returned to the U.S. after being deported will be referred to the U.S. attorney's office for possible prosecution, he said. The people arrested were from throughout Mexico and Central America, as well as from countries in Europe and Asia.

There are 75 fugitive operations teams in the nation, and Congress has authorized adding 29 for fiscal year 2008-2009. Locally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to add a team in the San Fernando Valley and one in the Inland Empire.

Source



Another British absurdity: Illegal immigration 'fleet' has only one van

Government claims that illegal immigrants would be rounded up in a fleet of vans have been dismissed as "spin" after it emerged that just one "mobile detention unit" is currently in operation.

In January, Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, announced the radical measure to fight mass illegal immigration, claiming that a "fleet" of mobile detection vans would detain illegal immigrants on the spot when attempts to smuggle them into the country were foiled. The suspects would then be transported to detention centres.

However, six months on, Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, has learned that just one unit is currently in operation, in Poole in Dorset. Mr Green said: "Yet again, the Government is caught out talking tough but acting weak. Ministers wanted us to believe that a fleet of these vehicles would make a real difference to the fight against illegal immigration. "Now we know there is only one, based in an area which is not the busiest point of entry. "After 11 years of this Government, they have still failed to get to grips with border protection.''

Mobile detection units were promoted by ministers as a way to avoid a repeat of a number of embarrassing incidents in which illegal immigrants were apprehended but, instead of being detained, released to make their own way to detention centres - often failing to arrive.

Ministers suggested that after a trial at ports on the "south coast", units would be rolled out across the country, beginning with Northamptonshire. In March, Mr Byrne said that the enforcement budget for detaining bogus arrivals would be doubled, repeating the promise to send out a "fleet" of mobile detention vans.

But in response to a request last week as to how many units were now in operation, Mr Byrne replied in a written parliamentary answer: "UK Borders Agency recently piloted the use of a short-term holding facility at small south coast sea ports, primarily Poole. During this period, the merit of using this type of facility for both pre-planned operations and to apprehend illegal immigrants was considered. "A version of this vehicle, informed by the earlier pilot but with a different specification, is currently being developed to meet the needs of our enforcement teams." Mr Byrne added that the new vehicle would be in operation in Northamptonshire by this autumn.

Source





27 May, 2008

Australia: Increasingly popular immigration destination for Indians

I am rather surprised that the numbers given below are as small as they are. You see Indians all the time in Australia and there are heaps of excellent Indian restaurants. Perhaps there are a lot of illegals from India in Australia too. Hindus and Sikhs work hard, keep their heads down and have that famous Indian politeness so attract minimal adverse attention. It might also be noted that there have been Indians in Australia since the earliest times. A Sikh wearing a turban but speaking with an Australian accent is not at all unknown. I spoke to one at breakfast yesterday, in fact. He is a man of great good humour, as Sikhs often are in my experience

Australia, with its liberal immigration policies and growing opportunities, is becoming an increasingly popular destination for Indians wishing to live and work abroad. According to the Australian statistics bureau, the number of Indian immigrants entering the country every year has been increasing -- from just over 5,000 in 2001 to 13,500 in 2007. In fact, the total population of Australian residents of Indian origin has almost doubled since the new millennium, from 104,000 in 2001 to 200,000 in 2007.

One of the possible reasons for this trend is Australia's liberal immigration system -- especially its skilled migration policies. While many nations require a job offer, labor market tests, and/or strict quotas before admitting overseas workers, Australia's General Skilled Migration (GSM) program allows entry for skilled migrants based upon their experience and qualifications in a long list of occupations. Working in Australia has never been easier.

The so-called Skilled Occupation List covers a wide range of professional specialties such as health care workers, computer specialists, and engineers, to trade occupations such as locksmiths, welders, and electricians.

In their application for skilled immigration, people are awarded points based upon their skills in their nominated occupation for which they plan to find a job in Australia. Age and English language ability also play an important part in the GSM program; however, the age requirement is fairly liberal. Skilled migrants are required to be from 18 to 45 years of age at the time of their application under the GSM.

Applicants must also have at least "competent" English ability (an overall band score of 6 on an IELTS test) unless the applicant's nominated occupation is a trade occupation. For trade occupations, "vocational" English is sufficient.

Source



Attacks on immigrants in Rome too now

The anger in Italy has mainly been fueled by the high crime-rate among Gypsies and Africans so it is sad to see Bengalis being attacked too. Most Bengalis are Muslims, however, so that is not exactly endearing. That some of the gang-members mentioned were wearing swastikas should not get anyone too excited. Nazism has never been well-regarded by Italians. The gangs are largely the work of the crime-bosses and the swastikas are probably just to divert attention from that

Balaclava-clad gangs, some wearing bandanas emblazoned with swastikas, smashed shop windows with iron bars and baseball bats and beat up shopkeepers in a hitherto bohemian neighbourhood of Rome. Members of the gangs shouted "Get out, bastard foreigners" as they attacked Bengali shopkeepers in the explosion of xenophobic violence.

Gianni Alemanno, the capital's new right-wing Mayor, condemned the attacks, which took place in the eastern suburb of Pigneto, an area with a reputation for tolerance, on Saturday night.

Local residents also condemned the violence, saying that it must have been perpetrated by outsiders. One shopkeeper, however, said he had recognised one of the youths, who earlier had accused him of harbouring a fellow Asian who had allegedly stolen a purse.

Opponents blamed the new centre-right Government for allowing what they described as a climate of xeno-phobia to flourish across the country.

The new Government of Silvio Berlusconi last week announced a crackdown on illegal immigration and street crime at a Cabinet meeting held in Naples. Roberto Maroni, the Interior Minister, who is deputy leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League, said that the Government was responding to the concern of Italians over immigration and personal security.

He said that the Government condemned vigilante attacks on immigrants, including arson attacks on Roma Gypsy camps.

Source





26 May, 2008

Swift Justice After Postville Raids

Out of 389 people captured at the Agriprocessors plant, 270 have been sentenced to five months imprisonment for fraudulent use of documents to procure work authorization. Those are just the criminal proceedings. The whole bunch will be removed after they've served their sentences. Why so fast?

The unusually swift proceedings, in which 297 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced in four days, were criticized by criminal defense lawyers, who warned of violations of due process. Twenty-seven immigrants received probation. The American Immigration Lawyers Association protested that the workers had been denied meetings with immigration lawyers and that their claims under immigration law had been swept aside in unusual and speedy plea agreements.

The illegal immigrants, most from Guatemala, filed into the courtrooms in groups of 10, their hands and feet shackled. One by one, they entered guilty pleas through a Spanish interpreter, admitting they had taken jobs using fraudulent Social Security cards or immigration documents. Moments later, they moved to another courtroom for sentencing.

The illegals (note my shock that the N.Y. Times doesn't bother with any euphemisms) were offered the opportunity to plead guilty on these lesser charges. Those that refused were told they would be prosecuted for aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory two-year minimum sentence.

"Catch and release" is being replaced with a zero-tolerance policy aimed at punishing illegal immigrants for criminal violations in addition to imposing the usual civil immigration penalties. The criminal sentences will at least break up the usual cycle wherein an illegal is caught, ordered removed, brought to the other side of the border around noon, and is resting comfortably back at home by evening. I suspect this bunch thought that they'd do just that; many initially claimed to be from Mexico (when in fact they are largely from Guatemala) so as to make the trip back easier. More prosecutions may be pending:

No charges have been brought against managers or owners at Agriprocessors, but there were indications that prosecutors were also preparing a case against the company. In pleading guilty, immigrants had to agree to cooperate with any investigation.

Also, a story came out of the Jewish press yesterday about possible grand jury proceedings related to Agriprocessors.

It is unclear whether Wahls has been called as a witness or as a potential target of a government investigation. A spokesperson for the Northern Iowa U.S. Attorney's Office would neither confirm or deny that a grand jury has been convened in connection with the Postville raid. "The obvious thing to say is that they're building a case against the Rubashkins themselves," said Marc Stern, general counsel to the American Jewish Congress.

An R.W. was named in the original government affidavit that laid the legal groundwork for last week's raid at Agriprocessors, which netted 389 illegal immigrants. R.W. is alleged to have carried an envelope of cash with which he paid undocumented Agiprocessors employees. Wahls told the Des Moines Register that he is probably the R.W. named in the affidavit.

Agriprocessors, its owners, and its managers will likely face prosecution for multiple violations of environmental and labor laws in addition to immigration-related crimes.

Source



New Zealand: 'Islanders drain on economy' report under investigation

New Zealand has a lot of Polynesian immigrants from Pacific islands -- such as the Cook Islands. What is said about them in the report mentioned below is common comment in NZ but mentioning it in public is obviously incorrect:

"An academic report describing Pacific Islanders as a drain on the economy is to be investigated by the Race Relations Commissioner. Commissioner Joris de Bres said today that the commission hosted a meeting yesterday attended by academics, community members and analysts from government departments. Significant concerns were raised over the academic rigour of the Massey University report, he told Radio New Zealand.

Mr de Bres, who will issue terms of reference for the investigation, said the report had resulted in a significant amount of prejudice vented over the internet and on talk-back radio. A Massey University spokesperson said the university welcomed the review and expected staff members to make submissions.

The report is part of a three-year study, Growing Pains: Evaluations and the Cost of Human Capital, based on data from the Economic Development Ministry, Labour Department and Pacific Island Affairs Ministry. Headed by economist Greg Clydesdale, of Massey University's management and international business department, the study is due to be presented at conference in Brazil in July.

The report said Pacific Island immigrants were less productive and less likely to contribute to economic growth. They had the highest unemployment in every age group, were less likely to start businesses, had lower rates of self-employment and were over-represented in crime statistics.

Source

We all know that truth is no defense these days, of course.





25 May, 2008

900 nabbed in CA on immigration charges

Federal immigration officers arrested more than 900 people in California on immigration violations this month, almost half of them in Northern California, officials said Friday. Fugitive operations teams with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 441 arrests in the northern part of the state. Of those, 178 were targeted individuals who had either ignored final orders of deportation or who returned to the United States illegally after being deported. The other 263 were people encountered in the course of making the arrests who did not have legal authorization to be in the country, ICE officials said.

Roughly 1 in 5 of the people arrested had felony or misdemeanor criminal convictions, according to the agency. They included a 31-year-old Sacramento man with a record of transporting and selling heroin and a 41-year-old man from Watsonville with convictions for spousal rape and burglary. Both men had been previously deported and had returned to the United States.

Among those arrested in the Bay Area were 17 people in San Rafael taken into custody at their homes early Thursday, of whom four were targeted by immigration officials, said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice.

The San Rafael arrests sent fear through Mexican and Central American communities, which include many undocumented immigrants. Three San Rafael schools reported scores of student absences Thursday, including San Pedro Elementary School, which canceled its open house Thursday night because families were afraid to attend, district officials said.

San Pedro's principal, Kathryn Gibney, had testified before Congress two days earlier at a hearing on the emotional impact of immigration raids on children.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, who chaired the hearing, contacted senior ICE officials Friday to express concern over the raids and suggest that current voluntary humanitarian guidelines covering workplace immigration raids should be mandatory for all ICE actions.

Kice emphasized that ICE did not make any arrests at schools. "Our goal in making all these arrests is to involve as few third parties as possible," she said. "That's one reason we endeavor to make these arrests at residences."

Source



Australia: Asylum review under attack from do-gooders

IMMIGRATION Minister Chris Evans yesterday announced the first results of the Government's efforts to speed up the processing of asylum-seekers, with those allowed to stay slightly outnumbering those being deported. The announcement drew criticism from asylum support groups, who fear for the fate of the thousands of people claiming to be political refugees.

Senator Evans recently reviewed the cases of 72 people in immigration detention for more than two years. Of those, 24 have or will be removed because Senator Evans believes they have "no valid reason to be in Australia". Five of the people have already been deported while steps are being taken to "fast-track" the removal of the remaining 19. Of the others whose cases were reviewed, 31 people were granted visas or considered for visa grants pending health and security checks. A further 17 people were subject to ongoing proceedings, meaning their cases could not be resolved now.

"I have personally reviewed all of these cases individually and sought to apply a range of measures to progress, if not resolve, their immigration status," Senator Evans said. "Underpinning my decisions in all of these cases are the principles that indefinite detention is not acceptable and that those people who have no right to be in Australia are to be removed promptly."

Government sources suggest Senator Evans, who is keen to promote skilled immigration to fulfil some acute labour needs, is also eager to show the Government is tough on those who claim asylum but cannot prove a valid case. A departmental spokesman said that as of last week, of the total protection visa applicants who had made an initial application for asylum, 58 were in detention. "An additional 26 people are in detention who have made an initial application for protection and are awaiting departmental decisions," spokesman Sandi Logan said. But Mr Logan said a further 2157 people who had lodged an initial protection visa were living in the community, many with the right to work.

Refugee groups yesterday called on Senator Evans to reconsider his decision to carry out further deportations of long-term detainees. "Forced deportations are not in line with a compassionate refugee policy," said Ian Rintoul, spokesman for the Refugee Action Coalition. "Australia has an obligation not to return asylum-seekers to danger."

Source





24 May, 2008

ACLU: Police Enforcing Immigration Laws 'Terrorize' America

The ACLU are zealous about enforcing to the extreme any law that suits them but the law is totally irrelevant when it does not suit them. They are a psychopathic organization -- with the principles, ethics and morality of a cockroach

State and local police who help enforce federal immigration laws are targeting Latinos and "terrorizing" people across the United States, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said at a briefing on Capitol Hill on Monday.

"Local law enforcement has been given the green light to engage in racial profiling," Joanne Lin, a legislative counsel with the ACLU, said at the briefing held by the Appleseed Foundation, a non-profit network of 16 public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico. "Massive immigration sweeps are terrorizing communities across the country, including those who are U.S. citizens, permanent residents and other lawful workers," she stated.

Lin, on a panel with five other speakers, said the ACLU opposes section 287(g) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which allows the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division to enter into partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, in which local officers are authorized to operate as federal immigration agents. The designated police officers have been trained and are under the supervision of ICE officers.

"It's always been the ACLU's position that immigration is exclusively a federal law," Lin said. "Our view is that it's not the appropriate constitutional use of state and local power."

But Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief of The Cato Supreme Court Review, said there is nothing unconstitutional about states cooperating with the federal government. "The government cannot force states to cooperate, but if it's done voluntarily, there is nothing unconstitutional about that," Shapiro said.

In 2007, ICE removed more than 280,000 people who were in the United States illegally, and Pat Reilly, public affairs officer with the agency, said that twice that number are expected to be repatriated by the end of 2008 -- with the continuing success of the partnership between Homeland Security and state and local police.

"The cross-designation between ICE and state and local patrol officers, detectives, investigators and correctional officers working in conjunction with ICE allows these local and state officers the necessary resources and latitude to pursue investigations relating to violent crimes, human smuggling, gang/organized crime activity, sexual-related offences, narcotic smuggling and money laundering," Reilly said.

At Monday's briefing, Lin spoke about the federal lawsuit filed against the Department of Homeland Security and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department by the ACLU and the family on behalf of Pedro Guzman, the Associated Press reported. Guzman is a mentally disabled man who was arrested for trespassing, had no identification and was deported to Mexico.

Guzman, who is a U.S. citizen, was found by relatives near a border crossing almost three months later. When asked by Cybercast News Service if Guzman was an isolated case or if the ACLU had statistics showing how many U.S. citizens are mistakenly deported, Lin said she did not have any numbers but suspected there were other such cases

Source



Two million Britons emigrate in 10 years

Two million British citizens have left the UK in a decade, the greatest exodus from this country in almost a century, new figures will show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) will release figures showing that more than 200,000 Britons emigrated during 2006. That will take the total number who left the country between 1997 and 2006 to 1.97 million. Another 1.58 million foreign nationals resident in Britain left during the same period. However, 3.9 million foreigners arrived over the decade, including more than 500,000 in 2006.

The body will publish the raft of immigration figures on Tuesday, as MPs prepare to dismiss the national statisticians' data as "not fit for purpose" and demand an overhaul of the way population movements are measured. On Thursday, the Treasury sub-committee of the House of Commons will conclude that the lack of reliable and up-to-date figures for immigrant populations is hampering Government policy both nationally and locally.

ONS figures only go back to 1991, but some historians say the departure of two million Britons in a decade is almost unparalleled in the country's history. According to figures compiled by Jay Winter, of Yale University, the last comparable exodus came between 1911 and 1914, when 2.4 million people left Britain. The other significant spike in emigration came in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when thousands of Britons left to start new lives in Australia, Canada and the United States.

The Institute for Public Policy Research, a think-tank, has estimated that there are more than 5.5 million British citizens living abroad. Jill Rutter, a senior migration researcher at the IPPR, said the recent exodus marked "probably the greatest period of emigration we've ever seen". She said: "A lot of this is people retiring abroad, which is a relatively new phenomenon and is only possible because we are all better off . "There is also a much more internationalised labour market and workforce - it is now quite commonplace for people to go abroad to work for a year or more." Immigrants who come to this country, gain citizenship and then leave also add to the total of British emigrants.

Opposition parties say that some emigrants have been driven out of Britain by its high levels of crime and taxation. "This explosion in emigration is inevitably a reflection of the state of the country under a Labour government," said David Davis, the shadow home secretary.

Source





23 May, 2008

Illegal Aliens and Identity Theft

Identity-theft amnesty:

As everyone knows, America is experiencing an epidemic of identity theft. In the last five years alone, complaints to the Federal Trade Commission from U.S. residents who have had their identity stolen have skyrocketed 60 percent, to 258,427 in 2007-one-third of all consumer fraud complaints that the commission receives.

What's less well understood, however, is how illegal immigration is helping to fuel this rash of crime. Seeking access to jobs, credit, and driver's licenses, many undocumented aliens are using the personal data of real Americans on forged documents. The immigrants' identity theft has become so pervasive that the need to combat it is "a disturbing front in the war against illegal immigration," according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The FTC's latest statistics help show why. The top five states in terms of reported identity theft in 2007 all have large immigrant populations-the border states of Arizona, California, and Texas, as well as Florida and Nevada. People who pilfer legitimate identities in these states are much more likely than in other parts of the country to use them to gain employment unlawfully-the most common reason that illegal aliens steal personal information. In Arizona, for instance, 36 percent of all identity theft is for employment purposes, compared with only 5 percent in Maine, a state with far fewer illegal aliens. "To many law enforcement leaders in Arizona, this suggests that Arizona's identity-theft epidemic is directly linked to the problem of illegal immigration," says a recent report by Identity Theft 911, an Arizona company that helps businesses and individuals protect themselves.

Part of the "Path to Citizenship" legislation that Pelosi and company are attempting to piggyback on the war funding supplemental is this:

Illegals receive immunity for any Social Security fraud if they worked under a fake or stolen Social Security number. They'd get their own SSN. They don't have to pay any back taxes owed on illegal employment.

It comes with tax-fraud amnesty, too . . . unless you've held your job legally. I recommend that you familiarize yourself with this pile of crap in detail.

Really, this ties in nicely with Darleen's post from earlier today, regarding the California court's decision against the public's referendum-expressed preference for a traditional definition of "marriage" within the state. These people don't give a rat's ass about what the public wants in this instance, either. A little felony fraud? No big deal. It's not as though they were citizens when they committed it.

It costs $250 bucks. Not quite as hard as putting in several years of service in the US military, mind you. But there you have it. That's what Nancy Pelosi and company think US citizenship is worth.

UPDATE: Per Malkin, the bill has been stripped due to pressure brought to bear on Reid. Here's more about the proposed legislation, which isn't going away until we start throwing the bums out.

Source



Who Pays? New Study Considers Cost of Foreign Students

Press release from CIS [center@cis.org] below

Lobbying groups frequently claim that foreign students are a benefit to America's balance of payments, comparable to a booming export sector. For instance, the Institute for International Education (IIE) asserts that foreign students contributed a net $14.5 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2006-07 school year by paying for tuition and living expenses with resources from abroad, representing a net inflow of nearly $25,000 per year, every year, from the average foreign student.

To assess these claims, the Center for Immigration Studies has published a new Backgrounder, "Who Pays? Foreign Students Do Not Help with Balance of Payments," written by immigration researcher David North. Acknowledging other, non-financial reasons the United States might benefit from admitting foreign students, North examines the most recent IIE report on foreign students' monetary contributions and compares it to two other studies on the subject. His report finds that the balance-of-payments claim is totally without merit.

The complete report is available online here and includes the following findings:

# The IIE assumes that the only cost to the domestic sources is tuition. However, partially hidden subsidies from U.S. sources, such as endowments and taxpayer contributions to state schools, are not taken into consideration.

# The IIE report relies on questionable data collection techniques, using foreign student advisers as a primary source for determining whether students' funding originated overseas or domestically. In the most recent year, little more than half of the foreign student advisers surveyed even responded to the survey's question on the origin of students' resources.

# While the IEE claims that two-thirds or more of foreign students' funding comes from abroad - i.e., money pumped into the U.S. economy from abroad - other, more rigorous studies that surveyed the students themselves have produced very different results. In prior research, the author found that only 10.4 percent of the foreign students' incomes came from overseas, the rest coming from U.S. sources. A multi-agency survey of doctoral students found that only 9.7 percent of foreign students' resources came from overseas.





22 May, 2008

Number of new British citizens under Labour Party rule hits 1.2m mark

A record number of foreigners became British citizens last year, bringing the total since Labour came to power to almost 1.2 million, according to figures published yesterday. Three quarters of those getting a British passport came from Asia and Africa with the main nationalities being Indian, Philippine, Afghan, South African and Pakistani. The figure is 7 per cent up on the previous year and was the highest number ever granted in any year.

A series of reports released in Whitehall showed that 164,635 foreigners became British citizens last year, which followed a slump in numbers in 2006. The increase in the number of immigrants obtaining citizenship comes despite a drive by the Government to make it more difficult for people to become British. In 2005 a Britishness test was introduced that makes foreigners take a multiple-choice test before being granted citizenship.

The Home Office said that reasons for the increase in 2007 were not clear but suggested that speedier decision making had reduced the backlog of applicants. More than 2,300 applicants were refused a passport because they had insufficient knowledge of English or failed the test on life in Britain.

Damien Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, said: "These figures are extraordinary. Given the Government's proven record at granting passports to people like Muktar Ibrahim Said - ringleader of the July 21 plot - the public will be alarmed that passports are being handed out at such a rate. Given the Government's ineptitude, how can they guarantee they are being granted to suitable people? This shows why it is essential our border controls are tightened."

Nationalities with the largest number of citizens were Indian with 14,490, Philippine 10,840, South African 8,150, Afghan 10,555 and Pakistani 8,140.

While record numbers of people took citizenship, separate figures showed that the number of people who left the country in 2006 hit a record of 400,000. More than half were British citizens, of whom almost one third went to live in Australia and New Zealand, a quarter to Spain or France and about one in twelve to the US.

An estimated 591,000 people came to Britain, resulting in net immigration in 2006 running at 191,000. Net immigration of New Commonwealth citizens was 115,000 and was the highest of all foreign citizenship groups coming to the country. Citizens from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka made up 80 per cent of net migrants. By comparison net immigration from the Old Commonwealth - Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa - fell to 20,000 and from other countries dropped to 81,000.

London was the most common destination for immigrants with almost 30 per cent saying that the capital was where they intended to stay. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) admitted: "However, immigration has become increasingly dispersed across the UK compared with previous years."

Two other sets of figures produced by the ONS highlighted the changes caused by the scale of immigration since Labour came to power. Figures for people coming to the country for less than a year have been dramatically revised upwards by 23 per cent for 2003-04 and by 22 per cent in 2004-05. An estimated 1.1 million short-term migrants came to Britain in 2004 and 1.2 million in 2005. This means that estimated immigration including both short and long-term migration was almost 1.5 million in 2004 and 1,750,00 in 2005.

The ONS also produced figures showing that 12.5 per cent of total employment is made up of non-British-born workers. The figures showed that in the first three months of 1997 the workforce comprised 24.3 million UK-born people and 1.9 million non-UK-born compared with the same period this year of 25.8 million and 3.7 million respectively.

Source



Britain: Fewer failed asylum-seekers sent home

Asylum applications rose in the first three months of the year and the number of failed applicants removed from the country fell, government figures published yesterday show. Britain received the largest number of asylum applications in Europe during the same period. Applications increased by 16 per cent to 6,595 in the first quarter of the year, compared with 5,680 in the same period last year. The number of failed applicants removed from the country fell by 13 per cent. The number of applications in the whole of 2007-08 was higher than for the previous year and the number of removals was lower.

The figures are a blow to the Government and indicate that the drive to remove foreign prisoners who have served their sentence has been at the expense of removing failed asylum applicants. Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, said that an overhaul of border security was producing results with "asylum applications falling again". He was referring to a 1 per cent fall in the first quarter of this year compared with the final quarter of last year. When compared with the same quarter of last year, there is a 16 per cent rise.

Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, said: "This undermines the Government's pledge to remove more failed asylum-seekers than arrive, let alone to make inroads into the massive backlog." A separate set of figures showed that the number of migrants from eight Eastern European states was slowing down.

Source





21 May, 2008

Illegal immigration and identity theft

Post below recycled from Fausta. See the original for links

A couple of years ago I watched a report on Univision or Telemundo (I forget which at this point) where the reporter interviewed a woman, an illegal alien from a Central American country. The woman, who apparently was not employed, lived in a grand style. She was youngish (late twenties - early thirties?) and good looking, nicely dressed.

Her apartment looked like something out of the Pottery Barn catalogue. When asked about how did she earn the money for living in such style, she actually stated that she had done it by charging it to stolen credit cards. She felt that she was owned that lifestyle and had every right to take was she felt was her due.

By the time the report was over I was furious. There had to be hundreds like her. Unfortunately I didn't have the time or resources to investigate. Steven Malanga, however, has been looking into the issue and has an excellent article at City Journal, "Illegal in More Ways than One". Identity theft in America goes hand and hand with illegal immigration:

As everyone knows, America is experiencing an epidemic of identity theft. In the last five years alone, complaints to the Federal Trade Commission from U.S. residents who have had their identity stolen have skyrocketed 60 percent, to 258,427 in 2007- one-third of all consumer fraud complaints that the commission receives. What's less well understood, however, is how illegal immigration is helping to fuel this rash of crime. Seeking access to jobs, credit, and driver's licenses, many undocumented aliens are using the personal data of real Americans on forged documents. The immigrants' identity theft has become so pervasive that the need to combat it is "a disturbing front in the war against illegal immigration," according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The FTC's latest statistics help show why. The top five states in terms of reported identity theft in 2007 all have large immigrant populations - the border states of Arizona, California, and Texas, as well as Florida and Nevada. People who pilfer legitimate identities in these states are much more likely than in other parts of the country to use them to gain employment unlawfully - the most common reason that illegal aliens steal personal information. In Arizona, for instance, 36 percent of all identity theft is for employment purposes, compared with only 5 percent in Maine, a state with far fewer illegal aliens. "To many law enforcement leaders in Arizona, this suggests that Arizona's identity-theft epidemic is directly linked to the problem of illegal immigration," says a recent report by Identity Theft 911, an Arizona company that helps businesses and individuals protect themselves.

Government investigations have only begun to uncover the extent of the crime wave. When ICE agents raided six Swift meat-processing plants in December 2006, they found widespread evidence of fraud involving the use of real people's identities; the feds eventually charged 148 illegal aliens in the case with crimes related to identity theft. In the first year and a half after Arizona created a special unit to deal with identity theft, investigators said that they were able to purchase more than 1,000 phony documents that made use of real people's identities. A so-called three-pack - a Social Security card, a driver's license, and a permanent-resident card - costs on average just $160 in the state.

How is it done?

One disturbing theory: health-care employees with access to children's files are working for organized gangs that trade in illegal documents and are willing to pay richly for the data. "We have a major problem with workers in medical offices stealing patients' identities, selling them and making a direct profit," Sergeant James Bracke of the Phoenix Police Department told authors of the Arizona report. The gangs can afford these bribes because identity theft has become such a big business. In Phoenix, "coyotes," the smugglers who lead illegal immigrants over our borders, have created a network of phony-document producers and safe houses where undocumented workers can wait until they get their fraudulent papers.

Where to start? Through local law enforcement. Until local police departments are trained and willing to fight this crime, it will continue to expand. And illegal aliens involved should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.



Leftist opposition to immigration in Australia

In Australia, opposition to non-British immigration has historically emanated from the labor unions and the guy reported below is that most fierce kind of unionist: A Scotsman. He has all the hatred of "the bosses" that you expect from that. I think highly of Scotland and the Scots (I even go to a Scots kirk) but there is no denying the instinctive socialism that is so prevalent in Scotland. Cameron is one of the most Leftist people in Australian public life

Unionist and New South Wales Senator-elect Doug Cameron is warning that the influx of migrant labour into Australia could lead to a racist backlash. Mr Cameron points to the increase in foreign labour in Britain as a factor in the rise of the British National Party at the recent UK local elections, and he is urging the Government and business to carefully manage immigration to avoid a similar trend here. He says Australia needs to learn from the US and the UK, where the British National Party now holds more than 50 local council seats.

Mr Cameron enters the Senate on July 1. He says cases of mistreatment of foreign workers in the 457 visa scheme have raised concerns there may be a backlash against immigrant labour in Australia. "In the UK, the British National Party have used this issue of migration to build a support base for an extreme right wing group and I don't want to see that happen within Australia," he said. "The Labor Party has got long experience and good experience at managing multiculturalism and the migration scheme and it is very important that the Labor Party handles this sensitively, smartly and doesn't give any opening for any racist views arising from the introduction of this increased migrant intake."

Mr Cameron believes an increase in foreigners working in the construction, manufacturing and hospitality sectors could create resentment among the community and that the immigrant labour scheme must be properly managed. "If it is done sensibly, if workers are treated as human beings and not just some economic commodity, then I think we can manage this," he said. "I am just raising the concerns that have been raised right around the world and we can't be immune from what academics and the press are saying is happening all around the world - and that is a backlash against this immigration."

But Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Peter Anderson says Mr Cameron's concerns about a possible backlash are inflammatory. "We need in Australia to recognise that we are part of a global economy," he said. "Capital is global and labour is global. What Australia needs is a sensible and rational debate about migration policy. "Migration policy needs to move with the social and economic times and any suggestion that we can't have a sensible debate without fuelling xenophobia is really silly."

Mr Anderson is confident that good leadership will avert resentment of foreign workers in the community. "[We have] good leadership amongst our community leaders and our political leaders and for that matter from our business leaders," he said. "What it means is making sure that we don't add to the tone of a discussion a hysterical element, that we ensure we not only have balanced policies, but we explain the balance of those policies to the community."

Immigration Minister Chris Evans has also rejected Mr Cameron's fears of a backlash against foreign workers. "I think the reality is that Australia has matured about those issues," he said. "Australia is a country of migrants and it is a country that has accepted large scale migration over the years - provided people settle well and provided that people are convinced that people coming into the country are needed for the growth of the economy, and that they are not undercutting Australian wages and conditions."

Source





20 May, 2008

Illegals unpopular in South Africa too



VIOLENT attacks against immigrants in South Africa have killed 12 people with rioters claiming foreigners are responsible for rising crime levels and low employment opportunites. Photographs supplied by local newspapers captured horrific images of a man who was set on fire after a tyre soaked in gasoline was put around his neck, the Associated Press reported. There was no immediate word on his condition

Hundreds of foreigners have taken refuge in police stations and churches as the violence against them spread further across poor townships. Some South Africans, especially those living in poor areas of high unemployment, accuse Zimbabweans and other newcomers of fuelling the high crime rate and taking scarce jobs. The attacks have renewed the authorities' fears that xenophobia is on the rise in a country which was once known as one of the most welcoming to immigrants and asylum seekers, especially from Africa.

Local radio said angry mobs had at first attacked houses owned by immigrants from neighbouring Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other countries in Alexandra township. But now these attacks had spread to other settlements and Johannesburg's city centre. Properties had been looted and destroyed. "There have been some incidents in the Alexandra area where police opened fire using rubber bullets to disperse crowds," police spokesman Govindsamy Mariemuthoo said on local radio. "There've been problems also in the East Rand. In the Boksburg area some shacks have been set alight," he added. Mr Mariemuthoo was not reachable for further comment.

The anti-foreigner violence has rattled authorities and the business community, and President Thabo Mbeki urged police to move quickly to find the instigators. "It's necessary to move as quickly as possible to establish all the causes and the players in all of this, so that we can then deal with the matter more effectively," he said on national broadcaster SABC radio. "The communities ... should act together with the police and together we should say this is very, very wrong. It is unacceptable that there should be this kind of violence."

Medical rights group Medecins Sans Frontieres said the situation now amounted to a humanitarian crisis. "I have been to many refugee camps and situations and this definitely is along those lines," spokesman Eric Goemaere told SAPA news agency. "This reminds me of a refugee situation. I have treated bullet wounds, beaten people, rape victims and the people are terrified."

The violence has also affected businesses owned by immigrants from Asian countries like Pakistan. An estimated 3 million Zimbabweans have fled to South Africa as a result of the political and economic crisis at home.

Source



U.S. Senate panel adds immigration measure to Iraq supplemental

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday added to an Iraq spending bill a controversial provision to help pave the way for undocumented agriculture workers to win legal status, a move that may reopen the divisive immigration debate on the Senate floor.

The so-called Ag-Jobs amendment, sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho), would create a process that allows undocumented workers to continue to work on farms. Without the amendment, Feinstein warned that the U.S. would lose $5-9 billion to foreign competition, tens of thousands of farms would shut down and 80,000 workers would be transferred to Mexico. The bill would sunset in five years.

"Agriculture needs a consistent workforce," Feinstein said. "Without it, they can't plant, they can't prune, they can't pick and they can't pack. "This is an emergency situation," she added.

The amendment was approved by a 17-12 vote with defections from both parties. Critics say the amendment amounts to amnesty for people who entered the country illegally. A broader comprehensive immigration overhaul, with a path for citizenship for the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, failed in a divisive Senate vote last year.

"No matter how one characterizes it, this enormous amendment still amounts to amnesty," said Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). "I oppose amnesty. All these immigration issues should be addressed through the regular order."

The committee is moving Thursday to approve three separate measures: one to fund domestic priorities; another to provide $169 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and a third to alter President Bush's war policy. The Senate plans to take up the bills next week, and is likely to reject the war policy measure, but will likely approve the funding for the wars.

It is unclear whether Democrats have the votes to approve the domestic-spending provision since a number of Republicans want to add their priorities. The measure remains one of the few vehicles likely to get enacted before the election in November. The addition of a slew of amendments could doom its prospects in the Senate.

Source





19 May, 2008

England feels pinch as Poles depart

Renata Drag sells champagne at 20 pounds ($42) a glass in an upmarket cafe in London's ritzy Kensington but she has something in common with hundreds of thousands of other Poles working in building sites, farms and hotels across Britain. She is going home.

Just four years after Britain was caught by surprise by a massive influx of workers from Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, the mostly young immigrants are turning around in large numbers and leaving Britain. Tabloid newspaper headlines that once agonised about the flood of immigrants from the newly expanded European Union taking British jobs are now warning darkly that there will be nobody left to pick fruit, clear tables and build stadiums for the 2012 London Olympics.

"I really like London and I have improved my English working here but things are getting a lot better back in Poland now," said 24-year-old Drag, who plans to go home to Cracow and look for work in international tourism. "Wages are really going up in Poland and the pound is getting weaker so it is harder to save good money in London. "Lots of my friends have left and now they are getting good jobs at home because they have learned good English and got good experience here."

The Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK estimates that about a million workers from Poland and the seven other eastern and central European countries that joined the EU in 2004 shifted to Britain, the only large EU economy that kept its labour market open to the new entrants. That shift has been one of the world's largest and smoothest migrations of workers across any border [Which of course has NOTHING to do with the fact that they are Northern Europeans of Christian background -- like the native British themselves], and has been described by historians as the largest influx into Britain in 300 years. But now, according to the IPPR, about half those workers have gone home, with many more planning to follow soon.

Danny Sriskandarajah, one of the report's authors, says this massive wave of migration has been unique in British history because most of the arrivals in previous influxes stayed permanently. At this stage, Britain's experience with what are dubbed "the Polish plumbers", suggests the EU's flexible labour market has actually worked the way it is intended, providing extra labour when the British economy was booming, allowing more growth while keeping down inflation and interest rates. Now that Britain's economy is slowing, there are suddenly fewer workers looking for jobs.

Poland has benefited because many of its ambitious workers were able to find good jobs during a time of high unemployment at home and are now returning with the money and experience to start their own businesses or take on more highly paid jobs while stimulating economic demand. Poland's unemployment has halved since it joined the EU in 2004. Wages in some of its industries are up by 25 per cent this year, and the zloty has soared against the pound. In 2004, each pound saved by a Polish worker would buy 7.5 Polish zloty; today it buys only 4.5 zloty. Given the higher living costs in London, rising wages at home and the tug of family ties, there are weaker incentives to stay.

The arrival of the eastern workers in the UK strained government services in many regions but soon prompted visible changes in many aspects of British life. Supermarkets stocked hundreds of lines of Polish food and beers, street signs in some cities were duplicated in Polish, Catholic churches saw fuller pews and nightclubs introduced special Polish pop music nights. Local councils and even political parties translated their hand-outs into Polish, and dozens of medium-sized newspapers began printing regular Polish-language editions.

Even The Sun, which revels in British nationalism, is considering printing special 48-page Polish language editions during the Euro 2008 football tournament. With England failing to qualify, retailers and publicans hope to cash in on Polish fans by advertising Polish beers and snacks.

Wojciech Pisarski, a spokesman at the Polish embassy in London, told The Weekend Australian that his Government "is doing everything it can to encourage workers to come home because we need them now in Poland." "We are running a publicity campaign to convince them that they can use the expertise they have gained here to set up businesses or get good jobs back home," Mr Pisarski said. The Polish Government had offered cheap loans to returning workers hoping to set up new businesses, and a tax amnesty on remissions of cash so workers could shift their money home without worrying about being double-taxed on foreign earnings, he said.

"Gdansk council has also introduced its own incentives to get people to shift home. It is quite important because, just like London is getting ready for the Olympics, we are hosting the 2012 Euro (football championship) and a lot of work has to be done. "We need to build stadiums, hotels and infrastructure and we need to bring home people with the skills to do that," Mr Pisarski said. "At one point we had about 1000 Polish people a day coming to Britain but that has levelled off and now it seems to be flowing the other way."

Miles Quest, a spokesman for the British Hospitality Association, said hotels and other catering businesses would suffer if east Europeans kept returning home: "Around 80 per cent of workers in hospitality in London are from overseas and ... the eastern Europeans have been extremely valuable." The departure of Poles means many British employers are turning to Bulgarians and Romanians, who tend to have worse language and technical skills but are cheaper workers.

Source



Libya taking action

Libyan authorities have arrested 240 illegal immigrants and are preparing to repatriate them, the interior ministry said on Thursday. Those detained in operations around the country were of various nationalities, a statement said, without giving details of when the arrests were made.

With 1,770 kilometres of coastline, Libya is a popular jumping-off point for people seeking to reach Europe from elsewhere in Africa. Malta and Lampedusa are only a few hundred kilometres away.

The Italian Interior Ministry recently said that 16,482 illegal immigrants landed in Italy last year, adding that they probably came from Libya. In December, Tripoli and Rome signed an accord to cooperate in the battle against illegal immigration, which includes joint sea patrols.

Oil-rich Libya has a native population of six million, with an estimated one million more living there illegally. In January, Tripoli announced a massive operation to round up and repatriate illegal aliens.

Source



Bribery allegations rock NZ Immigration Dept

The sort of corruption one expects of New Zealand. For some other recent examples of how official New Zealand works, see here and here and here. For an update on New Zealand's original "orchestrated litany of lies", see here. To use an expression that would be understood in New Zealand: Everyone in government in New Zealand is "pissing in one another's pocket"

The Immigration Department in New Zealand has been rocked by scandal. Immigration officers have been accused of bribery and the head of the department has resigned in disgrace.

Mary Anne Thompson quit after it was revealed she helped three of her relatives in Kiribati get into New Zealand, and now she is accused of lying on her resume to get senior government jobs. She claims to have a PhD from the London School of Economics but the college has no record of it. Ms Thompson set up the Pacific Division of the immigration service and police are investigating allegations staff in that unit took bribes.

Lawyer Richard Small has put in 20 complaints. "When we asked quite innocently if there was a way that a very pressing humanitarian case could this be given priority, the answer came back 'how much?'" he said.

Nineteen people have been investigated for misconduct and nine have been sacked.

Source





18 May, 2008

Arizona Governor Fights Illegal Immigration Task Force

Manuel Espinoza-Vasquez lives in Gilbert, Arizona and is a student at Arizona State University. He is an illegal immigrant and he is facing deportation. Espinoza-Vasquez was stopped by Gilbert police for making an "improper right turn." At the same time, three teenagers were deported to Mexico after they were stopped by Gilbert PD for drag racing. They admitted they were in the country illegally, just like Espinoza-Vasquez.

There are over 400,000 illegal aliens in the United States that have been ordered to leave the country, but remain here. Of that number, 80,000 are classified as violent criminals.

It has been reported that illegal aliens generally commit crimes at the same rate, proportionately, as legal citizens. If, however, they were not here to commit those crimes, the number of overall crimes committed would be reduced. And, those who have lost their lives in an incident involving an illegal alien, would still be alive. Think about the three Newark, New Jersey college students who were killed by an illegal from Peru. If he weren't in this country, they would be continuing their education and dreaming of future careers and family.

In many municipalities around the country, jaywalking is a crime. Mainly characterized as a civil traffic offense, it usually brings with it a small fine and a misdemeanor designation. Most law enforcement offices ignore jaywalking. Police and sheriff departments in America are very busy day after day with larger issues. So what if this one law is not enforced? What harm could result?

Well, according to the National Safety Council, 1,770 pedestrians died in 1998 while crossing the street. Thousands more were injured. If those numbers hold consistently year over year, we would have lost over 16,000 to this kind of fatality between 1998 and today. Is enforcing the jaywalking law important? Would it have saved every life that was lost? Not every life, but perhaps a fairly significant number of them. A deterrent would have been established if any municipality let in be known that this particular law would be strictly followed, or, tickets and fines would follow.

How many lives have been lost due to illegal immigration? Tragically, the news is replete with incidences of crimes, including murder (see above), that involve illegal aliens. Are all illegal aliens dangerous criminals? No. Do most illegal aliens commit minor offences or relatively petty crimes? No. However, all of them broke the law at least once. That is the truth of the matter.

Legislatures at the local, state and Federal levels, are debating how best to handle this situation. One way is to start enforcing unfailingly the laws already on the books. Perhaps a life will be saved if we do. And that includes the lives of those who risk peril by coming to this country by a treacherous desert crossing, or, by resting a dangerous faith in a coyote to smuggle them across the border.

This leads us to the decision this week by Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to pull the funding designated by the State's legislature to Sheriff Joe Arpaio's illegal immigration task force. Napolitano buckled to political pressure to stop Arpaio's crime suppression sweeps and bow before the forces of the pro-illegal immigrant crowd in Arizona. It seems that the Sheriff's sweeps have netted more than a couple of illegal immigrants as his deputies enforce the law by pulling over motorists for broken tail-lights and expired car registration tags.

Her excuse for pulling the Sheriff's money is that 40,000 felony warrants are outstanding in the greater Phoenix area (that number has somehow blossomed to 60,000 in newspaper accounts this week), and the money is better spent chasing down these warrants. She also says his sweeps have caused "trepidation" in the "immigrant community." So, via executive order, the money has been re-directed to the Department of Public Safety. The DPS, curiously enough, has been recently chastised in the state by an ACLU allegation that has charged them with racial profiling during their traffic stops. No wonder the Governor has selected them to receive Joe's money.

A long range question for Napolitano is this: if she were to become a President Barack Obama's Attorney General (as rumored -- she supported him over Hillary Clinton), would she direct money and resources to round up the 80,000 criminally violent illegal immigrants now roaming free all throughout these United States? Doubtful.

Source



Australia: Wrong to restrict immigration from a problem group?

Africans of course. Where are Africans not a problem? They are certainly a huge problem for one-another in Africa -- and only a Leftist would think that to be a product of "white racism". Everywhere in Africa, black welfare has gone BACKWARDS since the white man left. If white racism was doing anything, it was propping them up, not holding them back. Nasty of me to mention such glaringly obvious facts, I know

WHEN former immigration minister Kevin Andrews sparked a race row over his claims that African refugees were engaged in crime and failing to integrate into Australia he was acting contrary to advice from his own department. In a confidential briefing to the minister, obtained by The Age, the Immigration Department stressed that studies suggested it was not ethnicity that determined criminal behaviour but a combination of socio-economic problems and other disadvantage.

The briefing was prepared for Mr Andrews in response to an article in the Cranbourne Leader suggesting that transit police believed Sudanese men were responsible for 99% of assaults and armed robberies on two Victorian rail lines. The briefing, dated September 27, 2007, said: "Whatever the background of the perpetrators, it would be wrong to blame all people from a particular migrant group for the behaviour of a few." But a week later, Mr Andrews appeared to ignore its advice when he cited the failure of Sudanese people to integrate as a reason for cutting African refugee numbers.

Yesterday Mr Andrews said the document was simply a departmental response to a news item. He said his comments were influenced by an Immigration Department dossier that raised community concern about African refugees forming gangs, fighting in nightclubs and attacking other families. "I wasn't blaming a particular group. I said we've got problems there and we need to do something about it." Despite the Darfur crisis in Sudan, Australia allocated just 30% of refugee places to Africans in 2007-08, down from 70% in 2004-05.

But the race debate was not ignited until October 1 last year, when Mr Andrews was asked about the fatal bashing of 18-year-old Sudanese refugee Liep Gony in Noble Park. It later emerged that Mr Gony's alleged attackers were not African. [Probably Lebanese Muslims. They are not at all politically correct and do attack Africans]

Questioned at the time about whether better settlement services were needed, Mr Andrews said the refugee intake from places such as Sudan had been cut amid fears that some groups "don't seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian life as quickly as we would hope". This was at odds with a media release he issued several months earlier saying the Howard government had changed the composition of its refugee intake because of an improvement in conditions in some African countries and the need to help Iraqis displaced by war and Burmese refugees living in camps along the Thai-Burma border. The Government was accused of playing "ugly race politics" on the eve of the federal election. Critics said Mr Andrews was "dog-whistling" to marginal outer-suburban electorates with large numbers of refugees.

Mr Andrews said yesterday he had no regrets. "When difficulties are occurring, you can't put your head in the sand," he said. He had subsequently received supportive phone calls from Victorian police and visited migrant resource centres where he was told his comments were "entirely correct", based on their experiences. The Coalition had tried to deal with the issue by reducing — but not stopping — the African intake and providing an additional $200 million in resettlement services.

Mr Andrews said he had read media reports a few weeks ago that police were working with the Immigration Department to try to deal with some of the problems. "I think what I did was bring to people's attention what was an issue and now something is getting done about it," he said. "If you remain without commenting on an issue, what would have been done?"

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17 May, 2008

Gypsy camps destroyed as Italian anger flares

Italians are too passionate to be held up by politically correct abstractions. The behaviour of Gypsies is very often appalling

Smoke rose yesterday from the smouldering ruins of a Gypsy camp attacked by vigilantes in a run-down industrial suburb of Naples in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. The charred remains of the makeshift wooden shacks, mattresses and belongings at the site in Ponticelli crunched underfoot. Dogs scavenged through a pile of uncollected rubbish nearby. Police guarded another squalid "nomad camp" beneath an overpass after the inhabitants fled during the night to avoid meeting a similar fate. Signs of their flight were everywhere, with doors to shacks left open and the ground strewn with clothing, shoes, bicycles, plastic bottles, pots and pans and children's toys.

Police launched a nationwide round-up of nearly 400 illegal immigrants this week from the Balkans and North Africa - the first step in a crackdown on crime promised by the new centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi. Almost 120 of those held in the operation, which stretched from Naples to northern Italy, were ordered to be deported immediately for offences ranging from drug-dealing and robbery to prostitution.

In Rome, where Gianni Alemanno, the new right-wing Mayor, has vowed to dismantle "nomad camps" to reduce street crime, police raided a Roma camp, taking the inhabitants by bus to detention centres. Mr Alemanno has promised to deport 20,000 illegal immigrants.

But in Naples local people pre-empted the crackdown and took the law into their own hands. Scores of youths on scooters and motorbikes wielded iron bars and threw Molotov cocktails at the Roma shanty towns. Their anger came to a head after a 17-year-old Roma girl entered a flat in Ponticelli and apparently tried to steal a six-month-old girl. The child's mother and neighbours gave chase and the teenager escaped being lynched only after police moved in.

Naples erupted in fury, with women leading the marches on the Roma camps to the chant of "Fuori, fuori" ("Out, out") and "Go home, dirty child stealers". Young men, allegedly on the orders of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia, set the sites ablaze, blocking attempts by the fire brigade to put out the fires. Exploding gas canisters completed the destruction. The women jeered at the firemen, shouting: "You put the fires out, we start them again."

Hundreds of Roma families fled for their lives, their belongings piled on to small pick-up trucks or handcarts. Some have been taken under police protection. Others have found refuge at Roma camps elsewhere in the Campania region, while a few have been taken in by Naples residents shocked at the outbreak of xenophobia.

The arson attacks come from festering anger over rising crime and urban degradation, much of it blamed on Roma gypsies and the estimated half a million Romanians who have emigrated to Italy since Romania joined the European Union. The Roma rights group Opera Nomadi says there are 2500 Roma in Naples, 1000 from Romania and 1500 from Balkan areas.

Late yesterday, the Berlusconi cabinet was to approve an emergency "security package" drawn up by new Interior Minister and deputy leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League Robert Maroni. It includes the dismantling of Roma camps, the appointment of "special commissioners" to deal with "the Roma problem", tighter border controls and speedier deportation of immigrants who cannot show they have a job or adequate income. Mr Maroni wants to make illegal immigration a criminal offence. Romanian Interior Minister Cristian David arrived in Rome yesterday for talks on the crisis.

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Immigration to Australia even higher than thought

What a puzzle! Australia has a much larger immigrant population (proportionately) than the UK or the USA but Australia at the same time has much less ethnic tension. It's only a puzzle to people with politically correct blinkers on. Australia has long had high rates of immigration but until recently almost all immigrants came from Europe and East Asia -- people who in general fit in well and peaceably with Australian life. It's not the numbers of people coming from elsewhere that is important but where they come from. Africans and Muslims from the Middle East have recently started arriving in numbers and they are already beginning to shatter Australia's ethnic calm. Many of the "refugees" recently admitted are both Muslim AND African. Heaven help us!

AUSTRALIA is undergoing an unparalleled movement of people and ethnic change through "hidden immigration", but lacks a comprehensive policy to deal with it, according to an eminent demographer. Monash University professor Andrew Markus said raw immigration numbers masked the magnitude of a demographic revolution that had produced a population where one in four residents was born overseas. At 24 per cent, the overseas-born proportion of the population is twice that of the US at 12 per cent, and three times that of England and Wales at 8 per cent, where racial tensions have flared again. "Opinion polls in England in July 2007 and March 2008 indicated that immigration and race issues are the main concern of electors," Professor Markus said.

He said that while Australians had been tolerant and migrants committed to their new home, strong political leadership was required to convince the nation of the benefits to all of high immigration to avoid a backlash. Professor Markus presented his analysis at this week's Australian Davos Connection Future Summit. "The elements of a policy to promote social cohesion within communities characterised by diversity of language and culture are well known - and difficult to implement," he said. "At present, Australia lacks full clarity of vision, coherence and consistency - while the largest movement of people in the country's history is under way."

Speaking to The Australian yesterday, Professor Markus said that although many Australians regarded the rate of immigration as high, they probably had little idea that the transformation was far bigger than they imagined. The usually quoted "headline" number of permanent arrivals - people successfully applying each year for permanent residency from overseas - rose 67 per cent between 1999 and last year, from 84,000 to 140,000. But Professor Markus said this figure failed to include on-shore "conversions" from foreigners on student or temporary work visas to permanent residence. That number rose from 15,000 in 1999 to 52,000 last year. Taking those figures into account, the annual increase in new permanent residents nearly doubled over the past nine years, from 99,000 to 192,000.

The number of permanent departures - Australians leaving the country without any immediate intention of return -- doubled from 35,000 in 1999 to 72,000 last year. Many of those departing were taking highly sought skills to more highly paid jobs overseas, Professor Markus said.

Added to an ageing population, future economic growth would require filling Australia's skills shortage largely from overseas. But the result would accelerate the pace of ethnic change, and because immigration had been skewed towards "magnet" destinations, in some areas the transition would be extraordinary, he said. "With the uneven distribution of the overseas born, this translates to 34.5 per cent of Sydney's population, 31 per cent of Melbourne's, and over 70 per cent in some urban localities," Professor Markus said.

He proposed several measures towards a national policy to make immigration work. These included challenging disadvantage in education and employment, tackling institutional discrimination, and a "consistent set of policies to be implemented at the community level to promote inter-cultural understanding, bridge building and participation".

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Australia's new Centre-Left government promises massive increase in immigration

This is just the usual Leftist urge to tear up a status quo which is too peaceful and harmonious for them

Immigration Minister Chris Evans wants a major overhaul of the migrant program to boost numbers, promote unskilled [Can he be serious? There are plenty of unemployed unskilled people in Australia already] as well as skilled applicants and gear Australia to the new global competition for workers.

Predicting a "great national debate over the next few years", Senator Evans said he planned to bring a series of cabinet submissions to reform a "model that is out of date" and too unresponsive to employer needs. He said the debate about temporary migration was over; the coming debate would be about semi-skilled and unskilled migrants to meet labour shortages.

Next month, cabinet is expected to approve a pilot program for a guest worker scheme from the South Pacific. Senator Evans called this a "stalking horse" for the larger debate on unskilled migration. His comments came after the Rudd Government's first budget, delivered on Tuesday, lifted permanent and temporary migration for 2008-09 to nearly 300,000 in the biggest annual increase since the program's inception by the Chifley government in the 1940s.

The skilled component of the permanent intake is running at 70 per cent, probably the highest ever. "My general view is that we are increasingly facing a labour shortage, not just a skills shortage," Senator Evans told The Weekend Australian. "The demands of business are hitting us in the face. What I'm thinking about is a fairly serious overhaul of the migration system and trying to design a visa and migration system that meets the realities of the 21st century and the internationalisation of the labour market. "There is a lack of responsiveness to employer needs. What's not widely understood is that there is a global competition for labour. The workforce is more contract based. BHP (Billiton) brings an engineer here from South America for two years and he'll be in Africa two years later. It's the nature of his work."

Asked about the hefty increase in the intake announced on budget night, Senator Evans said: "It was certainly driven by the economics. "No doubt Wayne Swan had his eye on wage inflation pressure and Treasury advice about that. But fundamentally it's a response to the huge demand for labour." Senator Evans said the Government's first response to shortages was more education and training but "the reality is that there are demands now that won't be met by that agenda". This was true in the short-term and long-term.

He said he had two aims - to make the program more responsive to industry and to restore its integrity, notably the457 temporary visas, to eliminate exploitation and any undermining of Australian conditions. This was critical because there was urgent pressure on the 457 program for a shift down the skill scale from professionals such as doctors and engineers to tradesmen and IT workers. "The demand is often for truck drivers, store managers, below tradesman-level jobs in the mining industry," Senator Evans said. "More broadly we have an ageing population. My inclination is not to do reviews, but get on with it. As a cabinet, we are engaged with this issue. "I think Australians are prepared to accept strong migration provided they think we need the skills and contributions that people bring."

He foreshadowed a relaxation of the former government's rigid rules about migrants' ability to speak English. Some of its measures were "pretty clunky and actually stopped business operating".

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16 May, 2008

Florida Hospital Testimony Of Millions Of Dollars In Illegal Alien Ongoing Care

With millions in this country not able to afford health insurance, illegal aliens are still receiving "free" health care at taxpayer's expense. In the cases noted below millions were spent on just two illegal aliens who required ongoing care. Ongoing care is not covered by any laws. Emergency care is, but these illegals have remained in this hospital for years. ICE doesn't care because they don't have a criminal record and one patient - who was eventually deported to Mexico - has now sued the hospital costing them a quarter of a million dollars in legal expenses to defend themselves after spending millions on keeping him in their hospital "for free" for years.

This is something that needs to end. When every person in this country is taken care of then we can worry about foreigners health care. Until then these illegal aliens should be immediately deported.

The government just says "too bad" to all of the Americans who were denied care by this hospital in the meantime because they couldn't afford it, all the while taking the tax money they pay each year funneling it into illegal alien health care or having the hospitals driven out of business.

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Border Fence Ruins Mother's Day for Mexican Families

Post below recycled from STACLU. See the original for links. One point that Warner Todd does not make is that any Mexicans who are bothered by the fence could always go back to Mexico! Then they would have none of the fence problems described below

If you are looking for an eyerolling, maudlin Mother's Day story, you don't have to go any farther than the pages of the Washington Post to get a doosie. You see, Ashley Surdin of the WaPo gave us a tear-jerker of a tale about how the border fence between Mexico and the United States keeps Mothers from being with their children. Yes those mean Americans and their insistence on border security hurts Mommies. To that all I can say is, Oh brother!

In fact, the WaPo is even claiming that those poor Mexican Mothers can't put their fingers through that nasty, rotten fence to touch the tears on their baby girl's face because if they did they would be punished by the eeeevil U.S. government. And these poor, innocent Mommies are worried that things are getting worse because the U.S. is building "more fences."

Again, I have to say "Oh, brother." Are these people serious with this nonsense? Look at this schmaltz.

You can walk to the U.S. border, Francelia Menchaca's immigration lawyer advised her, but don't put your fingers through its fence. It may hinder her immigration paperwork, the lawyer said.

But when, after a year apart, Menchaca's mother arrived in her flowered straw hat to the border in Tijuana on Saturday and put her small, wrinkled hands up to the cast-iron gate, Menchaca reached out and touched them.

"Were you anxious to touch my hand?" Menchaca asked in Spanish. Tears stood on her lashes. "Yes," said her mother, Francisca Rodriguez, a resident of Tijuana, as her three grandchildren, including a 10-month-old girl she had never seen, strained to be near her.

What rot!

Then, after whining that the fence is only "just wide enough to slip a hand or a homemade taco through" the WaPo regales us on how things are getting worse for these poor Mothers.

Safe gathering spots such as these are few along this increasingly violent boundary, and Saturday may mark the last time families can use them. Amid escalating drug wars - which have recently erupted in bloody nighttime and daytime street shootouts, sending people into hiding in their homes - officials are fortifying the border. Within the next few weeks, the U.S. government will build more fences in this beachside area. The idea anguishes visitors such as Rodriguez.

Interesting how the WaPo doesn't mention that these drug wars are fought between Mexicans and all the violence is on the Mexican side of the border!

Now, I'm all for Motherhood, it must be pointed out. I feel that all Mothers everywhere should love and nurture their children. But, much as I think this story is all kleanex and BS, I have a solution for all the Mexican Mothers straining to touch the faces of their little girls that reside on the U.S. side of the border. Keep your kids in Mexico with you! See, I do want to keep families together.

Anyway, if anyone can divine the purpose of this WaPo story other than to make it out as if the U.S. is the bad guy for daring to want to keep their borders under control, I'd like to know what it is?





15 May, 2008

Danish prime minister criticizes immigration minister in dispute over head scarves in court

Denmark's center-right government on Wednesday said it will prepare legislation that would bar judges from wearing Islamic headscarves and religious symbols in court. "This includes crucifixes, (Jewish) skull caps, turbans and head scarves," Justice Minister Lene Espersen said. She said the bill was needed because judges "must appear neutral and impartial" in court.

The announcement follows a heated political discussion about hijabs that caused a rift in Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's government, even though there are no known cases of Danish judges wearing the traditional Muslim head scarf. In a wider sense, it underscores the ongoing debate about the role of Islam and Muslim traditions in Denmark that culminated in 2006 when Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad triggered violent protests in Muslim countries.

The latest discussion stems from a set of dress code guidelines issued last year by Denmark's court administration, which noted that Danish law does not bar judges from wearing head scarves. The guidelines went largely unnoticed until the government's small but crucial ally, the nationalist Danish People's Party, decided to politicize the issue last month. The party, known for its anti-Muslim rhetoric, created a poster showing a woman wearing an all-encompassing burqa and holding a judge's gavel. The party urged the government to introduce legislation ensuring that courtrooms remain "neutral instances in the Danish judiciary."

Fogh Rasmussen's Liberal-Conservative coalition was sympathetic to the idea and started investigating the issue, but Immigration Minister Birthe Roenn Hornbech broke the party line. The outspoken Roenn Hornbech wrote an opinion piece in a Danish newspaper saying lawmakers have no business regulating the dress code of judges.

The premier criticized her Wednesday, saying her article was "unfortunate" and should have been cleared with him first. He added that he still has confidence in her as a minister.

Danish Muslim groups have been quiet on the issue, although the Muslim Council of Denmark said earlier this month no one should be disqualified from any job in Denmark "because of one's clothes, religious beliefs or political views." The justice minister said the government's bill, to be presented later this year, would be directed at judges, and would not affect prosecutors, defense lawyers or other courtroom officials.

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Another abuse by U.S. immigration officials

Love may be the international language, but it doesn't cut the mustard with Customs and Border Protection agents at Washington Dulles International Airport. That's where, according to The New York Times, Domenico Salerno, a 35-year-old Italian and recent law school graduate, was denied entry into the U.S.

His answers, given in broken English, failed to assure agents that he was on the up-and-up and so he was sent in shackles to a Virginia jail, where he remained for at least 10 days. If Canadian agents could quickly find a Tagalog speaker to deal with a lost tot at an airport there recently, why couldn't U.S. agents find an Italian one? In treating Salerno like a criminal, our government managed to inadvertently help Salerno's American sweetheart with her mission during this visit: To show him "another side" of America. The Italian, we're told, was locked up as an asylum seeker, in a barracks holding 75 others, including some who actually were asylum seekers and had been waiting there for a year. Salerno, who is from a well-off family in Italy, says he never asked for asylum and says that his requests to speak to his embassy were denied. As his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper, put it, "Who on Earth would ever seek asylum from Italy?"

Salerno, who at one point was so shaken that he asked if Virginia has a death penalty, was released after an NY Times reporter made some calls upon hearing about his situation from Cooper. We can't help but agonize over all the innocent people who fall between the cracks simply because they don't have a resourceful advocate out there, one who can marshal the full weight of the NYT to help them. What becomes of them in our "system"?

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14 May, 2008

Leftist AZ governor yanks Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration funding

Much of the money for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration-enforcement efforts lately has poured out of a special pool of state money. But New Times has learned that Governor Janet Napolitano's turning off the spigot. In what appears to be a prelude to a major fight between Napolitano and Arpaio, the governor issued an executive order last week to develop a new task force--headed up by the state Department of Public Safety--to find and arrest tens of thousands of felons with outstanding warrants. And, according to a letter from DPS Director Roger Vanderpool to Arpaio outlining the new effort, the task force will be funded with the money that Arpaio isn't getting anymore.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted just last week to renew an agreement between the DPS and the Sheriff's Office that would've allowed Arpaio to obtain $2 million in special funds for fiscal year 2009, which starts in July. Last year's agreement allowed Arpaio to recoup up to 85 percent of his expenses for immigration enforcement from the state, and the $2 million would've reflected an increase.

A review of receipts and requests for reimbursement from the Sheriff's Office shows that most of the money was used to pay the salaries and overtime expenses of deputies involved in immigration enforcement. The state funds also were used to lease numerous vehicles from Fox Rent A Car and also to purchase radios and other equipment. But now it looks like Arpaio won't be getting any more of the money.

Napolitano's been criticized for failing to take a stance on Arpaio's immigration sweeps, but it seems now that she's been quietly working on a plan to hit the sheriff where it hurts: in the pocketbook. But whether the governor's tactic of escalation works politically remains to be seen. Recent polls show that most county residents still approve of Arpaio's methods, despite criticism that he's racially profiling practically anyone who's skin's brown as a potential illegal alien--notably American citizens. Arpaio's also been lambasted for his failure to serve thousands of felony arrest warrants, choosing instead to expend a large amount of his office's resources on rounding up real and perceived illegal aliens.

Dennis Burke, the governor's chief of staff, tells New Times that Arpaio's go-it-alone attitude, combined with the need to round up fugitive felons, led to Napolitano's decision. Sheriff's officials "were supposed to be sharing intel with us, they were supposed to be coordinating with us, and the Sheriff's Office was thinking it was just a blank check," Burke says.

Arpaio's flacks haven't immediately responded to New Times' request for an interview with Arpaio, or with any other knowledgeable MCSO official, about this evolving story. The fireworks should be starting anytime now...

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Italy's new foreign minister vows tough immigration policy

Italy's new foreign minister talked tough Monday on immigration as Romania said it was despatching its interior minister to Rome to try and defuse tensions over rising crime blamed on its nationals. Prime Minsister Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing government is preparing an arsenal of controversial anti-immigration measures targeting Romanians in particular, but EU rules limit its room for manoeuvre.

"Italian citizens do not want racist or xenophobic behaviour by the Berlusconi government, which it would in any case never adopt," Franco Frattini said on RAI public radio, adding: "But by their vote they have asked for a firm attitude." "Italians have asked for change, mainly in strengthening measures to punish those who break the rules," Frattini said, citing the example of a Romanian woman alleged to have tried to kidnap a child in Naples this weekend. That kind of news, he warned, "sharply shakes up public opinion."

Romania's Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu said he was despatching his interior minister on an urgent trip to Rome to try and defuse the growing bilateral row over immigration. "We have proposed to the Italian authorities that we could urgently send a team of Romanian policemen and prosecutors to lend support to the Italian authorities in their efforts to combat crime."

Berlusconi's forces, who campaigned for more law and order ahead of the April vote, have highlighted reports alleging various offences, especially rape, said to have involved Romanian immigrants. New Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigration, eurosceptic Northern League -- a junior coalition partner -- is finalising measures to crack down on clandestine immigration. Maroni wants in particular to curb a surge in Romanian immigration since Bucharest joined the European Union in January 2007. The Northern League wants a suspension of the Schengen treaty allowing free movement for EU citizens in 22 of the 27 EU member states.

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, waded into the row on Monday saying he did not agree with a proposed new offence of clandestine immigration. "It is clearly necessary to respect the law and to regulate the flow of migrants, but one cannot say that we have no need for immigrants," Martino added.

The Italian press fears tensions with the EU authorities in Brussels over Rome's policy towards Romanians. Relations became strained between Italy and Romania over Italian measures to make it easier to expel Romanians, after a Romanian gypsy was blamed for the murder of an Italian woman last year. The murder led to a decree passed in November allowing the expulsion of nationals from EU member countries for reasons of public security, after which several dozen Romanians were deported and the European Commission warned Italy against "mass expulsions."

The maiden session of Berlusconi's cabinet, to be held in Naples next week, was set to announce planned anti-immigration measures. Proposals include the creation of a new offence of clandestine immigration, an extension of the period during which apprehended would-be immigrants can be held in detention, and use of DNA tests to monitor reuniting families.

In Bucharest, Tariceanu said the rise in crime by Romanians living in Italy was partly the result of a "weak reaction" from the Italian authorities, who needed to "intervene in a firm and determined manner." He disagreed with calls in Italy to limit immigration, especially of Romanians, insisting "the right to move freely in Europe is one of the fundamental pillars" of the EU and Romania "could not agree with the violation" of this right. Tariceanu, however, agreed it was in the two countries' "bilateral interest to resolve the situation positively." In doing so, he highlighted economic ties, particularly the fact that the Romanian community in Italy contributes to more than one percent of the country's GDP and that 23,000 Italian companies operate in Romania.

Currently some 342,200 Romanians live in Italy according to official figures, but the Roman Catholic charity Caritas says the figure has climbed as high as 556,000 since Romania joined the EU.

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13 May, 2008

Tough Immigration Stances winning elections

In Texas it's get tough on immigration or get out!

"Supporters of crackdowns against illegal immigration in Irving and Farmers Branch are leading in their races for political office. Farmers Branch City Councilman Tim O'Hare, 38, the champion of an effort to ban illegal immigrants from renting apartments in his city, is leading the mayoral race with 68 percent of the vote with five of 19 precincts reporting. His opponent, Gene Bledsoe, has 32 percent of the vote. Bledsoe said the city is spending too much money legally defending a rental ban doomed to be struck down in the courts.

Irving Mayor Herbert Gears, 45, whose reelection campaign included support for the city's Criminal Alien Program, is leading with 53 percent percent of the early vote. CAP refers suspected illegal immigrants in the city's jail to federal immigration officials and has resulted in the deportation of more than 2,700 people since it started in September 2006.

Gears' opponents Roland Jeter, who advocated a tougher crackdown, has 38 percent of the vote; Rigo Reza, who supported easing the crackdown, has 8 percent of the vote."

This is happening in local races across the country. By and large Americans want the influx of illegal immigrants stopped and those in this country illegally deported. It's not rocket science, it's upholding the law. It's what America is made of. This is something McCain ought to remember when he's out kowtowing to LaRaza in July.

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Absconder hunt nets 89 in Houston ICE arrests

Houston Chronicle:

The arrest went exactly as the agents planned. A few minutes after dawn, the Mexican citizen backed his new Chevy pickup out of the driveway onto the street, on the way to his job as a construction supervisor. Within seconds, Reynaldo Campos, wanted for being in the country illegally, was boxed in by vehicles driven by immigration agents who, wearing flak jackets and guns drawn, ordered him out of the car and cuffed him.

It was a successful start to last Thursday's roundup of illegal immigrants, the third of a four-day operation to track down illegal immigrants who have gone underground after being ordered to leave the country.

It's a daunting task. In Houston alone there are an estimated 30,000 immigrant fugitives, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nationally there are about 575,000.

Last week, ICE agents in the Houston Field Office's area of responsibility, which extends over 52 counties from Louisiana to Corpus Christi, cut that number by a small margin. Before the operation began at dawn Tuesday, ICE officials were confident of apprehending hundreds of immigrants. But when it ended shortly before noon Friday, they had picked up 89, including 28 with criminal convictions.

More than a half a million nationwide is a scary number. It is not clear to me why someone is released after they have been ordered to leave. It is not like they have ties to the community. Why not transport them out of the country as soon as the judge issues his order? They can appeal his decision in their native country.

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12 May, 2008

Anti-illegal immigration group censored

When members of an anti-illegal immigration group offered to sponsor litter cleanup on local roads, they never imagined California officials would offer them an Adopt-a-Highway stretch near a Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5, the main artery carrying illegal migrants north from the U.S.-Mexico border.

On Friday, lawyers for the San Diego Minutemen told a federal judge that the state had no right to rescind the offer after state legislators complained to the California Department of Transportation. The group asked that its blue Adopt-a-Highway sign be put back where it stood without incident for about six weeks until the agency removed it in January. "We were moved to silence our message in response to pressure from the open border advocates and the Latino caucus," said Minutemen attorney Robert Fuselier. "It all comes down to one thing: We can't have our speech because if we do, people who don't like it might become unruly and unlawful." Attorneys for the state contend the sign was removed because of concerns that demonstrators or vandals could create safety hazards for the 160,000 drivers who pass the checkpoint daily and for Minutemen volunteers collecting litter by the roadside.

The Minutemen have had a polarizing influence in San Diego the last several years, achieving hero status among advocates of tightening border restrictions and sparking outrage from immigrant groups who accuse members of harassing migrant workers.

State lawyer Jeff Benowitz told U.S. District Judge William Q. Hayes the Adopt-a-Highway signs amounted to a "thank-you" from the state, not political messages protected under the First Amendment. He said transportation officials planned to end all sponsorship of roads near Border Patrol stations, and had offered to reassign the Minutemen to a two-mile stretch of state route in a less-trafficked area in eastern San Diego County.

Hayes asked whether the state would continue moving the Minutemen sign if protests followed it. "It would seem you're saying you're allowing the people who are unhappy with the message to dictate who can be in the program," the judge said. "We can do that," Benowitz responded. "It is not a public forum."

Courts have found otherwise. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Ku Klux Klan after Missouri officials sought to bar the group from its Adopt-a-Highway program under a regulation prohibiting groups that deny membership based on race or with a documented history of violence.

State legislators, meanwhile, renamed the contested stretch of highway the "Rosa Parks Highway" in honor of the black woman arrested in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala.

California assemblywoman Lori Saldana of San Diego said she was considering legislation that would stop the transportation department from accepting new sponsorships until it develops standards governing who qualified to participate in the highway adoption program. "We want them to say what constitutes a legitimate group," Saldana said after the hearing. "Do we want these people allowed on a highway near a security checkpoint?"

Police searched the home of San Diego Minutemen leader Jeff Schwilk in 2007 during an investigation into alleged vandalism at three migrant camps in San Diego's McGonigle Canyon. No members of the group were arrested. "We are not a hate group," Schwilk said outside the courtroom Friday. "The open borders people have made it very clear that they don't want our participation anywhere in San Diego County." He said neither the sign nor the group's litter cleanup activities created hazards during the six weeks the sign stood.

Hayes said he would issue a written decision on the matter, but it was unclear when.

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Filipino whose wife died after blunder by British hospital to be deported

Governments justify their asylum policies for refugees on the grounds of compassion but there seems to be no compassion here

A man whose wife died as a result of an NHS blunder has lost his right to remain in Britain, in what a coroner described yesterday as an "extraordinary" decision.

Arnel Cabrera, 39, came to Britain from the Philippines in 2003 to join his wife, Mayra, a theatre nurse, who worked at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon. But a year later, Mrs Cabrera died at the same hospital after she was given an epidural during the birth of the couple's child which was mistakenly injected into her arm. The baby survived. An inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing and found the NHS trust had been guilty of gross negligence. Now the Home Office has told Mr Cabrera he has failed in his bid to remain in the UK.

David Masters, the Wiltshire coroner who presided over the inquest, said yesterday: "This is extraordinary. In view of the verdict reached at the inquest I find it difficult to appreciate how the Home Office has reached this decision." In its letter of refusal, the Home Office said Mr Cabrera had "not established a family life with his son in the United Kingdom". It added: "As his son remains in the Philippines there are no insurmountable obstacles to his family life being continued overseas."

Alex Rook, the solicitor who handled Mr Cabrera's immigration case, said: "This is an absolutely dreadful decision. If Arnel's wife had not been killed, the family would be living happily here. I will be writing to the relevant Home Office ministers asking them to reconsider their decision." He added: "His wife is killed by one part of the Government [the NHS], then Arnel is told by another part of the Government that he has to leave." Mr Rook said Mr Cabrera had taken his son, Zac, to the Philippines to be looked after by family until the inquest and related legal proceedings had concluded in the UK, but it was always his intention to build a future in Britain.

Mr Cabrera's personal injury lawyer, Seamus Edney, also reacted with disgust. "I am staggered by this decision and embarrassed on behalf of our government," he said. "Arnel was permitted to reside in Britain on the basis that his wife was working - but when she is unlawfully killed by gross negligence by the NHS, he is told he is no longer welcome." In a statement issued before Mr Cabrera lost his right to remain in the UK, he said he hoped the Government would show him "compassion". He added: "I have been unable to return to the Philippines during this difficult period and I desperately miss my young son, Zachary." A spokesman for the Home Office said: "All applications for leave to enter or remain in the UK are carefully considered on their individual merits."

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11 May, 2008

Florida: 80 accused in immigration weddings scam

A federal sting of four companies accused of arranging fraudulent marriages for U.S. citizenships, complete with wedding photos of brides in gowns and elaborate fake cakes, has netted more than 80 arrests, authorities said Friday. Immigrants, Americans and company officials were among the 83 arrested. The immigrants paid as much as $10,000, while the U.S. citizens were offered up to $2,500, U.S. Attorney Robert O'Neill said.

The couples were coached on how to pass immigration checks with fake answers, even though in some cases they didn't speak the same language as their purported spouses, officials said. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials who review each citizenship-conferring marriage to ensure legitimacy tipped off federal agents in many cases. At least one of the businesses kept a standing wedding showroom in its office, with a prop cake, an assortment of 10 to 15 wedding dresses and table settings never dirtied with dinner or drink.

"What we've seen in the past generally is that a person will meet someone, that person might be desperate for some money, willingly engage in a sham marriage and then they go their own ways," O'Neill said. "Here, you can see this was much more sophisticated. They incorporated businesses, they obviously sought out people, people came in."

Officials said some of the immigrants had criminal records, ranging from burglary to battery, drug offenses, domestic violence and even aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. They were primarily from Central and South America, though at least one was from Morocco.

The four companies that allegedly arranged the marriages were incorporated as immigration assistance services. They were All Kind Services, A-3 Services, American Solutions and Services, all based in the Orlando area; and Power of Attorney, based in Daytona Beach. Officials said more arrests were expected. Two people behind Power of Attorney, Larry Humm and Natalia Humm, pleaded guilty this year to conspiracy and fraud charges. She is appealing a nearly four-year prison sentence for masterminding the scheme, while he received three months' probation in exchange for cooperating with authorities. No telephone listings could be found for three of the companies. A message left at American Solutions and Services on Friday was not returned.

Those arrested were from Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa, Sarasota, Cocoa Beach and Fort Myers. Robert Weber, the agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Tampa, characterized the fraudulent marriages as a threat to national security. "[The Americans] did not know their motives; they did not know their intent; they didn't know where they were coming from -- in this case from 11 different nationalities," Weber said. "They did it for financial gain; they were willing to put our national security and domestic public safety at risk."

Weber warned that ICE was stepping up enforcement of marriage fraud. The agency investigated more than 5,200 such cases in 2006 and the first half of 2007, up from about 2,300 in 2004. "The bottom line: If you commit marriage fraud, whether as a United States citizen or one illegally in the country, you will become an ICE investigative target and be held accountable for such criminal activity," Weber said.

A total of 83 people were arrested, including the suspected business operators and couples. The operators were charged with establishing a commercial enterprise to evade immigration laws, punishable by up to five years in jail. The couples, including the Americans, face charges of knowingly entering into a fraudulent marriage to evade immigration laws, also carrying a maximum five-year penalty.

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Foreign criminals work at British airports unchecked

Thousands of foreigners are being allowed to work in high security parts of Britain's airports without passing proper criminal record checks. There is no bungledom like British bungledom. If there have been no Islamic attacks on aircraft operating out of Britain, it is not because of British airport security. It seems that even Osama bin Laden would get a pass to work at a British airport

Despite warnings that terrorists would try to recruit people working "airside" in terminals - with direct access to aircraft and baggage - no attempt has been made to check whether foreign workers have committed any offences abroad. The vetting process checks only for crimes committed in Britain. Foreign workers - arriving from inside or outside the European Union - are not checked in their country of origin. This means that someone with a conviction for firearms or explosives offences committed abroad could, for example, take a job loading bags on to aircraft at Heathrow, Gatwick or any other airport, provided they had committed no crimes here.

The security lapse was called "absolutely astonishing" by David Davis, the shadow home secretary, who demanded "full and immediate checks". Ministers ordered a review of airport security after Samina Malik - the "lyrical terrorist" - was found to have been working in the airside branch of WH Smith at Heathrow. And eight British Muslims are on trial for allegedly plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners using bombs disguised as soft drinks.

The Department for Transport's head of aviation security said last year that the next terrorist attack "would have the components available airside with the help of people who work there". There are an estimated 200,000 staff in the "airside" parts of airports employed in shops, cafes or as cleaners in the departure lounge. Others may be employed as baggage handlers, security guards or driving buses between aircraft and the terminal.

The Government brought in emergency rules in 2003 to improve airport security after September 11. Staff working airside were to be vetted to ensure they had no criminal record and had a checkable employment history for the previous five years. However, last night's BBC2 Newsnight disclosed that officials checked only British criminal records - and that no attempt had been made to find out about any crimes in their home countries. Experts said that meant thousands of foreign workers were not vetted properly. The Government said that it did not want to carry out foreign criminal record checks because it would take too long and involve complicated comparisons between legal systems in different countries.

Mr Davis called for immediate foreign security checks on all people working airside regardless of cost. "This is astonishing given airside at an airport is one of the most vulnerable and critical security points," he said. "It is doubly astonishing the Government have let it continue to exist." Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "It's crazy to have an elaborate system of checks for British employees but completely ignore potential problems from somebody from another country."

Asked on Newsnight whether convicted EU terrorists could be working at Heathrow, Jim Fitzpatrick, the transport minister, said: "What we're absolutely confident of is that any individual who is working at our airports would have to go through the same screening process as anybody who wants to travel or anybody else who is working at our airports to make sure they are safe when they are working in that restricted zone area." Pilots called for anyone suspected of having a criminal past to be banned from working airside.

The loophole is the latest in the controversy over foreign nationals. In April 2006, Charles Clarke resigned as home secretary after it emerged that 1,013 foreign prisoners, including sex offenders and murderers, were not deported on release from prison. Last year the Home Office admitted 11,000 illegal immigrants were working in the security industry. That came months after it emerged that 27,529 records of British nationals convicted of crimes abroad had been left in box files at the Home Office when they should have been entered on a police database. This year the Crown Prosecution Service admitted losing 4,000 DNA profiles for more than a year. When the checks finally started in February 2008 since when 15 matches were found. Of these people, 11 are known to have committed offences - some serious - in the UK.

Jim McAuslan, the general secretary of the pilots' union Balpa, said: "If it's good enough for pilots it should be good enough for anyone else that's working airside and these checks need to be carried out on everyone."

A spokesman for the Department for Transport said all airside workers were required to go through the same checks that passengers have to pass through. He said: "Enforcing a check on overseas records would require the co-operation of a large number of foreign countries involving delays and complex comparisons of international legal systems. "It would also have a major impact on an international airport's day-to-day operations, including preventing many foreign aircrews from landing in the UK. "However, this practical difficulty should not prevent us from requiring checks of UK records. Neither is such a check required by International Aviation Security bodies."

A spokesman for the airports operator BAA said: "We work very closely with the Department for Transport and ultimately with the Government to take a view on what security measures are appropriate." A spokesman for the industry body, The International Air Transport Association, added that conditions were laid down by national governments. He said that airlines applied whatever checks were required to by their own authorities, but said security was a national responsibility.

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10 May, 2008

Canada/US comparison

What would the U.S. do if this happened here? AFP reports:

Authorities have lost track of 41,000 people ordered to leave Canada, and in most cases have stopped looking for them, said a federal watchdog Tuesday. In a scathing report, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said most of the missing were failed asylum seekers allowed into the country on temporary permits while their immigration or refugee cases were assessed. However, some of them "may pose a threat to public safety and security," she added.

Oh, wait -- it did happen here. A Homeland Security Inspector General report (pdf) released last year said that the backlog of immigration cases involving immigrants ordered to leave the U.S. had reached 600,000 -- and the whereabouts of many of those, whether criminal offenders or non-criminal deportees, couldn't be determined. It's important to note that this number represents the backlog, not the number of people missing, as in Canada.

The report put the blame for the backlog, which had been increasing since 2001, on insufficient detention space and systems, along with inadequate staffing. (This focuses on ICE rather than CIS, so it doesn't take into account the long lines legal immigrants face to get in or change their status if they're already here.)

There hasn't been an internal assessment of where the "fugitive" backlog stands more recently. And though Homeland Security has received more beds and staff, it has also stepped up its enforcement efforts, so the backlog may very well still be rising, if at a slower pace.

The Canada case gives occasion to recall that this country's ad-hoc enforcement-first approach doesn't necessarily work as smoothly as advocates hope. And, as the editorial board would argue, it isn't the best approach for the country even when it works as intended.

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Nutty British immigration tribunal frees terror supporter

A firebrand preacher once described as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe is due to be freed within days after being granted bail by an immigration tribunal. Abu Qatada, who came to Britain in 1993 and last month defeated the British Government's efforts to deport him to Jordan on terror charges, will be subject to a 22-hour curfew when he is released from Long Lartin high-security prison.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said she was extremely disappointed at the decision and promised all steps necessary to protect the public. Some of the bail money is thought to have been put up by Norman Kember, the Christian peace worker who was held hostage in Baghdad for four months from November 2005 by a group of insurgents. Abu Qatada had made a video appeal for his release.

The bail decision by the Special Immigration Advisory Tribunal is a fresh blow to the British Government's anti-terror policies. Last month, the Home Office was forced to abandon plans to deport 12 Libyans, leaving a memorandum of understanding with Libya, signed in October 2005, effectively in tatters.

Abu Qatada, 45, has been convicted in his absence in Jordan of involvement with terror attacks in 1998 and of plotting to plant bombs. The radical cleric once called on British Muslims to martyr themselves, and tapes of his sermons were found in a flat in Germany used by some of the September 11 hijackers.

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9 May, 2008

Canadian bungling

Authorities have lost track of 41,000 people ordered to leave Canada, and in most cases have stopped looking for them, said a federal watchdog Tuesday. In a scathing report, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said most of the missing were failed asylum seekers allowed into the country on temporary permits while their immigration or refugee cases were assessed. However, some of them "may pose a threat to public safety and security," she added.

Fraser noted an improved enforcement since her last audit in 2003, when responsibility for removals was transferred from Citizenship and Immigration Canada to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). In 2006-2007, Canada Border Services Agency removed about 12,600 individuals, including 1,900 criminals who "posed a high risk to Canada," she said in her report. But "due in part to a lack of exit controls, there is a growing number of individuals whose whereabouts is unknown and who might remain in Canada illegally," Fraser said.

As of September 2007, the Canada Border Services Agency determined that there were about 63,000 individuals with either enforceable removal orders or outstanding immigration warrants for removal. The agency said it knew the whereabouts of 22,000 of the individuals, but "the remaining 41,000 cases are individuals with immigration warrants for removal, whose whereabouts are unknown to the agency," said the report. The agency said it did not investigate most of these cases because "this could mean devoting resources in an attempt to find individuals who have already left the country."

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told reporters: "The CBSA has already put in place quite a few of the recommendations that she (Fraser) has talked about so we're improving. "It's not perfect yet but it's a big improvement over what it has been," he said.

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New Australian center-Left government tougher on asylum seekers than the previous conservatives

Great news if it's true across the board. Refugees from Africa have been the sort of disaster that everyone without his head in the sand would have expected. There is no place in the world where Africans are not far out ahead of everyone else in committing violent crimes

THE Rudd Government is rejecting asylum seeker applications at a higher rate than the Howard government, according to an analysis of new figures. An Asylum Seeker Research Centre report says the immigration department has knocked back 41 of the 42 cases it has had referred to it since Labor took power after the November 2007 election, a rejection rate of 97.6 per cent. The report, authored by ASRC chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis, says that is the highest rejection rate since the Victoria-based ASRC started in 2001.

ASRC community campaign co-ordinator Pamela Curr conceded some of the 42 did not have compelling cases, but said others certainly did. "There is no way you can look at some of these cases and, with the guidelines for ministerial decision making, reject them," Ms Curr said. "We don't have the figures yet from other advocacy agencies but we know this is going on all around Australia."

Ms Curr said wrong decisions were being made because of Immigration Minister Chris Evans' emphasis on clearing backlogs and making decisions more quickly. She said the figures made a mockery of Senator Evans' assurance that he would bring humanity back to the immigration portfolio. "I think that this government is absolutely dead scared on the refugee issue, after all they lost an election on this back in 2001," she said. "Now they're in power, they've got a wonderful majority, they've got the country behind them but they're too gutless to tackle the hard issues."

Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition said he believed the promise of a new dawn in immigration was not being delivered. "I think the minister is still paying too much attention to the immigration department rather than trying to implement the cultural change that was promised," he said. Mr Karapanagiotidis said while it was too early to form a complete picture of Senator Evans' approach, it was looking as if the change in government had not brought change for asylum seekers.

Jack Smit from refugee advocacy group Project SafeCom called the figures "disturbing". The ASRC claims to be the largest provider of aid, advocacy and health services for asylum seekers in Australia.

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8 May, 2008

Hillary Clinton Won't Crack Down on Sanctuary Cities

Many conservatives disagree with Sen. Hillary Clinton's liberal policies and positions, but the New York Democrat was far from disagreeable in her two-part interview with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly. Clinton seemed comfortable and relaxed -- not shrill or stilted, as she's been described at times on the campaign trail. She gave ready answers to blunt questions as she and O'Reilly engaged in what amounted to a battle of wits.

In the second part of the interview, which aired Thursday night, the TV host and the presidential hopeful discussed topics ranging from the war on terror to torture to illegal immigration. "This is the most fun interview you've ever done, I know it is," O'Reilly joked with Clinton as their conversation drew to a close. "I was going to say it was the most fun interview you've ever done," Clinton smiled back.

It's no coincidence that Clinton appeared in O'Reilly's "No Spin Zone" just a few days before the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. Clinton's spokesman was quoted earlier this week as saying that O'Reilly has a big audience -- and that Clinton wants to reach out, even to those voters who don't agree with her all the time -- O'Reilly's viewers, in other words.

On the issues, Clinton told O'Reilly, "There is no military solution to what we face in Iraq." She said the U.S. military has done what it set out to do there, and she said as president, she would begin withdrawing U.S. troops to force the Iraqi government to focus on "what they must do for themselves." Clinton said she would concentrate her efforts on winning the war in Afghanistan and supporting the "pro-democracy movement" in neighboring Pakistan.

Pressed on whether Clinton would crack down on sanctuary cities -- those that turn a blind eye to illegal aliens -- she said, "No," she would not. Clinton said illegal aliens should not be discouraged from reporting crimes. Clinton said she shares Americans' frustration with the "broken" immigration system, but she doesn't see any advantage to "forcing them into the shadows." "I'm one hundred percent in favor of tightening our borders, of enforcing the laws against employers, of going after the kind of abuses that we see in the job market." She blamed "partisan wrangling" for the federal immigration stalemate. Illegal aliens convicted of crimes "should be deported, no questions asked," Clinton said. But she also said the American people don't want deputized law enforcement officials going door to door at businesses and homes, looking for illegal aliens.

A conservative group is blasting Clinton's position on sanctuary cities. "Hillary's response should be frightening to American families, who are forced to live with frequent criminal activity committed by illegals in sanctuary cities," the Eagle Forum said in a news release.

The group used the murder of three Newark, N.J., teenagers last year as an example of what's wrong with sanctuary cities. Three teenagers were killed in a Newark playground last year, allegedly by a Peruvian man who had been released from jail, even though he was in the country illegally.) "It is an outrage that Hillary Clinton is running to become President of the United States, yet she is openly admitting that she will not enforce America's laws," said Eagle Forum Executive Director Jessica Echard. "If Hillary Clinton will not enforce the law against sanctuary cities, why should we believe she will enforce any other immigration laws or build the fence?" Echard asked. "She will simply continue the Bush open-border policies which she pretends to condemn and that have allowed our illegal immigration population to nearly double since 2000."

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Immigrants Feel Less Welcome in Frederick County, Maryland

In just over a decade, Frederick County has been transformed from a bucolic, timeless community of dairy farms and strawberry festivals to a fast-paced mosaic of high-tech firms and housing developments, Pilates classes and exotic eateries, mega-stores and McDonald's. The changes have also brought thousands of Hispanics, some legal immigrants and others not, who have migrated up Interstate 270 to meet the demand for construction and service jobs. Until now, the county has handled the influx with outreach classes in schools and community policing programs. Chic Hispanic restaurants flourish in downtown Frederick, and working-class Latinos have remained relatively invisible.

Suddenly, however, their presence is igniting a controversy that some fear could escalate into the kind of war over illegal immigration that has torn apart Prince William County. In the past month, the Frederick County sheriff has joined with federal authorities to identify and deport illegal immigrants, and county commissioners have proposed legislation to ban free translation of county business and require public schools to track down students who are in the United States illegally. "The single biggest threat to our country is the immigration problem. We cannot continue to absorb this population or we will end up in collapse like a Third World country," said Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, whose officers have identified 18 illegal immigrants in the past two weeks after traffic stops or other incidents. "We are not going out in a white van with a big net, but we are getting the criminal element of the illegal population out of Frederick County."

Local opponents of the measures, including black, white and Hispanic residents, say the crackdown and other proposed actions smack of racism and political grandstanding. They say Latinos have been welcomed by Frederick's businesses as a source of cheap labor. Since 1990, the county's Hispanic population has more than tripled, from fewer than 5,000 to more than 15,000, growing to about 5 percent of the county's inhabitants. "This is nothing but scapegoating," said Lydia Espinoza, a community mediator of Mexican American descent. "The immigrant community has been growing here for years, but now people are seeing more Latinos in public, speaking Spanish in stores. They hear about overcrowded houses or issues that can be resolved by the community. Instead, some people are stoking these emotional fires to create group feelings against immigrants."

Regional organizations on each side have joined the fray. CASA of Maryland, a nonprofit group that lobbies for immigrant rights, plans to present a report today that accuses Jenkins and his department of racial profiling, imprisoning "alarmingly high" numbers of Latinos and using crime fighting as a "subterfuge to deport immigrants."

Help Save Maryland, a rapidly growing citizens group that opposes illegal immigration, has supported the crackdown in group e-mails, radio interviews and newspaper columns. The coordinator of the Frederick chapter has accused opponents of "playing the race card."

In the Hillcrest neighborhood, where many of Frederick's Latinos live (often in households that include legal and illegal immigrants), residents describe growing anxiety. Priests say parishioners have stopped driving to church for fear of run-ins with the police. Check-cashing stores say people are closing their bank accounts. And everyone is asking whether Frederick will become the next Prince William. "I used to love Frederick, but now I don't feel comfortable here anymore," said Concepcion Ramirez, 20, a Mexican-born waitress. "I went to high school here, and everyone was so caring and nice. But people are scared of the police now. Every time you get in your car, you are thinking every single moment of what to do if they stop you."

Despite the contretemps, residents say there is little chance that Frederick will become as bitterly divided as Prince William, where officials approved a number of policies last year to drive out illegal immigrants. In Frederick, the recent proposals to halt public translation services and count illegal pupils are unlikely to become law, in part because they may conflict with state and federal statutes.

One reason for the difference is Frederick's diverse character, a blend of rural courtliness and urban worldliness. The county's economic mainstays include military research, dairy farms, high-tech industry and tourism. Its populace includes seventh-generation German Americans, a black middle class and young professionals who commute to Rockville or Washington. It has an active NAACP chapter and an annual Latino Festival.

More here





7 May, 2008

New British rules sound designed to keep out smart Indians

This is just political posturing. It is not skilled legal immigrants that are the problem but rather illegals and parasitical "refugees"

Britain tightened the rules to regulate entry of skilled non-European workers in the second phase of the biggest overhaul of immigration policy for a generation. The strict new criteria announced on Tuesday require British employers to prove they cannot fill skilled posts with resident or European workers. Non-European skilled workers will need to have a firm job offer in hand even before they apply for visas. Skilled non-Europeans would also need to speak fluent English and earn the equivalent of 24,000 pounds in their home country in order to have any chance of entering Britain legally to work. The new rules were announced by Immigration Minister Liam Byrne as a "system (that) means British jobseekers get the first crack of the whip and that only the skilled migrants we actually need will be able to come".

Tuesday's announcement comes barely eight weeks after Britain formally inaugurated an Australian-style points-based system in the hope it would have "one of the toughest borders in the world" by year-end. On February 29, rules governing the controversial, existing highly-skilled migrants programme were overhauled and a new licensing system put in place for employers wanting to recruit from overseas locations outside Europe.

The February changes dealt with Tier 1 of the immigrant worker category. Tier 2 is the second of five tiers due to be rolled out over the next 12 months. It will be introduced along with Tier 5, for temporary workers such as musicians, actors and sportsmen. Tier 4, which covers students, will follow at the beginning of 2009.

The government has already said that had the new rules been in force, 12 per cent fewer skilled non-European migrants would have entered the UK last year. The Home Office said that in the 12 months to September, 65,000 skilled workers from outside the EEA - the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein - entered the UK. The new criteria, it said, would have trimmed that figure by 8,000. The government's analysis also showed that its tighter rules could have shaved off skilled and temporary non-European migrants by roughly 20,000 people last year.

On Tuesday, it was also confirmed that low-skilled non-Europeans, officially categorized as Tier 3, would no longer be allowed to enter Britain to work. The UK said it would only ever allow entry to this tier of non-European worker if specific shortages are identified that cannot be filled from the domestic or European labour force.

The crackdown on immigration policy and implementation also includes some of the toughest penalties in the world for employers who break the rules and illegally hire non-Europeans. The government said that in the first 80 days of the new immigration regime, 137 British companies were issued with Notices of Potential Liability worth almost half a million pounds for illegally employing non-Europeans. This is more than ten times as much as the entire number of prosecutions last year for the same offence.

The minister said, in what is increasingly seen as a root-and-branch reform of Britain's so-called open-door immigration policy: "Illegal jobs are the root cause of illegal immigration... fines make up just one part of the biggest shake-up of the immigration system for a generation. With the introduction of compulsory identity cards for foreign nationals later in the year, there can be no excuse for not checking the identity of those applying for jobs."

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California -- where "minorities" are a majority

Immigration generates another demographic trend - California's evolution into a society with dozens, even hundreds, of ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The Census Bureau reported last week that 20.9 million Californians are nonwhite and that with its 57 percent "minority" population, the state trails only Hawaii, the District of Columbia and New Mexico.

Immigration, especially illegal immigration, is a hot political topic. Clearly, many Californians resent and resist the cultural change that immigration is creating, manifested in passage of ballot measures against illegal immigration, bilingual education and affirmative action by what has remained an overwhelmingly white electorate.

Resented or accepted, however, massive cultural change is an inescapable and unstoppable fact of California life. We are destined to become a state with both a diminishing, rapidly aging white population and a growing, much younger nonwhite population. One of the fascinating questions that arises out of that change is how it will affect the state's politics.

As noted earlier, the declining white population has been politically dominant, typically accounting for 70-plus percent of voters, who also tend to be substantially older and more affluent than the population as a whole. And the gap between voters and younger, mostly nonwhite, nonvoting adults has been a continuing headache for politicians because the two groups' priorities are markedly different.

Political pros, pundits and academics constantly mull over the possibilities of a surge of political involvement by the uninvolved - whether it would turn the state to the left, for example.

In a report released last week by a consortium of immigration-related foundations, Chicago-based demographic researcher Rob Paral contends that with 49 percent of California's adolescents having at least one immigrant parent, there's strong potential for a dramatic change in the makeup of voters during the next decade.

"It's jaw-dropping," Paral said. If demography is destiny, California's future will be, to put it mildly, a fascinating tableau of change.

More here





6 May, 2008

The latest from McCain

Like GWB, he figures that the GOP needs the Hispanic vote. And because conservatives are unlikely to stay home when the alternative is the far-Leftist Obama, he hasn't got to worry about them. It looks like the filibuster is the only thing now standing in the way of another amnesty. Interesting that the filibuster is nowhere written into the constitution but is nonetheless an important constitutional safeguard. That reflects America's British heritage. Their constitution was entirely "unwritten" until the EU came along. It is interesting evidence of what Judge Learned Hand said: "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it."

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain said Monday that the federal government’s failure to overhaul its immigration policies and secure the border has regrettably prompted some states and cities to enter the fight against the nation’s border woes. Some communities frustrated by federal border efforts are rejecting the long-held notion that immigration is an exclusive federal responsibility. Local efforts include denying some public benefits to illegal immigrants, training police officers in federal immigration law and trying to prevent businesses from hiring illegal border-crossers. “It saddens me to see these conflicting approaches toward the issue of illegal immigration, because we would not have this problem if the federal government had carried out its responsibilities,” McCain told reporters in Phoenix on Cinco de Mayo.

McCain said he’d return to the federal approach if he’s elected president by securing the border, deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in the United States, updating temporary worker programs and establishing tamper-proof IDs to let people determine whether new workers are in the country legally.

On a political front, the Republican from Arizona noted that the focus on immigration during the GOP primary season harmed his party’s image among Hispanics. Hispanic citizens want America’s borders secured because they are vulnerable to losing their jobs because illegal immigrants accept lower wages. They also want humane treatment for illegal immigrants who sometimes face exploitation and mistreatment, McCain said.

McCain, whose campaign launched its Spanish language Web site on Monday, said he was confident in his prospects for attracting Hispanic voters, whose values include respect for family, opposition to abortion, a sense of patriotism and a drive to work hard. “Everything about Hispanic voters is tailor-made to the Republican message,” said McCain, noting he received heavy Hispanic support during his last Senate re-election campaign. “I am confident that I will do very well. I will have to work at it.”

McCain said he didn’t know whether an aggressive local immigration crackdown in the county where he lives would hurt Republican chances to win over Hispanics. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has had 160 of his officers trained in federal immigration law, set up a hotline to report immigration violations and sent his deputies to three heavily Hispanic areas to conduct crime crackdowns. While the sheriff said the crackdowns were meant to suppress all manner of crime, civil rights groups and some elected officials say the patrols were thinly veiled immigration sweeps fraught with racial profiling.

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Illegals leaving Britain because of Britain's appalling socialized medicine system

ILLEGAL immigrants are sneaking OUT of Britain because they are sick of our weather and hospitals. Border officials yesterday revealed they are collaring a rising tide of failed asylum seekers who flee because life here is not cushy enough. Most escapees caught in the last few weeks are from hellholes like Iraq and Afghanistan - where temperatures rarely drop below 35øC. Many planned to head to balmy Italy after rumours of an amnesty for illegal immigrants. But they changed their minds when right-wing PM Silvio Berlusconi was re-elected and launched a clampdown.

Chief immigration officer Les Williams said: "We have recently noticed people trying to leave the country. Some said they wanted to go to a warmer country as they are fed up with the English weather and their treatment on the NHS."

A colleague told how he caught four Iraqis trying to sneak through Dover's port. He said: "They were sick of the rain and cold and wanted to go somewhere with a bit more sun. They also complained they could not get appointments to see a doctor or a dentist. It's all a bit rich really."

Three Afghans were arrested just weeks ago when they were injured trying to sneak out on a Polish timber lorry. The trio were formally deported. The Sun revealed in December how pregnant Polish immigrants were heading home to give birth because prenatal care was better in Poland.

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5 May, 2008

The "wisdom" we are up against

Post below recycled from Michelle Malkin.

The MSM focused on the diminished numbers of May Day protesters earlier this week, but those who did turn out were as militant as ever. Blog correspondents from across the country sent in their coverage.

Here’s a taste of what you missed–with thanks to all the bloggers, photographers, and readers who sent in their submissions.

From Pacific Northwest photojournalist Byron Dazey, reconquistadors are alive and well (or whatever) in Seattle:

Urban Infidel braved the moonbats in Union Square, NYC:

Freedom Folks has video of the open-borders tantrum in Chicago. Watch for the lovely use of the American flag as a stroller cover and the left-wing thug attack on Blogs 4 Borders reporter M.J. at around 4:30:

In Boston, intrepid Michael Graham went undercover to interview open-borders marchers.

Antihippies in Portland snapped photos of the May Day mayhem. Why can’t the nutballs leave our flag alone?

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Moderate Risk has more Portland. More Chicago coverage from Flying Debris. More Denver coverage from Slapstick Politics.

Hazleton speech by "Digger"

Below is the text of a speech at the Voice of the People immigration rally in Hazleton, Pennsylvania on May 1, 2008

So what do you all think of good ole George W. Bush? Well no matter your opinion of the man there is one good thing that George W. Bush has done for this country. On April 30, 2003 George W. Bush made this proclamation: "The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day," and I ask all Americans to join me in this day of celebration and in reaffirming our allegiance to our Nation." So I say to you now Happy Loyalty Day and long live the United States of America!

Unfortunately, there are others in this country today celebrating a different kind of Loyalty Day all across our nation. These people have come to our country illegally and are now marching through our streets making demands. These people have no loyalty to the United States and have no right to be here. No Right!

Speaking of rights, there is a current lie and deception being perpetrated on we, the American people. You will see it on signs today in their marches when you look at the pictures. This falsehood is being repeated over and over by groups that want illegal immigration to continue - groups like La Raza. That lie is that immigrants, both legal and illegal, in this country have or should be granted Civil Rights. They are directly trying to hijack the civil rights movement led by the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and cut it up in some absurd and bizarre pattern to fit illegal aliens. There is just one problem with this - Civil Rights by definition are rights bestowed on citizens by a nation.

They are one of the great benefits of becoming a citizen. Blacks in this country at the time had every right to march and demand equal Civil Rights in this country, for they were American citizens! THESE - PEOPLE - ARE - NOT! Remember that the next time you see them trying to hijack the civil rights movement with their deceptive words.

And as these illegal aliens and their supporters march through our streets demanding rights, they are also demanding more handouts from you, the American people. (As if they haven't taken enough from you already). Here's an example for you - I promise to keep it brief since it's a bunch of numbers.

A recent ESR Research Firm report found that in 2007 the government's estimate of 37 million immigrants, both legal and illegal in this country, cost the US taxpayer $9,000 per immigrant in costs and services. A total of $346 billion for 2007 alone. The study also found that the government's estimates of 12 million illegal aliens are well below the true numbers and that it is at least 20 million illegal aliens.

Now to my point. If these 20 million+ illegal aliens are granted amnesty, not only would it show a disregard for our laws and be a slap in the face to those waiting to come here legally, it will literally cost us hundreds of billions of dollars in additional services per year.

Now I have a question for you. How many of you enjoyed paying your taxes this year? I certainly didn't. But as any low wage earning family in this country can tell you, they usually receive a refund. Families usually receive one because of the Earned Income Credit or EIC. This can easily total thousands of dollars in refunds each year for a family.

If we bow to the demands of illegal aliens marching today imagine how much taxpayer money will be going to them in the form of tax refunds alone through EIC. All of the people of this country will suffer as the government either needs to punish Americans by cutting things like the EIC out of the tax code or raise taxes on everyone to cover it - because they surely are not going to cut spending overall.

This is just one single example of how giving into these extortionists - yes, I said extortionists! - will cost you and me and all citizens in the United States of America. Are you going to give in to these extortionists? Are you going to sit on your couch and ignore this?

Every night while you sleep Americans are being killed at the hands of illegal aliens in this country. The list of victims is growing. The absolute sadness and heartbreak is spreading to families throughout this country. It absolutely angers me to see my fellow citizens killed by the lack of action of our leaders.

Does it anger you? How much more of this are you going to take? Are you going to continue being a victim? Are you going to spread the word far and wide that our country has been invaded? Are - you - going - to - fight - for - your - country? We are in the right on this issue and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I close with this. we cannot give into the demands of a group of people who have illegally entered our country. A group of people who hold no loyalty to this country. A group of people who are only here to rape our wallets and leave our children destitute. We do not have to stand for this anymore! No to amnesty. No to sanctuary cities. No to the continued injustice we are being forced to accept.

Thank You, Happy Loyalty Day and Free Ramos and Compean!

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4 May, 2008

An Op-ed the New York Times Editorial Page Refused to Run

The following appears on the Dept. of Homeland Security website dated May 1. There are numerous links in the original

When it comes to illegal immigration, the American people are tired of thirty years of lip service. They want our laws enforced. As Secretary of Homeland Security, I have directed my department to pursue that mandate, using all the tools permitted by law. This involves a three-fold approach.

First, we stem the flow at the border by increasing the likelihood that illegal entrants - and smugglers of all types - will be detected, apprehended, and removed.

Second, we drive businesses to comply with laws against employing illegal workers.

Third, when we encounter those who are here illegally, we remove them.

Granted, we need a long-term solution involving a temporary worker program, legal immigration reform, and a fair policy to deal with illegal immigrants long-rooted here.

But the American people have demanded that we first demonstrate an effective commitment to enforce current laws. And even those who are sympathetic to the painful circumstances of illegal immigration question any change that might trigger new waves of entrants seeking to benefit from still-future waves of "reform."

Our policies respond to this demand and to Congress. They may be tough, yet they are fair, and they are succeeding. That success has now bred a firestorm of opposition. Opponents are driven by factors ranging from an ideological commitment to open borders to reliance on illegal workforces. Apparently, their strategy is to challenge every enforcement action with exaggerated or misleading cries of outrage. These challenges add up to a position that would forbid any effective enforcement. The New York Times editorial page is a case in point.

Regarding interior enforcement, a March 27, 2008 editorial ("A Foolish Immigration Purge") attacked our proposal that businesses receiving letters about workers whose names don't match Social Security numbers clear up the discrepancy within three months. Under this proposal, if a mismatch is caused by an innocent clerical mistake, the mistake is simply corrected. But if it's caused by an illegal worker carrying a forged identity, the employer must act. Ignoring this distinction, the Times falsely implied that businesses would have to fire workers even for innocent errors.

A December 18, 2006 editorial ("Swift Raids") protested earlier efforts at workplace enforcement. It was followed by an October 4, 2007 editorial ("Stop the Raids") which depicted our enforcement efforts on Long Island and elsewhere as trampling on localities. But an April 16, 2008 editorial ("New Jersey's Immigration Crackdown") castigated Garden State localities for their enforcement efforts.

Concerning border security, an April 3, 2008 editorial ("Michael Chertoff's Insult") condemned our exercise of legal authority to waive certain environmental regulations that would have stopped us from fulfilling the explicit mandate of Congress to put fencing, roads, and lighting in place this year in order to stem drug and human smuggling.

The editorial failed to mention that we had previously conducted multiple environmental reviews or that the Interior Department has complained that some border areas are so endangered by smugglers that visitors and employees are turned away.

Taken together, these examples suggest that in some quarters, no enforcement technique is acceptable. Of course, if none is acceptable, enforcing immigration law becomes impossible. Perhaps that's what some critics really want. In a March 4, 2008 editorial ("Border Insecurity"), this newspaper takes aim at the very propriety of defending our sovereignty and our laws: "From San Diego on the Pacific to Brownsville on the Rio Grande, a steel curtain is descending across the continent. Behind it lies a nation..that has decided to wall itself off.."

In this rewrite of lines from Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain address, the editorialists outrageously compare America's attempts to secure its own borders against smugglers with Josef Stalin's subjugation of Eastern Europe.

In the end, the debate is not about enforcement tactics. It's about enforcing the rule of law. Do our critics want a country where employers create economic incentives for people to come here illegally? Do they desire an America with open borders and uncontrolled illegal migration? Should federal officials tacitly allow this to happen by rejecting every meaningful effort to enforce the law?

In the end, two truths stand out. We need to continue to discuss reforms to our immigration laws. But we must continue to uphold our current laws by enforcing them.

Michael Chertoff

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CA: Immigration Raid Busts Deported Criminals

Fifteen undocumented immigrants illegally living in the North County after being deported for serious crimes were in custody again Friday following a two-day law enforcement sweep, authorities said. "Our mission is to rid our community of as many criminals as possible," said Escondido Police Lieutenant Bob Benton.

The criminal aliens, all of whom had been kicked out of the United States following felony convictions, were re-arrested Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday according to the Escondido Police Department. The raids were carried out with assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The detainees' criminal histories include such crimes as burglary, auto theft, felony domestic violence and assault with a deadly weapon, Benton said. One is a documented gang member, and others were found in possession of methamphetamine and a loaded 9 mm handgun. "Many of these individuals return to the united states simply to commit more crime," Benton added.

Five immigrants were jailed in Vista to face prosecution for crimes they allegedly committed since unlawfully re-entering the United States. The others were turned over to ICE and likely will be deported again soon. "If they reenter, and we catch them," said Robin Baker, of Immigration and Customs enforcement, "they're going to be presented for prosecution. It's a federal crime to reenter this country after you've been deported."

"Criminals, without a doubt, should be behind bars, whether they're documented or not," said Enrique Morones, an immigration rights advocate, from the organization Border Angels. But Morones said Escondido is targeting its residents over and over again. "Whether its landlords acting as immigration agents, whether it's the police, and border patrol working together for racial profiling." Morones asked why other cities are not making the same efforts to target crimes. "It's always in Escondido. You don't hear that happening in La Jolla?"

The purpose of the effort was to rid Escondido of serious crooks, not to target people whose only offense is being non-U.S. citizens in the country without permission, according to Benton. "And a lot of times what we're finding is that (criminal aliens) are coming back into the country simply to commit more crimes," the lieutenant said. "... The important distinction is we're not targeting individuals simply because they're undocumented."

Benton said the city relies on undocumented residents to report crimes when they have been victimized. "Many of these criminals target these individuals simply because they're here illegally, and because they know they won't report

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3 May, 2008

Nearly 25 Percent of Children Younger Than 5 Are Latino, Census Says

A demographic change nobody was ever consulted about

Hispanics, the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group, now account for about one in four children younger than 5 in the United States, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released today. The increase from almost one in five in 2000 has broad implications for governments, communities and schools nationwide, suggesting that the meteoric rise in the Hispanic population that demographers forecast for mid-century will occur even sooner among younger generations.

"Hispanics have both a larger proportion of people in their child-bearing years and tend to have slightly more children," said Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center and co-author of a recent study predicting that the Latino population will double from 15 percent today to 30 percent by 2050. "So this means that in five years, a quarter of the 5- to 9-year-olds will be Hispanic, and in 10 years a quarter of the 10- to 14-year-olds will be Hispanic. It's just going to move up through the age distribution with each successive cohort being slightly more Hispanic," Passel said.

Hispanics account for more than half of children younger than 5 in New Mexico and California, where their share of the overall state population is 44 and 36 percent, respectively. In Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado, about one-third or more of children younger than 5 are Hispanic. The figures are less dramatic but still notable in Virginia and Maryland. In both states, Hispanics account for 11 percent of children younger than 5 -- and 7 and 6 percent of the overall population, respectively.

Although the census is not scheduled to release county-level data until later in the year, statistics compiled by Washington-area school systems indicate that the number of youngsters who are Latino is even higher in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. In Montgomery County, for instance, Hispanics make up 14 percent of residents and 22 percent of public school students. In Fairfax County, Hispanics account for 13 percent of residents and 17 percent of students.

The census figures showed a slight drop in immigration to the United States by Hispanics from July 1, 2006, to July 1, 2007, vs. the previous 12-month period. That suggests that the U.S. economic slowdown might have had some impact on immigration. For almost a decade, U.S. births have accounted for a far greater share of the growth in the Hispanic population than immigration. Nonetheless, many researchers warn that the higher-than-average poverty rate of U.S.-born Latino children and the fact that many are raised by immigrant parents pose particular challenges to their education and integration.

"Based on what we know, many in this population may not be growing up speaking English in their homes," said Margie McHugh, co-director of the National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. In a recent study, McHugh found that 75 percent of limited-English-proficient students in Los Angeles County elementary schools were born in the United States. Adding to the difficulties facing such children, McHugh said, is the fact that Latinos are increasingly moving to states and counties where they have not been historically concentrated.

"Because of the accountability requirements in the No Child Left Behind law, many of these states and localities have already been thinking hard about how to serve these children," she said. "But the gap between the services they have in place and what's needed is quite large."

More here



CIA Chief Sees Unrest Rising With Population

Swelling populations and a global tide of immigration will present new security challenges for the United States by straining resources and stoking extremism and civil unrest in distant corners of the globe, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a speech yesterday. The population surge could undermine the stability of some of the world's most fragile states, especially in Africa, while in the West, governments will be forced to grapple with ever larger immigrant communities and deepening divisions over ethnicity and race, Hayden said.

Hayden, speaking at Kansas State University, described the projected 33 percent growth in global population over the next 40 years as one of three significant trends that will alter the security landscape in the current century. By 2050, the number of humans on Earth is expected to rise from 6.7 billion to more than 9 billion, he said. "Most of that growth will occur in countries least able to sustain it, a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism, both in those countries and beyond," Hayden said. With the population of countries such as Niger and Liberia projected to triple in size in 40 years, regional governments will be forced to rapidly find food, shelter and jobs for millions, or deal with restive populations that "could be easily attracted to violence, civil unrest, or extremism," he said.

European countries, many of which already have large immigrant communities, will see particular growth in their Muslim populations while the number of non-Muslims will shrink as birthrates fall. "Social integration of immigrants will pose a significant challenge to many host nations -- again boosting the potential for unrest and extremism," Hayden said. The CIA director also predicted a widening gulf between Europe and North America on how to deal with security threats, including terrorism. While U.S. and European officials agree on the urgency of the terrorism threat, there is a fundamental difference -- a "transatlantic divide" -- over the solution, he said.

While the United States sees the fight against terrorism as a global war, European nations perceive the terrorist threat as a law enforcement problem, he said. "They tend not to view terrorism as we do, as an overwhelming international challenge. Or if they do, we often differ on what would be effective and appropriate to counter it," Hayden said. He added that he could not predict "when or if" the two sides could forge a common approach to security.

A third security trend highlighted by Hayden was the emergence of China as a global economic and military powerhouse, pursuing its narrow strategic and political interests. But Hayden said China's increasing prominence need not be perceived as a direct challenge to the United States. "If Beijing begins to accept greater responsibility for the health of the international system, as all global powers should, we will remain on a constructive, even if competitive, path," he said. "If not, the rise of China begins to look more adversarial."

Source





2 May, 2008

This year's May Day rally in L.A. draws business support, but far fewer protesters



In numbers that appeared notably light, immigrant workers and their supporters gathered in downtown Los Angeles this afternoon for a May Day march to demand legislative reforms and an end to blanket raids on work sites.

Two years ago, the May Day march drew more than 500,000 supporters registering their protest of recently scuttled plans to make being an illegal immigrant a felony. Last year, the crowd was estimated at 35,000 and today it appeared to be smaller, although thousands from two main marches converged on City Hall in the late afternoon.

The May Day marches in cities across the U.S. were expected to be smaller than in the past -- about 20,000 were predicted in Los Angeles -- and quieter. Widespread fear of government raids was blamed for the lower turnout, along with the immigrant movement's shift in focus from marches to boosting citizenship applications and voter registration.

Pete Navarro, president of the Mexican American Bar Assn., said Spanish-language disc jockeys were not promoting the event as heavily as they did in previous years. And with immigration reform efforts stalled in Congress, there have been no urgent headlines inducing marchers to get out and show the flag.

Rick Oltman, spokesman for the anti-illegal immigration group California for Population Stabilization, said march organizers may have deliberately sought to avoid a big turnout. "They realized that all these numbers hurt them in terms of support," he said. "It is reminding the American people that there is this whole group of people, illegal aliens, who do not want our laws enforced."

Calling for a host of immigration reforms, marchers have found allies in local political leaders and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. In a news conference this morning, the chamber stressed the need for more worker visas and a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. "This is a landmark moment," said Sam Garrison, the chamber's vice president of public policy. "Here you have labor, business, local elected officials, immigrant rights activists and leading educators all coming together to say this has to stop. "The raids are frightening workers. They are worrying employers," he said. "I think it's going to cause a lot of businesses to think twice about coming to Los Angeles."

By late afternoon, Thurday's event was proceeding without any significant confrontations between marchers and police. Last year, an otherwise peaceful march degenerated into a chaotic and violent episode at MacArthur Park. Officers clubbed protesters and media, fired non-lethal riot guns into the crowd, and ultimately generated more than 250 legal claims from people who said they were injured. In a scathing self-appraisal, the department said officers used excessive violence and suffered from a failure of leadership at the scene. This year, the LAPD mounted elaborate training measures to prepare for the May Day crowd.

Some of those who were injured last year told reporters at MacArthur Park this morning that they hoped for a more peaceful march. Planning to march at the front of the crowd, they wore red shirts and carried a banner that read "Fuimos golpeados. Seguimos luchando" -- "We were beaten. We keep fighting." "We want this year to be peaceful," said Henry Reyes, who said he was injured last year by a motorcycle officer. "We hope this year will be better than last year."

In the last two years, organizers have been split on the issue of boycotting work, school and consumer spending in honor of May Day. This year, they shelved the boycott idea, favoring instead a united front on comprehensive immigration reform, according to Angelica Salas executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles..

The issue of comprehensive reform has colored the presidential campaign, prompted hundreds of state and local legislative proposals, and brought tens of thousands of marchers into the streets across the nation every May Day for several years. As the rhetoric has ratcheted up, immigration raids have become more frequent. In the last fiscal year, some 4,900 websites were swept up in local work-site arrests, compared with just over 100 in 2001. In just one raid last February, authorities arrested more than 130 undocumented workers at a Van Nuys manufacturing company.

Continued raids could be bad for business, chamber officials said today, citing a study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. The report, released today, said tens of thousands of jobs could be lost if continued raids force businesses to flee the state. Enforcement efforts should focus on companies with a clear history of exploiting workers, it said. "The immigrant worker built Southern California and the L.A. economy," Garrison said. "At the end of the day, they benefit everyone, whether legal or not."

Source



Immigration laws give gang member a shot at staying in Canada, lawyer says

An El Salvador man's bid to seek refuge in Canada from the violent gang he once belonged to is among the scenarios covered under laws designed to protect people facing harm in their home countries, a Vancouver-based immigration lawyer says. The case of Jose Francisco Cardoza Quinteros, who arrived in Canada in September 2007 and told border officers he had killed four people in El Salvador, has raised questions about why someone with an admitted criminal past would be allowed to apply for protected status.

But immigration lawyer Doug Cannon says while Cardoza Quinteros doesn't appear to meet the UN definition of a refugee, there is a section of Canadian law that offers protection to people facing unreasonable harm abroad. "What we're really talking about here are broader requirements to protect people who are at risk of life, cruel and unusual punishment or treatment, or torture," Cannon said in an interview Thursday. "The refugee division considers cases like this because it is part of protecting human beings from unfair treatment, wherever they may face it in the world."

Cardoza Quinteros later retracted his statements about his gang activities - which varied greatly during his original interview with border officers - and an immigration board member recently said she doubted he had ever killed anyone. Cardoza Quinteros claimed he was fleeing his former gang, the Mara Salvatrucha, which wants him dead because it believes he was an accomplice in the deaths of gang members during a 2004 prison riot. His refugee claim was denied in February because of his ties to a criminal organization and he was ordered deported, but he'll still be able to argue during the pre-removal risk assessment process that he will face danger if returned to El Salvador.

Cannon said Cardoza Quinteros isn't fleeing the justice system. "What he's really afraid of is a situation where he feels he has done no wrong yet his life is at risk and the authorities cannot protect him," Cannon said. "And that's the key issue in his case - can the authorities protect him from the harm that he fears?" Cardoza Quinteros's lawyer in Vancouver declined to comment about the case.

In the meantime, the federal government will ask the Federal Court on Friday to overturn an immigration board decision to release Cardoza Quinteros while the case moves through the immigration system. Federal lawyers will argue Cardoza Quinteros poses a danger to the public, but earlier this week an immigration board member ruled that Cardoza Quinteros is not a significant risk and that conditions placed on him were adequate. In ordering him released, refugee board member Daphne Shaw Dyck noted Cardoza Quinteros had been living free in Surrey for seven months without incident and has expressed a desire to turn his life around.

It's not clear how often claimants have used their criminal past to justify claims for protected status, as federal immigration officials don't compile such statistics. A similar example occurred last year, when a teenage gang member from Nashville facing extradition on charges of murder asked for refugee protection in Edmonton. Nasser Muhsin, 17, argued he might be hurt or killed by rival gangs if he was sent back to the United States. Muhsin was initially released by the refugee board in Edmonton, but in January a Canadian judge ordered him extradited.

The Cardoza Quinteros case in Surrey has prompted fierce criticism from local politicians in British Columbia who say such admitted criminals should never be released into the public, much less be allowed to apply for protection in Canada. "I think the vast majority of Canadians will have absolutely no sympathy with that claim (that Cardoza Quinteros deserves protection from his former gang)," said Liberal public safety critic Ujjal Dosanjh. "Fleeing political, religions, ethnic persecution and the like really bears no resemblance to running away from a criminal gang. Canada's refugee system should not provide you with a shield against your past or current sins."

Dosanjh said he supports Ottawa's fight to keep Cardoza Quinteros detained, but he said legislation should be changed to prevent such refugee claims from moving forward.

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, who first applied to have Cardoza Quinteros held in custody, declined to comment on the case but said Ottawa wants to ensure anyone trying to enter Canada who poses a danger to the public is removed. "Our government is committed to detaining and removing foreign nationals who may pose a threat to national security or engaged in serious criminality," John Brent wrote in an e-mail.

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1 May, 2008

Recent Australian attitudes to immigration

Australia has a long history of encouraging immigration and a consensus of long standing about that. The consensus arose out of the fact that Australia is quite "empty" comparted with the billions of people in lands to our North. It was felt that a bigger Australian population was needed for defence purposes. For that reason, approval of immigration is unusually high in Australia. Approval has been kept high by the fact that most immigrants to date have been from Europe and Asia -- bringing people to Australia who assimilate very successfully to Australian society. Recent arrivals of significant numbers of Muslims and Africans seem likely to fray that happy situation in the future, however. The famous Cronulla riots were a reaction to perceived Muslim arrogance and hostility. Some statistics below and thoughts about prosperity and immigration. The years under the recently deposed Howard government were ones of high and rising economic prosperity

The long economic boom probably does much to explain another paradox. Under Howard, our immigration program was built up to record levels. The more the economy boomed, the more migrants he let in. But while all this was happening, public disapproval of immigration was falling, not rising. In the middle of last year only 35 per cent of respondents considered the intake to be too high, half the proportion feeling that way in 1996. Almost half the respondents considered the balance of immigration from different countries to be "about right".

It's true that only a third of people approved of government assistance to ethnic minorities to maintain their customs and traditions. But such spending is never popular - it's seen as benefiting select minorities, not the nation - and, if anything, approval is up a bit. Overall, almost 70 per cent of people agreed with the proposition that "accepting immigrants from many different countries makes Australia stronger". But agreement was higher among men than women, varied significantly between states, was higher in state capitals than the rest of the state, and tended to decline with the rising age of the respondents.

Agreement rose with the respondents' level of education. Predictably, it was higher among those born overseas than those born in Australia, and highest among those overseas-born from a non-English speaking background.

Of course, the degree of actual contact with immigrants varies greatly between city and country, as well as between capital cities. Overall, just under a quarter of the population was born overseas. But the proportion ranges from 35 per cent in Sydney, 34 per cent in Perth and 31 per cent in Melbourne, to 25 per cent in Adelaide, 23 per cent in Brisbane and 13 per cent in Hobart.

Why did Howard's reign see us become so much more relaxed about high and rising levels of immigration? Predominantly, I guess, because of our rising economic security. Historically, we've been leery of migrants when we feared they'd take our jobs or drive down our wage rates. As part of that, people may have found the move to a much higher proportion of immigrants with scarce skills - and so a lot less family reunion - less threatening.

But I suspect the very fact that Howard seemed so suspicious of immigrants - so tough on asylum seekers, so insistent that we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come - has reassured many people that the Government's in control and can be trusted to protect our interests. So the era of Pauline Hanson has passed - partly because Howard, seeing his voter base under threat, promptly donned some of her clothes.

Rudd, of course, fully intends to keep the high immigration program going, although he's likely to be somewhat less punitive in his treatment of unauthorised immigrants and a lot less punitive in his rhetoric. It will be interesting to see whether, with a slowing economy and without all the waving of sticks, he can preserve the present retreat from xenophobia.

Source



Sex offender caught crossing into US illegally



Texas - U.S. Border Patrol Agents arrested a man convicted of sexual assault with a minor as he entered the country illegally through a drainage canal on Friday, near downtown El Paso. Agents from the Border Patrol entry team entered the Franklin drainage system and found eight individuals that illegally entered the United States approximately 1.5 miles west of the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry. All eight were transported to the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry for processing.

During processing, record checks indicated that one of the men, a Mexican citizen, had been convicted of 2 counts of sexual assault with a minor in Florida, probation violation and faced deportation in the past. The man was identified as 50-year-old Victor Valenzuela-Guerrero, from Mexico

Source



English not first language for 800,000 schoolchildren in Britain



More than 800,000 schoolchildren do not speak English as their first language, official figures have disclosed. Almost 500,000 children in primary schools have English as a second language – an estimated one in seven – with a further 350,000 pupils in secondary schools.

It follows a significant rise in the number of school pupils from immigrant families. Their numbers have almost doubled in a decade to reach record levels in England's schools. In some areas, children without English as their first language account for more than half of all pupils.

Teachers warned yesterday that large concentrations of foreign pupils with a poor grasp of English were placing an increasing burden on their capacity to provide all children with a decent standard of education. They say more money is needed to cater for the dozens of languages spoken in some classrooms, amid fears that overall standards could suffer if they are forced to concentrate on the few struggling with their language.

Many Roman Catholic schools are now printing admissions forms in Polish and hiring foreign teaching assistants to cope with increasing demand for places from eastern European families.

According to figures published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families yesterday, 14.4 per cent of children aged five to 11 speak languages other than English in the home – compared with 13.5 per cent 12 months ago – making a total of 470,080 pupils. In secondary schools, there are 354,300 pupils with English as a second language. That proportion increased from 10.6 to 10.8 per cent. The figures disclosed that in 14 local authorities – almost one in 10 – English-speaking primary school pupils are in the minority.

In the London borough of Tower Hamlets, only 23 per cent of pupils speak English as their first language. In inner London primary schools, children with English as their first language are in the minority. One primary school – Newbury Park in east London – teaches children who speak more than 40 languages, including Tamil, Swahili, Bengali, Cantonese, Spanish, Japanese and Russian.

Jim Knight, the schools minister, admitted that "undoubtedly there can be problems" for schools with a high concentration of pupils speaking other languages as their mother tongue. Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, said: "This has happened because the Government failed to follow our policy of taking into account the impact of immigration."

The National Association of Head Teachers warned in November that the situation was "out of control" and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers called last month for extra funds to "meet the extra educational demands on schools brought about by the recent influx of children of refugee and EU migrant families".

According to official figures, the number of pupils speaking other languages has increased by a third since the main expansion of the European Union in 2004, from 10.5 per cent to 14.4 per cent this year. Last year, official figures disclosed that since Labour came to power in 1997, nearly four million foreign nationals have come to Britain and 1.6 million have left. It was also disclosed that increasing numbers of pupils were from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The proportion of primary pupils described as non-white British rose from 21.9 to 23.3 per cent. In secondary schools, the proportion increased from 18 to 19.5 per cent in 12 months.

Mr Knight said: "The gap in achievement between migrant children and English-speaking pupils has narrowed significantly in recent years."

Source