The primary version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Greenie Watch, Political Correctness Watch, Education Watch, Dissecting Leftism, Food & Health Skeptic, Gun Watch, Socialized Medicine, Eye on Britain, Recipes, Tongue Tied and Australian Politics. For a list of backups viewable in China, see here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing) See here or here for the archives of this site

****************************************************************************************



31 May, 2011

Los Angeles Pols Would Protect Illegal-Alien Criminals

R. Cort Kirkwood

In the latest act from the illegal-alien lobby, Los Angeles city council members have announced they want the city to stop full participation in the federal Secure Communities program, which matches the fingerprints of local arrestees against the database maintained by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. The purpose of Secure Communities is to identify illegal aliens so they can be deported after they serve sentences.

According to the Los Angeles Times, council members Bernard C. Parks and Jan Perry are behind the effort to undermine federal enforcement of immigration laws. Los Angeles has been a sanctuary city for 30 years, and now its political leaders are trying to hamper efforts to deport illegal alien criminals. The pair, along with the immigration lobby, is backing a bill that passed the assembly which limits the fingerprints state and local authorities can share to those of convicted felons.

No Deportations

Thirty years ago, the city adopted Special Order 40, which prohibits aw enforcement officials from contacting someone solely because those officials suspect him of being an illegal alien. The council members argue the federal program trespasses Special Order 40, the Times reports.

As well because illegal alien criminals who are not felons, but perhaps only "minor" offenders, get caught in the dragnet of the Secure Communities fingerprint program, the leftist leaders in Los Angeles want to short circuit it. According to the Times:

Secure Communities . has come under fire for leading to the deportation of those who were either arrested but not subsequently convicted of a crime or convicted of misdemeanors or infractions, such as a traffic violation. Of 38,828 people in California deported through Secure Communities between May 2009 and March of this year, about 12,000 were charged with or convicted of major violent offenses, while nearly 11,000 were classified as non-criminal deportees, according to ICE statistics.

The Times reports that the resolution backs a recently passed assembly bill, sponsored by a crackpot leftist in San Francisco, "which requires that only fingerprints of convicted felons be run through the immigration database." The bill would cancel and renegotiate participation in the Secure Communities program. . The bill would also make counties' participation in the program voluntary.

Will Obama Sue? The move, as with most sanctuary policies, would appear to trespass the federal prerogative to enforce immigration laws, as the Obama Administration argued in its lawsuit against Arizona. Wtih the carefully crafted SB 1070, Arizona sought to intensify the enforcement of federal immigration law by permitting police to question the immigration status of anyone with whom they have otherwise lawful contact. The Obama Justice Department successfully argued in federal court that SB 1070 usurped federal authority over immigration. Arizona is appealing a decision from the radically leftist U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, that validated the Obama Administration's view that immigration is solely a federal prerogative.

The question is why the Administration has not sued any of the dozens of sanctuary cities, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, which openly defy federal programs meant to bring illegal immigration under control. The upshot of the proposal from the Los Angeles council members is that no illegal alien who is not an violent or potentially violent criminal is worthy of deportation.

Crime Wave

Sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles typically suffer cosmically high violent crime rates because they refuse to help deport illegal aliens. As Heather Mac Donald reported in the Manhattan Institute's City Journal in 2004, sanctuary laws help perpetuate crime, particularly because they inhibit the deportation of illegals who commit "minor" crimes.

L.A.'s sanctuary law and all others like it contradict a key 1990s policing discovery: the Great Chain of Being in criminal behavior. Pick up a law-violator for a "minor" crime, and you might well prevent a major crime: enforcing graffiti and turnstile-jumping laws nabs you murderers and robbers. Enforcing known immigration violations, such as reentry following deportation, against known felons, would be even more productive.

LAPD officers recognize illegal deported gang members all the time-flashing gang signs at court hearings for rival gangbangers, hanging out on the corner, or casing a target. These illegal returnees are, simply by being in the country after deportation, committing a felony (in contrast to garden-variety illegals on their first trip to the U.S., say, who are only committing a misdemeanor).

"But if I see a deportee from the Mara Salvatrucha [Salvadoran prison] gang crossing the street, I know I can't touch him," laments a Los Angeles gang officer. Only if the deported felon has given the officer some other reason to stop him, such as an observed narcotics sale, can the cop accost him-but not for the immigration felony.

Though such a policy puts the community at risk, the department's top brass brush off such concerns. No big deal if you see deported gangbangers back on the streets, they say. Just put them under surveillance for "real" crimes and arrest them for those. But surveillance is very manpower-intensive. Where there is an immediate ground for getting a violent felon off the street and for questioning him further, it is absurd to demand that the woefully understaffed LAPD ignore it.

Secure Communities is particularly important, then, in fighting illegal alien crime, which is out of control. Reported Mac Donald, "In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens."

Mac Donald's figures are a few years old, but they explain the concerns of cops who worry more about crime than the rights of illegal aliens.

Sheriff Supports Secure Communities

The Los Angeles County Sheriff, Lee Baca, supports Secure Communities, as he wrote in an op-ed piece for the Times. Wrote Baca:

Consider the following case: In January, a local police agency arrested a man for driving with a suspended license. A subsequent fingerprint screening revealed that he was also a convicted felon illegally in the United States from Mexico. His record included three prior drug trafficking convictions and six deportations in 11 years.

Or consider this one: Recently, a 32-year-old man was booked into the Los Angeles County Jail on DUI charges. His fingerprints revealed not only that he was in the United States illegally but that he had previously been deported after his conviction for killing a child in 1997.
Both men were identified through the Secure Communities program.

Baca argues that concerns about non-criminal illegals being deported, as if that ought to be a concern, given that they shouldn't be here anyway, are misplaced. Secure Communities, he argues, is a success. 

SOURCE





Light to be shone on Australia's illegal immigration mess

LABOR'S immigration regime will be scrutinised as part of a formal inquiry into the detention network, with the Greens and crossbenchers indicating they support a Coalition-led review.

As another boatload of asylum-seekers was intercepted off Ashmore Reef yesterday, the opposition motion for a "warts and all" examination into detention received its strongest support yet.

The Greens backflipped on previous statements the review would simply be a political "witch-hunt" after securing concessions from the Coalition.

After a week of negotiations with the Greens and crossbenchers, opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison yesterday amended the terms of reference of his inquiry to address concerns by both groups -- including closer scrutiny of the system of mandatory detention.

"Over the last several years, we have seen a litany of chaos and abuse and cost blowouts in this sector which defy imagination . . . and a failure by this party to address policy failures," Mr Morrison said. "No member should be muzzled in seeking to ask the questions and get the answers they deserve in this sector."

Greens MP Adam Bandt and independent Andrew Wilkie voiced support for the inquiry yesterday. Independent Bob Katter and West Australian National Tony Crook are expected to vote for the motion when debate resumes next parliamentary sitting.

Mr Bandt said he welcomed the inquiry but wanted to see the upper and lower houses involved. "It is clear, for reasons other members have pointed out, that mandatory detention has failed and anything we can do to shed light on the issue is something I would welcome," Mr Bandt said. "I hope it is treated as a serious issue and for that reason I would like to see it take the form of a joint select committee."

Mr Wilkie labelled mandatory detention "cruel and inhumane" and said the government could not "keep kidding itself that its policy is working". "I trust the inquiry will not be a political circus but instead the first step to Australia adopting a more humane and effective approach," Mr Wilkie said.

Mr Bandt yesterday secured support from the opposition for a Greens motion condemning the proposed five-for-one asylum-seeker swap with Malaysia.

The motion passed through the Senate last sitting and if successful in the House of Representatives, it will be the first time in the new parliament both houses have condemned a government policy. "The deal is a rushed political fix designed to paper over the government's mandatory detention policy," Mr Bandt said. "My decision to put forward this motion and use the word 'condemn' has not been taken lightly," he said.

Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O'Connor yesterday confirmed the interception of the 25th asylum-seeker vessel to arrive this year.

SOURCE



30 May, 2011

Obama is deceiving Hispanics on immigration

There is nothing astonishing about the fact that President Barack Obama’s Republican critics claim that he is taking U.S. Hispanics for a ride on immigration issues. What’s surprising is that some of Obama’s closest Democratic allies are beginning to say the same thing.

Virtually all Hispanic Democrats in the U.S. Congress — they include the only Hispanic Democratic Senator, Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey — are stepping up their criticism of Obama for not doing more on the immigration front.

Last week, I was amazed by what I heard from Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, a Democratic congressman from Chicago — the president’s hometown — and longtime Obama backer. Gutierrez was visiting Miami as part of a national tour to denounce Obama’s immigration stand, saying that he is playing games with Hispanics by claiming to be fighting for a comprehensive immigration reform, while not doing anything to stop massive deportations of people who shouldn’t be deported.

Obama has in recent weeks stepped up calls for congressional approval of an immigration overhaul that would both secure the border, and offer a path to earned legalization to millions of undocumented residents who are willing to pay penalties and learn English.

He had pledged during the 2008 campaign that he would pass such a law during his first year in office.

But Gutierrez and growing numbers of Democrats in Congress say that Obama’s immigration reform campaign is political posturing, because the president knows that he won’t get the votes for congressional passage of a comprehensive immigration reform in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Obama’s rhetoric may help win Hispanic votes for the 2012 elections by showing Republicans as the stumbling block for immigration reform, but is creating false expectations among Hispanics, they say.

So what should Obama do, I asked Gutierrez. There are many things Obama can do with discretionary powers he already has, without going to Congress, Gutierrez said.

First, Obama could use existing presidential powers to stop deportations of the estimated 65,000 undocumented students who were brought to the United States as children, and who graduate from high school every year, and want to enter college or the armed forces, Gutierrez said. Obama has called repeatedly for congressional passage of the Dream Act, which would allow these youths to stay, but is not using his discretionary powers to delay their deportations until Congress decides on their fate, he added.

Second, Obama should use his executive powers to delay deportation of the parents of the estimated four million U.S.-born children who have at least one parent who does not have legal status, he said.

If the Obama administration recently used discretionary powers to give temporary residency status to Haitian immigrants to avoid their deportation to earthquake-devastated Haiti, why not give a similar relief to Mexicans who face deportation to violence-ridden Ciudad Juárez, he asked.

So why is Obama not doing any of this? I asked Gutierrez. “The president doesn’t feel the pressure to do it, because he feels that Latinos will vote for him anyway,” he said. “But this is a matter of life and death, that has to be taken seriously, and not be used to deceive the Latino community as we come near the next elections.”

Responding to such criticism, Obama said in a recent speech in El Paso, Texas, “I wish I could simply bypass Congress and change the law myself, but that’s not how a democracy works.” A White House official told me that, while the administration continues to push for immigration reform in Congress, it is changing the way it enforces deportation procedures, focusing on removing undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

My opinion: Obama’s calls for congressional passage of a comprehensive immigration reform are a good electoral strategy to gain sympathies among Hispanics ahead of the 2012 elections, but is raising false expectations within the Latino community.

Obama should stop playing this game. Instead of fearing being criticized by Hispanic-phobic anti-immigration zealots for allegedly pursuing a blanket “amnesty” for 11 million undocumented residents, he should use his discretionary powers to give temporary status to some categories of immigrants.

For instance, as he said in his State of the Union address, “it makes no sense” to deport thousands of undocumented students who grew up as Americans, or others — including many from China, India and other parts of the world — who came to study in some of the best U.S. universities, and upon obtaining advanced degrees are “sent back home to compete against us.” Obama can stop their deportations, but — as far as we know — isn’t doing so.

SOURCE





Australian government's "refugee" hypocrisy

THE past week has brought home that the Labor government can't claim a shred of principle on asylum policy any more. It has shamed itself repeatedly and in a most hypocritical way. Those who condemned the Pacific solution have embraced a Malaysian one. The people who said Nauru was unacceptable for offshore processing in part because it wasn't signed up to the UN convention on refugees aren't worried that Malaysia is also outside it.

If the government wasn't desperate, it would be embarrassed. If its backbench wasn't frightened of the electoral backlash over boat arrivals, it would be up in arms.

Last week the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, lashed out at the deal and Malaysian human rights activists attacked it. Pillay, visiting Australia, toned down her initial criticism after government briefings but still declared the bilateral agreement would need to be scrutinised carefully for its human rights guarantees.

Meanwhile, Malaysian activist Eric Paulsen from that country's Lawyers for Liberty wondered how Australia could achieve what others could not. "All of a sudden, without any changes to Malaysian immigration laws and policies, will asylum seekers suddenly become immune to their day-to-day reality of arbitrary arrest, detention, harassment, extortion, jailing and whipping? We doubt that very much."

Former federal human rights commissioner Sev Ozdowski reinforced a point the opposition has pushed, when he said at least in Nauru "we were able to control the conditions in the detention centre" - Malaysia would be a "much worse solution".

It does seem a leap of faith to believe Australia can be sure the asylum seekers we send there under the "swap" deal won't be badly treated, given the country's record. It will take some formidable monitoring.

The only way the government can get out of its imbroglio is if the deterrent - the fear of being sent to Malaysia and the back of that long "queue" - discourages the boats quickly. Then perhaps, the government hopes, it won't have to send too many people to Malaysia. Or, at least, if the boats slow dramatically, criticism of the nastier aspects of the deterrent will fade. The end will be regarded as justifying the means.

No wonder Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd are out spruiking the "don't come" message, as the government has been working frantically to bed down the formalities of the Malaysian deal, so implementation can start. On another front, negotiations with Papua New Guinea for a processing facility there crawl along.

If the boats keep coming, and the Malaysian 800 quota is filled, the government's border protection political disaster will continue. If the people smugglers are discouraged, on the other hand, Tony Abbott will find a potent issue rapidly subsiding

SOURCE



29 May, 2011

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley: Feds 'get in the way' of enforcement

Gov. Nikki Haley accused federal officials Friday of preventing South Carolina from enforcing a 2008 anti-illegal immigration law, saying they are denying the state access to electronic records used to verify a worker's eligibility.

Catherine Templeton, the director of the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, said the state has not been able to enforce the law since April 29. As a result, Haley said, the state may lay off its two dozen immigration auditors.

Immigration experts said Friday it was the first they had heard of problems between state immigration auditors and the federal Department of Homeland Security.

The dispute is over access to federal E-Verify documents, which Haley said are crucial to allowing the state to enforce its 2008 law. Haley said the Department of Homeland Security has denied the state access to those documents and is not answering questions why. Haley sent a letter Friday to Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano about the dispute, which she said began in February.

"They continue to get in the way of me governing this state," Haley said of the federal government. "They can't be serious about illegal immigration if they won't allow us to enforce the law."

An official from the Department of Homeland Security said the agency had reached out to the governor's office to discuss the issue on multiple occasions but did not receive a response. He did not provide documentation to show how often the department reached out or what communication channels were used.

Adam Fetcher, a Homeland Security spokesman, said Haley's request was pending while the U.S. Supreme Court considered a case regarding an Arizona E-Verify law. Now that the Supreme Court has upheld that state's right to enforce immigration laws that regulate businesses' hiring practices, the department that manages E-Verify is reviewing the S.C. request, Fetcher said.

The news conference with Haley and Templeton, an appointee of the new Republican governor, caused immigration attorneys to scratch their heads.

South Carolina passed its first immigration laws in 2008 and began phasing in requirements for all businesses to verify the eligibility and legal status of all newly hired workers. Under the law, businesses are allowed to use the federal E-Verify program or accept a driver's license from South Carolina or from one of 26 other states, approved by the S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles.

The Legislature put the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation in charge of auditing businesses. The agency has more than 20 auditors who inspect businesses; those inspections often are based on complaints from the public.

Frederick Manning, an immigration employment attorney with Fisher and Phillips in Columbia, said he has not heard of any instances in which a business did not show E-Verify documents to state inspectors when asked.

Manning said the state inspectors are effective and had a solid track record in finding illegal immigrants working in South Carolina. "This doesn't make sense to me."

Tammy Besherse, an S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center attorney who follows immigration legislation, said no one from the state Labor, Licensing and Regulation Department has told legislators this year that its agents have not been able to enforce the law because of the federal government. Besherse has attended every hearing this session that has involved immigration. "If she had said we can't enforce the law, they would have tried to amend the bill to make sure she could," Besherse said.

Manning said the majority of employers ask for a driver's license to meet the state's employment eligibility requirements, meaning the federal Homeland Security Department would not be in a position to interfere with the state's enforcement.

When a company uses E-Verify, it signs a memorandum of understanding with Customs and Immigration Services, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security. Those agreements include privacy provisions, intended to protect companies and their workers from fraud, Besherse said.

SOURCE





Immigrants key to Tory victory in Ontario, Canadian immigration minister says

An interesting perspective. I wonder how well-founded it is? The Tories have certainly got the runs on the board Federally. But will that transfer to the Provincial elections? In Australia, Federal and State elections often go in different directions

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says immigrants allowed the Conservatives to take Ontario away from the Liberals in the federal election.

He says the Ontario Tories can do the same this fall if they stick to their conservative values and keep courting new Canadians.
Speaking at the provincial party's convention today, Kenney boasted that "Tory Toronto is back."

The Conservatives made a major breakthrough in Toronto on May 2, claiming eight Liberal seats in a city that's repeatedly rebuffed Tory advances.

Kenney says media and commentators will try to explain away the Harper government's majority mandate and its historic breakthrough in Ontario.

But he says his party picked up 23 more seats in the province because Conservative beliefs — such as job creation through lower taxes — resonate with Ontario voters.

SOURCE



28 May, 2011

Immigration is 'out of control', admits British minister: Rising numbers dash Tory hopes of cuts

Immigration rose to near-record levels last year, official figures have revealed. Net migration increased at the fastest rate since Labour opened Britain’s doors to workers from the Eastern European states that joined the EU seven years ago.

In the year up to September 2010, the figure for net migration – the difference between immigration and emigration – was 242,000, the third highest on record.

Some 586,000 people arrived to live in Britain and 344,000 emigrated. The net migration of 242,000 was nearly 100,000 higher than the previous year. It means that David Cameron must more than halve immigration if he is to get anywhere close to the Coalition ‘aspiration’ of bringing net migration down to tens of thousands a year.

A raft of figures published yesterday delivered a series of blows to the Government’s hopes of curbing the levels of immigration that critics say have distorted the economy and deepened poverty and benefit dependency over the past 14 years.

Migration from Eastern Europe is back up again after falling in 2009. The numbers of Poles and other Eastern Europeans in the UK rose by 43,000. Immigration from Eastern Europe rose by some 50 per cent to 72,000 while the numbers of Eastern Europeans leaving to go home dropped by nearly half to 29,000.

Labour put no restrictions on the rights of Eastern Europeans to work in the UK when their countries joined the EU in 2004. As a result, the Coalition cannot close the doors or tighten the rules.

Ministers did succeed in cutting the numbers of student visas issued to those from outside Europe in the 12 months to March this year. Student visas issued fell by 2 per cent to 346,245 in the year to March. But this was offset by a rise in the numbers of work visas issued.

Despite the efforts of Home Secretary Theresa May to reduce visas issued to workers from outside Europe, the number rose 6 per cent to 161,815 in the year to March.

Two fifths of workers in London come from overseas, the ONS has said. More than 1.4million of the capital's working population were foreign born. By comparison, just over 2.3m were born in the UK. A third of high-skilled workers in the city - including accountants, doctors, teachers and scientists - are also foreign-born with 403,000 posts filled by overseas workers.

Overseas workers fill nearly two thirds of low-skilled jobs in London with just over 200,000 working in jobs such as cleaners, hotel porters, postmen and catering assistants - 80,000 more than British workers.

The Government blamed the previous Labour administration. Immigration Minister Damian Green said: ‘These statistics show that immigration was out of control thanks to the old system. ‘That is why we have already introduced radical changes to drive the numbers down and we will shortly be consulting on a range of new measures.’

Critics warned however that the Coalition is facing an increasingly difficult issue. Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch said: ‘This sharp rise in immigration comes as a shock. ‘These figures show just what an enormous task the Coalition Government has inherited as a result of Labour’s mass immigration policy. ‘Firm measures are now absolutely essential. The impact on British-born workers is a particular concern that has been brushed under the carpet for too long.’

The net migration figure of 242,000 was 96,000 up in a year and nearly 50 per cent higher than the 163,000 annual figure estimated in the year to December 2008. It is the highest since the record of 260,000 in the year to June 2005.

A fall in emigration contributed to the rise in net migration. The number of emigrants was down from 427,000 a year at the end of 2008 to 344,000 in the year to the end of last September.

But numbers of people coming into the country stayed at roughly the same level that has been maintained since 2004. Over the 12 months to last September, 586,000 people arrived to live in Britain.

SOURCE





Census: Hispanics half of US population growth

The US Census Bureau reported Thursday that the Hispanic population rose by 15.2 million between 2000 and 2010, accounting for more than half of the nation’s population increase of 27.3 million.

Put another way, the Hispanic population grew by 43 percent – four times America’s overall 9.7 percent growth rate and much more than the non-Hispanic white population, which grew by barely more than 1 percent over the same period.

Details about US population growth come as legal and political issues swirl around illegal immigration, which focuses largely on Hispanics crossing the border into the United States.

The latest Census Bureau information paints a picture of how and where the US Hispanic population is growing – most significantly in the South (57 percent) and the Midwest (49 percent).

“In eight states in the South (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) and in South Dakota, the Hispanic population more than doubled in size between 2000 and 2010,” according to the Census Bureau.

While more than half of the Hispanic population in the United States lives in three states (California, Texas, and Florida), the Hispanic population more than doubled in at least one of every four counties across the country.

About three-quarters of Hispanics in the United States indicated on their census forms that they are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban origin. But since 2000, three other Hispanic-origin groups surpassed a population of 1 million: Salvadoran, Dominican, and Guatemalan.

While non-Hispanic whites remain a majority in the United States (64 percent, down from 69 percent in 2000), the growth in the Hispanic population has an important political dimension for both major parties.

In the 2010 midterm elections, 60 percent of Hispanics voted for Democrats and 38 percent voted for Republicans, according to exit polls. In 2008, Hispanics voted for Barack Obama by more than 2 to 1 (67 to 31 percent) over John McCain.

Race and ethnicity are likely to be a factor in the congressional redistricting mandated by the 2010 census.

SOURCE



27 May, 2011

Strict Arizona immigration law gets Supreme Court blessing

The Supreme Court gave its blessing today to one of the strong immigration control laws passed by Arizona, a law that has served as a model for similar measures in other states.

Arizona requires businesses to use the national eVerify system to check workers immigration status. Licenses are revoked when illegal immigrants are intentionally employed.

The Chamber of Commerce and labor groups formed a powerful coalition to challenge the law. They argued it steps on the federal government's broad immigration powers.

Conservatives carried the day in the 5-3 vote. Chief Justice John Roberts said while federal law bars states from imposing civil and criminal penalties for immigration violations, Arizona's license revocation statute doesn't fall into the category.

Mike Hethmon of the Immigration Reform law Center praised the ruling. "The Supreme Court has essentially given its seal of approval to states making eVerify mandatory for businesses in their jurisdiction," Hethmon said.

Roy Beck of the reform group NumbersUSA sees it as much more than that, calling the ruling "a tremendous victory for unemployed Americans." "There are about 7 million illegal aliens estimated to be working in non-agricultural jobs. There are many Americans unemployed and lined up to get those jobs," Beck claimed.

Also supporting the ruling is the Latino advocacy group known as the League of United Latin American citizens (LULAC). Luis Vera, LULAC's general counsel, says the law should expose businesses that utilize underpaid immigrants in unsafe conditions.

About a dozen states have laws similar to Arizona's. "There are at least a dozen other states that have held back," Rob Beck said, "I think we're going to see those states passing those laws in the next year."

Further, he predicts the business community's concerned for a single uniform system will send it from the Supreme Court across the street to Congress, to push for a standard nationwide eVerify requirement.

One of the Chamber of Commerce's primary complaints to the Supreme Court was that employers would be facing a myriad of state laws that raise business costs.

Making its way to the justices is the challenge over Arizona's better known enforcement measures, which include allowing police to stop anyone suspected of being an illegal alien.

Lower courts have struck down key provisions. CBS News Senior Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen says while scholars will be poring over the language of today's ruling, the issues are different and the justices may not rule in favor of states' rights in that case.

At NumbersUSA, Roy Beck believes that law does not reduce illegal immigration as much as the one that was the subject of today's decision.

He says that's because "the thing that causes illegal aliens to go home eventually and prevents illegal aliens from wanting to come is whether they can get jobs."

SOURCE





Hispanic Turnout 2010: Despite Predictions, It Neither Spiked nor Slumped

An analysis of new Census Bureau voting data from November 2010 shows that Hispanic turnout conformed to the pattern of recent midterm elections. Before the 2010 election some commentators argued that the failure to address immigration would increase Hispanic turnout, others argued it would cause them to stay home. The new data shows that neither of these predictions were correct.

Among the findings:

* Prior to the 2010 election, the Center for Immigration Studies projected that Hispanics would comprise 6.8 percent of the national electorate in congressional elections. The new Census Bureau data match this projection, with Hispanics comprising 6.9 percent of the vote.

* Our projection was correct because it was based on the assumption that Hispanic turnout would follow past patterns and that they would be neither especially animated nor especially disengaged in 2010.

* The 31.2 percent of Hispanic citizens who voted in 2010 is very similar to the 32.2 percent who voted in the 2006 mid-term election and the 31.2 percent who voted in the 2002 mid-term election. All of these values fall within the margin of error of ± 1.7 percentage points and indicate that 2010 was not unusual.

* In addition to the 6.9 percent of voters who identified as Hispanic in the 2010 election, 77.5 percent of voters identified as non-Hispanic white, 11.5 percent as non-Hispanic black, and 2.4 percent as non- Hispanic Asian.

* Hispanics are a much smaller share of voters than they are of the general population. In November 2010, Hispanics were 16.3 percent of the total U.S. population, 14.1 percent of the adult population, 10.1 percent of the adult citizen population, and 6.9 percent of those who voted.

* The size of the Hispanic vote varied significantly by state. In 2010, Hispanics were less than 5 percent of the vote in 39 states plus the District of Columbia, and more than 10 percent of the vote in only five states (New Mexico, California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida).

* Polling of Hispanics indicates that immigration is not one of their top issues. Like other voters, education, jobs, healthcare, and the federal deficit all rank above immigration in importance.

* This does not mean immigration is unimportant to Hispanics. It does mean it was not an issue that was important enough in 2010 to have a discernable impact on their overall turnout.

* Only 27 percent of Hispanic voters in the 2010 election were immigrants themselves (naturalized U.S. citizens) and just 14.9 percent lived in the same household as a non-citizen. The lack of direct personal experience with immigration may explain why the issue does not rank higher in importance to Hispanic voters.

* CNN’s national exit polls showed that in 2010, 60 percent of Hispanics voted for Democrats and 38 percent voted for Republicans. This compares to 69 percent and 30 percent in the last mid-term election in 2006. If the failure to address immigration played a role in Hispanic voting, it seems to have helped Republicans.

* However, the increase in the Republican share of the Hispanic vote in 2010 is almost certainly related to general voter dissatisfaction with the economy and the Democrats, and it parallels gains that Republicans made among many demographic groups.

Methods and Data

The data for this analysis come from the public use file of the Voting and Registration Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS) collected by Census Bureau, which contains about 100,000 adults. The Voting and Registration supplement is conducted in November every other year after Election Day. The public-use file of this data was recently released. Among other questions, the survey asks individuals if they are registered and if they voted. The Hispanic and race questions are separate. Hispanics are individuals in the CPS who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, which means that they or their ancestors came from a country that derives its language and culture from Spain.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Steven Camarota, (202) 466-8185, sac@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization





26 May, 2011

ACLU asks court to block Indiana immigration law

The ACLU of Indiana is attempting to block a new law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants.

The ACLU filed Wednesday in in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis seeking to block the state's new E-Verify law. It would expand the reasons police can arrest immigrants and make the use of identification cards issued by foreign consulates illegal.

The law also mandates employers check their workers' citizenship.

The ACLU says the arrest provisions violate constitutional protections against arrest without probable cause. It also says that Indiana is overextending its constitutional bounds by regulating international affairs with the ID measure.

Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the measure into law May 10.

SOURCE





Malaysia treats illegals harshly

Australia's Leftist government intends to send middle-class illegals from Iraq and Afghanistan there. If that happens, most will stop coming

UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay, who is visiting Australia, claimed yesterday the Gillard government risked breaching international laws with the proposed swap of 800 boat arrivals for 4000 refugees from Malaysia.

While Immigration Minister Chris Bowen insists the deal complies with the UN Refugee Convention, that document does not cover torture, cruel punishment or conditions in detention centres that are dealt with under other international covenants and UN guidelines.

His office could not guarantee covenants or guidelines would be part of the agreement, which Mr Bowen said would be signed within weeks. Pressed on whether canings and the caging of pregnant women or children would br prevented, Mr Bowen's spokesman said negotiations were ongoing.

Ms Pillay was critical of the government's proposal. "If checks and balances are not made there's a huge risk of violations," Ms Pillay said.

Amnesty International's Dr Graham Thom toured three Malaysian detention centres last year, hearing how detainees had died of leptospirosis contracted via rat urine.

He photographed women and a baby caged in squalid conditions at Lenggeng Immigration Depot, near Kuala Lumpur, and hundreds of men in a tennis court-sized enclosure.

"We went to three different centres and each was equally appalling," he said.

Refugee lawyer David Manne said he had assisted asylum seekers who had been in Malaysian detention camps which were overcrowded and rife with malnutrition. "There are very poor sanitary conditions, serious systematic abuse, beatings, whippings, canings," Mr Manne said.

A spokesman for the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR, said "safeguards" were needed in the agreement to ensure any detention of asylum seekers was for a limited initial period.

SOURCE



25 May, 2011

Europe Has Immigration Problems on Steroids

For all the problems we think we have with immigration, Europe's problems far exceed ours. The U.S. has always had a history of panic about new and alien groups pouring into our country (Irish, Italians, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and now Hispanics). But all of these groups came here to become American; they integrated and contributed. By and large, the same is true of Muslim immigrants to the U.S. today-particularly Iranians and Afghans. In Europe, however, many in the flood of Muslim immigrants are not integrating well-partly out of today's spate of Islamism but partly because ordinary Europeans find these immigrants adhere to an alien culture.

Europeans, after the horrors and genocides of World War II, made a commitment to open their doors to needy immigrants. England is awash with Pakistanis; France with North Africans; Germany with Turks from religious villages; and the Scandinavian countries have been the most generous of all, taking in Somalis, Iraqis, Moroccans, and others. All are creating trouble on two fronts: social integration and horrific welfare costs. The educated elites, who run Europe, have ideological notions that do not jibe with the realities faced by ordinary working Europeans who have not found these immigrants a benefit to their lives.

On the social front (little publicized) are the soaring crime rates: rapes, domestic violence, honor killings, incest, forced child marriages, and public belligerence against European culture. On the economic front, it is even worse. There is enormous welfare fraud, financial support for polygamous families with bloated birthrates, and an overwhelming of these countries' healthcare systems.

In Europe, Canada, and Australia, there is growth of Immigrants scamming social services. One clever rascal in Canada (arrested in 2011) provided false Canadian citizenship documents to hundreds of people in the Middle East so they could collect benefits and tax refunds of up to $500,000. Even worse, none of the recipients actually lived in Canada. The Mounties caught him.

An Iranian immigrant was told by his Swedish social worker that there was no need to get a job because the Swedish government put checks in the mail each month. (Someone should find her and fire her.) Indeed Sweden does this, to the tune of about $7 billion every year, which has contributed to bringing the Swedish welfare state to the brink of bankruptcy. The same is true for Norway. Non-Western immigrants, they say, are ten times as likely to be on social assistance as native Norwegians.

Muslim immigrants in Denmark make up 5% of the population but consume 40% of welfare spending. In France, a polygamous Muslim father of 17 children was charged with welfare fraud when authorities discovered that two of his “wives” lived in Dubai for a year while continuing to get welfare benefits worth 10,000 Euros. One of his wives had been fined for driving while wearing a niqab that restricted her vision.

Australia, which is less tolerant of criminal immigrants than Europe, discovered that an Algerian immigrant and father of seven, Abdul Nacer Benbriks, on trial for terrorism, had been ordered deported three times, never worked a day in 19 years, and has cost the Australians millions in welfare payments, baby bonus checks, and other benefits.

Canada's most notorious terrorist family, the Khadrs, still live on welfare in the Toronto suburbs, and they all share the beliefs of their relative, confessed terrorist Omar Khadr, still in Guantanamo Bay, having pleaded guilty to killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002.

Many well-known Islamic radicals are also on the dole. In London, Anjem Choudary, a notorious hate preacher, has bragged about receiving 25,000 pounds a year in benefits. He also threatened an attack during the recent royal wedding.

Finally, someone is trying to do something about it. British Prime Minister David Cameron has said that large-scale immigration had caused “discomfort and disjointedness” in some parts of the country. He wants the government to reduce net immigration from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands a year. That is a start, but does not begin to address the social and financial cost of their indulgent generosity and careless follow-up.

SOURCE





Leftist denial of immigration realities reaches new heights (or depths) in Australia

LABOR is so confident its refugee swap with Malaysia is going to slow the flow of boats that it has budgeted for the arrival of only 750 asylum-seekers next financial year, despite more than 6000 having arrived last year.

Immigration Department secretary Andrew Metcalfe said the figure was in line with arrivals in 2002 -- after the Howard government's introduction of the Pacific Solution.

Speaking in a Senate estimates hearing yesterday, Mr Metcalfe said the prediction of 750 boatpeople for 2011-12 had been made because "the government believes its policy will work". He was referring to the latest announcements by Labor that involves a five-for-one refugee swap with Malaysia and the possible reopening of an offshore processing centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.

"As a result of policy measures put in place, the figure of 750 was decided," Mr Metcalfe said. "The government is confident policy changes made will have a significant impact on boat arrivals. "The figure is purely a figure identified for financial planning purposes . . . that was the same number as the people who came in 2002, which was also after a major policy change."

Mr Metcalfe said the 750 figure would include asylum-seekers sent to any offshore facility, but would not include "up to 800" to be sent to Malaysia as part of the planned deal.

Australia will take 4000 certified refugees from Malaysia even if fewer than 800 asylum-seekers are sent there.

The Immigration Department's chief accountant, Stephen Sheehan, said the budget measures included an average occupancy of about 6500 detainees. "We are budgeting for 750 arrivals as part of our modelling process and an average occupancy of 6556 -- including those IMAs (irregular maritime arrivals) who are sent offshore but spend a few days in Australian detention," Mr Sheehan said.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the 750 figure "proved" the government would indeed send all 800 asylum-seekers to Malaysia. "It just means back to business as usual," he said. "This is further evidence of why we need a parliamentary inquiry into the immigration detention network."

Mr Morrison on Sunday announced the Coalition's plan for a "warts and all" inquiry into immigration.

SOURCE



24 May, 2011

£25 milion cost of 'bribing' foreign criminals to go home

Half of foreign prisoners kicked out of the country are now “bribed” to go home costing the taxpayer millions of pounds, The Telegraph can disclose.

Almost 7,000 criminals have been removed from Britain in the past 16 months, but 47 per cent went only after taking advantage of a voluntary return programme which offers up to £1,500 in cash, a leaked document revealed. It also shows the trend is growing – just one in three prisoners deported in 2009 left under the voluntary programme.

The numbers mean that since the scheme began in 2006 the taxpayer has spent between £20 million and £25 million on persuading criminals who have no right to remain in the UK to go home.

The Coalition faced criticism last year after it emerged that it had trebled the value of the cash incentive to clear Britain's jails and detention centres of foreign offenders. Those who agree to go before they have even finished their sentence receive the largest payouts.

The incentives, first offered by the Labour government to avoid drawn-out deportation battles, were criticised by the Tories when in opposition.

Figures for last year have not been officially published but a UK Border Agency document meant for internal distribution shows that between January last year and last month, 6,989 foreign criminals were deported. Of these, 3,338 went under the repatriation scheme at a cost of between £7 million and £12 million.

In October last year, the Coalition reduced the value of the package to between £500 and £1,500 but made it all available in cash for the first time.

Earlier in the year the package was worth between £3,000 and £5,000 but only £500 of that was available in cash.

Between 2006 and 2009 some 3,860 offenders took advantage of the scheme at a cost of around £12 million.

One immigration source said the packages were "essentially bribes", adding: "If we could offer UK criminals such fantastic sums for their retraining, resettlement and housing, reoffending would drop massively." Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: "There is a case for encouraging returns but when it becomes quite so popular one wonders if it has gone a little too far."

In opposition, Dominic Grieve, who is now the Attorney General, called the scheme "simply outrageous".

Damian Green, who is now the Immigration Minister, said in opposition that Labour had abandoned any attempt at removing foreign criminals and was instead "paying them to leave". Now, he says the scheme is "practical" and will save money. The Home Office last night said it refused to comment on leaked documents.

SOURCE




Recent posts at CIS below

See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.

1. The Problem with Obama's Immigration Plan (Op-ed)

2. Romney and Huntsman on Illegal Aliens (Blog)

3. New Wrinkle in H-1B Fraud: Stealing from the Taxpayers, Not the Workers (Blog)

4. 9/11's Triumvirate of Terrorist Travel: al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Iran (Blog)

5. DoJ Zaps Discrimination vs. U.S. Citizens, but Very Rarely (Blog)

6. Golden Parachutes for Illegal Chipotle Workers? (Blog)

7. Amnesty for All Haitians in U.S., Save those Arriving in Last Four Months (Blog)

8. Security Gaps Still Present in Visa Waiver Program (Blog)

9. Senate Holds Hearing on Immigration Courts, II (Blog)

10. Senate Holds Hearing on Immigration Courts, I (Blog)

11. NYT Exposes Fraud in Yet Another Foreign Worker Program (Blog)

12. Border Exchange (Blog)

13. Post-Modern Journalistic Partisanship (Blog)



23 May, 2011

Canadian Government Plans New Immigration Law, Minister Says

They are undoubtedly feeling their oats now that they have an absolute majority

Canada’s ruling Conservative Party will reintroduce a law aimed at curbing human smuggling when Parliament convenes next month, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said.

The proposed law was scrapped earlier this year when an election was called for May 2. The Conservatives won the right to form a majority government in the vote, which means they no longer need the support of opposition lawmakers to pass laws.

A cargo ship carrying about 500 Sri Lankan refugees made headlines in August when it reached Canadian waters off the coast of British Columbia. Canada said at the time that human smugglers were behind the operation.

“Criminal networks” are charging people “tens of thousands of dollars” to transport them to Canada illegally, Kenney told CTV television network’s Question Period program in an interview in Ottawa today.

“We committed in our platform to bring forward a bill to crack down on human smuggling,” the minister said. “We know those operations are still going on in East Asia. So this legislation will come forward fairly early to try to deter them.”

The proposed law would also make it easier for Canada to deport fraudulent refugee claimants after a few months instead of several years, Kenney said. About 60 percent of the asylum seekers who come to Canada are found “not to be legitimately in need of our protection,” he said.

SOURCE






Unlimited free phone calls for illegals detained in Australia -- a big hit on taxpayers

The figures below relate to only one of the many "detention centres" (jails) in operation

PHONE bills at the Scherger defence facility near Weipa have soared by more than a quarter of a million dollars in the first six months of the centre being used to house asylum seekers. The hidden cost is revealed in a bill for $259,455 that Defence sent to the Department of Immigration this month.

The revelations come as the Government faces a series of political attacks on its border protection policies, with the Opposition and Greens calling for inquiries into the way immigration detention centres are run.

Departmental staff will face a grilling from Opposition senators in Budget estimates hearings this week over an estimated $1.7 billion cost blowout in border protection.

Labor's plans to swap 800 asylum seekers with 4000 refugees from Malaysia will cost about $292 million. These costs are likely to increase, with the Government discussing similar deals with other countries, including Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Thailand.

The phone bill is outlined in a Government contract notice for the Scherger detention centre.

It comes after the temporary use of the Cape York centre as an immigration detention centre was extended for another year. Numbers of asylum seekers housed in the remote far north Queensland facility have almost doubled from the original capacity of 300. There were 591 detainees in the centre this month, according the most recent data.

About 100 Afghan and Sri Lankan detainees were involved in violent clashes at the centre last week, raising fears of overcrowding.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen declined to comment on the telephone costs. But a Department of Immigration spokeswoman said the costs related to all phone calls from the remote centre between October 2010 and March this year. "The figure is for the cost of all phone calls from Scherger immigration detention centre made by Defence, DIAC, Defence service provider... and local detainee phone calls," the department's spokeswoman said.

Opposition MP Jamie Briggs, who runs the Coalition's "waste watch" committee, demanded the Government provide a detailed breakdown of phone costs at Scherger and other immigration detention centres. "It appears to be an extraordinarily high cost," he said.

Mr Briggs said he did not oppose asylum seekers being able to call their families overseas, but said taxpayers should not be paying for "excessive" numbers of calls. He said he knew of examples of detainees running up large phone bills in other centres through daily calls to destinations including Iran.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison yesterday urged a wide-ranging inquiry into the immigration detention system.

The Greens and independent MP Andrew Wilkie have backed the inquiry but have called for it to consider scrapping mandatory detention.

SOURCE



22 May, 2011

4 Obama Immigration Claims That Just Aren't True

“Are the borders really secure?” is probably not the best set-up for the next Geico commercial. No, they’re really not secure.

This president would have us believe otherwise. His immigration speech in El Paso, Texas, bordered as much on deception as it did physically with Mexico, just over the Rio Grande. President Obama - now candidate Obama -- did his best to convince Americans that our borders are secure and that interior enforcement is up in order to justify amnesty for illegal aliens to appease his special interests supporters and stoke his voting base.

The problem is that when given close scrutiny, the president’s claims range from minor omissions to major whoppers. Here are

1. “We are deporting those who are here illegally”

The president is suggesting that deportations are up. Not so fast.

The number of deportations in 2009 and 2010 is higher under the Obama administration than at any other time, but it’s not because of increased enforcement. The higher numbers reflect many removal cases that were already in the pipeline, leftovers from Bush-era enforcement. Once those removals are complete, one wonders how the deportation numbers can possibly be sustained since few new removal cases are being initiated because large numbers of non-criminal illegal alien cases are being dismissed by executive fiat. Deportations have, in fact, already declined slightly from 2009 to 2010.

Ultimately, the Commander-in-Chief should be deporting illegal aliens and not expect a gold star for simply enforcing the law, nor using basic immigration enforcement as a bargaining chip for amnesty. Even at a rate of 400,000 removals per year it would still take the federal government 30 years to remove the 12 million illegal aliens currently living in the U.S.

2. “We’ve increased the removal of criminals by 70 percent”

True, but with a major catch. More criminal aliens – illegal aliens who commit violent felonies – are indeed being deported but it is to the exclusion of almost all other illegal aliens!

Think of two similarly sized pie charts, each representing overall deportations. One is 2009, the other is 2010. The 2010 pie is about the same size but is sliced much differently because DHS deported more criminal aliens in 2010. This is the basis of the deception. The president is taking credit for increasing the percentage of criminal aliens removed, hoping we don’t notice that most other illegal aliens are just being ignored. Thus, the Obama Administration is gradually accomplishing an “administrative amnesty” while simultaneously convincing Americans that enforcement has increased.

Criminal-aliens-only immigration enforcement was never the intent of Congress. Laws regarding removal apply to all illegal aliens, irrespective of whether they have committed additional crimes. By selectively choosing classes of people to which the laws apply, the administration is ignoring federal law and conferring upon itself the power to act as it sees fit and as it suits the political whims of the president.

3. “The fence is now basically complete”

The fence has basically hit a wall and has for a long time. There are only 32 miles of the recommended double layer fence built and only 649 miles of single layer fence on a border that’s 2,000 miles long. DHS’s own estimates show that less than half of the southern border is under operational control. And entirely lost in the discussion is the Canadian border and U.S. coastlines, unsecured areas that mounting terrorist threats can, and will exploit.

4. “We’re going after employers who knowingly exploit people and break the law.”

Worksite raids have been abolished and replaced with paper audits that impose modest fines that employers simply roll into the cost of doing business. Employers are given a slap on the wrist and illegal alien employees are simply released.

During a January 2011 hearing of the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Rep. Lamar Smith (R- Tex.) reported that, “in the area of worksite enforcement, arrests have fallen 77%; criminal arrests are down 60%, indictments are how 64% and convictions have fallen by 68% since 2008.”

The media made much of President George W. Bush’s ill-fated 2003 “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln in which he prematurely proclaimed “an end to major combat operations in Iraq.”

President Obama’s similar proclamation that our borders are now secure and immigration enforcement has increased deserves no less attention, particularly since the next stage of planned operations is amnesty.

SOURCE




Texas Senate revives immigration enforcement bill

The so-called “sanctuary cities” bill would prohibit local governments and police agencies from adopting polices to ban their officers from asking detained people about their immigration status. The bill was the subject of angry debate before it passed the House.

The Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee had slowed down the bill earlier this week, but revived with Friday. The 5-3 vote broke along party lines with Republicans supporting the bill.

Some Senate Hispanic lawmakers have said they worry the bill would allow police to target Latinos and they consider it racially motivated.

SOURCE



21 May, 2011

What 'Comprehensive' Immigration Reform Compromises?

Whatever your views about Immigration Reform, the "Comprehensive" part of recent proposals means imposition of a national identification scheme on American citizens. A little-known core provisions of the “Schumer-Graham” proposal mandates a biometric worker ID system: it requires a national ID card with two-biometric features, and computer tracking system for all U.S. "workers." That means most American citizens would have to carry a national ID.

The U.S. labor force of 160 million men and women dwarfs the estimated 10 million "illegal immigrants." Yet every employable citizen would have to be dually biometricizes-fingerprinted and digitally photographer, perhaps retina scanned. Every “worker” would have to get a "tamper-proof" ID card and have to carry it whenever working on a job. It would have to be produced on demand by employers or government inspectors.

Since the 1930s, multiple schemes for a national ID systems have been rationalized as ways to ferret out fascist or communist infiltration, streamline government services, stop terrorism, or end illegal immigration. New justifications and foolproof schemes pop up every few years like outbreaks of mushrooms. Every one is aimed at the "bad guys," but each one actually undermines the fundamental freedoms of the "good guys." A national ID would compromise what it means to be an American citizen.

Furthermore, this scheme one would even "bait-and-switch" legal immigrants: expecting to shred their green cards on naturalization, they (and other "legal" workers) would instead get shackled to red-and-blue cards. Worker IDs would also become a hugely expensive waste of tax dollars, no doubt tens of billions of dollars more than any large estimate.

Whatever you think is the solution to illegal immigration -- from tall walls to open borders, to guest worker contracts -- a national ID system won't solve the problems. Countries like China and Germany have both strict household registration system and national ID card requirements and bureaucracies. But they still have extensive illegal immigration problems. Both are centralized state provider of order and services, though the Federal Republic is a democracy. Neither represents the American way.

Rationalized and ineffective, a national ID system sadly, too, reverses the proper relationship of consent of the governed to government. Rather than the people delegating democratic power by consent, in a national identification system, the ID imposing government gives, and can take away, consent for the subjects to have identities, rights and benefits. Like the individual health insurance mandate, worker ID systems are the state telling citizens what rights they have, or don't have, to prosper and how to manage their lives in their best interests. Neither is a proper government position.

If you don't like health insurance mandates, you won't like mandatory biometric national worker IDs. Whatever your views of the benefits of immigration reform, any proposal needs to drop the worker ID schemes from consideration. Like arguments for nationalizing the driver's licenses in "Real IDs," the debate around IDs to end illegal immigration, is just another excuse for an unnecessary, outlandishly expensive, compromised and detrimental federal program. Here’s a chance to let your government know now that you oppose any form of a national ID plan.

SOURCE






Violent "refugees" in Australia

Are these the people we want in Australia? All offenders should be denied permission to stay

THREE critical incidents are being reported each day across detention centres in what insiders claim is a system out of control.

Documents revealed to Federal Parliament show there were more than 3400 incidents reported across the detention network in the nine months to February this year. Of those, 850 were deemed critical.

According to reporting protocols adopted by Serco, the company contracted to run the centres, critical incidents include assaults, bomb threats, chemical and biological threats, death, sexual assaults, riots, escape, hunger strikes, damage to facilities or protests.

"Are things out of control? They have been out of control for five years," one worker said.

SOURCE



20 May, 2011

Immigration 'boosted the UK population by 1.75m in just eight years'

The number of people from minority backgrounds who live in England and Wales went up by 2.5million in eight years, figures revealed yesterday. Estimates said that 1.75million of the rise came about because of immigration, while 734,000 was the result of rising birthrates. The increases meant the minority population increased by 37 per cent between 2001 and 2009.

According to the Office for National Statistics, one in six of the population is now from an ethnic minority or white non-British background.

In the eight year period studied, the population of white foreigners rose by 550,000 as Eastern Europeans and migrants from Commonwealth countries poured in.

Numbers grew by a further two million with people from black and Asian backgrounds thanks to immigration, rising birthrates, and asylum seeking.

The ONS said its figures, based on immigration counts, census data and birth and death records, had been found to tally with its existing population estimates.

The figures cast new light on the last Labour government’s immigration policies, which added three million to the population between 1997 and last year.

Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch said: ‘This is the legacy of Labour’s mass immigration policy now appearing in the official figures. They have, whether deliberately or not, changed the face of Britain. ‘If immigration continues on anything like this scale, we are heading for a population of 70million in 20 years’ time, absolutely contrary to the frequently expressed wishes of the British people.’

The breakdown showed a rise of just under 553,000 in the white non-British population, of which 514,000 were people who came to England and Wales as migrants.

These were ‘particularly people born elsewhere in Europe’ but there was also a large inflow from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

Much of the increase was driven by numbers from Eastern Europe, especially Poland, who arrived after Britain opened its borders when their countries joined the European Union in 2004.

Among black and Asian groups, the Indian population rose by 380,000 to 1.43million and the Pakistani population went up from 728,000 to top one million.

Because of comparatively young age profiles and higher fertility rates than among other groups, Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations were driven up by high numbers of births.

Numbers of black Africans in the population went up by more than 300,000 to reach nearly 800,000. The ONS said one reason for this was high numbers of African asylum seekers. Its report pointed to the effect of ‘international migration, in particular of people from African Commonwealth countries, and from citizens of African countries, notably Zimbabwe, Somalia, Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of Congo, seeking asylum’.

The fastest-growing ethnic group was of Chinese people, whose population nearly doubled to reach 452,000 in 2009.

The greatest concentration of black and Asian numbers was in London, where in several areas ‘minority’ populations make up a majority. However the share of ethnic minority and white non-British in the capital stayed roughly the same, at about 40 per cent, over the eight years. This is because while large numbers of immigrants arrived, many minority families joined the growing flight to suburban towns in the Home Counties.

SOURCE





Alligators, Moats and Other Such Nonsense

President Obama gave what was billed as an important speech on immigration last week near the border in El Paso, Texas. Unfortunately, it was one of the most demagogic moments in recent presidential history. Nearly everything Obama said was either factually incorrect or deliberately misleading.

Why, 28 months into the Obama presidency, is there now a sudden push to pass "comprehensive" immigration reform? After all, from 2009 to early 2011, Obama had large Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. Why hasn't Obama already rammed through his own immigration bill, as he did with health care?

The answer, of course, is that about 70 percent of the American people consistently poll against the president's initiatives on illegal immigration. Obama simply did not want to sign an easily passable bill that would earn him further unpopularity.

But now he has lost the House. A close re-election bid looms. The president is enjoying a sudden bounce in popularity after the capture of Osama bin Laden. He needs to firm up his base of Latino supporters. Presto: time to blame Republicans for his own past unwillingness to get a bill through his Democratic Congress.

Obama's demagoguery seemed to work on the crowd in El Paso. It interrupted the president's speech to answer, "Tear it down," when he mentioned the border fence. The audience booed, and jeered on cue, "They're racist," when he went after Republicans. And it joined Obama, the sudden cheerleader in chief, in chanting, "Yes, we can."

In blaming Republicans, Obama charged that their fears about open borders were groundless since, "The fence is now basically complete." And to emphasize that claim, he mocked his opponents by saying, "Maybe they'll need a moat. Maybe they'll need alligators in the moat."

That sounds cute. But it is again quite untrue. The fence is most assuredly not "basically" complete. Currently, fewer than 700 miles of the more than 1,900-mile border have any sort of barrier. And less than 5 percent of the border has a secure double-fenced impediment. Even with increased patrols, a recent Government Accountability Office study found that 40 percent of the border is essentially open and unguarded. There are still well over a half-million illegal border crossings per year.

In a fit of projection, the president also accused his opponents of politicking the issue for partisan advantage: "We've seen a lot of blame and a lot of politics and a lot of ugly rhetoric around immigration."

That too was a distortion for at least two reasons. One, during the 2010 midterm election, the president himself urged Latinos to "punish" their political "enemies." That advice sure seemed like "ugly rhetoric."

And in the El Paso speech, the president rallied his listeners to go lobby for his proposals: "So I'm asking you to add your voices to this debate. You can sign up to help at whitehouse.gov." Whipping up crowds to log onto his website seems just like "the usual Washington games" that Obama deplored in the speech.

The president also deliberately confused legal and illegal immigration in lamenting the inability of highly skilled immigrants to obtain work visas and citizenship opportunities. But polls show wide support for legal immigration based on skill sets, not just on proximity to the border or family ties.

What the president did not dare reveal was that to let in professionals and business people from around the world, based on their skills and earning potential, might also mean to curtail those without education and capital -- in other words, to discourage the millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico who don't speak English or have high school educations, and who often have little means of support but apparent political clout.

Even when the president offered some sensible proposals about illegal aliens paying fines, applying formally for citizenship and learning English, he was still disingenuous. Obama deliberately floated these proposals to his partisan audience without any details of enforcement, since to do so would likely turn off the cheering crowd.

So how exactly would Obama coerce some 11 million illegal aliens into paying a fine, returning to the immigration line to apply legally, or learning English? By threat of deportation or incarceration?

The vast majority of the American public is not racist or "playing politics" in worrying about out-of-control illegal immigration. The enforcement of existing federal immigration law has become a joke. Drug violence in Mexico is destabilizing an entire country and spilling over the border. Jobs are scarce, with unemployment here still at 9 percent. Many billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico leave the American Southwest, often from illegal aliens who rely on American social services to make up the difference.

These are serious issues that deserve more from a president than re-election pandering at the border and bad jokes about alligators and moats.

SOURCE



19 May, 2011

Denmark brings in strict border controls to crack down on illegal immigrants from North Africa

Denmark yesterday joined an increasing number of European countries seeking tighter border controls in an attempt to curb crime and illegal immigration. Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said police and customs officials will use border stations for random checks on cars and passports, and increase the use of scanners designed to detect illegal immigrants hiding in vans. He said control booths will be erected at crossings to Germany and Sweden and in harbours and airports.

Hjort Frederiksen insisted that since the controls will be random they 'will be within the framework of the Schengen system' - a free-travel agreement that has removed compulsory passport controls between many internal borders in Europe.

The system has been under pressure recently with the EU Commission considering reintroducing national border controls in the face of a flood of North African immigrants.

Uprisings across the Middle East have caused a humanitarian and refugee crisis with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing countries.

Last week, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom suggested reintroducing temporary national border checks 'under very exceptional circumstances' after France and Italy had demanded changes to the Schengen system. France prompted the row by temporarily closing a key railway frontier with Italy and reintroducing tough extra checks on immigrant papers.

Mediterranean border nations like Greece, Italy, Spain and Malta have also complained that the 27-nation EU has dumped its immigration issues and the costs of dealing with illegal immigrants on their backs.

The agreement in Denmark was made to meet demands from the government's nationalistic ally, the Danish People's Party, and is expected to be approved by Parliament. 'We see a rise in cross-border crime: drugs, eastern European gangs, human trafficking, money smuggling, etc. And one of the efficient ways to fight this is border control,' Hjort Frederiksen said. 'It will be put in place as soon as possible.'

Justice Minister Lars Barfoed said Denmark was 'cracking down' on transnational crime. 'Denmark must be a safe country and we will do everything that is possible to combat the rising crime from abroad,' Barfoed said. 'It will otherwise not impede the free crossing of borders by citizens and businesses.'

Some 270 million kroner ($52 million) have been earmarked to build booths, buy electronic equipment and provide more resources to police and customs.

When Denmark joined the Schengen system a decade ago, border barriers were removed and control stations shut down. Instead, random customs and police checks were carried out across the country.

SOURCE





The invisible price tag of immigration

Comment from Canada

There has been much huffing and puffing by politicians, the media and immigrant lobbyists about the government’s plan to reduce the number of parents and grandparents joining their immigrant offspring in Canada next year.

Yes, the policy change is unfair. Many immigrants have come to Canada having been promised that their parents and grandparents could join them so that they can continue the cultural traditions of their homelands and receive help with family chores and child care.

But, as is the case with all government policies, benefits to one group of citizens impose costs on another. In this case, the benefits to immigrants come at the expense of Canadian taxpayers. Unfortunately, these costs do not show up in government budgets but are hidden behind the provisions of the welfare state and driven by low average incomes of recent immigrants.

New data and studies show the extent of this fiscal burden; recent immigrants remit lower average incomes and tax payments than other Canadians, even 10 years after their arrival. At the same time, these immigrants on average absorb at least the same amount of social benefits as other Canadians.

As a result, $6,000 is annually transferred to the average immigrant at the expense of Canadian taxpayers. In 2006, the value of these transfers to all 2.7 million immigrants who arrived between 1987 and 2004 and still live in Canada came to $16.3-billion. Taking account of the 1.5 million immigrants who arrived since 2004, the fiscal burden comes to $25-billion in 2010. These costs represent a significant portion of the federal government’s $55-billion deficit projected for the fiscal year 2011.

Important here is the fact that parents and grandparents lower the observed average incomes of all immigrants. The reasons are obvious: parents and grandparents tend to be elderly, often cannot speak English or French and possess few marketable skills. At the same time, the number of parents and grandparents arriving as immigrants are high: 84,917, or 6.7% of the 1.3 million immigrants admitted to Canada from 2006 to 2010.

The fiscal transfers to parents and grandparents are much higher than those of the average immigrant, not only because of their low incomes but also because they tend to be of an age where their demand for costly medical services is at its highest level.

For example, in 2009, family-class immigrants made up 22.1% of all immigrants who entered Canada that year. Those who were selected by the federal government on the basis of their occupational skills and other characteristics contributing to their economic success accounted for only 16.2%.

To alleviate this fiscal strain on taxpayers, Canada’s immigration selection process should be reformed to replace the existing, failed system of using points to select immigrants, with a system that emphasizes a reliance on market forces. This would result in giving preference to immigrants with job offers in Canada and skills needed by Canadian employers.

In our recent paper, Immigration and the Canadian Welfare State 2011, Patrick Grady and I outlined our proposals for reforming the Canadian immigration system to one that places a premium on employable skills. We envisioned a system where would-be immigrants with job offers are provided with temporary work visas, valid for two years and renewable for an additional two years upon the presentation of evidence of continued employment. After four years and continued employment in Canada, the holders of work visas would be eligible for landed immigrant status and for citizenship two years later. Spouses and dependents of the holders of work visas would be allowed to enter Canada under a program of family work visas, which would allow them to accept employment. Finally, immigrants would be able to have their parents and grandparents join them as landed immigrants in Canada after posting a bond that is used to pay for their health care and other social benefits.

Since holders of work visas pay the same personal income, GST and other sales taxes and social insurance premiums as Canadian citizens do, the holders of these visas would rightfully and automatically be entitled to receive the same public benefits that are available to Canadian taxpayers, including employment insurance, provincial welfare, health care and public pensions.

Over time, the immigration issue has attained a kind of religious mystique, so much that any debate over the costs of immigration will immediately be dismissed as racist, or anti-Canadian. But with Canada now facing the prospect of large, cyclical deficits, it’s time for a no-holds-barred examination of current immigration policy.

An examination of the true costs of immigration on Canadian taxpayers would be a good place to start.

SOURCE



18 May, 2011

Where are they? 181,000 with expired visas are still in Britain

Around 181,000 migrants are thought to be living in Britain unlawfully after their visas expired, a report said last night. The total includes students and workers from outside the EU who should have left the country in the last two-and-a-half years.

UK Border Agency bosses came under fire from MPs after admitting they have no idea how many have returned home because they do not count people out of the country. A new system to monitor electronically everyone who departs will not be fully in place for at least another two years.

The report, by the Commons Public Accounts Committee, warned the agency not to use the lack of exit controls as an ‘excuse’ to ignore thousands who are overstaying illegally.

Committee chairman Margaret Hodge said: ‘The agency has not got a grip on making sure that migrant workers whose visas have expired actually leave the UK.

‘It estimates that 181,000 such workers are staying on without permission – but it can’t even verify the figures, and does not try to enforce the employer’s duty to ensure that the people they bring in leave when they are required to do so.’ The report also raised fears that British workers may be missing out on jobs because some foreign workers are exempt from the Government’s immigration cap.

Tens of thousands of non-EU workers who arrive every year through the ‘intra-company transfer route’ are not counted as adding to the official limit.

Instead they must comply with a salary minimum, set at £40,000 for anyone staying over a year, to ensure they are not simply cheap replacements for British staff.

Many are IT workers transferred in to work in multinational companies. Last year 64,000 workers came in via this route. But the committee said there was a ‘lack of control’ over transferred workers. Employers can pay up to 40 per cent of salary as accommodation and other allowances, but the report said this made it hard to be sure what the workers were actually earning.

Mrs Hodge added: ‘Most workers enter through this route and, for instance, tens of thousands of IT workers have been brought in through intra-company transfers at a time when UK residents with IT skills are struggling to find work.’

She also criticised the agency for a lack of checks on employers. Fewer than one in five businesses are visited before being granted a licence to bring in workers.

The cap on the number of non-EU workers was imposed from the start of last month, and will allow 21,700 workers in over the year, a cut of one fifth.

After wrangling within the Coalition, however, Business Secretary Vince Cable won an exemption for transferred workers. He also won concessions which watered down reforms to the student visa system.

Immigration Minister Damian Green said: ‘This report demonstrates why the immigration system needs radical reform.

‘This Government has already introduced an annual limit on economic migrants. We are making it more difficult for people to live in the UK illegally by taking action against employers that flout our rules.’

SOURCE




Recent posts at CIS below

See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.

1. Visa Security (Testimony)

2. USCIS Moves (gasp!) to Upgrade Arriving Immigrant Populations (Blog)

3. Ethnic Politicking in El Paso (Blog)

4. Only 30% of Americans Agree with Obama that Border Is Secure (Blog)

5. No Taxpayer Dollars for Sanctuary Cities, States, or Federal Agencies (Blog)

6. DHS Raids Social Security System and Zaps U.S. Workers – Again (Blog)

7. Huffington Post Skips E-Verify (Blog)

8. The Startup Visa Fraud (Blog)

9. Measuring Border Security (Blog)

10. Honduran Woman Tries to Deport Her Own Mother (Blog)

11. Credibility Gap (Blog)

12. Obama's Amnesty Speech (Blog)

13. The Outcomes of 'Comprehensive' Reform (Blog)

14. A Roundup of H-1B News (Blog)

15. Refugee Resettlement: No Easy Solution (Blog)

16. How One Illegal Outwitted Federal, State Authorities for 30 Years (Blog)





17 May, 2011

British Public report 300 immigration abuses every day

Immigration officials receive 300 reports a day of suspected illegal migrants and other abuses, a watchdog revealed today.

But the way the UK Border Agency handles the intelligence came under intense criticism with official not even able to say whether a call resulted in an arrest.

John Vine, the chief inspector of UKBA, said the picture was “unacceptable” and that intelligence is often focused on hitting targets rather than targeting those organising illegal immigration.

A separate report by the watchdog also revealed that plans to arrest suspected illegal immigrants had to be delayed because of a lack of detention space.

Mr Vine said UKBA received more than 100,000 calls from the public every year – or 2,100 a week – with allegation of immigration abuse. It includes suspected illegal workers, illegal entry and sham marriages. But he said the agency was "unable to identify the proportion of allegations that had resulted in people being prevented from entering the UK, or which had led to enforcement action against people living or working illegally in the UK".

Frontline staff at the UK's ports also used different methods to spot suspicious people or vehicles, but had no way of telling which of these best identified potential offences or offenders.

Mr Vine said: “There is a real need for the agency to focus more rigorously on the actual outcome of intelligence. "There is insufficient understanding across the agency of the role that intelligence should play and whether or not it is the driving force for meeting objectives. "The agency should have a clearer idea of how the use of intelligence contributes to preventing and detecting immigration and customs offences."

A separate report in to the agency's arrest team in Croydon found four of six operations planned by one of the agency's 53 arrest teams had to be rescheduled due to a "lack of detention space". "The remaining four operations were due to be rescheduled when detention space became available," he said. "However, as intelligence reports are only valid for a period of three weeks, according to agency guidance, there is a risk that this period might be exceeded.

Intelligence checks were also carried out two months before one operation and it was unclear whether they had been rechecked since, the report said. "This lack of a clear audit trail presents an obvious risk; for example, if a person had become known to police after the previous checks, the agency may not be aware of this," Mr Vine said. "The risks to staff and members of the public of such an oversight are potentially considerable."

Briefings which contained personal and sensitive information about people suspected of immigration offences were carried out in the street while others failed to note that a potential target was four months pregnant, the inspectors found.

SOURCE





Asylum seekers in Australia pretending to be teenagers for faster processing

IMMIGRATION detainees are pretending to be teens to get their visa applications processed quicker and live in better conditions.

Victoria's biggest youth immigration detention centre in Broadmeadows is filled with many asylum seekers claiming to be under 18 to escape the tougher regulations for adults, an investigation has discovered.

Secret photos obtained by the Herald Sun reveal men with obvious signs of ageing, including crow's-feet, wrinkles around their eyes and receding hairlines. Experts say the men are more likely to be aged in their 20s.

Several Immigration Department sources have confirmed the con. Immigration officials lack time and resources to investigate people's ages so they deliver them to youth detention centres with "a wry smile", a whistleblower said.

"There are some massive guys, we're talking about man mountains, in the centre. Sixteen-year-olds just aren't built like that," the source said. Adult detainees bullied genuine youngsters at the facility, it was revealed.

University of Technology Sydney forensic anatomist Dr Meiya Sutisno said an initial assessment of a selection of the photographs showed men not minors. "They are not juveniles, definitely not," she said. Dr Sutisno said the men in photos she had seen were aged between 18 and their late-20s.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the age scam had become widely known among asylum seekers and the department was unable to prove people's ages.

"They (the department) have no idea how old these people are," he said. "They just guess."

Sources revealed:

MANY detainees deliberately have no documentation of their age so they can lie about how old they are.

SOME asylum seekers have privately confessed to being more than a decade older than they claimed.

INMATES at the Broadmeadows facility have boasted about escaping at night to get McDonald's.

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre coordinator Pamela Curr said many didn't know their ages because it was not in their culture to celebrate birthdays. "They say what they have been told to say by people smugglers."

SOURCE



16 May, 2011

No Voting Rights For Illegal Aliens - Ever!

For Dems, It's All About A Permanent Electoral Majority - Not Human Dignity

No one who broke our laws to enter this country should ever decide who becomes our president, a member of Congress, a governor or mayor, or a member of the local school board. This is the non-negotiable “die line” those who love our country must defend: We cannot permit a huge criminal voting block to determine our future. And every person who entered this country without our government’s formal permission is a criminal. Period.

Democratic Party operatives embed their public arguments for amnesty for eleven-million illegals in terms of human dignity and decency (they never mention votes). The examples they cite in their speeches and sleek commercials always feature hardworking moms with adorable kids who excel at school and, when not doing community service, dream of becoming physicians and curing cancer. Our laws are never mentioned. Nor is the multitude of illegal immigrant criminals who continue to violate those laws after breaking into our national home.

The reality? A few years back—before things worsened--40% of all federal convicts were Latinos, and 72% of those were not U.S. citizens. That tells us two things: First, native-born Hispanics are, on average, better citizens than a number of other ethnic groups. Second, a disproportionate number of illegal immigrants commit felonies. Contrary to Democratic Party bigotry, not all Hispanics are alike.

Those “cute-as-a-puppy” commercials and TV-news featurettes never get around to advertising the murderers, rapists and drug thugs covered in gang tattoos who haunt our cities and ever more small towns, or the fact that at least half of illegal-immigrant households are on at least one welfare-system program at taxpayer expense, or that the cost just to our education system of illegal immigration is between forty and fifty billion dollars per year. (Want to save a few billion a year? Defend our borders.)

Why does the Democratic Party relentlessly inflict this “illegals-are-just-like-you-only-nicer-and-better” propaganda on us? Is it because the party that supported slavery, then relied on the Ku Klux Klan for a full century, then re-enslaved African-Americans on its electoral plantations where their children receive inferior educations (thanks to the overseers in the teachers’ unions) and are discouraged from pursuing careers that might free them finally saw the light and decided to fight for a better future for minorities? Hell, no. Democratic Party support for amnesty for illegals comes down to one word: “Votes.”

So let’s call the Dems out. We’re not going to get an ideal solution to the illegal-immigrant problem. And we’re not going to line up eleven-million criminal invaders (that’s what illegals are, folks) and march them back across the Rio Grande. It just isn’t going to happen. But we can protect our system of government and our social values by insisting that, after ridding ourselves of every illegal with a criminal record beyond the initial border violation, a history of joblessness, or a gang tattoo (checking for them would be no more intrusive than what you and I endure at the airport), we create a new category of provisional residency leading—if the individual’s police record stays clean and he or she stays off dependency programs—to permanent residency without voting rights.

Of course, the Dems will howl that there has been no greater injustice in all of human history and that, in President Obama’s favorite phrase, “That’s not who we are!” (speak for yourself, Mr. President). But let’s apply common sense: How many illegals broke into this country because they hoped one day to participate in our national, state or local elections? Apart from the haters in La Raza, wouldn’t illegals regard residency without voting rights as a damned good deal? If they could choose that option, wouldn’t they jump at it? With all of the benefits of being Americans, except the right to distort our system of government?

They won’t be offered that option, though. Not if this administration has anything to say about it. Democratic Party power brokers wouldn’t accept such a reasonable compromise in a thousand years. Because the Dems don’t give a damn about little Luisa and her dreams of getting a Ph.D. in astrophysics, becoming an astronaut, writing symphonies, and dressing the sores of lepers in her spare time. They only care about the votes they hope to buy with total amnesty.

The fundamental purpose of the Democratic Party’s insistence on full citizenship for the criminals from abroad who live among us is the hope of creating a permanent Democratic majority in key states and nationally. The blunt truth that no Republican official will mouth is that, after creating their squalid electoral plantations—every one a domain of hopelessness and reliable Democratic majorities—the Dems now want to create barrio latifundias with electoral peons who will learn nothing in our schools (certainly not effective English-language skills) except that they owe their allegiance to the Democratic Party—and that race-hatred is America’s primary heritage.

From its long embrace of Communism to its current worship of invasive government, the now-dominant left wing of the Democratic Party has always been uneasy with our republic and the constitutional manner in which we allocate power through elections. The Dems’ attitude really can be summed up as “The masses are asses.” Elites know best, and those of us who didn’t go to top universities are better off as serfs controlled by a directorate of the intelligentsia. And, of course, no native-born American could possibly be as deserving as a criminal alien newly arrived from the underdeveloped world.

We’re reminded, again and again, that we’re a country of immigrants. Absolutely true. And we need continued immigration. But it must be legal. We have every right to decide who does and does not get to enter and remain in our country. And our consular officers—often destructively leftist in their orientation—need new regulations that discourage scamming the system and encourage the allocation of green cards to the young, healthy and educated.

Wouldn’t hurt a bit, if, for a ten-year period, the basic requirement for a green card was a four-year university degree plus the proven ability to speak and write fluent English (the ability would have to be double-checked at ports of entry, since too many of our consular officers have political agendas). Our current system is obsessed with making our society more “balanced,” meaning multicultural and dumbed-down. The left hates the America that was, despises the America that is, and is determined to design the America that will be. And it won’t be a democracy whose leaders are chosen by conscientious, literate citizens.

Really, let’s call the Dems out. If they truly care about giving cuddly illegals the opportunity to unfold their supposedly enormous gifts, live better lives, and rescue our economy, fine: Let’s make a deal (but booting out all criminals is non-negotiable, too). The illegals who measure up—who have a consistent record of employment, no government-aid claims and no police records--get to stay, with every right and opportunity except the vote. And their children who are born on our soil after they receive permanent residency will enjoy full voting rights when they come of age, just like others born legally on our soil. It’s the greatest deal on earth. All the Dems have to do is to prove their humanity and compromise on a single issue.

Think they will?

The first response will be that it’s un-American to have “second-class citizens.” Fine. Don’t call them “citizens.” Call them “residents.” We already have various classes of residency. We can, through legislation, create another. And, frankly, I’m not interested in the party of slavery, then and now, telling me what’s un-American.

As for Hispanics, the Dems are virulently racist, lumping them all together as a group and failing to recognize their individuality and patriotism. Millions of native-born Hispanics are thorough patriots who do not welcome the crime, fecklessness and degradation that illegal immigrants bring to their communities. But to the Democratic Party’s propagandists, all olive-skinned, tan, brown or white folks with a last name such as Gutierrez or Sanchez are oppressed victims who have no stake in our brutal, imperialist society. And the Dems would love to do to Hispanics what they’ve done to African-Americans: Destroy their strong family values, addict them to government programs, discourage them from pursuing good educations and liberating careers—then herd them to polling stations to vote for Democrats anointed by party commissars.

Ultimately, the Dems are going to lose. Our Hispanic fellow citizens just aren’t going to let themselves be dragged backward. And the Dems sense it. So they’re chasing a block of eleven-million uneducated criminals whose poor English-language skills exclude them from full participation in the work-force or our society. That’s the future of the Democratic Party, as the likes of Senator Harry Reid or Representative Nancy Pelosi see it.

To prevent that future from becoming a reality we need to concentrate fiercely on a single battle cry: “No voting right for illegal aliens—ever!”

SOURCE





Thailand interested in unloading its refugees onto Australia too

They'd be mad not to. The mad one is Prime Minister Gillard

THAILAND has expressed interest in striking a similar asylum-seeker deal with Australia to the one proposed by the Gillard government with Malaysia.

The development came as Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said a boatload of 32 asylum-seekers intercepted off Western Australia would be sent to a third country, even though the deal with Malaysia has yet to be finalised. Australia is in talks to swap 800 asylum-seekers for 4,000 genuine refugees currently living in Malaysia.

Australia has been seeking a regional solution to the issue of asylum-seekers, and has also approached Papua New Guinea about reopening its Manus Island detention centre.

Last night Thailand's foreign minister Kasit Piromya said Thailand would be interested in considering a swap arrangement similar to that Australia had reached with Malaysia. “I think the agreement between Australia and Malaysia on this particular model based on, I think, five to one ratio is something that the rest of us will be interested to look at,” Mr Kasit said after bilateral talks with Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd in Bangkok.

He said many countries had been looking for a way to deal with an influx of asylum-seekers. “I think the Australian-Malaysian likely agreement would provide some sort of certainty and also a model for others to study,” he said. “I think the whole issue could be discussed further by all the other countries involved.”

Many of the refugees Australia is set to take from Malaysia are from Burma, and travelled to Malaysia via Thailand.

Mr Rudd said he and Mr Kasit discussed the broader issue of asylum-seekers. “So what we discussed in particular was the ongoing support which our friends in Thailand need to sustain something in the order of 110,000 people spread across nine camps,” Mr Rudd said.

The asylum-seekers intercepted off Western Australia on Friday night are the first to arrive since Labor's announcement of its agreement with Malaysia. Believed to be from Afghanistan and Pakistan, they will be taken to Christmas Island for identity checks.

However Mr Bowen said they would then be taken to a third country, although he would not say what country that was. “It's well known we've been in discussions with Papua New Guinea. It's well known we are in discussions across the region,” he said. “We have an agreement to enter into a bilateral arrangement with Malaysia. “I am not going to flag which country these people will be sent to, but they will be held at Christmas Island, pending removal to a third country.”

Mr Bowen added: “My message to people smugglers and to asylum-seekers is very clear. “We will not be accepting and processing people for asylum claims who arrive in Australia by boat.”

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the arrival showed people-smugglers had not been put off by Labor spin on a people-swap deal with Malaysia.

Mr Bowen could not say where the group would be sent because the government had no deal with Malaysia, PNG, East Timor or anywhere else, Mr Morrison said. “Having realised that by announcing their panicked deal before it was agreed and operational they had issued an invitation to people smugglers, Minister Bowen is now trying to shut the gate once, in this case, the boats have bolted.”

Mr Bowen had not confirmed if Malaysia had been specified as a place asylum-seekers could be transferred to under Australian law, Mr Morrison said. “Unlike on Nauru or Manus Island, Australia will have no role in looking after the welfare of those potentially transferred to Malaysia under their five-for-one people-swap deal.

SOURCE



15 May, 2011

English for Immigrants

President Obama invoked immigrant assimilation this week in a speech in El Paso, Texas, praising the notion embodied in the motto E pluribus unum: out of many, one. But it wasn't all that long ago when many liberals eschewed the idea of America as having one language, one culture, and one people. Ironically, it has taken an anti-immigrant backlash to awaken at least some liberals to the dangers of multiculturalism, which they pushed aggressively for decades.

It was liberals -- not conservatives -- who originally claimed that today's immigrants couldn't assimilate, or, in their view, shouldn't even try. Liberals insisted that Hispanic kids, even those who were born here, be taught in Spanish and learn to revere their ancestral culture rather than to take pride in being Americans. The bilingual, multicultural approach became deeply imbedded in the public school curriculum, thanks to the efforts mostly of white liberals, with help from some college-educated, fully assimilated Hispanic activists.

The consequences were disastrous, especially for Hispanic children consigned to a second-class education in Spanish, which would not lead to college or economic success. It also caused resentment among those who rightly felt that other immigrants had willingly adopted English and that Hispanics should as well. But there were a few valiant voices arguing against bilingual and multicultural education, and none was more effective than Dr. Rosalie Pedalino Porter.

Porter's memoir, "American Immigrant: My Life in Three Languages" (Transaction Publishers) chronicles her struggle to end programs that segregated Hispanic students by language and ethnicity. Porter came to America from Italy as a child of 5, speaking not a word of English. She arrived when the United States was in the middle of the Great Depression, but her parents had relatives living in New Jersey who helped them find jobs.

Even the poverty of the Depression era was nothing compared to the bleak life they left behind in Italy. Like many immigrants of that era, Porter found school a welcome departure from the grinding duties of caring for younger siblings, preparing meals, and cleaning house that fell on the oldest child. She excelled in school and decided to devote her life to education.

Eventually, Porter would earn a Ph.D. in education and become director of a bilingual education programs in the Newton, Mass., public schools. It was her experience in the classroom that helped change her mind about what works -- and what doesn't -- when it comes to teaching new immigrants to speak English.

Porter quickly found that teaching youngsters in their native language actually slowed down their academic progress and eventually abandoned the approach. When she became a school administrator, she put her experience to action and transformed the school system's bilingual program, which drew the ire of state officials. She became a thorn in the side of bilingual educators around the country. At conferences, she spoke up whenever bilingual advocates made the ridiculous claim that the best way to learn English was to make sure students spent most of their day being taught in Spanish.

In 1990, Porter's first book, "Forked Tongue: The Politics of Bilingual Education," became the authoritative text on the subject. Since then, she has served as an expert witness in countless court battles on bilingual education, and the U.S. Supreme Court cited her work in its decision on Flores v. Arizona, which upheld English immersion as an acceptable method to teach non-English speakers.

She also became an activist, assisting immigrant parents in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts to get rid of failing bilingual programs in favor of more effective English immersion programs, all of which she details in her memoir.

It's no surprise that an immigrant would be the perfect foil for bilingual educators. Who better to understand that English is the gateway to opportunity in America? President Obama was singing the praises of English and assimilation for America's newcomers in Texas this week. But Rosalie Porter has been the choir leader on the subject for years.

SOURCE






Australia: Expensive "Asylum-seekers

"The flood of asylum-seekers will generate a $1 billion-plus bonanza for the controversial foreign conglomerate that runs Australia's detention centres. Serco originally signed a five-year contract worth $370 million to run the facilities, including the Maribyrnong Detention Centre, until mid-2014. But immigration industry experts said this figure was now likely to burst through the billion-dollar barrier.

Figures obtained from government tender records show the total size of Serco's contracts in relation to asylum-seekers was quietly doubled in November to more than $756 million.

Of this, $712 million is allocated to run the centres through to mid-2014, including the notorious Villawood Centre in Sydney which was almost burnt to the ground last month by rioting asylum-seekers. A further $44.5 million was set aside for "residential housing and transport" for detainees.

But immigration industry sources are saying the latest contract amount for Serco is already six months out of date, and it stands to make hundreds of millions more from the taxpayers with continued boat arrivals.

One source said the asylum-seeker boom since November had already added up to $200 million to the total value of Serco's detention contracts. That would value them at up to $950 million as of this month.

Industry experts said Serco's bonanza was set to easily crack the $1 billion barrier if the Government's new "Malaysia Solution" does not work and refugee boats keep coming.

An Immigration Department spokesman refused to speculate on the Serco bonanza. A Serco spokeswoman said these were "questions for the Government".

In the two years since Serco took over the detention centres contract, there has been a blowout in both the number of refugees and detention facilities. In mid-2009, there were less than 1000 detainees in seven centres. But the latest figures show there are now 6700 detainees in 24 facilities across the country, all run by Serco.

SOURCE



14 May, 2011

More "Bitter Clingers"?

Today, President Obama spoke at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. A transcript of his remarks is here.

The part that really jumped out at me was when the President asserted that "[immigration] is a subject that can expose raw feelings and feed our fears of change. It can be tempting to think that those coming to America today are somehow different from us."

Typical Obama move -- reminiscent of the "bitter clingers" remark, isn't it? Anybody who isn't for his version of "immigration reform" (i.e., amnesty) is nothing but a bigot with a pathological fear of "change." Rarely has a President insulted so many of his fellow Americans with such regularity.

Just for the record: Very few Americans oppose all immigration -- rather, they oppose illegal immigration, and the attack on our sovereignty that results from the Obama administration's non-enforcement of the immigration laws on the books. The issue isn't about "change" or "difference" or bigotry . . . it's about the rule of law.

If the President actually stopped the flow of illegal immigrants into this country -- and contrary to his claims, the metric isn't how many people the government employs to do this, but how well they succeed -- I bet he'd be amazed at how open Americans in both parties would be to solving the remaining immigration issues.

SOURCE






Mass immigration ‘has made the UK’s poor even poorer’

Ministers drew a link for the first time yesterday between large-scale immigration and rising levels of poverty among low-paid workers.

Iain Duncan Smith said that Labour’s open door to migration meant tens of thousands more people were chasing unskilled jobs – and that in turn meant many gave up on work for a life on benefits.

The Work and Pensions Secretary named immigration as one of the causes of rising distress among low-skilled workers after the latest official breakdown showed working-age adult poverty has reached its highest level in 50 years.

The figures showed slightly less poverty last year among children and pensioners, and average take-home incomes went up.

But the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies said this was mainly because of increasing state benefits and tax credits in the year before the general election. It predicted record falls in incomes and a vicious squeeze on living standards this year.

The poverty figures showed that 5.7million working-age people were living below the Government’s poverty line in the financial year that ended in April 2010, a rise of 700,000 in five years between 2004 and 2009.

The IFS said the 16 per cent of working-age people now below the poverty line is the highest since it started compiling its own records in 1961.

However, the great bulk of the increase did not come during the recession years after 2007, when unemployment began to rise, but in the three years between 2004 and 2007.

This was the period when the economy was booming – attracting one and a half million Poles and other Eastern Europeans who came to work in Britain after the borders were opened when their countries joined the EU. Immigration from other parts of the world was also running at unprecedentedly high levels over the three years.

Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘Labour’s open-door immigration policy meant that the competition for low skill jobs in many areas increased, and a life on benefits became a more attractive option than a life in work. ‘That’s why this Government is doing the responsible thing and reforming the welfare state and tightening up on immigration to get Britain working and end the madness of generations living on benefits with no higher aspiration.’

Labour ministers defended high immigration on the grounds that it benefited the economy.

The poverty figures, however, suggest there was force behind the arguments of critics of immigration who said the benefits were felt only by the well-off – and those on low incomes were facing greater competition for work and lower pay.

According to the Households Below Average Incomes report, the share of working-age adults in poverty – below 60 per cent of median income – stood at 14 per cent in 2004. Last year it reached 16 per cent.

Mr Duncan Smith said that despite the falls in official poverty levels, inequality is at record levels and working people have borne the brunt of paying for the state benefits that gave better living standards to the workless. ‘These figures lay bare the growth of income inequality in the UK which is now the highest it has ever been,’ he said.

He added that ‘benefit [welfare] dependency and worklessness (had been made) inherent to the UK way of life with middle and low income earners picking up the bill.’

SOURCE



13 May, 2011

Crass and Cynical on Illegal Immigration

If you didn’t notice, the president is running for President again. That’s why all of sudden he’s gotten interested in “comprehensive” immigration reform.

If that sounds crass and cynical, then you are right. Crass and Cynical run the White House for at least 19 more months, dispensing law and justice to the rest of us.

The guy who rushed out to get trillions for banks, big pharmaceuticals and unions, practically ignored the topic of immigration reform when his guys ran Congress for two years and could have written their own version.

Indeed one of his wise-guys from Chicago, Rep Luis Gutierrez recently noted “[Obama] has the power to make things better right now without the Congress having to pass any new laws.”

Yeah, he can just do what he did for gays, unions, Chicago and all of his other cronies: He can ignore enforcing the old laws he doesn’t like. Or maybe he can grant every illegal immigrant a waiver, like he did for his favorites under healthcare “reform.”

Why hasn’t he presented an immigration reform proposal? Because had Obama passed immigration reform under a Democrat-controlled Congress, he would have had to take responsibility for passing it. If he ignores the old laws now, he’ll have to take responsibility for that too. And if there is one thing that Obama hates, it’s taking responsibility for anything. If Bill Clinton was a draft-dodger, then Obama’s a vote dodger.

Jobs? Nope. War? Nope. Immigration reform? Present.

That’s why the president has had a death-bed conversion to the Democrat idea of immigration reform. It’s an idea that has died already. And he knows it.

Because the Democrat idea of immigration reform evades the idea of immigrants taking personal responsibility for following immigration laws, it’s probably a tempting proposition for the president.

But it’s a version of reform that he’ll likely never have to take responsibility for or even work on. Because nothing will ever be presented by the president to Congress on immigration reform besides finger wagging and the clipped sentences that adorn all of Obama’s b-roll lectures to the rest of us. If Obama’s presidency was a book it would be the Last Lecture.

The president dispensing law and justice followed by his prepared remarks can’t possibly end soon enough.

And it’s telling that Obama doesn’t think that Hispanic voters deserve the benefit of law and justice or quaint notions of the truth. Instead, we have a president who is perfectly satisfied in making sure that millions of illegal immigrants stay here illegally, wholly dependent on his minions ability to give or take away residency.

Already liberals are lining up to trade horses with him: “He can’t pass a bill. But he is answerable to all the expanded enforcement actions and to the question people ask: Could you take the edge off enforcement” of illegal immigration laws? says said Angela Kelley with the liberal group Center for American Progress. Or “Do you really have to follow the laws so verbatimly?” to paraphrase Mark Twain.

It’s so much easier for the president just to give a speech about immigration reform, and keep a important voting demographic entirely subject to his whim, rather than go through the hassle of writing legislation that might actually be read by members of the public, if not by Congress before a roll call vote.

“I just haven’t seen the outreach to offices on how to work together,” on immigration reform, said a senior House Republican aide who has worked on comprehensive immigration reform, according to Politico. “We have never seen anything followed through other than these public meetings. I just wonder where this work is that they’re doing.”

Obama’s conversion to a believer on immigration reform has more to do with his prayers to save his job as president than it does about actually improving the security of the county, economic or otherwise.

“Hispanics are a key element in his reelection campaign,” writes the Daily Caller, “partly because his support among working-class whites and swing-voters [has] crashed after two years of lousy economic conditions. But Hispanics’ turnout is low, and their lopsided support for him has tumbled from 68 percent to 54 percent over the last few years.”

And if Hispanic haven’t noticed that Obama’s running for president again, they’ll notice soon enough now that Crass and Cynical are in the race.

SOURCE




Texas Moves to Crack Down on Cities Protecting Illegal Immigrants

Four months after Gov. Rick Perry put out an urgent request to wrap up a bill cracking down on cities providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants, the Texas House passed it Monday night, advancing it to the state Senate, which is expected to approve it and send it to Perry's desk.

Under the bill, police officers in so-called "sanctuary cities" will be able to question detained suspects about their immigration status even if their bosses disapprove.

The term "sanctuary cities" is used to describe places where local officials refuse to enforce federal immigration laws and undocumented workers are free to seek jobs, housing or local government services without fear of deportation.

The bill doesn't go as far as Arizona's requirement that police check people's immigration status, but it prohibits cities or police departments from telling officers not to enforce immigration laws. Cities that fail to comply would relinquish state grant funds.

Many sheriffs and city police chiefs have criticized the bill, saying they are already helping officials prosecute and deport illegal immigrants but don't want more mandates from the state.

Other critics said the bill could allow local police agencies to become de-facto immigration enforcement agents and let rank-and-file officers spend all the time they want enforcing immigration laws no matter what managers want.

But the GOP-led House looked past those objections and approved the measure 100-47 after Republicans moved to cut off all debate on the issue.

The vote came on the eve of Obama's first trip as president to the U.S.-Mexico border, where he planned to continue his recent push to revive legislative efforts to remake the nation's immigration laws.

In the absence of a sweeping national law, many statehouses have taken immigration matters into their own hands. In 2010, a record number of laws and resolutions were passed by state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which calculated that 46 states and the District of Columbia had passed 346 measures, with an additional 10 having fallen from gubernatorial vetoes.

And the U.S. House is considering legislation that would slash federal funding for "sanctuary cities."

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey released Tuesday found that 59 percent of likely voters favor the legislation, 28 percent oppose it and 13 percent are undecided. But 55 percent think Congress is unlikely to pass the bill. The poll, taken May 7, of 1,000 likely U.S. voters, had a margin of error of 3 points.

An estimated 1.6 million illegal immigrants live in Texas, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington. Nationwide, the numbers declined between 2007 and 2009, from 12 million to 11.1 million, the first significant drop after two decades of growth, attributed in large part to a receding economy. But the combined population of illegal immigrants in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana went up by a statistically significant 240,000, the center reported last month.

The debate over the bill in Texas, a state heavily dominated by Republicans, has been inflamed by racial allegations.

While supporters say it's needed to stop crime committed by illegal immigrants, critics say it would lead to racial profiling, detract from real police work and allow rogue agents to harass Hispanics. "Now you'll get stopped for driving while Mexican," said Democratic Rep. Rene Oliveira. "We know that there are people out there who will do racial profiling. ... Now they're going to have a blanket amnesty to do it."

Republican Rep. Leo Berman took offense at the suggestion that people who supported the bill were motivated by racial fears. "I don't have a racist bone in my body," said Berman. "We have Hispanic government in San Antonio. We have many Hispanic police officers."

Rep. Jose Aliseda, a Mexican immigrant who rose to become a Republican legislator, accused Democrats of "grandstanding" and said he had "brown skin" but was not afraid to give police more authority to police in immigration matters.

Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles and a former aide to President George W. Bush, dismissed the racial allegations as politics as usual by the far left. "Frankly, the far left is using that argument to scare Latinos," he told Fox News. "It's the historic argument of the left, that you're going to be discriminated against, they're coming after you, they're racist. Democrats are good people, compassionate. That is a very simplistic argument that civil rights groups tied to the left are trying to use."

But Aguilar said Latinos in the end will see through it.

Republican Rep. Burt Solomons, author of the bill, helped tack on softening amendments that would provide a limited exemption for hospitals and school districts. But police officers who work for hospitals or school districts would still be given authority to help enforce immigration law. "The bill is a prohibition against policies, not a requirement to do anything," Solomons said.

SOURCE





12 May, 2011

Obama heckled as he tries to woo Hispanic voters by hailing importance of immigrants to U.S.

President Obama was heckled as he made a blatant attempt to woo Hispanic voters today by hailing the importance of immigrants to the American economy. Speaking in El Paso, Texas, close to Mexican the border, the President pledged to escalate legislation that would offer a pathway to the nation’s millions of illegal immigrants.

But the President also claimed border controls between the U.S. and Mexico had never been more stringent.

Obama said:'We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants - a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America’s precepts. 'It doesn’t matter where you come from. What matters is that you believe in the ideals on which we were founded, that you believe all of us are equal. In embracing America, you can become American. That is what makes this country great.'

The President was broadly cheered by supporters as he told how immigrants were an essential part of the economic recovery and said he wanted to offer a path to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants.

But he was then heckled as he made reference to the 'fence' between the U.S. and Mexico, with shouts of 'tear it down' from the crowd.

In scenes unusual for such a campaign-style event, supporters attempted to drown out jeers from opponents of immigration by chanting, 'Yes we can'.

The speech came as immigration is widely expected to become a key issue in the 2010 presidential election as both Democrats and Republicans seek to use it to their own advantage. A number of states, including Arizona, have been moving in the opposite direction of the President by making it easier to deport people in the U.S. illegally.

On his first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border since becoming president, Obama declared it was more secure than ever before. He boasted of increasing border patrol agents, nearing completion of a border fence and screening more cargo.

Obama claimed that fewer arrests of illegal immigrants showed that 'far fewer people are attempting to cross the border illegally'. 'Even as we have stepped up patrols, apprehensions along the border have been cut by nearly 40 per cent from two years ago,' said Obama.

But local police chiefs have alleged that they have been told to stop arresting illegal immigrants on the border to keep official figures down.

An Arizona sheriff last month said Border Patrol agents have told dozens of law enforcement officers to instead chase the immigrants back towards Mexico. Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever said he had been 'flooded' with emails from officers supporting his claims.

The President sought to blame Republicans for standing in the way of immigration legislation as he sought to appease Hispanic voters.

Many Hispanics have voiced concerns about the administration's heavy deportations and feel Obama never made good on his promise to prioritise immigration legislation during his first year in office.

Obama predicted Republicans would seek to block his new immigration reform drive, quipping they would demand alligators in a moat around America's borders.

'We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement,' Obama said, at the southern US border in El Paso, Texas.

'Even though we've answered these concerns, I have got to say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goalposts on us one more time.

'They'll say we need to triple the border patrol. Now they will say we will need to quadruple the border patrol. Or they will want a higher fence. 'Maybe they'll need a moat. Maybe they will want alligators in the moat - they'll never be satisfied, and I understand that. That's politics.'

Few political observers believe there is any chance that a comprehensive immigration reform bill will pass this year, so Obama has been accused of bringing it up to seek favour with Hispanics and to hurt Republicans.

But White House aides insisted the President felt a sense of urgency about illegal immigration and wanted to spur Congress into action. 'It's easier for politicians to defer the problem until after the next election, and there's always a next election,' Obama said. 'So we've seen a lot blame and politics and a lot of ugly rhetoric.

'We've seen leaders of both parties who tried to work on this issue and then their efforts fell prey to the usual Washington games. And all the while, we've seen the mounting consequences of decades of inaction.'

Obama said that the U.S. had 'strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible'. He said: 'They wanted more agents on the border. Well, we now have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history.

'The Border Patrol has 20,000 agents – more than twice as many as there were in 2004, a build up that began under President Bush and that we have continued.'

The President said that immigration reform would help make America more competitive in the global economy. He argued that the middle class would benefit from bringing illegal immigrants out of an underground economy and drawing on the abilities of immigrants educated in American universities.

He said: 'Look at Intel and Google and Yahoo and eBay – these are great American companies that have created countless jobs and helped us lead the world in high-tech industries. [And how many illegals work in those firms??]

Every one was founded by an immigrant. We don’t want the next Intel or Google to be created in China or India. We want those companies and jobs to take root in America.

He pledged to 'make it easier for the best and the brightest to not only study here, but also to start businesses and create jobs here'. He said: 'In recent years, a full 25 per cent of high-tech startups in the U.S. were founded by immigrants, leading to more than 200,000 jobs in America. I’m glad those jobs are here. And I want to see more of them created in this country.'

Republicans disputed Obama's contention that the border has been effectively secured and accused him of playing politics in pursuit of the ever-growing Hispanic electorate ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

'The President's off talking about comprehensive reform. We've been down that road before,' Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told reporters. 'I believe, in turn, we should do things that actually produce some progress and results.'

SOURCE





The Amnesty Bandwagon Rolls Again

Michelle Malkin

The public relations campaign for President Obama's latest revival of "immigration reform" makes one thing crystal clear: This is not, and never has been, about homeland security. This is not, and never has been, about economic security. It's about political security, plain and cynical.

In conjunction with Tuesday's renewed White House push in Texas for a "new pathway to citizenship" for millions of illegal immigrants, disgruntled Latino activists are ratcheting up their radical anti-enforcement rhetoric. Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez -- a persistent critic on Obama's left flank -- lambasted federal workplace enforcement raids this weekend. On Sunday, he repeated his hyperbolic attacks on homeland security agents "terrorizing" neighborhoods and ripping babies from the breasts of nursing moms. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano made no public effort to defend her employees.

On campuses across the country, unhappy ethnic college student groups have turned up the heat on Democrats to resurrect the "DREAM Act" nightmare for the 12th time in a decade. The legislation -- persistently rejected by a bipartisan majority on Capitol Hill -- would provide illegal aliens (not just teenagers, but students up to age 35) federal education access and benefits, plus a conditional pass from deportation and a special path toward green cards and U.S. citizenship for themselves and unlimited relatives.

Obama argues that his comprehensive amnesty plan would boost America's bottom line. But the open-borders math doesn't add up. The Congressional Budget Office score of the last DREAM Act package estimates that "the bill would increase projected deficits by more than $5 billion in at least one of the four consecutive 10-year periods starting in 2021." And that doesn't include the costs of the unlimited family members the millions of DREAM Act beneficiaries would be able to bring to the U.S. A separate cost analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies concluded that the illegal alien DREAM Act bailout would cost taxpayers $6.2 billion a year and "crowd out" U.S. students in the classroom.

To help gloss over those sobering realities and blur the lines between legal and illegal immigration, Obama summoned Latino celebrities such as actresses Eva Longoria and Rosario Dawson. The starlets -- deemed important "stakeholders" in the immigration policy debate by the celebrity in chief -- have served as glamorous distractions from the vocal complaints of Southwest governors, ranchers, farmers and other victims of continued border chaos. These are the real stakeholders whose lives and livelihoods are at risk. But none had a seat at the Hollywood-filled table.

While proudly emphasizing her ethnic loyalties, Dawson (an outspoken critic of Arizona's immigration enforcement law) insists immigration reform "isn't just a Mexican" or Latino issue. But for more candid liberal strategists, the illegal alien amnesty bandwagon is nothing more than a tool to motivate current and future Latinos to protect the Democrats' grip on power. Eliseo Medina, secretary treasurer of Obama's deep-pocketed backers at the Service Employees International Union, laid out the stakes in an interview with MSNBC:

"Clearly with immigration reform and any other kind of reform that would benefit the Latino community, we have to make sure that our voices are heard in the ballot box. There are approximately 23 million Latinos that are eligible to vote, yet only 10 million voted in 2008."

SEIU's goal: "If we increase the turnout from 10 million to anywhere between 12 and 15 million, we're going to have an outsized impact on the election in 2012."

If, as widely expected, Obama fails to deliver amnesty through the legislative process, there's always amnesty by executive fiat. White House insiders first floated the idea in June 2010 to unilaterally extend either deferred action or parole to millions of illegal aliens in the United States. This administration has accomplished its major policy agenda items through force, fiat and fraud. Immigration will be no different.

Unfortunately for the law-abiding, there is no Hollywood-Washington-Big Labor lobby to speak for them. While Obama's homeland security officials hang their "mission accomplished" banner over the border, the feds have barely made a dent in the three-year naturalization application backlog or the 400,000-deportation fugitive problem.

Meanwhile, law enforcement witnesses told a House subcommittee last month that border smuggling has grown so out of control that federal prosecutors are simply declining to pursue cases. Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Larry Dever testified about the feds' so-called "Turn Back South" policy -- which includes lowering thresholds for drug and smuggling prosecutions, and permitting border-crossers at least seven strikes before being charged with immigration misdemeanors. And just last week, the General Accounting Office reported another massive 1.6 million illegal visa overstayers backlog -- a problem exposed by five of the 19 September 11 hijackers who benefited from systemic failure to enforce visa regulations.

So much for "never forget."

SOURCE



11 May, 2011

Federal judge blocks Utah immigration law

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a new Utah immigration law that would have allowed police to check the citizenship status of anyone they arrest. U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups issued his ruling in Salt Lake City hours after the law went into effect, citing its similarity to an Arizona law currently before federal courts.

The American Civil Liberties Union and National Immigration Law Center had sued to stop the law, warning its implementation could lead to racial profiling.

Utah Assistant Attorney General Jerrold Jansen said the ruling was "not a surprise." Jansen said after the hearing that the law is "fully constitutional" and that his office plans to "argue it vigorously." The next hearing on the matter is set for July 14.

The law, signed by Republican Gov. Gary Herbert in March, would require police to check the citizenship status of anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony or class-A misdemeanor, while giving officers discretion to check the citizenship of those stopped for traffic infractions and other lesser offenses.

Class A misdemeanors include theft, negligent homicide and criminal mischief, while felonies range from aggravated burglary to rape and murder.

SOURCE




"Asylum-seeker" influx sees Australia's detention costs rocket

THE influx of asylum-seekers by boat into Australia has led to an explosion in the costs of running the nation's immigration detention centres, blowing out previous budget allocations by more than $1 billion.

The costs of running offshore processing, primarily on the Christmas Island detention centre, have forced the government to spend $290 million extra in the current financial year, but the estimated blowout for offshore detention will skyrocket by $819m next financial year and total just over $1bn by the end of 2013-14.

Between the next financial year and the end of 2014-15, the government estimates it will have spent $2.5bn on offshore processing.

Running onshore detention centres, such as the troubled Villawood facility in Sydney, has cost the government $88m this year, bringing the total cost of running Australia's detention centres to about $788m in 2010-11.

The total cost for the program in the upcoming financial year will be $1.05bn for offshore processing and $90m for onshore processing.

In 2012-13 the total program cost of offshore centres will reach $677m, and the government will spend $401m in 2013-14. The government expects offshore costs to decline to $366m in 2014-15.

But signals point to the government opening more offshore processing centres with the costs associated with onshore processing remaining stable. Spending on onshore detention will decline over the next four years from previous expectations by about $10m.

The government has been in talks with Papua New Guinea over the possibility of reopening the Manus Island detention centre to deal with the influx, after the centre was closed down under the Rudd government.

The increasing price tag does not include costs associated with the new $300m Malaysian refugee exchange policy announced by the Prime Minister before the budget. Nor does it include $129m set aside for extra costs associated with building new centres and expanding facilities at Northam, Christmas Island, Darwin and Curtin detention centres.

The Department of Immigration will bear the brunt of the blowout with $200m set to be cut from the department in the next four years. According to the budget papers, the cuts will be achieved by "reducing expenditure on corporate support, policy and program design and service delivery function".

There will be an extra $107.7m provided over the next four years devoted specifically to fighting legal appeals to offshore arrivals.

Last year the High Court ruled that offshore arrivals should be given the benefit of offshore review, and the funds will be used to increase the number of reviewers and appeals hearings.

Yesterday a spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the increased costs in offshore processing flowed from the expectation of new arrivals over the coming years, but said they would decline with the introduction of the Malaysian agreement.

SOURCE



10 May, 2011

Recent posts at CIS below

See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.

1. Jerry Kammer and Donald Kerwin Debate Immigration Issues (Video)

2. Where are the H-1B Geniuses? (Blog)

3. Obama's Rule of Lawlessness (Blog)
4. Holder Sends Signal Supporting Marriages of Gay Immigrants (Blog)

5. Just Another Mafia (Blog)

6. An Intriguing (but Probably Flawed) Idea - the Sacrifice Bunt Visa (Blog)

7. Illinois Governor Moves to Protect Illegal Alien Criminals (Blog)

8. Republicans and Immigration (Blog)

9. U.S. Islands' Immigration Policies Overruled by Mainland Standards (Blog)

10. USCIS Spends Too Much Time on Tiny Populations, Including Dead Ones (Blog)

11. 'You must . . . study for at least part of your time in the USA' for an F-1 Visa (Blog)





Arizona will ask Supreme Court to rule on immigration law

Arizona will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the state's controversial anti-immigration law, Gov. Jan Brewer said Monday. The announcement was made after a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected on April 11 Arizona's plea to overturn a district judge's injunction blocking implementation of parts of SB1070.

Among the articles currently suspended is one that would oblige police agencies in Arizona to ask for proof of legal residence in the United States from anyone they suspect of being an undocumented immigrant. Also blocked is the article that obliges all immigrants to carry their immigration documents at all times.

"Arizona will prevail in its fight to protect its citizens," Brewer said Monday. The Republican governor said that a year after she signed SB1070, Arizona continues fighting against crimes related to the violence generated by Mexican drug cartels.

This is a new chapter in the history of a law that divides communities inside and outside the state, between those who want an "iron fist" against illegal immigration and those fighting for the rights of immigrants.

Because Brewer considers that time is of the essence, she decided to take SB1070 to the Supreme Court instead of lodging a second appeal with the 9th Circuit. An intervention by the high court would create a "greater likelihood that legal questions surrounding the law will be resolved quickly so that the law can begin to do its job," she said.

The state of Arizona now has until July 11 to present its official appeal before the nation's highest court. The Supreme Court is not expected to decide whether it will hear the case until late September or early October.

"Our issue is bigger than simply border security. It's about the principle that a state must be able to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens, especially in the absence of sufficient federal assistance. I'm confident that Arizona will emerge victorious from this legal fight," Brewer said.

The governor admitted that it will be a costly legal battle.
She said that up to now her office has received $3.7 million in private donations for the legal defense of SB1070, of which amount approximately half has already been spent.

"For decades, the federal government has neglected its constitutional duty to secure the border. It is because of that negligence that Arizona was forced to take action to protect its citizens via SB1070," the governor said.

Arizona's attorney general, Tom Horne, said the situation on the border is so "urgent" that the state must fix it as soon as possible.

Implementation of SB1070 has spread fear among Arizona's immigrant community, whose members have begun leaving the state to find better opportunities elsewhere.

The enactment of the controversial law also sparked a boycott against the state that experts say has seriously affected the tourism industry and Arizona's image within and without the United States.

SOURCE



9 May, 2011

Arizona now accepting donations to complete border fence; Democrats call legislation 'symbolic'

Arizona lawmakers have launched their latest attack on illegal immigration: an online fundraising campaign to build more fencing along the state's border with Mexico.

State Sen. Steve Smith, sponsor of a new bill aimed at bankrolling the additional fence, said the goal is to use online donations and prison labor to build beefed-up border security.

Donors to the cause may even be given certificates declaring they helped build the wall, Smith told reporters last week.

"I think it’s going to be a really, really neat thing," he said.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill late last month allowing lawmakers to go through with the planned website where they will attempt to raise donations.

"If the website is up and there is an overwhelming response to what we've done and millions of dollars in this fund, I would see no reason why engineering or initial construction or finalized plans can't be accomplished," Smith told The Associated Press.

650 miles of fence already exists along America's border with Mexico, much of it in Arizona, a major gateway for illegal immigrants and drug trafficking. But that hasn't been enough for Arizona lawmakers -- including Sen. John McCain who in a 2010 interview about border control quipped part of the answer to securing Arizona was to "Complete the danged fence."

Brewer recently requested additional help from President Obama to secure the border.

The fence bill is just the latest legislation supported by Arizona Republicans in an effort to boost border security.

The state is already using public donations to support the legal defense of its controversial immigration legislation, SB1070, which requires immigrants carry registration papers. A federal judge issued an injunction on the enforcement of most of the controversial parts of that bill. Arizona has sought to reverse that decision in a federal appeals court.

Smith, a staunch anti-illegal immigration advocate, has often spoken out for increased funding for border protection, even as Arizona is mired in a budget crisis. While passionate about the issue, his numbers haven't always been accurate.

In a May 5th debate to send more money to the Pinal County Sheriff to increase border security, Smith claimed "half of the illegals that come through the country go through Arizona and 80 percent of those go through Pinal County."

The Arizona Republic reported those facts were dubious, at best. In 2009, 44.7% of illegal immigrants apprehended by border patrol were indeed in Arizona -- but since 90% of illegal immigrants are apprehended within five miles of the border and Pinal County is 70 miles from the border, Smith's 80% figure is doubtful.

Democrats called the legislation nothing more than “symbolic” in the April 18 debate.

"If we are here to pass symbolic legislation and not really address border security, SB1406 does the job. But people don't benefit from symbolic legislation," Democratic Rep. Catherine Miranda of Phoenix said.

SOURCE




Australia was wiser about immigration in the past

Arthur Calwell was leader of Australia's Federal parliamentary Labor party between 1960 and 1967

The horrors of World War II reduced Europe to a state of absolute chaos, with crushed, displaced people having lost everything as well as their homelands, being confronted by an implacable new foe - communist Russia. Australia's concern about post-war reconstruction and population growth was acted on by the country's most successful and patriotic immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, who, according to his detractors of the day, "became increasingly aware of the splendid human material to be found in the refugee camps".

Between 1947 and 1952, 181,700 refugee and displaced persons entered Australia through the International Refugee Organisation, which was formed in 1946 to deal with the European refugee crisis, but the stringent health requirements quite correctly set by Calwell led to him being attacked again by the usual suspects as using refugees as "grist for the labour mill".

Fast forward to the years of Al Grassby, Malcolm Fraser, Petro Georgiou and all the other multiculturalists who linked arms with their lefty mates in our schools, universities and parliaments and imposed their version of a Brave New World on the rest of us. Fraser invited Lebanese Muslims to Australia in 1976 and our first boatpeople from Vietnam arrived during his government. During the Howard years the number of African refugees increased and I am reminded again of Calwell who said that he "objected to the mass importation of people who will form 'black power' groups and menace the security of Australia when their numbers have grown sufficiently" and become "fiercely anti-white and fiercely anti one another. Do we want or need any of these people here? I am one red-blooded Australian who says no."

Australia's immigration and refugee policies are now one huge mess with boatpeople arrivals in recent years leading to our coastal borders being shot to pieces and the disasters at Christmas Island, Villawood and elsewhere testimony to a government that has no idea what to do next. Sweeping changes to our immigration and citizenship laws are urgently required but mention the word law and a lawyer will be standing at your shoulder. Teams of lawyers jostle with each other to get their snouts in the trough of legal aid monies constantly being topped up by hapless taxpayers as the courts are log-jammed with cases and appeals related to immigration and refugee matters.

Our slavish adherence to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees is a millstone dragging us down and compromises our sovereignty. This was demonstrated by the UN buying into the Villawood debacle by telling protesters that UN officials would talk to them if they came down off the roof.

All Australian governments have done the UN's bidding without question but the Japanese have taken a different route. Not ratifying the UN Convention until 1981, Japan has accepted just 508 refugees from the 7297 applications made since 1982. Maybe salving its conscience, Japan is the third-largest donor in the world to the UNHCR, which could explain why a rapacious UN looks the other way while Japan goes on ignoring refugees and keeping its borders secure.

There is no escaping the dreadful track record of the UN over recent decades - the WHO rorts and scams, the horrible "sex-for-food" scandal in Liberia, the ghastly Rwanda genocide followed by Srebrenica and the list goes on. When was the last time an Australian foreign minister took the UN on? Alexander Downer is on the UN payroll in Cyprus so what hope do ordinary Australians have? Look at the damage John Howard did when he gave Amanda Vanstone the keys to the Immigration Department and then rewarded her by inflicting her on the Italians!

An Abbott government must reconnect with ordinary Australians through hard-headed and strong government but it will need new blood at all levels to help it make the changes. The undergrad apparatchik politics of past years must be swept aside. We must redefine our ocean borders and police them rigorously and the UN must be told the Australian government and its people will decide who migrates here in future.

A recent report tells us that more than 60 per cent of our refugees have failed to get a job after five years and 83 per cent of those households now rely on welfare payments for income. The greatest unemployment rate was recorded among new arrivals from Iraq and Afghanistan with less than 10 per cent finding full-time work and 93.7 per cent of households sucking on the Centrelink teat. I know many people who are not white but who are fiercely proud Australians and we must all stand together. I wonder how many of our current crop of MPs have read Calwell's autobiography Calwell: Be Just and Fear Not.

SOURCE



8 May, 2011

Illegals headed for Australia to be diverted to Malaysia

This deal is a shocker. Another 4,000 useless Muslims to be added to Australia's welfare rolls. And it will probably be more than that. If the refugee status of the illegals is to be assessed by U.N. officials rather than Australian officials, there are not going to be many rejections. Let's hope the bleeding hearts knock this idea on the head. Both the Greens and the conservatives are opposing the deal so it could well die. The Greens are the tail that wags the dog in the Australian government

ASYLUM seekers relocated to Malaysia could be abused, with reports of canings in immigration centres. The move to trade asylum seekers between the Australia and Malaysia is likely to come under fire from human rights groups.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that Australia and Malaysia were close to signing off on an agreement which would see 800 asylum seekers who try to make their way to Australia by sea instead taken immediately to Malaysia for processing.

In return, Australia would expand its humanitarian intake to resettle an extra 4000 genuine refugees already residing in Malaysia over four years.

But asylum seekers sent to Malaysia, which is not a signatory to the UN Refugees Convention, may receive rougher justice than in Australia. Figures out of Kuala Lumpur show that over the past five years almost 30,000 foreigners had been subject to caning by Malaysian authorities for immigration offences.

While most countries have abolished judicial caning, Malaysia has expanded the practice with the number of offences covered by the punishment having been increased to more than 60. In March, Malaysia's Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, admitted in parliament that 29,759 foreigners had been caned between 2005 and 2010 for immigration offences alone.

An Amnesty International investigation into 57 cases of judicial caning in Malaysia, published in December, found the punishment could be classified as torture as authorities had intentionally inflicted severe pain and suffering. The human rights organisation said tens of thousands of refugees and migrant workers had been caned since 2002, when Malaysia amended the Immigration Act to make immigration violations such as illegal entry subject to the punishment.

Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young also pointed out that Malaysia was not a signatory to the UN Refugees Convention and asylum seekers taken there could be subjected to abuse. "There have been deaths of people in incarceration, while health conditions, particularly for children and their families, are horrid," she said.

Meanwhile, Ms Gillard said the arrangement with Malaysia was part of building a regional approach to combating people smuggling. "From the time that the agreement comes into effect, 800 people seeking to come to Australia by boat, hoping to have their claims processed in Australia, hoping to end up resettled in Australia, will be taken to Malaysia instead," she said.

Asylum seekers transferred to Malaysia would have their claims assessed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees but would not receive any preferential treatment in terms of processing their claims.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said he expected the deal, which had been negotiated with the Malaysian government over the last seven months, to be finalised in coming weeks. The arrangement would add an additional 4000 places to Australia's humanitarian intake over four years.

In October last year, Australia provided Malaysia with $1 million worth of equipment, including patrol boats, to help combat people smuggling.

SOURCE





U.S. Warns Schools Against Checking Immigration Status

The Education Dept. has issued some dubious interpretations of the law recently and this may be another

Federal officials issued a memorandum to the nation’s school districts on Friday saying it was against the law for education officials to seek information that might reveal the immigration status of children applying for enrollment.

Civil liberties advocates and others have complained in recent months that many school districts are seeking children’s immigration papers as a prerequisite for enrollment. Some state and local officials have also considered bills to require prospective students to reveal their citizenship or immigration status.

“We have become aware of student enrollment practices that may chill or discourage the participation, or lead to the exclusion, of students based on their or their parents’ or guardians’ actual or perceived citizenship or immigration status,” said the memo, from Justice and Education Department officials. “These practices contravene federal law.”

The letter cited a 1982 Supreme Court decision that recognized the right of all children, regardless of immigration status, to attend public school as long as they met the age and residency requirements set by state law.

“The undocumented or noncitizen status of a student (or his or her parent or guardian) is irrelevant to that student’s entitlement to an elementary and secondary public school education,” said the memo, signed by Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division of the Justice Department; Russlynn H. Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department; and Charles P. Rose, that department’s general counsel.

Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said it was the first time her agency had issued guidance to school districts on the 1982 decision. The Education Department did not return calls seeking comment.

Civil liberties advocates, who had been asking President Obama’s administration to clarify the law, hailed the memo. “We’re gratified that the Department of Justice has seen fit to do the right thing, to clarify any ambiguities,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, calling the guidance “a really big deal.”

Last year, Ms. Lieberman’s group found that 139 districts in New York State — about 20 percent of the total — were requiring children’s immigration papers as a prerequisite to enrollment, or asking parents for information that only lawful immigrants could provide.

While the group did not find any cases in which children had been turned away for lack of immigration paperwork, it warned that the requirements could deter illegal immigrant families from enrolling children for fear that their status might be reported to federal authorities.

After months of pressure from the civil liberties group, the state’s Education Department sent school districts a memo strongly recommending that they not ask for information that might reveal the immigration status of enrolling students. State education officials in Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois and Nebraska have taken steps in recent years to halt similar practices, immigrant advocates said.

Despite the New York memo, some school districts there continued to press for the right to ask about immigration status, said Udi Ofer, advocacy director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

In Arizona, state lawmakers have considered a bill that would require the state’s Education Department to determine the number of public school students who are unable to prove lawful presence in the United States, officials said. Last year, a legislative committee in Oklahoma favored a bill to require public schools to determine, at the time of enrollment, whether a child was born outside the United States.

SOURCE



7 May, 2011

San Francisco to defy Secure Communities immigration program

San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey will start releasing low-level illegal-immigrant criminals from jail even if federal officials notified through a controversial fingerprint identification program request that they be held for a deportation hearing.

The new policy, set to begin June 1, is meant to uphold San Francisco’s sanctuary ordinance, which prohibits local officials from assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement with enforcing immigration laws unless it involves a felony.

“I’m trying to enforce San Francisco’s city of refuge law,” Hennessey said. “The city of refuge law says we are not supposed to comply with federal officials except with felonies. I’m just doing our best to enforce local law. That’s my job.”

Federal officials have been able to circumvent sanctuary city policies throughout the country through a program called Secure Communities. That program allows ICE to monitor fingerprint data collected during the booking process and put holds, known as “detainers,” on people they believe to be illegal immigrants.

Since the program took effect in June 2010 until February, 111 people identified through the Secure Communities were deported after it was found they committed no crime at all except for being in the country illegally, according to the most recent ICE data. Federal officials deported 85 people who committed the lowest two levels of crimes, such as shoplifting, drinking in public and drug possession, while45 people who had committed felonies had been deported.

As it is now, sheriff’s deputies holds low-level criminals until ICE picks them up. Once the new policy takes effect, however, sheriff’s deputies will release them from jail with a citation just as they would a U.S. citizen, even with an ICE detainer.

The move is generating praise from San Francisco’s progressive circles while groups opposed to sanctuary cities are howling. “It’s an astonishing abuse of his office,” said Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, a Washington D.C.-based legal advocacy group that is currently suing The City over a similar immigrant issue. “I guarantee you that someone who is released by him as a result of his lawlessness will go on to commit a more serious crime,” Fitton said. “People are going to get hurt, or worse, and it will be on him.”

Harmeet Dhillon, chairwoman of the San Francisco Republican Party, slammed The City’s sanctuary policy as out of date and she said Hennessey was attempting to make the federal government’s job to quell illegal immigration more difficult. “I am very disappointed to hear the sheriff is basically substituting his discretion for a court of law to determine whether these people are safe enough to release into our communities,” Dhillon said.

Secure Communities has come under increasing fire across the state and country as non criminals continue to be swept up through the program. Hennessey has attempted to opt out of the program since its inception, but ICE has said only states can opt out of the program.

This week, Illinois announced that it will terminate its Secure Communities agreement, and last week an Assemblyman Tom Ammiano bill that would require the attorney general to allow California counties to opt out of the program passed out of a committee.

ICE has not yet commented on Hennessey’s plan.

SOURCE





Most asylum seekers to Australia dump their passports

Where that can reasonably be shown, they should be held until they can be repatriated -- JR

MORE than 80 per cent of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat throw away their passports before landing, presenting a security nightmare for ASIO and immigration authorities.

New figures obtained from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship revealed that 5213 people arriving illegally between 2008 and 2010 had first flown to Indonesia before boarding a boat to Australia. But only 21 of those people still had passports with them by the time they were intercepted in Australian waters.

And less than a quarter of them had any documentation at all, raising the danger that people who posed a security risk could slip through the net.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen yesterday said no one currently in the system being assessed had failed ASIO checks. But Opposition spokesman for Immigration Scott Morrison said it was impossible to know whether these people were who they claimed to be when they arrived without any identification.

"To travel by air you must have documentation. The decision to discard documentation is an act of defiance and non-co-operation with Australian authorities," he said.

"The absence of documentation also leads to significant delays in processing and security assessment that detainees now complain about.

"The practice of discarding documentation is routine among asylum seekers using people smugglers and is designed to frustrate Australian authorities trying to determine whether a person has a legitimate asylum claim. "They are clearly counting on being given the benefit of the doubt."

SOURCE



6 May, 2011

A world of long-term welfare for "refugees" in Australia

Muslims particularly useless

MORE than 60 per cent of refugees to Australia have failed to get a job after five years, according to a damning Federal Government report into the humanitarian settlement program. And 83 per cent of those households now rely on welfare payments for income.

The greatest unemployment rate was recorded among new arrivals from Iraq and Afghanistan, with less than one in 10 finding full-time work and 93.7 per cent of households receiving Centrelink payments.

The statistics are contained in a Department of Immigration and Citizenship report released last Friday under the cover of the royal wedding. It is the first investigation into settlement of refugees in more than a decade.

The study of more than 8500 humanitarian entrants revealed that only 31 per cent of humanitarian refugees were considered "employed" after five years.

The remainder were unemployed, retired, studying full time, engaged in caring duties, doing voluntary work or trying to start a business from which they had yet to receive income. More than 60 per cent of those people without jobs had a poor command of English.

"Humanitarian entrants are most likely to be unemployed, even after five years of settlement," the report said. "There needs to be a greater understanding of migrants' personal or household dependency on Centrelink payments."

Statistics for skilled migrant intake and family migrant intake were more positive, with 84 per cent of skilled migrants working and a little over 50 per cent of the family migrants employed.

The report did find positive outcomes for humanitarian entrants, with almost a quarter completing a trade or university qualification within five years of arriving.

The Federal Opposition said the report was a "shocking wake-up call" for the Government's settlement services policy. "Low levels of employment, welfare dependency, lower income levels and poor English skills are a toxic social cocktail that can lead to enclaving and serious intergenerational social problems." Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said.

Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship Kate Lundy has said the Government was trying to improve conditions for refugees. "While the settlement outcomes for refugees improve over time, the report does find that there are difficulties, especially in the early years, in securing stable employment," she said.

SOURCE




"Asylum seekers" to be sent to Papua New Guinea?

AUSTRALIA could end up sending asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea, as the Gillard Government ramps up desperate efforts to find a regional solution to the influx of boat arrivals.

Speculation is mounting that the Government may strike a deal with PNG to reopen the Manus Island detention centre, after it confirmed last night that Immigration Department head Andrew Metcalfe had visited the country earlier this week.

Manus Island, located hundreds of kilometres off the northeast coast of PNG, housed refugees under the Howard government. The facilities have been mothballed for years.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her Immigration Minister Chris Bowen are desperate to find a solution to the unending flow of asylum seekers who are risking their lives coming to Australia by boat.

Before last year's election the government announced it would negotiate with East Timor to host a regional processing centre there.

Dubbed the "Dili Solution", the policy proved anything but, as negotiations failed.

According to a spokesman for Mr Bowen, the Government is "engaging with countries across the region about tackling people smuggling and irregular migration, following the endorsement of the regional cooperation framework in Bali". "That work continues," the spokesman said.

An Immigration Department spokesman said Mr Metcalfe played "an important role in advancing dialogue on immigration and border security issues in the region".

"And as part of his role a head of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, regularly travels overseas to meet with his counterparts," the spokesman said. "He was in Papua New Guinea earlier this week as part of his regular meetings with PNG immigration and foreign affairs officials. "Australia is working with many countries including PNG to progress outcomes from the Bali process ministerial conference."

SOURCE



5 May, 2011

Lawsuit seeks to halt Utah immigration measure

Utah won national attention this year for promoting a gentler approach to immigration when it passed a law essentially allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the state if they work and don't commit crimes.

Yet on Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center filed a federal lawsuit to stop the implementation next week of another Utah immigration law, one modeled on a controversial Arizona law that enlists local police to help root out illegal immigrants.

"The statute violates everyone's civil rights," said Cecilia Wang of the ACLU. "The practical effect is that people will have to carry their ID with them at all times."

Utah's HB 497 is a watered-down version of Arizona's law, most of which was put on hold last year by a judge who ruled that it was unconstitutional, a decision upheld last month by a federal appellate court.

The Arizona law made it a state crime to lack immigration papers and requires police to investigate the immigration status of people they stop and also think are illegal immigrants — meaning even people who jaywalk or are pulled over for not using turn signals could face scrutiny.

The Utah version does not create a new crime and only requires an investigation into a person's status after arrests for a felony or misdemeanor. HB 497 was passed by the conservative state Legislature at the same time as the state's guest-worker program, which would give a legal identity card to illegal immigrants who pass a background check, pay a fine and are employed.

Each of the contradictory approaches is popular. Polls have shown that wide majorities in Utah and nationwide favor an Arizona-like approach to deport all illegal immigrants but also favor allowing those who are law-abiding to stay in the country.

The contradiction explains much of the paralysis surrounding the question of what to do about illegal immigration. "Since George Washington's time, we have welcomed and shunned immigrants at the same time," said Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute. He noted that there are loud partisans who back the extremes — mass deportation or mass amnesty. "The middle has not made up its mind."

Utah's leaders have touted their approach as balancing enforcement and compassion. In a statement Tuesday, Ally Isom, a spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Gary R. Herbert, said: "The efforts of the ACLU/NILC would be much better spent in proposing and advocating realistic immigration reform rather than pursuing litigation against those who are trying to deal with our current problems."

Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff said the state's leaders scrambled last year to stop hard-liners from passing an Arizona-style law and repealing two other pro-immigrant measures. "It was going south real fast," he said in an interview Tuesday.

Business leaders came up with the idea of the Utah Compact, a statement of principles that urged law enforcement to focus on stopping crime rather than enforcing federal immigration law. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is growing rapidly overseas, has signed on, and what seemed like a long-shot proposal got new life. Meanwhile, state legislative leaders repeatedly weakened the bill that became HB 497.

"But legislators still felt like they were taking a big risk on [the guest-worker bill] and they had to tell their constituents they voted for an enforcement bill," Shurtleff said.

The guest-worker law would require a federal waiver, and critics say it clearly flies in the face of federal law, which does not allow any state to create its own immigration policy. That bar is what doomed much of Arizona's law last year and is cited by the plaintiffs who sued Utah on Tuesday over its enforcement law.

The plaintiffs said they did not sue over the guest-worker law because it would not take effect until 2013.

A similar explanation was given by U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, when pressed as to why his department — which sued Arizona over its law last year — wasn't suing over Utah's guest-worker bill.

"If it is not changed to our satisfaction by 2013," Holder said, "we will take all the necessary steps."

Archie Archuleta, a Latino activist who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Tuesday, said that there was fear in the state's immigrant communities over HB 497 but that the guest-worker proposal remains murky and wouldn't take effect for years.

"The other bill," he said, referring to the guest-worker measure, "has provided more confusion than comfort."

SOURCE




Barletta proposes immigration caucus, crackdown on 'sanctuary cities'

U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta this morning announced the creation of a new caucus that will closely examine American immigration policy and offer ways to stop illegal immigration.

Barletta, R-11, Hazleton, also announced that he is drafting his first piece of legislation, which would crack down on so-called "sanctuary cities" that knowingly flaunt American immigration laws.

Barletta said he is taking the fight against illegal immigration that he started as mayor of Hazleton in 2006 to the halls of Congress.

"The American people sent me here last November to fix Washington. They sent me here to fix our broken system. I know I'm not alone in that. All across the country, the American people voted in new members of Congress and gave them the same order: Fix what's broken," he said during a press conference in the capital.

The 112th Congress Immigration Reform Caucus, consisting of a group of freshman members, will address the problem of illegal immigration in the United States, Barletta said.

"I'm optimistic that other new members of Congress who are concerned about our flawed immigration system will join this caucus so we can devise some real solutions," he said.

His legislation, tentatively titled the Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities (MASC) Act, would crack down on cities whose elected officials have willfully chosen to not enforce immigration policy by withholding all federal funding from them as long as their sanctuary policies are in place.

Barletta said he has asked the Congressional Research Service to compile a comprehensive list of sanctuary cities and calculate how many federal taxpayer dollars each receives. Online sources state there are dozens of sanctuary cities all across the country, from Maine to California.

"The elected officials of more than 100 American cities - including some of our largest cities in the country - willfully ignore federal immigration policy by declaring themselves 'sanctuary cities,'" Barletta said. "Local elected officials who choose to ignore enforcement of federal immigration policy are aiding and assisting illegal aliens, and it is illegal to aid and abet those who are in this country illegally."

Elected officials, he said, "cannot pick and choose the federal laws they enforce." However, if they do, "then they should not expect to get federal money."

SOURCE



4 May, 2011

Refugee Resettlement: Report Examines Need for Reform

Next week, on May 12, the State Department will host a public meeting on the appropriate size and scope of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for next year. This is an opportune time, then, to take a hard look at problems besetting this component of our immigration system.

To that end, the Center for Immigration Studies has published “Refugee Resettlement: A System Badly in Need of Review,” authored by CIS Fellow Don Barnett. He finds that our refugee resettlement system has failed refugees, both by diverting limited resources from overseas assistance and by the sheer neglect of those resettled in the United States by their “sponsors.” In addition, the program is rife with fraud, profitable for hundreds of “non-profit” organizations, and is a potential channel for terrorism into American communities.

The report is online here. Among its findings:

* Security Matters. Meaningful background checks are difficult to obtain for refugees admitted from countries without reliable government records.

* U.S. Taxpayers Without Borders. The U.S. welfare system is a global magnet, which has been instrumentalized by the international refugee industry.

* Exploitation for Profit. Refugee resettlement is very profitable for some non-profits, who consistently refuse to commit any of their own resources for the resettlement effort.

* American Community Impact. Some American towns have been overwhelmed by the arrival of refugees. At no point are these communities consulted.

* Non-Assimilation. The USRAP is increasingly bringing in groups that have stated openly they do not intend to assimilate into American culture.

* Chain Immigration. The initial admission leads to exploitation of the chain immigration system.

* Abandonment upon Arrival. Despite PR about supporting refugees, NGOs routinely abandon their charges after four months or less, moving on to the next, more profitable, cycle of recent admissions.

* Globalized Disease. Refugees and those arriving on various “following-to-join” programs are bringing in HIV, hepatitis, TB, malaria, and other diseases.

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

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization





Australia's Leftist government 'paralysed' on border control

Greg Sheridan

THE opposition is right to seek a stronger regime of enforcement for detention centres. Under measures proposed by the opposition's immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, detainees who engage in violent or unruly conduct could face a range of penalties below criminal sanctions.

This is sensible policy and in accordance with the public's expectations. It also highlights the growing weakness of the Gillard government on border-control issues.

But Morrison made a much more devastating point on Sky-TV's Australian Agenda program yesterday. The key question, he said, is the government's resolve. The illegal immigration industry recognises resolve and it also recognises a lack of it.

The Gillard government exudes weakness from every pore on border control. At every point, the illegal immigration industry has broken the will of the government. The government's policies in this area are like a shattered pane of glass -- ragged, injurious and impossible to repair.

The government is now paralysed on border control. It can merely react, increasingly ineffectively, to the growing aggression and self-confidence of the illegal immigration industry.

Every announcement of tough measures is shown soon enough to lack credibility.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen threatens to use the character test to deny visas to those guilty of violence or unruly behaviour in detention centres. Then it turns out that Bowen does not make such determinations and detention-centre inmates have acquired criminal convictions and then gone on to acquire permanent resident visas.

The illegal immigration industry has got the government completely sussed. Now it is in the process of making the detention-centre network completely unworkable.

In order to defuse tensions in the detention centres, processing times will be cut and people will be released as permanent residents sooner than ever.

They will win the prize of permanent residency and they will confirm the product the people-smugglers have to sell.

For Morrison also underlined the other key reality that highlights the government's weakness: virtually none of the asylum-seekers are ever sent home against their will.

So criminal convictions are no bar, no one gets sent back, the detention centres are unmanageable and the flow of boats is ever increasing. This represents comprehensive failure by Labor.

The other important policy lead from Morrison yesterday was that the Coalition will neither embrace nor contest the government's new enthusiasm for multiculturalism.At the same time, the Liberal Party would champion Australian diversity.

It's a good combination if the opposition can stick to it.

SOURCE



3 May, 2011

Eastern European migrants' boost to British economy was 'insignificant', says thinktank

A claim that mass immigration from Eastern Europe gave a huge boost to Britain’s economy was rubbished last night in a groundbreaking report.

The wave of migrants who came to the UK from Poland and other former Communist states had an 'insignificant' impact on growth, according to a respected economic think tank. In just five years after EU expansion in 2004, they pushed up Britain’s population by 700,000 - a rise of more than one per cent. However, they added a third of that - just 0.38 per cent - to Britain’s economic output over the same period, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research said.

The report prompted a renewed attack on Labour's 'open door' migration policy which heaped pressure on public services and housing.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the MigrationWatch think tank said: 'This blows out of the water many of the arguments that the immigration lobby have been making for years. 'We now find that the contribution of workers from Eastern Europe to our GDP was trivial, much less than their addition to our population.' He added: 'This is the last nail in the coffin of Labour’s immigration policy.'

Successive Labour Home Secretaries, as well as former PM Tony Blair, defended immigration by citing the supposed economic benefits of new arrivals. A Home Office-commissioned report in 2007 claimed immigration added £6billion to the economy during the previous calendar year.

But today's report found they added just £4.91bn to Gross Domestic Product over the entire five years from 2004.

The researchers also said the patterns of migration established over the past seven years were 'likely to prove permanent'.

Left-wing supporters of mass migration have pointed to the dip in Eastern European arrivals seen during the recession as evidence many of those migrants who came to Britain would return home when work dried up.

It was also claimed Polish and other Eastern European workers would try to find jobs in Germany and other countries who, from yesterday, were forced to abandon temporary restrictions on workers from A8 contries- Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

But one of the report’s authors, Dawn Holland, said the lifting of restrictions by other EU countries would make little difference. She said: 'Lifting barriers in Germany may divert some Polish and other workers away from the UK,' she says, 'especially given the relative strength of the German economy.' 'But as the existence of support networks for new migrants is one of the most important factors, much of the shift in migrants since 2004 is likely to prove permanent.'

The report found that between 2004 and 2009 around 1.5million Eastern Europeans came to Britain from the eight new EU states. The report estimated around 700,000 stayed, including half a million from Poland alone. Over the same period Britain's GDP grew by £98bn - of which 5 per cent can be attributed to immigration, the NIESR said. By contrast, it found Germany's growth fell by as little as 0.1per cent as a result of imposing curbs on new arrivals.

Tory immigration minister Damian Green this year vowed not to repeat the 'mistake' of not implementing the transitional controls, which were limited to seven years and expired yesterday.

The Labour government allowed full access to Britain’s job market, and only imposed restrictions on benefits. These also expired yesterday - raising fears of a new rush of benefits tourists.

A House of Lords report on immigration in 2008 found the economic benefits of immigration were 'small and close to zero'.

Mr Green commented: 'While immigration can being benefits, it can strain public services, infrastructure and community cohesion unless it is properly controlled. 'That is why, as well as reducing net migration to the tens of thousands, the government will introduce transitional controls for new EU member states as a matter of course.'

SOURCE




Recent posts at CIS below

See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.

1. Refugee Resettlement: A System Badly in Need of Review (Backgrounder)

2. Public Comment on Proposed H-1B Regulations (Testimony)

3. An Unusual Voice on Univision (Blog)

4. Does Parroting Lobbyists Constitute 'News analysis'? (Blog)

5. USCIS Overturns 'Early Bird Gets the Worm' Rule in H-1B Program (Blog)

6. State Department Regs Guarantee Loss of 120,000 American Jobs (Blog)

7. SB1070 as Bogeyman (Blog)

8. Superman Meets His Match: Los Hermanos Ortiz (Blog)

9. Utah's Actions Analyzed at Immigration Policy Conference (Blog)

10. Jason DeParle Has the Last Word, for Now (Blog)

11. Bahamas Gets It Right on Investment Levels and Streamlining (Blog)

12. Is it Time for a National Latino Museum? (Blog)

13. A Message from Jason DeParle, and a Response (Blog)



2 May, 2011

The British hospital where 80 per cent of babies have foreign mothers

Just one baby in five born in one NHS ¬hospital has a British mother, new figures have revealed. Of the 3,289 children born at Ealing Hospital, West London, in the past year, a remarkable 2,655 were to foreign nationals.

The statistics – released following a Freedom of Information request by The Mail on Sunday also show that the maternity unit dealt witha total of 104 different nationalities in the 12 months to February.

These include 537 babies born to Indian mothers – the largest minority ethnic group – 389 Poles, 270 Sri Lankans, 260 Somalians, 200 Afghans and 208 Pakistanis. In contrast, of the 634 babies with British mothers, just three were from Wales and six from Scotland.

Maternity services at the hospital have been coming under increasing pressure, with a 20 per cent rise in births over the past five years, almost twice the national average.

The hospital has had to take on 32 extra ¬midwives to cope with the boom, which saw 500 more babies delivered there last year than in 2006.

A key factor is that foreign women tend to have more babies than British women – an average of 2.5 compared with 1.84 for UK nationals – and Ealing is one of the most ethnically diverse boroughs in Britain.

The figures are derived from how mothers declared their nationality on hospital paperwork, so the ¬British category also covers foreign-born mothers granted British passports and second-generation immigrants who were born British citizens.

Nationally, one baby in four is born to a foreign mother, twice the level of 1997, when Labour came to power. Conservative MP James Clappison said: ‘The Labour Government has left us with significant challenges after an unprecedented wave of inward migration.

‘The pressures, I’m sure, are being felt all over the place including in the NHS. I fully support the present Government’s proposals to cap migration.’

Despite the burgeoning birth rates, Ealing Hospital denies that its maternity services are under strain. Yet the Royal College of Midwives recently warned that maternity units across the country were ‘teetering on the brink’ under the pressure of rising birth rates. And some mothers have complained about being left alone during labour at Ealing Hospital.

Father Paul at the Polish Catholic Community Centre in the borough said he had spoken to many new mothers who were unhappy about their experience at Ealing Hospital. He said: ‘Some women say it is not very good and that the service they would receive in Poland would be better. ‘Doctors are involved much earlier in their pregnancy in Poland and the service is more complex and detailed.’

In July 2008, watchdogs at the Healthcare Commission rated Ealing Hospital’s maternity unit as one of the weakest in the country. It put the unit in the bottom fifth of hospitals for childbirth and ante-natal services, placing it in the ‘least well performing’ category.

However, the service has improved in recent years, according to the new health regulator, the Care Quality Commission. Results of its survey published in December 2010, rated Ealing’s maternity unit 7.8 out of 10, on a par with most NHS Trusts in the country.

A spokeswoman for Ealing Hospital NHS Trust said the hospital catered for a diverse borough and that it was ‘no surprise’ that a high proportion of mothers at its ¬maternity unit were from outside the UK. And she said that a team of translators were on hand to help foreign mothers.

She said: ‘As with the rest of the UK, the Trust has seen a steady increase in the birth rate during the last few years. As with other hospital Trusts that serve diverse populations, clinical staff have access to support workers and systems that aid communication with patients.

‘The maternity services at Ealing Hospital NHS Trust are not under strain and the Trust has achieved and maintains good staff-to-mother ratios in the maternity department. ‘Between 2006 and 2011, the Trust employed a further 32 midwives as a response to increased demand for maternity services and to improve staff-to-mother ratios.’

SOURCE





Germany braces itself for invasion of Polish workers as it follows EU immigration rules

Like 26 million other hard-working Germans, Stephan Walter feels he has done more than his bit for the cause of European integration.

An electrician aged 23, some five per cent of his €10-an-hour wage already goes on a special "solidarity tax" to fund reunification with Germany's economically backward East. And for the next four years, another chunk will help bankroll his government's generous €89 billion bail-out of Greece, its spendthrift partner on the southern side of the Eurozone.

Now, though, he is bracing himself for another serious drain on his earning power - not, this time, from "Ossies" or feckless Greeks, but from industrious, hardworking Poles.

Under European Union rules that come into force on Sunday, May 1, Germany will open its doors fully to jobseekers from Poland and other Eastern European nations for the first time, paving the way for a flood of cut-price carpenters, plumbers and other budget labour of the kind that swept Britain in 2004.

However, with German trade unions predicting that up to a million Poles may arrive in the first year alone, not everyone feels like welcoming the new arrivals from the other side of the River Oder.

"Free movement of labour is all very well," said Mr Walter, who lives in Bielefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia, once the heartland of the coal and steel plants that forged Germany's post-war recovery.

"But there is nothing in this great EU to stop us all being shafted from a tidal wave of under-cutters. We are stoking the fires of social unrest if we just allow anyone in who is able to work.

"I have just gone back to school to get more qualifications but I will be returning to work after my studies. I know all about Poles willing to do what I did for three and four euros and hour, and it won't be any different when there are thousands more from countries like Poland."

The pending influx is the result of working rights extended to citizens from the Eastern European states that joined the EU in 2004, including also the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Baltic nations.

While Britain, which was short of labour at the time, allowed such workers in straight away, Germany, France and Italy negotiated individual moratoria, citing concerns about unemployment. Now Germany's moratorium is expiring - just as the global recession and last summer's Eurozone crash mean severe cuts in health, social service and welfare budgets in Europe's biggest economy.

That has fuelled a German swing against immigration in general, and a growing sense that a people which has long supported the EU project no longer gets a fair deal.

As in Britain, the "Polnische Klempner" or Polish plumber is held up as an example of the low-wage bogeymen that Germans now fear coming to steal work from them. Industrious, helpful and willing to turn out at the kind of unsocial hours many Germans are reluctant to, they are also cheap - ready to accept hourly payment of three, four and five euros instead of the 10, 20 and 30 euros that qualified tradesmen earn.

"It is human nature to hunt bargains - I would be the same," conceded Mr Walter. "But I think this moratorium should have been in place for another five years, at least until Germany gets back on its feet. There will be too much of a temptation to go 'on the black' as they save tax and people save money."

Officially, there are more than enough jobs to go around. A relative bounce-back in the economy has pushed unemployment down to just 7.9 per cent, and already there are labour shortages within Germany's ageing population that the Poles aim to plug.

Kamil Rakoczy, an adviser on migration for Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, said there were vacancies for 36,000 engineers and 20,000 IT specialists, as well as jobs in construction, nursing and elderly care. Although the Polish economy is growing fast itself, its thriving metropolitan areas lack the capacity to absorb more people, and the average monthly corporate wage of 3,400 zlotys (£770) is still only a third of that in Germany.

"Germany survived the crisis, and the demand for labour is there," said Professor Krystyna Iglicka, a migration expert from Warsaw's Centre for International Relations. "The Germans are ageing and they need fresh blood and young and dynamic people."

Among them will be Andrzej Rokowski, 41, from the northern city of Szczecin. A cook by profession, he is prepared to turn his hand to anything to bring in money for his wife and child.

"May 1 is an important day for me," he said. "In Poland there is no chance for a man to make a living wage, as the money is just too little. In Poland I can make around £225 a month, while in Germany I can earn four times that. My family don't want to go so they will stay here, and I'll send the money home."

The Cologne Institute for Economic Research predicts a maximum of 800,000 immigrants will come to Germany in the next two years, a number that may not have that much visible impact given that some three million immigrants arrived between 1991 and 2000.

Nonethless, many Germans fear a repeat of what happened in Britain, where official predictions of no more than 40,000 newcomers proved to be well short of the estimated million that eventually came.

Annelie Buntenbach, a board member from the Confederation of German Trade Unions, recently warned that net migration to Germany from Poland and other new EU states could hit five million once all restrictions were completely lifted in coming years.

And Frank Bsirske, head of trade union Verdi, said he feared pressure on wages. "I fear a downwards spiral, in which companies which employ labour from Eastern and Central Europe push out those who pay better wages and offer more social working conditions."

Such concerns come at a sensitive moment for Mrs Merkel's ruling Christian Democratic Union coalition, which is already fraying at the edges over anxieties about immigration and the integration of Muslims into society.

The touchpaper to that debate was lit in August last year with the publication of an inflammatory - but best-selling - book by Thilo Sarrazin, a senior central bank official, claiming that Germany was being made "dumber" by Muslim immigrants who made little effort to learn German, and whose only effort to integrate was into the benefits system.

There was also rare criticism of Mrs Merkel from a senior member of her own centre-right party, Erika Steinbach, who warned that the CDU was seen as too left-wing on immigration, and that a charismatic politician could easily peel off voters to a new hard-right party.

Another renegade ex-CDU member, Rene Stadtkewitz, has already announced the creation of a right-wing Freedom Party similar to that of Geert Wilders in Holland. Success for such a party would mark a decisive break with Germany's post war-liberal consensus, in which memories of Nazism have often inhibited frank discussion on nationalist issues.

Now, stuck between hosting existing immigrants whom they feel do not work enough, and new ones whom they fear may work too hard altogether, many Germans believe the comfortable years of the post-war era are over. "What will happen when 10,000 Polish women turn up with their mops and their buckets and offer to undercut my wages?" asked Rita Seewall, 50, a domestic cleaner in Berlin.

"I do not expect loyalty from the people who pay me. They will say: 'These are the new terms Rita, take them or leave them.' Why does Germany always seem to look after others instead of taking care of its own?"

SOURCE



1 May, 2011

The NYT is still obsessing about an elderly and retired Greenie

Latest rant below, again from Jason DeParle. Most Greenies don't like anyone very much and that appears to have been true of Tanton. Most immigration critics are conservatives, however, so their thinking is from an entirely different perspective. The NYT attempt at "guilt by association" is thus both childish and very selective in its attention to the facts. I wonder when we are going to hear from the NYT about divisions in the Sierra club over immigration?

On this much, both sides agree: John Tanton, the provocative architect of a national movement to reduce immigration, has quietly left the board of the group he started and helped guide for 32 years. But when did it happen and what does it mean?

Dr. Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist, has been a magnet for criticism since the 1980s, for writings that appear to disparage minorities and for accepting money from a foundation that promoted theories of white superiority. Hoping to discredit his broader movement, immigrant groups intensified their attacks in recent years, in what Dr. Tanton’s friends call a campaign of vilification.

Yet the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, or FAIR, the influential group he started in 1979, kept him on the board of directors. Two years ago, Dan Stein, the group’s president, hailed him as a “renaissance man.”

On April 17, The New York Times published an article examining Dr. Tanton’s racial views. Soon after, his name disappeared from the list of board members on the FAIR Web site.

Critics crowed. “FAIR needed to finally distance itself from someone who had brought such a bad reputation to the organization,” said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a long-time nemesis.

But the story may be more subtle — and revealing about immigration politics. Inside the movement, Dr. Tanton has been a giant, helping to start all three major national groups that seek to reduce immigration, legal and illegal. The others are the Center for Immigration Studies and Numbers USA.

An environmentalist and an advocate of population control, Dr. Tanton started with vows to build bridges with the left. But he attracted more support on the populist right, with warnings about the “Latin onslaught” and assertions that American society needs “a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Now 77 and with Parkinson’s disease, he has been withdrawing from public life.

In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Stein said Dr. Tanton left the board two months before the Times article. He forwarded an e-mail from Feb. 3, in which Dr. Tanton told the board that his term was expiring and he would not seek re-election.

Yet the FAIR Web site continued to list him on the board. In an interview on March 9, Mr. Stein simply described Dr. Tanton as “relatively inactive.” After the Times article appeared, FAIR issued a long statement, but did not say Dr. Tanton had severed his ties.

The next day, Julie Kirchner, FAIR’s director, canceled a scheduled talk to a class at Princeton, saying she did not want to discuss Dr. Tanton. But she, too, did not say he had left the board, nor did Dr. Tanton himself, in a letter to The Times. Then suddenly he vanished from the roster on the Web.

Why the delicate choreography? One theory is that neither FAIR nor Dr. Tanton wanted to appear that they were reacting to what they regard as unfair attacks by unscrupulous enemies.

“I had heard for months that John was leaving the board,” said one friend, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid entering the dispute over Dr. Tanton’s views. “I really think it’s purely his health. He’s been such a target forever, it wouldn’t be the attacks.”

Mr. Stein said he had not called attention to Dr. Tanton’s departure because he did not find it newsworthy. “I would certainly object strenuously if you characterized this somehow as a byproduct of external pressures,” he said.

Told that Dr. Tanton had resigned in February, Ms. Beirich said she found it “mystifying” that FAIR had not announced it. “Perhaps they didn’t want to draw any more attention to him and his views,” she said.

SOURCE




Unrest over excessive immigration in Singapore

Singapore's ruling People's Action Party started out on the far Left but is now one of the most pro-market parties in the world. It still retains the Leftist penchant for extensive meddling in people's lives however. So the SDP opposition is a bit of a hybrid too -- pro-market but "caring"

The PAP regime’s ultra-liberal and pro-foreigner immigration policies came under attack by SDP candidates during its rally at Woodlands stadium tonight:

Speaking to a packed crowd, SDP candidates questioned the way the PAP regime has handled the immigration issue and if Singaporeans will soon end up as second class citizens in their own country.

The first speaker Mr Alec Tok asked PAP Chairman Lim Boon Heng why the majority of jobs created by the two IRs goes to foreigners: “65,000 jobs were supposed to have been created by Mr Lim Boon Heng’s acquiescence to the casino. Jobs that were meant for us. If you go casino right now…. More than 60 per cent of the jobs have gone to foreigners. Why?” said Mr Tok.

35 year old Michelle Lee, who graduated from the prestigious London School of Economics asked: “We must ask why so many and why so quickly? Singapore is becoming a place where Singaporeans are strangers in our own land. In 1990, 20 years ago, foreigners made up 14 per cent of the people in Singapore. In just 20 years, according to the latest United Nations report, foreigners now make up 40.7 per cent of Singapore’s population, almost 41 per cent as of mid 2010. A UN report said this is far higher than any developed country in the world.”

SDP’s Assistant Secretary-General John Tan, who will be contesting in Sembawang GRC noted that the uncontrolled inflow of foreigners is one of the key issues on the minds of voters and asked Singaporeans to tell the PAP that ‘enough is enough’ at the polling booth on 7 May.

He added that it was Singaporeans who built the nation and not foreigners, blaming the PAP for opening the floodgates to immigrants. “There is only one thing you can do if you do not want to end up as second class citizens in your own country,” he roared to thunderous applause from the crowd.

Despite the widespread unhappiness among Singaporeans at the PAP’s immigration policies, PAP leaders continue to insist that they are ‘essential’ for Singapore’s economic growth and that more will be coming.

In a speech made at a community event last week, PAP de facto leader Lee Kuan Yew proclaimed: “Please remember: We still need 900,000 foreign workers on work permits.”

The figure does not include foreigners on S and E passes. Neither did Lee bother to explain how he arrive at the figure. He need not do so as the PAP has an absolute majority in parliament. He just need to open his mouth and ‘BOOMZ’, 900,000 foreigners will arrive and become your neighbors overnight.

The coming general election on 7 May is the last window of opportunity for native Singaporeans to reclaim ownership of their nation after which their voices and votes will surely be diluted by the immigrants the PAP is mass-importing to replace them.

With the two opposition MPs contesting in GRCs, there is a good chance that Singaporeans may end up having NO elected opposition MP in parliament to speak up for them.

SOURCE






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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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