NYT says Arpaio in trouble
Some wishful thinking there
Election Day brings with it the tantalizing possibility that voters in Arizona will do what should have been done years ago: end the career of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, the self-appointed, self-promoting scourge of illegal immigrants whose five-term reign has been a disaster for law enforcement, county budgets, the lives of immigrants and Latinos and the rule of law.
Sheriff Joe, who is seeking a sixth four-year term, faces a credible challenger in Paul Penzone, a retired Phoenix police sergeant and Democrat. It’s hard to know the current state of the race – The Arizona Republic reported that the polls have varied, depending on which campaign paid for them, but said that the sheriff’s lead has ranged from 14 to 4 percentage points, unusually narrow for someone who previously coasted to re-election with negligible opposition.
Anti-Arpaio forces see signs that the sheriff is breaking a sweat — in the abundance of outside money, ferocious negative ads and election-related mischief. A reporter for the local CBS-TV affiliate, for example, stated wrongly on the air that it was a felony to possess someone else’s ballot — which, if true, would pose a huge problem for the dump-Arpaio groups that have been scouring the county gathering early-voting ballots for delivery to election officials. As long you have a voter’s permission and don’t pretend to be a government employee, handling other people’s ballots is perfectly legal, a fact that the county recorder, a Republican named Helen Purcell, was urged to point out (she eventually did). That didn’t stop Sheriff Arpaio’s campaign from reportedly making robo-calls urging voters not to let anyone take their early ballots — you wouldn’t want to break the law!
Anti-Arpaio groups have also argued that the sheriff’s supporters are trying to suppress the Latino vote. It’s hard to blame them for being suspicious. This is the county, after all, where supporters of a Republican state senator facing a tough recall election put a fake opponent with a Spanish name on the ballot, to dilute the opposition. The sham candidate, Olivia Cortes, eventually withdrew.
Ms. Purcell’s office has already had to acknowledge that voting-information cards and bookmarks it printed in Spanish gave the wrong date for Election Day: Nov. 8, not Nov. 6. Ms. Purcell called it an error. (“I wish I could say we never made a mistake in this office,” her statement said.) The same mistake was not made in the English-language materials.
SOURCE
WA Politicians Eye Utah's Immigrant License System as Model
Washington and New Mexico remain the only two states in the country not to require proof of legal U.S. residency when applying for a driver's license.
But the races for governor and attorney general have brought renewed attention to a proposal that would create a two-tiered driver's license system in Washington to address the issue of driving by immigrants who can't provide proof of legal U.S. residency.
Under the proposal known as the Utah model, a person who can't prove U.S. residency can get a permit that allows them to drive, but that document is not a valid identification.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna backs the idea, and attorney general candidates Republican Reagan Dunn and Democrat Bob Ferguson speak of it favorably.
"The idea that you should be able to obtain (a key identity document) without proving you're a legal resident of the country is seriously mistaken," McKenna said during a debate in Yakima earlier this month.
McKenna's opponent, Democrat Jay Inslee, has said he prefers keeping Washington's current system in place.
Over the years, this has been a contentious issue in Olympia that pits immigrant advocacy groups against conservatives.
Immigrant groups argue that when undocumented immigrants have access to driver's licenses, it creates safer roads and allows them to purchase insurance. Opponents say that failing to ask for proof of U.S. residency invites identity fraud and could end up putting noncitizens in the state's voter rolls.
In Utah, one industry that relies heavily on immigrant labor hasn't seen much change since the law there was passed in 2005.
"Certainly there are labor shortages in our agricultural community, but we didn't feel (the driver's license law) had a significant impact," said Sterling Brown, vice president of public policy at the Utah Farm Bureau Federation. "It has not had an immediate or significant impact on the agriculture community."
According to Utah Driver License Division data, the number of people applying for the Driving Privilege Card has steadily climbed since 2005, from 21,600 to 38,997 in 2011. It peaked at 43,000 in 2008. That same year a state audit found that more than 75 percent of people who had the driving permit also had active car insurance, comparable to the 82 percent rate of drivers with a regular license.
But now immigrant rights groups in Utah are worried about information sharing between the state and the federal government.
In the 2011 legislative session, lawmakers changed the law to mandate the state to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if an applicant has a felony on this record. If the individual applying has a misdemeanor warrant outstanding, the state notifies the agency who sought the person's arrest.
Luis Garza, executive director of Comunidades Unidas, says he's concerned that people with minor offenses such as traffic infractions will be caught in the dragnet. He's also worried about the database of people applying for the driving permits being leaked.
Beyond that, the system creates a two-class society, he said.
"They have big red letters saying for `driving privilege only'," Garza said. "Anyone who shows that card -- who may or may not be undocumented in the country -- is a second class citizen."
In 2010, the Utah Legislature created another driving permit for noncitizen legal residents, who initially could get the Driving Privilege Card. Still, nearly 160 legal immigrants have the permit.
It's not just immigrant rights groups who oppose the two-tier system. In 2011, a Republican state senator wanted to undue the law because he saw the driving permit as a magnet for undocumented immigrants
In Washington, numerous bills to require proof of U.S. residency have been filed but have never made it the floor of any legislative chamber in recent memory. A bill using the Utah model was introduced in 2011, but did not make it out of committee.
In 2010, the Department of Licensing answered some of the concerns about driver's licenses by narrowing the documents that it now requires to provide proof of Washington residency. It now requires proof of a valid Washington residence address if an applicant doesn't provide a verified Social Security number. The proof documents, such as rental agreements, will be copied and verified by the agency before a permanent license is issued.
"First and foremost, we believe the current system works and we want as much as possible that DOL doesn't become ICE," said Toby Guiven, public policy director at OneAmerica, an immigrant advocacy group.
According to Department of Licensing data, fewer out-of-state people who didn't provide a Social Security number have sought to obtain a driver's license in Washington in the last two years, suggesting the department's new restrictions are deterring undocumented immigrants from other state from getting a license here.
The department's data shows that in 2011, 9,237 people didn't provide a Social Security number when obtaining a license. In all of 2010, more than 23,000 did not. As of October of 2012, more than 5,000 have.
Guiven argued that creating a new system would add costs to the state budget, new bureaucracies and more wait time at the local DMV office.
In Utah, wait lines did increase shortly after the new law was passed, but subsequently decreased, according to an audit.
One unsolved issue around driver's licenses is the arrival of the federal REAL ID act. It was passed in 2005, but its implementation has been delayed since then. The latest deadline for states to come into compliance is January of next year. But officials expect that deadline to be extended.
Department of Licensing spokeswoman Chris Anthony said the Department of Homeland Security has asked for so far an update package for the state at the end of October, but that's it so far.
She added that state lawmakers passed a measure that prohibited the department from acting on REAL ID until the federal government provided money.
SOURCE
Monday, October 29, 2012
Obama's Spanish Language Ads
In an off the record conversation with the Des Moines Register that made it on to the record, Barack Obama stated that, “Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community.”
Obama, did not mention, however, what he and the Democrats will offer to the Hispanic community. To see what he thinks will animate this demographic, it is worth looking at his Spanish language ads. In September he released an ad featuring a Latina whose message translates as:
“My name is Nydia. I am an attorney, and Puerto Rican. I would like to talk to you about the Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. When she was named by Obama we all celebrated, the Puerto Ricans and Hispanics. But Mitt Romney opposed Sotomayor. He offended me when he declared that he rejected her nomination. And now he wants our vote for president. Señor Romney, the time has come to pay the bill.”
The ad ends with Barack Obama stating "Soy Barack Obama y yo apruebo este mensaje." [I am Barack Obama and I approve this message.] Apparently themessage that Obama approves is that Hispanics should vote solely based on their ethnicity. Notice that the ad mentions nothing about Sotomayor’s qualifications or judicial philosophy, but merely the fact that she was Puerto Rican. Hispanics should be outraged by this assumption that they will vote for him based on race rather than policy.
Obama’s most recent ad touts his support for the DREAM Act Amnesty. Obama, who does not speak Spanish, nonetheless drags out his old teleprompter to give a Spanish language message. Obama’s states:
“In the young people known as the DREAMers, I see the same qualities that Michelle and I try to inculcate in our daughters. They respect their parents. They study to get ahead. They want to contribute to the only country that they know and love. As a father, it inspires me. And as president, their courage has made me remember that no obstacle is too great. No road is too long.”
I am the first person to admit that the children whose parents brought them here illegally are a difficult case, and some of them are perfectly nice people. Some, such as Humberto Leal Garcia, an illegal aliens whose parents brought him here when he was 2 and then who murdered and raped a 16 year old, are not. Rather than consider Leal someone who only knew and loved America, Obama tried to block his execution on the grounds that he was a “Mexican National” entitled to legal assistance from the Mexican consulate.
Nor does Obama acknowledge that his amnesty is available for illegals as old as 31. It’s also interesting that he keeps on referring to parents. If some of the “DREAMers” are in a difficult position, the fault is with their parents for making breaking our laws, not America for having immigration laws.
This Spanish language pandering is nothing new for Barack Obama. In 2008, he ran Spanish ads attacking John McCain because his “friend” Rush Limbaugh had supposedly said “stupid and unskilled Mexicans” and that all immigrants must “shut your mouth or you get out!” Besides the fact that anyone who listens to Rush Limbaugh knows he is not fond of John McCain, Obama intentionally took both clips completely out of context.
Limbaugh was not calling all Mexicans stupid and unskilled, he was only referring to Mexicans who were taking low skilled jobs. Perhaps it was a broad brush to apply to unskilled workers, but certainly not meant to apply to Mexicans. The comment about telling immigrants to “shut up or get out” were from a clip where Limbaugh was describing Mexico’s immigration laws, where foreigners who engage in political protests can be deported.
For all his claims that Republicans are anti-Hispanics, these ads show that Obama and the Democrats clearly view Hispanics as little more than a voting block that can be manipulated by lies and racial appeals. Hopefully, patriotic Hispanics voters will prove them wrong.
SOURCE
Britain facing new eastern Europe immigration surge
Britain is facing a new wave of Eastern European immigration which will put British workers’ jobs at risk, experts have warned.
Twenty nine million Bulgarians and Romanians will gain the right to live and work unrestricted in Britain in 2014 under European “freedom of movement” rules.
Last night forecasters said it could lead to a significant number of new arrivals, in the same way as when Poland and other Eastern European countries gained the same rights in 2004, with the scale likely to be increased by the economic crisis gripping the rest of Europe.
And a Government report was disclosed to show concern among official advisers that the British labour market will suffer “adverse effects” as a result.
Both the countries’ citizens currently have restricted rights to come to Britain since they joined the European Union in 2005, but those limits end on 31 December 2014, opening the way for them to move freely.
The restrictions will be lifted at a time when there is increasing political tension over Britain’s relationship with Europe and questions over whether European “freedom of movement” rules have harmed the job prospects of British people.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has already indicated she is keen to press for an end to the free movement of EU workers. But there appears to be no prospect of Britain preventing the restrictions being lifted, as it would involve tearing up the provisions of the treaty signed when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU.
The Home Office has made no official predictions of how many more Bulgarians and Romanians will seek to enter Britain when the current limitations end, and argues that most who want to come have probably arrived already, finding work on the black market if they cannot work legally.
However, critics believe that the Government’s reluctance to issue predictions is because it grossly underestimated the numbers that came in the previous wave of migration in 2004, when citizens from eight new EU members, including Poland, were given full access to the UK job market.
Despite official predictions that less than 20,000 would arrive, some 669,000 people from those eight countries were working in the UK as of last year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Experts on the government’s Migration Advisory Committee agree immigration is likely to rise when the restrictions are lifted, and have warned it will have a negative effect on the job market in Britain.
It said in a report: “Lifting the restrictions would almost certainly have a positive impact on migration inflows to the UK from those countries.
“At one extreme the effect could be small (with the additional annual inflow being in the hundreds or low thousands, for instance) but it could be significantly higher. “It would not be sensible, or helpful to policymakers, for us to attempt to put a precise numerical range around this likely impact.”
It said there was evidence Bulgarians would come to Britain because of this country’s higher rates of GDP, and also said it was “plausible” that Romanians would come for the same reasons.
Robert Rowthorn, emeritus professor of economics at Cambridge University, said: “The potential for immigration is very large because these are poor countries and they have populations of nearly 30 million between them.
“I think it will have quite a big effect. When Poland and other eastern European countries joined the EU in 2004 there was an unexpected surge and around one million of them are living in this country now, with net migration running at about 40,000 a year.
“I imagine a similar pattern will be repeated with Romania and Bulgaria, although the transitional controls have perhaps taken the edge off somewhat.”
Already figures obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show the number of immigrants coming from the two countries reached a peak of just over 40,000 last year - suggesting that there is likely to be an even great number in 2015.
More than 130,000 immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria are living in Britain and Britain is one of the most popular destinations for Bulgarian migrants, along with Greece, Spain and Germany, while the Romanian Embassy says that Spain and Italy attract 80 per cent of their emigrants.
But the perilous state of the Greek and Spanish economies may mean that much larger numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians decide to come here instead.
Those who come currently either have to have a job when they move or declare themselves as self-employed.
However an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has revealed how loopholes in current restrictions have allowed eastern Europeans to take 50,000 jobs from which they should have been excluded.
By declaring themselves technically “self-employed”, Bulgarians and Romanians have been able to access jobs in trades like hotel and restaurant work, sales, and taxi-driving. Hundreds of women have also been hired as self-employed lapdancers.
Romanian and British job agencies have become adept at streamlining the paperwork involved for employers, so that even waiters, hotel receptionists and porters can be hired on a self-employed basis.
The “self-employed” category is also being used by strip clubs to recruit young Romanian and Bulgarian women, according to adverts placed on tjobs.ro, Romania’s leading recruitment website.
Official figures from the Department for Work and Pensions showed 40,260 Romanian and Bulgarian workers applied for National Insurance numbers last year - the largest number on record and a 28 per cent rise year on year.
Sir Andrew Green, director of MigrationWatch UK, said: “I think there could be a significant spike from Romania and Bulgaria, particularly as the economies in other parts of the EU are suffering serious difficulties. “Neither Spain nor Italy are a good bet at the moment if you’re looking for a job.
“I think we need a further five year extension of the transitional arrangements. Britain has done our bit with eastern European migrants - we’ve taken far more than any other country - and we could justify a special case for such an extension.”
Sinclair Stevenson, the chief executive of Bucharest-based Premier Global International recruitment, said: “I think people in Romania will take advantage, as there is already now quite a strong community in the UK. With their language abilities, they have a propensity go there anyway.”
Croatia is also due to join the EU in July next year but with a population of just four million it is unlikely to lead to large numbers of arrivals in Britain, and will also be subject to transitional controls.
SOURCE
Obama's Spanish Language Ads
In an off the record conversation with the Des Moines Register that made it on to the record, Barack Obama stated that, “Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community.”
Obama, did not mention, however, what he and the Democrats will offer to the Hispanic community. To see what he thinks will animate this demographic, it is worth looking at his Spanish language ads. In September he released an ad featuring a Latina whose message translates as:
“My name is Nydia. I am an attorney, and Puerto Rican. I would like to talk to you about the Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. When she was named by Obama we all celebrated, the Puerto Ricans and Hispanics. But Mitt Romney opposed Sotomayor. He offended me when he declared that he rejected her nomination. And now he wants our vote for president. Señor Romney, the time has come to pay the bill.”
The ad ends with Barack Obama stating "Soy Barack Obama y yo apruebo este mensaje." [I am Barack Obama and I approve this message.] Apparently themessage that Obama approves is that Hispanics should vote solely based on their ethnicity. Notice that the ad mentions nothing about Sotomayor’s qualifications or judicial philosophy, but merely the fact that she was Puerto Rican. Hispanics should be outraged by this assumption that they will vote for him based on race rather than policy.
Obama’s most recent ad touts his support for the DREAM Act Amnesty. Obama, who does not speak Spanish, nonetheless drags out his old teleprompter to give a Spanish language message. Obama’s states:
“In the young people known as the DREAMers, I see the same qualities that Michelle and I try to inculcate in our daughters. They respect their parents. They study to get ahead. They want to contribute to the only country that they know and love. As a father, it inspires me. And as president, their courage has made me remember that no obstacle is too great. No road is too long.”
I am the first person to admit that the children whose parents brought them here illegally are a difficult case, and some of them are perfectly nice people. Some, such as Humberto Leal Garcia, an illegal aliens whose parents brought him here when he was 2 and then who murdered and raped a 16 year old, are not. Rather than consider Leal someone who only knew and loved America, Obama tried to block his execution on the grounds that he was a “Mexican National” entitled to legal assistance from the Mexican consulate.
Nor does Obama acknowledge that his amnesty is available for illegals as old as 31. It’s also interesting that he keeps on referring to parents. If some of the “DREAMers” are in a difficult position, the fault is with their parents for making breaking our laws, not America for having immigration laws.
This Spanish language pandering is nothing new for Barack Obama. In 2008, he ran Spanish ads attacking John McCain because his “friend” Rush Limbaugh had supposedly said “stupid and unskilled Mexicans” and that all immigrants must “shut your mouth or you get out!” Besides the fact that anyone who listens to Rush Limbaugh knows he is not fond of John McCain, Obama intentionally took both clips completely out of context.
Limbaugh was not calling all Mexicans stupid and unskilled, he was only referring to Mexicans who were taking low skilled jobs. Perhaps it was a broad brush to apply to unskilled workers, but certainly not meant to apply to Mexicans. The comment about telling immigrants to “shut up or get out” were from a clip where Limbaugh was describing Mexico’s immigration laws, where foreigners who engage in political protests can be deported.
For all his claims that Republicans are anti-Hispanics, these ads show that Obama and the Democrats clearly view Hispanics as little more than a voting block that can be manipulated by lies and racial appeals. Hopefully, patriotic Hispanics voters will prove them wrong.
SOURCE
Britain facing new eastern Europe immigration surge
Britain is facing a new wave of Eastern European immigration which will put British workers’ jobs at risk, experts have warned.
Twenty nine million Bulgarians and Romanians will gain the right to live and work unrestricted in Britain in 2014 under European “freedom of movement” rules.
Last night forecasters said it could lead to a significant number of new arrivals, in the same way as when Poland and other Eastern European countries gained the same rights in 2004, with the scale likely to be increased by the economic crisis gripping the rest of Europe.
And a Government report was disclosed to show concern among official advisers that the British labour market will suffer “adverse effects” as a result.
Both the countries’ citizens currently have restricted rights to come to Britain since they joined the European Union in 2005, but those limits end on 31 December 2014, opening the way for them to move freely.
The restrictions will be lifted at a time when there is increasing political tension over Britain’s relationship with Europe and questions over whether European “freedom of movement” rules have harmed the job prospects of British people.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has already indicated she is keen to press for an end to the free movement of EU workers. But there appears to be no prospect of Britain preventing the restrictions being lifted, as it would involve tearing up the provisions of the treaty signed when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU.
The Home Office has made no official predictions of how many more Bulgarians and Romanians will seek to enter Britain when the current limitations end, and argues that most who want to come have probably arrived already, finding work on the black market if they cannot work legally.
However, critics believe that the Government’s reluctance to issue predictions is because it grossly underestimated the numbers that came in the previous wave of migration in 2004, when citizens from eight new EU members, including Poland, were given full access to the UK job market.
Despite official predictions that less than 20,000 would arrive, some 669,000 people from those eight countries were working in the UK as of last year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Experts on the government’s Migration Advisory Committee agree immigration is likely to rise when the restrictions are lifted, and have warned it will have a negative effect on the job market in Britain.
It said in a report: “Lifting the restrictions would almost certainly have a positive impact on migration inflows to the UK from those countries.
“At one extreme the effect could be small (with the additional annual inflow being in the hundreds or low thousands, for instance) but it could be significantly higher. “It would not be sensible, or helpful to policymakers, for us to attempt to put a precise numerical range around this likely impact.”
It said there was evidence Bulgarians would come to Britain because of this country’s higher rates of GDP, and also said it was “plausible” that Romanians would come for the same reasons.
Robert Rowthorn, emeritus professor of economics at Cambridge University, said: “The potential for immigration is very large because these are poor countries and they have populations of nearly 30 million between them.
“I think it will have quite a big effect. When Poland and other eastern European countries joined the EU in 2004 there was an unexpected surge and around one million of them are living in this country now, with net migration running at about 40,000 a year.
“I imagine a similar pattern will be repeated with Romania and Bulgaria, although the transitional controls have perhaps taken the edge off somewhat.”
Already figures obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show the number of immigrants coming from the two countries reached a peak of just over 40,000 last year - suggesting that there is likely to be an even great number in 2015.
More than 130,000 immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria are living in Britain and Britain is one of the most popular destinations for Bulgarian migrants, along with Greece, Spain and Germany, while the Romanian Embassy says that Spain and Italy attract 80 per cent of their emigrants.
But the perilous state of the Greek and Spanish economies may mean that much larger numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians decide to come here instead.
Those who come currently either have to have a job when they move or declare themselves as self-employed.
However an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has revealed how loopholes in current restrictions have allowed eastern Europeans to take 50,000 jobs from which they should have been excluded.
By declaring themselves technically “self-employed”, Bulgarians and Romanians have been able to access jobs in trades like hotel and restaurant work, sales, and taxi-driving. Hundreds of women have also been hired as self-employed lapdancers.
Romanian and British job agencies have become adept at streamlining the paperwork involved for employers, so that even waiters, hotel receptionists and porters can be hired on a self-employed basis.
The “self-employed” category is also being used by strip clubs to recruit young Romanian and Bulgarian women, according to adverts placed on tjobs.ro, Romania’s leading recruitment website.
Official figures from the Department for Work and Pensions showed 40,260 Romanian and Bulgarian workers applied for National Insurance numbers last year - the largest number on record and a 28 per cent rise year on year.
Sir Andrew Green, director of MigrationWatch UK, said: “I think there could be a significant spike from Romania and Bulgaria, particularly as the economies in other parts of the EU are suffering serious difficulties. “Neither Spain nor Italy are a good bet at the moment if you’re looking for a job.
“I think we need a further five year extension of the transitional arrangements. Britain has done our bit with eastern European migrants - we’ve taken far more than any other country - and we could justify a special case for such an extension.”
Sinclair Stevenson, the chief executive of Bucharest-based Premier Global International recruitment, said: “I think people in Romania will take advantage, as there is already now quite a strong community in the UK. With their language abilities, they have a propensity go there anyway.”
Croatia is also due to join the EU in July next year but with a population of just four million it is unlikely to lead to large numbers of arrivals in Britain, and will also be subject to transitional controls.
SOURCE
Sunday, October 28, 2012
3K illegal immigrants applying daily under Obama's deportation reprieve plan
More than 3,000 young illegal immigrants are applying daily to take part in the administration's new deportation reprieve policy, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said last week.
Napolitano said a total of roughly 200,000 people have applied since the agency began accepting applications two months ago.
She made the announcement Wednesday to a panel of educators from across the country who serve on the Homeland Security Academic Advisory Council, as reported by The Hill newspaper.
The agency began accepting applications after President Obama in June made the policy change -- after failing to pass comprehensive immigration reform and during an election year in which he will again need the Latino vote to help him win.
Napolitano announced earlier this year the agency would focus its resources on deporting illegal immigrants who are the most serious.
The change allows people under 31 who were brought the United States illegally by their parents to remain in the country for at least two years and get a temporary work permit. And the two-year permit can be renewed.
Applicants cannot have committed a felony or have been convicted of more than two misdemeanors. They also must have lived in the U.S. for the past five years, have graduated from high school or received an equivalent diploma, or been honorably discharged from the military.
SOURCE
Asylum rioters rewarded with visa to stay in Australia
ASYLUM seekers convicted of participating in riots that caused more than $5 million damage to the Christmas Island detention centre have been handed protection visas to stay in the country.
Just one of seven offenders convicted over the riots had his visa application rejected by Immigration Minister Chris Bowen on character grounds.
Three men found guilty of offences relating to the March 2011 riots - in which accommodation and administration facilities were burned down and rocks thrown at police - have been granted protection visas to remain in Australia.
Two others convicted were found not to be refugees and another has a current protection claim but is appealing against his conviction. Six of the seven remain in Australia.
At the time of the riots, Mr Bowen talked tough about the 200 participants, most of whom had their faces covered. Only 22 were charged, leaving just seven with convictions.
"Again, a group of around 200 protesters seem to think that violent behaviour is an acceptable way to influence the outcome of their visa application or influence government decision-making," he said at the time.
A month after the riots, Mr Bowen said he was toughening the character test provisions "to make it very clear that anybody who commits an offence, regardless of the penalty, regardless of the sentence, while they are in immigration detention will fail the character test and can be denied a permanent visa".
It has been revealed to parliament that the three rioters given protection visas received a warning on their character assessment before being handed their visas.
The character test clearly states if an asylum seeker has been convicted of an offence while in detention they fail the test. Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said that the rioters' visa applications should have been rejected.
detention
Australian Federal Police and dog squad in riot gear prepare to relocate asylum-seeker detainees within the detention centre on Christmas Island, following the March riots.
"Minister Bowen has proved himself a soft touch on our borders at every opportunity," Mr Morrison said.
"Every chance he has had to send a strong message on our borders, he has rolled out the welcome mat.
"The fact that he granted permanent visas to those who rioted and burnt sections of detention centres to the ground on his watch is a disgrace."
SOURCE
3K illegal immigrants applying daily under Obama's deportation reprieve plan
More than 3,000 young illegal immigrants are applying daily to take part in the administration's new deportation reprieve policy, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said last week.
Napolitano said a total of roughly 200,000 people have applied since the agency began accepting applications two months ago.
She made the announcement Wednesday to a panel of educators from across the country who serve on the Homeland Security Academic Advisory Council, as reported by The Hill newspaper.
The agency began accepting applications after President Obama in June made the policy change -- after failing to pass comprehensive immigration reform and during an election year in which he will again need the Latino vote to help him win.
Napolitano announced earlier this year the agency would focus its resources on deporting illegal immigrants who are the most serious.
The change allows people under 31 who were brought the United States illegally by their parents to remain in the country for at least two years and get a temporary work permit. And the two-year permit can be renewed.
Applicants cannot have committed a felony or have been convicted of more than two misdemeanors. They also must have lived in the U.S. for the past five years, have graduated from high school or received an equivalent diploma, or been honorably discharged from the military.
SOURCE
Asylum rioters rewarded with visa to stay in Australia
ASYLUM seekers convicted of participating in riots that caused more than $5 million damage to the Christmas Island detention centre have been handed protection visas to stay in the country.
Just one of seven offenders convicted over the riots had his visa application rejected by Immigration Minister Chris Bowen on character grounds.
Three men found guilty of offences relating to the March 2011 riots - in which accommodation and administration facilities were burned down and rocks thrown at police - have been granted protection visas to remain in Australia.
Two others convicted were found not to be refugees and another has a current protection claim but is appealing against his conviction. Six of the seven remain in Australia.
At the time of the riots, Mr Bowen talked tough about the 200 participants, most of whom had their faces covered. Only 22 were charged, leaving just seven with convictions.
"Again, a group of around 200 protesters seem to think that violent behaviour is an acceptable way to influence the outcome of their visa application or influence government decision-making," he said at the time.
A month after the riots, Mr Bowen said he was toughening the character test provisions "to make it very clear that anybody who commits an offence, regardless of the penalty, regardless of the sentence, while they are in immigration detention will fail the character test and can be denied a permanent visa".
It has been revealed to parliament that the three rioters given protection visas received a warning on their character assessment before being handed their visas.
The character test clearly states if an asylum seeker has been convicted of an offence while in detention they fail the test. Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said that the rioters' visa applications should have been rejected.
detention
Australian Federal Police and dog squad in riot gear prepare to relocate asylum-seeker detainees within the detention centre on Christmas Island, following the March riots.
"Minister Bowen has proved himself a soft touch on our borders at every opportunity," Mr Morrison said.
"Every chance he has had to send a strong message on our borders, he has rolled out the welcome mat.
"The fact that he granted permanent visas to those who rioted and burnt sections of detention centres to the ground on his watch is a disgrace."
SOURCE
Friday, October 26, 2012
Study: Undocumented Immigration From Mexico on the Rise
A finding that more Mexicans are crossing the border for low-skilled jobs is a sign of economic recovery, a study says.
A slight bump in the flow of undocumented Mexican immigrants during the first half of 2012 appears to signal a rebound of some U.S. sectors that realy on low-skilled workers, according to a two-nation study.
The population of illegal immigrants has reached prerecession levels (11.7 million). That figure led the study’s authors to argue that laws such Arizona’s SB1070 that aim to expel undocumented immigrants by making it impossible for them to live and work in the U.S. had little impact.
In a way, the study reveals a simple fact: People will move where there is work. The latest federal jobs report shows that of the 114,000 jobs added in September, most were in health, transportation, and warehousing, sectors that employ minorities, including low-skilled legal and unauthorized immigrants.
Even a small increase in the need for Mexican labor “would prompt a positive response in the migration flows despite intensified enforcement efforts by the federal government, several states, and some local governments,” according to the study.
Despite three years of unemployment levels at 8 percent or higher, “the size of the Mexican migrant population has not shrunken.” Similarly, record levels of federal deportations and state immigration laws have not curbed undocumented immigration, the study found.
The data are in direct contrast to an April Pew Hispanic Center study that revealed that net migration from Mexico to the U.S. had fallen to zero or had even reversed.
“Mexican Migration Monitor” is a joint publication of the University of Southern California’s Tomás Rivera Policy Institute in Los Angeles and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico. The study analyzed data from various sources, including unpublished data from the Border Survey of Mexican Migrants.
Key highlights of the report:
* While the construction industry has continued to shed jobs through 2012, opportunities have been increasing in the leisure and hospitality arenas.
* Mexican migrants still come to the U.S. primarily to work as low-skilled laborers.
* Immigrants deported from the interior of the country, such as those caught during workplace immigration raids, are likely to be have resided in the U.S. longer, often are heads of households, and are age 35 or older. People apprehended closer to the border often are younger and have been in the U.S. for a shorter length of time.
SOURCE
State Cracking Down on Businesses to Verify Workers' Immigration Status
Any business -- with the exception of a few industries -- hiring a new employee must verify that person's immigration status or face potential punishment.
It's called the E-verify program, and it's one part of South Carolina's immigration reform law that was amended last year.
The state's department of labor, licensing and regulation says in the past ten months it's checked more than 3,000 businesses for compliance. In most cases, LLR says, businesses are complying.
"We've got a 92 percent compliance rate," according to Jim Knight, the administrator of the LLR's Immigrant Worker Compliance program.
But there are a handful of businesses that aren't using the electronic verification program -- likely because they're unaware of the law.
At least 16 businesses, ranging from welders to pizza shops, have been put on probation after LLR discovered the companies weren't using E-verify.
But all of them, Knight said, quickly came into compliance and now understand the law. None of the employees who weren't checked through E-verify were illegal immigrants, Knight said.
To see a list of non-compliant businesses, click here.
The verification program was one part of the state's law which was passed to make sure available jobs are going to legal US citizens, Knight said.
The director says the law is having a positive impact on ensuring illegals aren't given jobs, and he said it's sendind a message to the illegals that they won't be able to find work in this state.
A business found to be non-compliant is issued a warning and put on probation for a year where they have to send quarterly reports to LLR.
Any business which violates the law a second time within three years could have its right to conduct business suspended by the LLR.
The E-verify program was suspended in 2010 after a US Supreme Court ruling brought into question the law's constitutionality. The court made it clear state's couldn't monetarily fine businesses which violated the requirement. State lawmakers quickly amended the law in 2011 by dropping the monetary fines.
SOURCE
Study: Undocumented Immigration From Mexico on the Rise
A finding that more Mexicans are crossing the border for low-skilled jobs is a sign of economic recovery, a study says.
A slight bump in the flow of undocumented Mexican immigrants during the first half of 2012 appears to signal a rebound of some U.S. sectors that realy on low-skilled workers, according to a two-nation study.
The population of illegal immigrants has reached prerecession levels (11.7 million). That figure led the study’s authors to argue that laws such Arizona’s SB1070 that aim to expel undocumented immigrants by making it impossible for them to live and work in the U.S. had little impact.
In a way, the study reveals a simple fact: People will move where there is work. The latest federal jobs report shows that of the 114,000 jobs added in September, most were in health, transportation, and warehousing, sectors that employ minorities, including low-skilled legal and unauthorized immigrants.
Even a small increase in the need for Mexican labor “would prompt a positive response in the migration flows despite intensified enforcement efforts by the federal government, several states, and some local governments,” according to the study.
Despite three years of unemployment levels at 8 percent or higher, “the size of the Mexican migrant population has not shrunken.” Similarly, record levels of federal deportations and state immigration laws have not curbed undocumented immigration, the study found.
The data are in direct contrast to an April Pew Hispanic Center study that revealed that net migration from Mexico to the U.S. had fallen to zero or had even reversed.
“Mexican Migration Monitor” is a joint publication of the University of Southern California’s Tomás Rivera Policy Institute in Los Angeles and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico. The study analyzed data from various sources, including unpublished data from the Border Survey of Mexican Migrants.
Key highlights of the report:
* While the construction industry has continued to shed jobs through 2012, opportunities have been increasing in the leisure and hospitality arenas.
* Mexican migrants still come to the U.S. primarily to work as low-skilled laborers.
* Immigrants deported from the interior of the country, such as those caught during workplace immigration raids, are likely to be have resided in the U.S. longer, often are heads of households, and are age 35 or older. People apprehended closer to the border often are younger and have been in the U.S. for a shorter length of time.
SOURCE
State Cracking Down on Businesses to Verify Workers' Immigration Status
Any business -- with the exception of a few industries -- hiring a new employee must verify that person's immigration status or face potential punishment.
It's called the E-verify program, and it's one part of South Carolina's immigration reform law that was amended last year.
The state's department of labor, licensing and regulation says in the past ten months it's checked more than 3,000 businesses for compliance. In most cases, LLR says, businesses are complying.
"We've got a 92 percent compliance rate," according to Jim Knight, the administrator of the LLR's Immigrant Worker Compliance program.
But there are a handful of businesses that aren't using the electronic verification program -- likely because they're unaware of the law.
At least 16 businesses, ranging from welders to pizza shops, have been put on probation after LLR discovered the companies weren't using E-verify.
But all of them, Knight said, quickly came into compliance and now understand the law. None of the employees who weren't checked through E-verify were illegal immigrants, Knight said.
To see a list of non-compliant businesses, click here.
The verification program was one part of the state's law which was passed to make sure available jobs are going to legal US citizens, Knight said.
The director says the law is having a positive impact on ensuring illegals aren't given jobs, and he said it's sendind a message to the illegals that they won't be able to find work in this state.
A business found to be non-compliant is issued a warning and put on probation for a year where they have to send quarterly reports to LLR.
Any business which violates the law a second time within three years could have its right to conduct business suspended by the LLR.
The E-verify program was suspended in 2010 after a US Supreme Court ruling brought into question the law's constitutionality. The court made it clear state's couldn't monetarily fine businesses which violated the requirement. State lawmakers quickly amended the law in 2011 by dropping the monetary fines.
SOURCE
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Millions of Brits desert the Labour Party because of immigration -- with 80% of supporters wanting drastic curbs on numbers
Millions of Labour voters have deserted the party in protest over mass immigration. A poll reveals that nearly eight in ten former Labour voters support drastic curbs on migrant numbers. It also shows huge support for sharp cuts in arrivals among those who have remained with the party.
In 1997, some 13.5million voted for Labour, but by the 2010 election that had fallen to 8.6million. Analysis of the views of some of the five million ‘lost’ Labour voters by YouGov shows 78 per cent want net migration cut to zero.
That policy would mean foreign migrants would be allowed in only to replace people who left – in effect, a one-in-one-out rule.
The YouGov poll, published in Prospect magazine, interviewed thousands of Labour 'defectors'. Pollsters also found that two-thirds of Labour party loyalists backed zero net migration.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the MigrationWatch think tank, said: 'This is stunning research which is bound to affect Labour’s immigration policies. 'We will see whether they have the courage to declare a limit on immigration or whether they try to duck this essential issue. The track record so far is not encouraging.'
Ed Miliband signalled this month that he wanted more done to tackle immigration, saying low-skilled immigration into Britain was 'too high'. But the Labour leader offered no policy proposals for how he would fix the problem.
Labour’s open-door migration policy led to the largest population explosion in Britain since the Saxon invasion. Between 1997 and 2010 the foreign-born population of the UK increased by three million, while nearly a million British citizens left the country.
Last year net migration stood at 216,000, down from 252,000 in 2010.
Home Secretary Theresa May has imposed a cap on migrant worker numbers and led a crackdown on family migration and bogus students.
SOURCE
Hispanic woman whose entire LIFE was stolen: Illegal immigrant 'used teacher's private details to get a job, a mortgage and medical care for her own two children'
When Candida L. Gutierrez's identity was stolen, the thief didn't limit herself to opening fraudulent credit and bank accounts. She assumed Gutierrez's persona completely, using it to get a job, a driver's license, a mortgage and even medical care for the birth of two children.
All the while, the crook claimed the real Gutierrez was the one who had stolen her identity. The women's kafkaesque nightmare puts a face on 'total identity theft,' a brazen form of the crime in which con artists go far beyond financial fraud to assume many other aspects of another person's life.
The scheme has been linked to illegal immigrants who use stolen Social Security numbers to get paid at their jobs, and authorities fear the problem could soon grow to ensnare more unsuspecting Americans.
'When she claimed my identity and I claimed it back, she was informed that I was claiming it too,' said Gutierrez, a 31-year-old Houston elementary school teacher. 'She knew I was aware and that I was trying to fight, and yet she would keep fighting. It is not like she realized and she stopped. No, she kept going, and she kept going harder.'
A 32-year-old illegal immigrant named Benita Cardona-Gonzalez is accused of using Gutierrez's identity during a 10-year period when she worked at a Topeka company that packages refrigerated foods.
For years, large numbers of illegal immigrants have filled out payroll forms using their real names but stolen Social Security numbers. However, as electronic employment verification systems such as E-Verify become more common, the use of fake numbers is increasingly difficult.
Now prosecutors worry that more people will try to fool the systems by assuming full identities rather than stealing the numbers alone.
For victims, total identity theft can also have serious health consequences if electronic medical records linked to Social Security numbers get mixed up, putting at risk the accuracy of important patient information such as blood types or life-threatening allergies.
Federal Trade Commission statistics show that Americans reported more than 279,000 instances of identity theft in 2011, up from 251,100 a year earlier. While it is unclear how many of those cases involve total identity theft, one possible indicator is the number of identity theft complaints that involve more than one type of identity theft - 13 percent last year, compared with 12 percent a year earlier.
Nationwide, employment-related fraud accounted for 8 percent of identity theft complaints last year. But in states with large immigrant populations, employment-related identity fraud was much higher: 25 percent in Arizona, 15 percent in Texas, 16 percent in New Mexico, 12 percent in California.
Prosecutors say that the longer a person uses someone else's identity, the more confident the thief becomes using that identity for purposes other than just working.
Once they have become established in a community, identity thieves don't want to live in the shadows and they seek a normal life like everybody else. That's when they take the next step and get a driver's license, a home loan and health insurance.
'And so that is a natural progression, and that is what we are seeing,' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Anderson, who is prosecuting the case against Gutierrez's alleged impostor.
Gutierrez first learned her identity had been hijacked when she was turned down for a mortgage more than a decade ago. Now each year she trudges to the Social Security Administration with her birth certificate, driver's license, passport and even school yearbooks to prove her identity and clear her employment record.
She spends hours on the phone with creditors and credit bureaus, fills out affidavits and has yet to clean up her credit history. Her tax records are a mess. She even once phoned the impostor's Kansas employer in a futile effort to find some relief.
Both women claimed they were identity theft victims and sought to get new Social Security numbers. The Social Security Administration turned down the request from Gutierrez, instead issuing a new number to the woman impersonating her.
And in another ironic twist, Gutierrez was forced to file her federal income tax forms using a special identification number usually reserved for illegal immigrants.
'It is such a horrible nightmare,' Gutierrez said. 'You get really angry, and then you start realizing anger is not going to help. ... But when you have so much on your plate and you keep such a busy life, it is really such a super big inconvenience. You have to find the time for someone who is abusing you.'
When Gutierrez recently got married, her husband began researching identity theft on the Internet and stumbled across identity theft cases filed against other illegal immigrants working at Reser's Fine Foods, the same manufacturer where Cardona-Gonzalez worked. He contacted federal authorities in Kansas and asked them to investigate the employee working there who had stolen his wife's identity.
The alleged impostor was arrested in August, and her fingerprints confirmed that immigration agents had encountered Cardona-Gonzalez in 1996 in Harlingen, Texas, and sent her back to Mexico.
SOURCE
Millions of Brits desert the Labour Party because of immigration -- with 80% of supporters wanting drastic curbs on numbers
Millions of Labour voters have deserted the party in protest over mass immigration. A poll reveals that nearly eight in ten former Labour voters support drastic curbs on migrant numbers. It also shows huge support for sharp cuts in arrivals among those who have remained with the party.
In 1997, some 13.5million voted for Labour, but by the 2010 election that had fallen to 8.6million. Analysis of the views of some of the five million ‘lost’ Labour voters by YouGov shows 78 per cent want net migration cut to zero.
That policy would mean foreign migrants would be allowed in only to replace people who left – in effect, a one-in-one-out rule.
The YouGov poll, published in Prospect magazine, interviewed thousands of Labour 'defectors'. Pollsters also found that two-thirds of Labour party loyalists backed zero net migration.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the MigrationWatch think tank, said: 'This is stunning research which is bound to affect Labour’s immigration policies. 'We will see whether they have the courage to declare a limit on immigration or whether they try to duck this essential issue. The track record so far is not encouraging.'
Ed Miliband signalled this month that he wanted more done to tackle immigration, saying low-skilled immigration into Britain was 'too high'. But the Labour leader offered no policy proposals for how he would fix the problem.
Labour’s open-door migration policy led to the largest population explosion in Britain since the Saxon invasion. Between 1997 and 2010 the foreign-born population of the UK increased by three million, while nearly a million British citizens left the country.
Last year net migration stood at 216,000, down from 252,000 in 2010.
Home Secretary Theresa May has imposed a cap on migrant worker numbers and led a crackdown on family migration and bogus students.
SOURCE
Hispanic woman whose entire LIFE was stolen: Illegal immigrant 'used teacher's private details to get a job, a mortgage and medical care for her own two children'
When Candida L. Gutierrez's identity was stolen, the thief didn't limit herself to opening fraudulent credit and bank accounts. She assumed Gutierrez's persona completely, using it to get a job, a driver's license, a mortgage and even medical care for the birth of two children.
All the while, the crook claimed the real Gutierrez was the one who had stolen her identity. The women's kafkaesque nightmare puts a face on 'total identity theft,' a brazen form of the crime in which con artists go far beyond financial fraud to assume many other aspects of another person's life.
The scheme has been linked to illegal immigrants who use stolen Social Security numbers to get paid at their jobs, and authorities fear the problem could soon grow to ensnare more unsuspecting Americans.
'When she claimed my identity and I claimed it back, she was informed that I was claiming it too,' said Gutierrez, a 31-year-old Houston elementary school teacher. 'She knew I was aware and that I was trying to fight, and yet she would keep fighting. It is not like she realized and she stopped. No, she kept going, and she kept going harder.'
A 32-year-old illegal immigrant named Benita Cardona-Gonzalez is accused of using Gutierrez's identity during a 10-year period when she worked at a Topeka company that packages refrigerated foods.
For years, large numbers of illegal immigrants have filled out payroll forms using their real names but stolen Social Security numbers. However, as electronic employment verification systems such as E-Verify become more common, the use of fake numbers is increasingly difficult.
Now prosecutors worry that more people will try to fool the systems by assuming full identities rather than stealing the numbers alone.
For victims, total identity theft can also have serious health consequences if electronic medical records linked to Social Security numbers get mixed up, putting at risk the accuracy of important patient information such as blood types or life-threatening allergies.
Federal Trade Commission statistics show that Americans reported more than 279,000 instances of identity theft in 2011, up from 251,100 a year earlier. While it is unclear how many of those cases involve total identity theft, one possible indicator is the number of identity theft complaints that involve more than one type of identity theft - 13 percent last year, compared with 12 percent a year earlier.
Nationwide, employment-related fraud accounted for 8 percent of identity theft complaints last year. But in states with large immigrant populations, employment-related identity fraud was much higher: 25 percent in Arizona, 15 percent in Texas, 16 percent in New Mexico, 12 percent in California.
Prosecutors say that the longer a person uses someone else's identity, the more confident the thief becomes using that identity for purposes other than just working.
Once they have become established in a community, identity thieves don't want to live in the shadows and they seek a normal life like everybody else. That's when they take the next step and get a driver's license, a home loan and health insurance.
'And so that is a natural progression, and that is what we are seeing,' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Anderson, who is prosecuting the case against Gutierrez's alleged impostor.
Gutierrez first learned her identity had been hijacked when she was turned down for a mortgage more than a decade ago. Now each year she trudges to the Social Security Administration with her birth certificate, driver's license, passport and even school yearbooks to prove her identity and clear her employment record.
She spends hours on the phone with creditors and credit bureaus, fills out affidavits and has yet to clean up her credit history. Her tax records are a mess. She even once phoned the impostor's Kansas employer in a futile effort to find some relief.
Both women claimed they were identity theft victims and sought to get new Social Security numbers. The Social Security Administration turned down the request from Gutierrez, instead issuing a new number to the woman impersonating her.
And in another ironic twist, Gutierrez was forced to file her federal income tax forms using a special identification number usually reserved for illegal immigrants.
'It is such a horrible nightmare,' Gutierrez said. 'You get really angry, and then you start realizing anger is not going to help. ... But when you have so much on your plate and you keep such a busy life, it is really such a super big inconvenience. You have to find the time for someone who is abusing you.'
When Gutierrez recently got married, her husband began researching identity theft on the Internet and stumbled across identity theft cases filed against other illegal immigrants working at Reser's Fine Foods, the same manufacturer where Cardona-Gonzalez worked. He contacted federal authorities in Kansas and asked them to investigate the employee working there who had stolen his wife's identity.
The alleged impostor was arrested in August, and her fingerprints confirmed that immigration agents had encountered Cardona-Gonzalez in 1996 in Harlingen, Texas, and sent her back to Mexico.
SOURCE
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Government of Canada cracking down on immigration fraud
With the winds of war blowing in the Middle East and other trouble spots it's hard to blame the well-to-do of the world for coveting Canadian passports as an insurance policy, but the government says you will either do it legally or lose it. That's what a couple from Turkey found out the hard way when they tried to sneak back into Canada where they were supposed to be living as permanent residents.
Reha and Ecehan Ozcelik were arrested at Trudeau International Airport when it turned out under questioning that they knew just about nothing about Montreal, their adopted home town in Canada.
Permanent residents must live 2 of 5 years in Canada to maintain their status and make a statutory declaration to that effect when applying for citizenship, which is still a very low threshold compared to other countries that accept immigrants.
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) charged the Ozceliks with making false representations, to which they pled guilty. A Quebec court convicted the couple, who might have preferred jail instead, and imposed an unusually steep fine of $120,000. Now six-figure poorer but certainly wiser they will have to return to their native Turkey unless they can find a legal way to keep their immigration status.
With Turkey looking more and more like the Islamic Republic of Iran every passing day, many affluent Turks are looking to Canada and the United States to guarantee their children's future in a secular country.
The incident was recently announced by Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, who reiterated government's determination to crack down on immigration and citizenship fraud. Kenney congratulated CBSA for their vigilance and said that those who obtain Canadian citizenship under false pretenses will lose it.
Some 3100 naturalised citizens are slated to lose citizenship for making false residency representations. Revoking citizenship is an extreme measure that requires cabinet approval. It was rarely applied prior to 2010, mostly to those accused of war crimes.
Investigations are specially targeting immigrants from the Middle East
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publications
1. What Are They Thinking? A Look at Roman Catholic “Doctrine” on Immigration (Backgrounder)
2. What the DACA Ordered: The Intersection of Administrative Amnesty and Health Reform (Memorandum)
Blogs
3. The Placid Response of DHS to its Enigma Challenge — the Border Tunnels (Blog)
4. My Vote for Weakest Immigration Sob Story of the Year (Blog)
5. What Cuba's New Exit Rules Mean for the United States (Blog)
6. 3,400 Border Patrol Agents on the Chopping Block (Blog)
7. Another One Bites the Dust (Blog)
8. ICE Refuses to Detain Illegal Alien Journalist (Blog)
9. No Limiting Principle (Blog)
10. USCIS Does Right Thing on EB-5 Issue — and Wins a Round in Court (Blog)
11. Choose You This Day Whom You Will Serve (Blog)
12. NYC Immigration Judges Favor Aliens More Frequently (Blog)
Government of Canada cracking down on immigration fraud
With the winds of war blowing in the Middle East and other trouble spots it's hard to blame the well-to-do of the world for coveting Canadian passports as an insurance policy, but the government says you will either do it legally or lose it. That's what a couple from Turkey found out the hard way when they tried to sneak back into Canada where they were supposed to be living as permanent residents.
Reha and Ecehan Ozcelik were arrested at Trudeau International Airport when it turned out under questioning that they knew just about nothing about Montreal, their adopted home town in Canada.
Permanent residents must live 2 of 5 years in Canada to maintain their status and make a statutory declaration to that effect when applying for citizenship, which is still a very low threshold compared to other countries that accept immigrants.
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) charged the Ozceliks with making false representations, to which they pled guilty. A Quebec court convicted the couple, who might have preferred jail instead, and imposed an unusually steep fine of $120,000. Now six-figure poorer but certainly wiser they will have to return to their native Turkey unless they can find a legal way to keep their immigration status.
With Turkey looking more and more like the Islamic Republic of Iran every passing day, many affluent Turks are looking to Canada and the United States to guarantee their children's future in a secular country.
The incident was recently announced by Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, who reiterated government's determination to crack down on immigration and citizenship fraud. Kenney congratulated CBSA for their vigilance and said that those who obtain Canadian citizenship under false pretenses will lose it.
Some 3100 naturalised citizens are slated to lose citizenship for making false residency representations. Revoking citizenship is an extreme measure that requires cabinet approval. It was rarely applied prior to 2010, mostly to those accused of war crimes.
Investigations are specially targeting immigrants from the Middle East
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publications
1. What Are They Thinking? A Look at Roman Catholic “Doctrine” on Immigration (Backgrounder)
2. What the DACA Ordered: The Intersection of Administrative Amnesty and Health Reform (Memorandum)
Blogs
3. The Placid Response of DHS to its Enigma Challenge — the Border Tunnels (Blog)
4. My Vote for Weakest Immigration Sob Story of the Year (Blog)
5. What Cuba's New Exit Rules Mean for the United States (Blog)
6. 3,400 Border Patrol Agents on the Chopping Block (Blog)
7. Another One Bites the Dust (Blog)
8. ICE Refuses to Detain Illegal Alien Journalist (Blog)
9. No Limiting Principle (Blog)
10. USCIS Does Right Thing on EB-5 Issue — and Wins a Round in Court (Blog)
11. Choose You This Day Whom You Will Serve (Blog)
12. NYC Immigration Judges Favor Aliens More Frequently (Blog)
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
A pox on both their houses!
Ruben Navarrette
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney should stop talking about immigration. Even when they're asked about it, as they were during their second debate, they should just smile politely and say: "No comment."
Otherwise, why remind voters that there is so much about this issue that the candidates don't understand? Not to mention that both of them have taken positions or enacted policies that they are having a tough time explaining?
For Romney, it was his shameful posturing in the Republican primary contests when he lurched to the right and not only took a hard line on anything resembling "amnesty" but also denigrated hardworking immigrants as takers who come to America for the freebies.
For Obama, it is his shameful record in office that includes 1.5 million deportations, divided families, thousands of U.S.-born kids of deported parents dumped into foster care, battered wives deported after calling the police, street vendors deported for selling ice cream or tamales without a permit, and expanded Arizona-style cooperation between local police and U.S. immigration officials nationwide by way of the Secure Communities program.
To avoid being criticized for all this by Latino supporters, Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House official Cecilia Munoz -- the administration's designated Latina apologist -- insist that it is only undesirables who are being deported.
Meanwhile, community activists in Detroit are protesting what they claim is a serious infraction by the local field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where agents are accused of staking out an elementary school to detain parents as they pick up their kids. How low can the administration go?
In trying to navigate the choppy waters of the immigration issue, each candidate has his coping mechanism.
Obama retreats into a fantasy world of unicorns and cotton candy where immigration officials only deport -- as he said during the debate -- "criminals, gangbangers, people who are hurting the community, not after students, not after folks who are here just because they're trying to figure out how to feed their families." Back in the real world, ICE agents have deported, since Obama took office, hundreds of thousands of gardeners, housekeepers, nannies and farm workers who were just "trying to figure out how to feed their families."
Meanwhile, Romney prefers to keep his answers vague, especially when asked what he would do with the estimated 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
Team Obama has to feign outrage over Romney's plan to allow illegal immigrants to voluntarily leave the country while ignoring that Obama prefers the more hands-on method. That's where ICE agents will kick down doors, put people in shackles, and toss them into a detention facility. According to a PBS documentary that aired last year, "Lost in Detention," many report allegations of being physically and sexually abused.
Team Romney -- in a futile bid to win Latino support -- is trying to criticize Obama for breaking his 2008 campaign promise to pursue comprehensive immigration reform, while ignoring that -- at least until the debate -- the Republican candidate opposed the concept. Now Romney says that he'll "get it done" in his first year.
Really, what's the point of Obama and Romney bickering over immigration to see who is the lesser evil? On this issue, they're both dreadful.
SOURCE
Prince William County renews focus on immigration
As Prince William County grapples with the sudden loss of a controversial program to identify and deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes, the immigration debate has been renewed just ahead of Election Day.
County officials were surprised that a partnership allowing Prince William to enforce federal immigration laws, known as 287 (g), is being renewed only until year’s end by the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. County officials had thought they were negotiating a new three-year deal.
Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, considers the program the crux of its anti-illegal immigration efforts, passed in 2007, mandating that police check the immigration status of people arrested.
Stewart (R-At Large) said he thinks ICE and the Obama administration are playing politics.
“Frankly, I didn’t think they’d have the guts to do it,” Stewart said of the Obama administration. “It’s going to hurt them in Virginia, and it’s going to hurt them in Prince William County. I really didn’t think they’d be foolish . . . from a political perspective to terminate the program right before the November elections.”
ICE has remained mostly mum about the reasons for the change. The Obama administration has instructed federal immigration offices across the country to focus on border security and people who commit serious crimes. It plans to phase out 287 (g) in favor of the Secure Communities program.
“The Secure Communities screening process, coupled with federal officers, is more consistent, efficient and cost effective in identifying and removing criminal and other priority aliens,” ICE spokeswoman Danielle Bennett said in a statement.
The department has declined to answer further questions.
Under Secure Communities, suspects’ names are run through an ICE database, which contains records of people who have come into contact with federal immigration authorities. After this year, Prince William law enforcement authorities would no longer be able to investigate the immigration status of people they arrest.
County officials say they won’t be able to identify nearly as many illegal immigrants. In a statement, they said that 5,000 people arrested in the county so far have been found to be here illegally. With the change, they estimated that number would drop by 60 percent.
The change was welcomed by people who say the 287 (g) program can lead to racial profiling and distract police from their core responsibilities.
Claire G. Gastanaga, executive director of the Virginia American Civil Liberties Union, said the ACLU has opposed the program from the beginning because ICE already detains and deports dangerous criminals.
“We think it’s antithetical to good, effective community policing,” she said. “You confuse the roles of local police and federal immigration authorities. You end up being less safe because people are not willing to cooperate with the police.”
SOURCE
A pox on both their houses!
Ruben Navarrette
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney should stop talking about immigration. Even when they're asked about it, as they were during their second debate, they should just smile politely and say: "No comment."
Otherwise, why remind voters that there is so much about this issue that the candidates don't understand? Not to mention that both of them have taken positions or enacted policies that they are having a tough time explaining?
For Romney, it was his shameful posturing in the Republican primary contests when he lurched to the right and not only took a hard line on anything resembling "amnesty" but also denigrated hardworking immigrants as takers who come to America for the freebies.
For Obama, it is his shameful record in office that includes 1.5 million deportations, divided families, thousands of U.S.-born kids of deported parents dumped into foster care, battered wives deported after calling the police, street vendors deported for selling ice cream or tamales without a permit, and expanded Arizona-style cooperation between local police and U.S. immigration officials nationwide by way of the Secure Communities program.
To avoid being criticized for all this by Latino supporters, Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House official Cecilia Munoz -- the administration's designated Latina apologist -- insist that it is only undesirables who are being deported.
Meanwhile, community activists in Detroit are protesting what they claim is a serious infraction by the local field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where agents are accused of staking out an elementary school to detain parents as they pick up their kids. How low can the administration go?
In trying to navigate the choppy waters of the immigration issue, each candidate has his coping mechanism.
Obama retreats into a fantasy world of unicorns and cotton candy where immigration officials only deport -- as he said during the debate -- "criminals, gangbangers, people who are hurting the community, not after students, not after folks who are here just because they're trying to figure out how to feed their families." Back in the real world, ICE agents have deported, since Obama took office, hundreds of thousands of gardeners, housekeepers, nannies and farm workers who were just "trying to figure out how to feed their families."
Meanwhile, Romney prefers to keep his answers vague, especially when asked what he would do with the estimated 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
Team Obama has to feign outrage over Romney's plan to allow illegal immigrants to voluntarily leave the country while ignoring that Obama prefers the more hands-on method. That's where ICE agents will kick down doors, put people in shackles, and toss them into a detention facility. According to a PBS documentary that aired last year, "Lost in Detention," many report allegations of being physically and sexually abused.
Team Romney -- in a futile bid to win Latino support -- is trying to criticize Obama for breaking his 2008 campaign promise to pursue comprehensive immigration reform, while ignoring that -- at least until the debate -- the Republican candidate opposed the concept. Now Romney says that he'll "get it done" in his first year.
Really, what's the point of Obama and Romney bickering over immigration to see who is the lesser evil? On this issue, they're both dreadful.
SOURCE
Prince William County renews focus on immigration
As Prince William County grapples with the sudden loss of a controversial program to identify and deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes, the immigration debate has been renewed just ahead of Election Day.
County officials were surprised that a partnership allowing Prince William to enforce federal immigration laws, known as 287 (g), is being renewed only until year’s end by the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. County officials had thought they were negotiating a new three-year deal.
Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, considers the program the crux of its anti-illegal immigration efforts, passed in 2007, mandating that police check the immigration status of people arrested.
Stewart (R-At Large) said he thinks ICE and the Obama administration are playing politics.
“Frankly, I didn’t think they’d have the guts to do it,” Stewart said of the Obama administration. “It’s going to hurt them in Virginia, and it’s going to hurt them in Prince William County. I really didn’t think they’d be foolish . . . from a political perspective to terminate the program right before the November elections.”
ICE has remained mostly mum about the reasons for the change. The Obama administration has instructed federal immigration offices across the country to focus on border security and people who commit serious crimes. It plans to phase out 287 (g) in favor of the Secure Communities program.
“The Secure Communities screening process, coupled with federal officers, is more consistent, efficient and cost effective in identifying and removing criminal and other priority aliens,” ICE spokeswoman Danielle Bennett said in a statement.
The department has declined to answer further questions.
Under Secure Communities, suspects’ names are run through an ICE database, which contains records of people who have come into contact with federal immigration authorities. After this year, Prince William law enforcement authorities would no longer be able to investigate the immigration status of people they arrest.
County officials say they won’t be able to identify nearly as many illegal immigrants. In a statement, they said that 5,000 people arrested in the county so far have been found to be here illegally. With the change, they estimated that number would drop by 60 percent.
The change was welcomed by people who say the 287 (g) program can lead to racial profiling and distract police from their core responsibilities.
Claire G. Gastanaga, executive director of the Virginia American Civil Liberties Union, said the ACLU has opposed the program from the beginning because ICE already detains and deports dangerous criminals.
“We think it’s antithetical to good, effective community policing,” she said. “You confuse the roles of local police and federal immigration authorities. You end up being less safe because people are not willing to cooperate with the police.”
SOURCE
Monday, October 22, 2012
Britain's immigration restrictions are hitting the wrong people
It's the welfare-dependent army of pseudo-refugees and illegals that they should be focusing on. Restricting welfare benefits to the native-born and those who can show 10 years worth of contributions to National Insurance would work wonders
THE prime minister’s speech at the Conservative Party conference on October 10th contained a thumping statement of the obvious. Britain might never recover its former glory, David Cameron admitted. The country is running a global race against much nimbler competitors. Its only hope is to slice regulations so that innovative, entrepreneurial folk can thrive, and trade furiously. Splendid stuff. So why is Mr Cameron’s government pursuing an immigration policy that is creating red tape, stifling entrepreneurs and hobbling Britain?
The country has, in effect, installed a "keep out" sign over the white cliffs of Dover. Even as Mr Cameron defends the City of London as a global financial centre, and takes planeloads of business folk on foreign trips, his government ratchets up measures that would turn an entrepôt into a fortress. In the past two years the Tories have made it much harder for students and foreign workers and family members to enter and settle in the country. Britain is not only losing the war for global talent, it is scarcely competing. More people now leave to take up job offers in other countries than come the other way.
Little England trumps Great Britain
Businesses everywhere complain about immigration systems. But Britain’s is comprehensively bad, in three ways. First, the policy itself. In opposition, Mr Cameron promised to bring net migration--immigration minus emigration--to below 100,000 a year by 2015. Since the latest tally stands at 216,000, this is hard, perhaps impossible. Britons and Europeans can come and go as they wish. Human-rights laws protect asylum-seekers. So Theresa May, the home secretary, has squeezed migrant workers and students--the very people who are most likely to boost Britain’s economy, as well as the most likely to leave soon. The number of study visas handed out has plunged by 21% in a year. The government has made it harder to move from study to work, which in turn will deter foreign students from applying. International education, one of the country’s most important export industries and an area where Britain should have a huge competitive advantage, is being starved.
In theory, Britain’s door is open to the most highly skilled, as well as to the very rich. In practice it is not, because of the second disastrous aspect of the immigration system: its bureaucracy. It takes far too long to process visa applications. Big firms can generally put up with the hassle involved in transferring a worker from Delhi. Smaller ones cannot. Fast-growing technology firms are in the worst position because they compete for a flighty, global pool of talent (see "Immigration and business: A harder road"). Workers who navigate the maze are tied to a firm, sapping their productivity. Britain fails to hand out even its meagre allocation of work visas. One category, for people of exceptional talent, has an annual cap of 1,000. Last year 37 such visas were granted.
Third, British politicians, led by the Conservatives, do their utmost to signal hostility and mislead the public. Last month Parliament approved a motion to take "all necessary steps" to keep the country’s population below 70m. Ed Miliband, Labour’s leader, has apologised on behalf of his party for the migration of east Europeans to Britain in the middle of the last decade (never mind that the Poles, like most people who migrate for work, claimed few benefits and contributed far more to the public purse). Mr Cameron has promised to review the rules guaranteeing freedom of movement within the EU. This right probably cannot be withdrawn unless Britain leaves the union, which it is not about to do. The only thing achieved by bringing it up is to add neon lights to the "keep out" sign. Talented folk, who can go elsewhere, will get the message.
The paradox of populism
Some senior politicians admit privately that Britain’s immigration policy is disastrous. A few business-minded Conservative MPs have begun to complain that the country’s immigration strategy is undermining its growth strategy. Boris Johnson, London’s ambitious, liberal-minded mayor, is egging them on. But what can be done, they ask? Britons, they shudder, will not wear a relaxation of the immigration rules. The government must stick to its promises.
The simple answer is that if a policy is doing as much harm to your country’s prospects as the net-migration target, then you should drop it entirely--and explain why. Mr Cameron is sadly unlikely to make such a bold U-turn, but he has some political room for smaller manoeuvres.
Immigration is certainly unpopular. Britons are more opposed to it than are the inhabitants of any other large European country. Fully 62% think immigrants make it harder for natives to get jobs, compared with a European average of 45%. Three-quarters argue that immigrants put too much pressure on public services. But the natives are not as xenophobic as their leaders suppose. Britons dislike skilled workers and students less than other immigrants. (Indeed, by European standards, they are exceptionally keen to discriminate between such desirable arrivals and the rest.) More important, they know the government’s policies aren’t working: immigration scores even lower than health, a Tory disaster area. If the net migration target is missed they will become angrier.
Even if Mr Cameron cannot scrap that foolish target, the government could take a few useful steps. Some groups, such as workers on company transfers and students, could be exempted from the target. The government should make it easier to move from study to work, at least for students at the best institutions. Somebody who can make it to a leading university will almost certainly prove an asset to Britain. The government should also speed and simplify the visa system. It has hacked back much of the red tape that binds business, and should do the same to immigration rules.
As emerging countries grow, the enthusiasm of young, talented foreigners to get an education in a British university or to sell their wares to Britain’s relatively prosperous consumers is likely to diminish. For now, though, the country’s global popularity gives it a huge advantage, which the government is squandering. The world is a competitive place. Britain is trying to run with its shoelaces tied together.
SOURCE
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney seeks power to bar people from Canada
There are a number of good reasons for not letting certain people into Canada: having a criminal record, being deemed a threat to the security of residents or the security of the country, and involvement in human rights violations, among others. Decisions about entry are made by border officials every day.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney thinks he should also have a say.
Kenney announced last week that he will seek new powers to bar certain people from entering Canada if the minister concludes that it is justified by “public policy considerations.” It’s a vague term that has yet to be defined, but he says it would mostly apply to people entering with the intent to promote hatred and spark violence.
Kenney says the recent attempt by Qur’an-burning preacher Terry Jones to cross the border demonstrates the need for the law. Canadian border officials found, in the nick of time, that Jones had a minor U.S. conviction for breach of peace and were able to keep him out. If the proposed law, which will go in front of a Commons immigration committee in the fall, was in place, Kenney could have stepped in from the get-go.
But Kenney is not shy in exercising his ministerial powers and has done so before. In 2009, his office arranged to bar British MP George Galloway from entering Canada, allegedly for supporting Hamas, which is designated by Canada as a terrorist group. A year later, the Federal Court ruled that Galloway was denied because the government did not like his political views, not because of national security.
As a result, there is well-founded concern that this new law could be applied inconsistently and arbitrarily. And proponents of free speech may argue that it shouldn’t be the role of the government to keep out those with views we may find collectively reprehensible.
Yet Kenney says he will try to ensure that the law can’t be abused. He intends to issue a list of criteria by which one can be denied before the parliamentary committee, and reach out to his own party and the opposition for feedback. He insists he isn’t looking for “some broad generalized power to prevent the admission of people to Canada whose political opinions we disagree with.”
But the question is: if Kenney can already step in for “exceptional cases” at the border, why the need to enshrine it in law? And given his government’s track record, how can we be sure the law won’t be abused? We can’t. This is a bad plan and the minister would be wise to drop it now.
SOURCE
Britain's immigration restrictions are hitting the wrong people
It's the welfare-dependent army of pseudo-refugees and illegals that they should be focusing on. Restricting welfare benefits to the native-born and those who can show 10 years worth of contributions to National Insurance would work wonders
THE prime minister’s speech at the Conservative Party conference on October 10th contained a thumping statement of the obvious. Britain might never recover its former glory, David Cameron admitted. The country is running a global race against much nimbler competitors. Its only hope is to slice regulations so that innovative, entrepreneurial folk can thrive, and trade furiously. Splendid stuff. So why is Mr Cameron’s government pursuing an immigration policy that is creating red tape, stifling entrepreneurs and hobbling Britain?
The country has, in effect, installed a "keep out" sign over the white cliffs of Dover. Even as Mr Cameron defends the City of London as a global financial centre, and takes planeloads of business folk on foreign trips, his government ratchets up measures that would turn an entrepôt into a fortress. In the past two years the Tories have made it much harder for students and foreign workers and family members to enter and settle in the country. Britain is not only losing the war for global talent, it is scarcely competing. More people now leave to take up job offers in other countries than come the other way.
Little England trumps Great Britain
Businesses everywhere complain about immigration systems. But Britain’s is comprehensively bad, in three ways. First, the policy itself. In opposition, Mr Cameron promised to bring net migration--immigration minus emigration--to below 100,000 a year by 2015. Since the latest tally stands at 216,000, this is hard, perhaps impossible. Britons and Europeans can come and go as they wish. Human-rights laws protect asylum-seekers. So Theresa May, the home secretary, has squeezed migrant workers and students--the very people who are most likely to boost Britain’s economy, as well as the most likely to leave soon. The number of study visas handed out has plunged by 21% in a year. The government has made it harder to move from study to work, which in turn will deter foreign students from applying. International education, one of the country’s most important export industries and an area where Britain should have a huge competitive advantage, is being starved.
In theory, Britain’s door is open to the most highly skilled, as well as to the very rich. In practice it is not, because of the second disastrous aspect of the immigration system: its bureaucracy. It takes far too long to process visa applications. Big firms can generally put up with the hassle involved in transferring a worker from Delhi. Smaller ones cannot. Fast-growing technology firms are in the worst position because they compete for a flighty, global pool of talent (see "Immigration and business: A harder road"). Workers who navigate the maze are tied to a firm, sapping their productivity. Britain fails to hand out even its meagre allocation of work visas. One category, for people of exceptional talent, has an annual cap of 1,000. Last year 37 such visas were granted.
Third, British politicians, led by the Conservatives, do their utmost to signal hostility and mislead the public. Last month Parliament approved a motion to take "all necessary steps" to keep the country’s population below 70m. Ed Miliband, Labour’s leader, has apologised on behalf of his party for the migration of east Europeans to Britain in the middle of the last decade (never mind that the Poles, like most people who migrate for work, claimed few benefits and contributed far more to the public purse). Mr Cameron has promised to review the rules guaranteeing freedom of movement within the EU. This right probably cannot be withdrawn unless Britain leaves the union, which it is not about to do. The only thing achieved by bringing it up is to add neon lights to the "keep out" sign. Talented folk, who can go elsewhere, will get the message.
The paradox of populism
Some senior politicians admit privately that Britain’s immigration policy is disastrous. A few business-minded Conservative MPs have begun to complain that the country’s immigration strategy is undermining its growth strategy. Boris Johnson, London’s ambitious, liberal-minded mayor, is egging them on. But what can be done, they ask? Britons, they shudder, will not wear a relaxation of the immigration rules. The government must stick to its promises.
The simple answer is that if a policy is doing as much harm to your country’s prospects as the net-migration target, then you should drop it entirely--and explain why. Mr Cameron is sadly unlikely to make such a bold U-turn, but he has some political room for smaller manoeuvres.
Immigration is certainly unpopular. Britons are more opposed to it than are the inhabitants of any other large European country. Fully 62% think immigrants make it harder for natives to get jobs, compared with a European average of 45%. Three-quarters argue that immigrants put too much pressure on public services. But the natives are not as xenophobic as their leaders suppose. Britons dislike skilled workers and students less than other immigrants. (Indeed, by European standards, they are exceptionally keen to discriminate between such desirable arrivals and the rest.) More important, they know the government’s policies aren’t working: immigration scores even lower than health, a Tory disaster area. If the net migration target is missed they will become angrier.
Even if Mr Cameron cannot scrap that foolish target, the government could take a few useful steps. Some groups, such as workers on company transfers and students, could be exempted from the target. The government should make it easier to move from study to work, at least for students at the best institutions. Somebody who can make it to a leading university will almost certainly prove an asset to Britain. The government should also speed and simplify the visa system. It has hacked back much of the red tape that binds business, and should do the same to immigration rules.
As emerging countries grow, the enthusiasm of young, talented foreigners to get an education in a British university or to sell their wares to Britain’s relatively prosperous consumers is likely to diminish. For now, though, the country’s global popularity gives it a huge advantage, which the government is squandering. The world is a competitive place. Britain is trying to run with its shoelaces tied together.
SOURCE
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney seeks power to bar people from Canada
There are a number of good reasons for not letting certain people into Canada: having a criminal record, being deemed a threat to the security of residents or the security of the country, and involvement in human rights violations, among others. Decisions about entry are made by border officials every day.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney thinks he should also have a say.
Kenney announced last week that he will seek new powers to bar certain people from entering Canada if the minister concludes that it is justified by “public policy considerations.” It’s a vague term that has yet to be defined, but he says it would mostly apply to people entering with the intent to promote hatred and spark violence.
Kenney says the recent attempt by Qur’an-burning preacher Terry Jones to cross the border demonstrates the need for the law. Canadian border officials found, in the nick of time, that Jones had a minor U.S. conviction for breach of peace and were able to keep him out. If the proposed law, which will go in front of a Commons immigration committee in the fall, was in place, Kenney could have stepped in from the get-go.
But Kenney is not shy in exercising his ministerial powers and has done so before. In 2009, his office arranged to bar British MP George Galloway from entering Canada, allegedly for supporting Hamas, which is designated by Canada as a terrorist group. A year later, the Federal Court ruled that Galloway was denied because the government did not like his political views, not because of national security.
As a result, there is well-founded concern that this new law could be applied inconsistently and arbitrarily. And proponents of free speech may argue that it shouldn’t be the role of the government to keep out those with views we may find collectively reprehensible.
Yet Kenney says he will try to ensure that the law can’t be abused. He intends to issue a list of criteria by which one can be denied before the parliamentary committee, and reach out to his own party and the opposition for feedback. He insists he isn’t looking for “some broad generalized power to prevent the admission of people to Canada whose political opinions we disagree with.”
But the question is: if Kenney can already step in for “exceptional cases” at the border, why the need to enshrine it in law? And given his government’s track record, how can we be sure the law won’t be abused? We can’t. This is a bad plan and the minister would be wise to drop it now.
SOURCE
Sunday, October 21, 2012
U.S. immigration choice: Education vs. diversity, or both?
People around the world with accredited degrees in science and math should "get a green card stapled to their diploma," Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in his Tuesday night debate with President Barack Obama, who has made similar appeals to retain skilled foreign students.
Stewed over by lawmakers since 2009, the visa-stapled degree is a bipartisan idea that Congress has been unable to achieve. Election-year politicking brought a rare opening but then quickly shut the door to compromise this fall -- specifically, whether to create more opportunities for highly educated scientists and engineers to stay in the United States at the expense of shutting down a random lottery of visas.
"Do we want to have 6,000 Iranians coming here or do we want 6,000 scientists and researchers?" U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Coronado, asked on the House of Representatives floor. "Do we want over 2,000 Moroccans (or) individuals who have proved they have an asset?"
In other words, congressional Republicans said, the United States can award special green cards for permanent residency to foreign scientists and engineers or it can give out the visas in a random global lottery, but it cannot do both.
They sought to replace the "diversity visa lottery" with 55,000 visas annually granting permanent residency to immigrants with advanced U.S. degrees in science, technology, engineering or math, called the STEM fields. Most Democrats reject that choice, arguing that America has room for both visa programs. Neither Romney nor Obama has weighed in on the lottery side of the debate.
The House debate collapsed in late September in a hail of carefully calibrated finger-pointing but left open an important question: Should the country retain the most highly educated migrants by sacrificing a lottery that over the past 17 years has opened the door to thousands of people? Or do both?
Everyone expects the issue to return once the political season cools off.
"We should keep the great students already studying at Stanford and Berkeley and not worry about bringing in people who may or may not contribute to U.S. competitiveness," said author Vivek Wadhwa, who has warned of a Silicon Valley "immigrant exodus" of talented entrepreneurs.
Attaching visas to doctorates and master's degrees has bipartisan appeal and a strong constituency in Silicon Valley, but the diversity lottery has its defenders: people like Michael Shklovsky, whose Israeli florist parents got a break with the visa lottery that changed their family's trajectory.
"They weren't major professors or highly accomplished scientists," said Shklovsky, 33, a civil trial attorney who lives in El Cerrito. "There was really no way for us to come in other than through a lottery."
The diversity allocation was originally designed to help Europeans choked off in the 1980s by immigration policy favoring immediate kin of people already here. Today, nearly half who win the visas are from Africa. Defenders say the lottery is still the only legal immigration chance for the kind of plucky workers who historically defined American immigration.
Shklovsky was 16 when his parents won the visa, sold their Tel Aviv flower shop and moved the family to Contra Costa County in the mid-1990s. His father recently retired as a Martinez mechanic, his mother is a Montessori school head teacher and his brother is an assistant bank manager. "I'm really happy I'm here. I'm happy we left," he said.
About 50,000 people win the lottery each year, a small slice of the approximately 1 million who come in, mostly through family ties or work sponsorships.
Lottery eligibility requires little more than a high school degree, and only those from countries with low rates of U.S. immigration can apply.
On the other side of the debate is Marcos Hung, 24, born in Argentina to Taiwanese immigrants and now working at Stanford Hospital on a soon-to-expire student visa. He applied for a diversity visa, but lost out -- the chances of winning are about 1 in a 100.
"That's why they call it a lottery," said Hung, a bioengineer who already has his name on two patents.
His chances of winning a so-called STEM visa would be closer to 100 percent -- he has a master's in bioengineering from Rice University in Texas. Without it, he will likely go the more traditional Silicon Valley route -- hoping an employer will sponsor him for a temporary H-1B visa, and eventually being sponsored for permanent residency -- which can take many years and cost a small fortune in legal fees.
Republican and Democratic legislators say they want to make it easier for people like Hung to get green cards, but they disagree on how to do it.
A longtime diversity visa opponent, House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, sought to add the doctorate visas by killing the lottery. U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, the minority leader of the immigration subcommittee, wanted to add the STEM visas and keep the lottery.
On the House floor, Lofgren described the Smith version as a "sinister" ruse to cut immigration while showing a pro-immigration GOP face before the presidential election.
Even some immigrant advocates who once endorsed the lottery argue that it has done its work by welcoming more than 800,000 people since 1995.
Thirty Democrats joined Republicans voting for Smith's version, including Bay Area Reps. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, and Jerry McNerney, D-Stockton.
Garamendi said in an interview that he prefers to keep diversity visas -- "it's a value statement about who we are as Americans," he said -- but felt a need to compromise.
However, he said the Republicans set up the vote to fail by requiring two-thirds support instead of a simple majority. The tally fell 20 votes short, 257 to 158.
"That's the game," Garamendi said. "It's sad, but that's what most of this year's votes were about."
Other advocates for high-skill immigration say more Democrats should reconsider the "all-or-nothing" approach.
"Having diversity is important," Wadhwa said, "but I don't think anyone would say that America lacks diversity."
SOURCE
Deportation waiver process becomes campaign issue
As the federal government continues issuing its first round of deportation waivers to certain unauthorized immigrants, supporters and critics of the much-debated program are weighing presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s pledge to halt the program if he wins office.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program grants a two-year reprieve from deportation to eligible applicants, with possible renewal, and allows them to seek a job permit. People must be 18 to 30 years old and have arrived in the U.S. before they turned 16. They also must have graduated from high school or college, have no criminal record and meet other criteria.
An estimated 1.3 million individuals nationwide could qualify, including more than 400,000 in California — the highest count of any state.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it had received nearly 180,000 applications and approved 4,591 as of Oct. 10, the most recent tally available. The agency does not provide regional breakdowns, but several immigration lawyers in San Diego County said some clients have gotten their exemptions.
In recent days, Romney has said that as president he would cancel Deferred Action but honor work permits already granted by the Obama administration. Some Republicans back his proposal, others want him to continue the program amid a Congress deadlocked on immigration issues and still others urge him to not only end the program but also rescind all approvals.
Deferred Action “is still a bad idea,” said Peter Nunez of San Diego, a former U.S. attorney here and a vocal opponent of allowing any residency reprieve for people who are in the United States without permission. “Nothing that Obama or (Gov. Jerry) Brown have done changes the reality that they are rewarding illegal immigration, the worst part of which is that it encourages more illegal immigration.”
Last month, Brown signed legislation allowing those who receive Deferred Action waivers to obtain driver’s licenses in the state.
In downtown San Diego, immigration attorney Lilia Velasquez said she has filed about 90 Deferred Action applications and that a handful have been approved.
She and some other lawyers are encouraging people who seem to meet all the requirements and want to apply to do so as soon as possible.
“Students who have clean cases should not wait until the end of the year, just in case Romney is elected,” Velasquez said.
Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego said the group’s staff is contacting people on a waiting list from its August workshop session about Deferred Action — to see how many of them still need help.
The nonprofit organization is stopping short of advising potential applicants to file sooner or later.
“If there is significant concern, then perhaps it might be best to wait,” Rios said. “I think they have to be as well informed as they can be and decide for themselves if it makes sense.”
President Barack Obama announced the Deferred Action program in June, and the application period began in mid-August. The evaluation time is running one to two months, but immigration experts and federal officials expect the process to take longer once more applications are filed.
SOURCE
U.S. immigration choice: Education vs. diversity, or both?
People around the world with accredited degrees in science and math should "get a green card stapled to their diploma," Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in his Tuesday night debate with President Barack Obama, who has made similar appeals to retain skilled foreign students.
Stewed over by lawmakers since 2009, the visa-stapled degree is a bipartisan idea that Congress has been unable to achieve. Election-year politicking brought a rare opening but then quickly shut the door to compromise this fall -- specifically, whether to create more opportunities for highly educated scientists and engineers to stay in the United States at the expense of shutting down a random lottery of visas.
"Do we want to have 6,000 Iranians coming here or do we want 6,000 scientists and researchers?" U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Coronado, asked on the House of Representatives floor. "Do we want over 2,000 Moroccans (or) individuals who have proved they have an asset?"
In other words, congressional Republicans said, the United States can award special green cards for permanent residency to foreign scientists and engineers or it can give out the visas in a random global lottery, but it cannot do both.
They sought to replace the "diversity visa lottery" with 55,000 visas annually granting permanent residency to immigrants with advanced U.S. degrees in science, technology, engineering or math, called the STEM fields. Most Democrats reject that choice, arguing that America has room for both visa programs. Neither Romney nor Obama has weighed in on the lottery side of the debate.
The House debate collapsed in late September in a hail of carefully calibrated finger-pointing but left open an important question: Should the country retain the most highly educated migrants by sacrificing a lottery that over the past 17 years has opened the door to thousands of people? Or do both?
Everyone expects the issue to return once the political season cools off.
"We should keep the great students already studying at Stanford and Berkeley and not worry about bringing in people who may or may not contribute to U.S. competitiveness," said author Vivek Wadhwa, who has warned of a Silicon Valley "immigrant exodus" of talented entrepreneurs.
Attaching visas to doctorates and master's degrees has bipartisan appeal and a strong constituency in Silicon Valley, but the diversity lottery has its defenders: people like Michael Shklovsky, whose Israeli florist parents got a break with the visa lottery that changed their family's trajectory.
"They weren't major professors or highly accomplished scientists," said Shklovsky, 33, a civil trial attorney who lives in El Cerrito. "There was really no way for us to come in other than through a lottery."
The diversity allocation was originally designed to help Europeans choked off in the 1980s by immigration policy favoring immediate kin of people already here. Today, nearly half who win the visas are from Africa. Defenders say the lottery is still the only legal immigration chance for the kind of plucky workers who historically defined American immigration.
Shklovsky was 16 when his parents won the visa, sold their Tel Aviv flower shop and moved the family to Contra Costa County in the mid-1990s. His father recently retired as a Martinez mechanic, his mother is a Montessori school head teacher and his brother is an assistant bank manager. "I'm really happy I'm here. I'm happy we left," he said.
About 50,000 people win the lottery each year, a small slice of the approximately 1 million who come in, mostly through family ties or work sponsorships.
Lottery eligibility requires little more than a high school degree, and only those from countries with low rates of U.S. immigration can apply.
On the other side of the debate is Marcos Hung, 24, born in Argentina to Taiwanese immigrants and now working at Stanford Hospital on a soon-to-expire student visa. He applied for a diversity visa, but lost out -- the chances of winning are about 1 in a 100.
"That's why they call it a lottery," said Hung, a bioengineer who already has his name on two patents.
His chances of winning a so-called STEM visa would be closer to 100 percent -- he has a master's in bioengineering from Rice University in Texas. Without it, he will likely go the more traditional Silicon Valley route -- hoping an employer will sponsor him for a temporary H-1B visa, and eventually being sponsored for permanent residency -- which can take many years and cost a small fortune in legal fees.
Republican and Democratic legislators say they want to make it easier for people like Hung to get green cards, but they disagree on how to do it.
A longtime diversity visa opponent, House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, sought to add the doctorate visas by killing the lottery. U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, the minority leader of the immigration subcommittee, wanted to add the STEM visas and keep the lottery.
On the House floor, Lofgren described the Smith version as a "sinister" ruse to cut immigration while showing a pro-immigration GOP face before the presidential election.
Even some immigrant advocates who once endorsed the lottery argue that it has done its work by welcoming more than 800,000 people since 1995.
Thirty Democrats joined Republicans voting for Smith's version, including Bay Area Reps. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, and Jerry McNerney, D-Stockton.
Garamendi said in an interview that he prefers to keep diversity visas -- "it's a value statement about who we are as Americans," he said -- but felt a need to compromise.
However, he said the Republicans set up the vote to fail by requiring two-thirds support instead of a simple majority. The tally fell 20 votes short, 257 to 158.
"That's the game," Garamendi said. "It's sad, but that's what most of this year's votes were about."
Other advocates for high-skill immigration say more Democrats should reconsider the "all-or-nothing" approach.
"Having diversity is important," Wadhwa said, "but I don't think anyone would say that America lacks diversity."
SOURCE
Deportation waiver process becomes campaign issue
As the federal government continues issuing its first round of deportation waivers to certain unauthorized immigrants, supporters and critics of the much-debated program are weighing presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s pledge to halt the program if he wins office.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program grants a two-year reprieve from deportation to eligible applicants, with possible renewal, and allows them to seek a job permit. People must be 18 to 30 years old and have arrived in the U.S. before they turned 16. They also must have graduated from high school or college, have no criminal record and meet other criteria.
An estimated 1.3 million individuals nationwide could qualify, including more than 400,000 in California — the highest count of any state.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it had received nearly 180,000 applications and approved 4,591 as of Oct. 10, the most recent tally available. The agency does not provide regional breakdowns, but several immigration lawyers in San Diego County said some clients have gotten their exemptions.
In recent days, Romney has said that as president he would cancel Deferred Action but honor work permits already granted by the Obama administration. Some Republicans back his proposal, others want him to continue the program amid a Congress deadlocked on immigration issues and still others urge him to not only end the program but also rescind all approvals.
Deferred Action “is still a bad idea,” said Peter Nunez of San Diego, a former U.S. attorney here and a vocal opponent of allowing any residency reprieve for people who are in the United States without permission. “Nothing that Obama or (Gov. Jerry) Brown have done changes the reality that they are rewarding illegal immigration, the worst part of which is that it encourages more illegal immigration.”
Last month, Brown signed legislation allowing those who receive Deferred Action waivers to obtain driver’s licenses in the state.
In downtown San Diego, immigration attorney Lilia Velasquez said she has filed about 90 Deferred Action applications and that a handful have been approved.
She and some other lawyers are encouraging people who seem to meet all the requirements and want to apply to do so as soon as possible.
“Students who have clean cases should not wait until the end of the year, just in case Romney is elected,” Velasquez said.
Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego said the group’s staff is contacting people on a waiting list from its August workshop session about Deferred Action — to see how many of them still need help.
The nonprofit organization is stopping short of advising potential applicants to file sooner or later.
“If there is significant concern, then perhaps it might be best to wait,” Rios said. “I think they have to be as well informed as they can be and decide for themselves if it makes sense.”
President Barack Obama announced the Deferred Action program in June, and the application period began in mid-August. The evaluation time is running one to two months, but immigration experts and federal officials expect the process to take longer once more applications are filed.
SOURCE
Saturday, October 20, 2012
ACLU sues LA County sheriff for allegedly denying bail to arrestees on immigration holds
Guilty until proven innocent?
Arrestees who say they were denied bail because immigration agents wanted them held sued the Los Angeles County sheriff Friday claiming they were illegally detained for weeks or months.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California filed the lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles challenging Sheriff Lee Baca’s ability to detain arrestees solely on the basis of a request from the federal immigration agency, when the inmates are eligible for bail or other forms of release.
Plaintiff Duncan Roy — a British film director — said he was held in jail for nearly three months because Immigration and Customs Enforcement had filed paperwork asking the Sheriff’s Department to keep him in custody, even though he tried multiple times to post bail.
“The sheriff says, he’s on an ICE hold, and the ICE people say, well, he’s got to make bond,” said Roy, who was eventually released after ICE withdrew its request, known as an immigration detainer, or hold. “They keep you in this limbo where each is blaming the other organization, but basically they’re colluding with each other to keep you there.”
Roy, who later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor extortion charge, is one of several named plaintiffs among tens of thousands of inmates who should have been eligible for release but were detained because the department says it must honor the immigration holds, according to the ACLU.
ACLU staff attorney Jennie Pasquarella said the suit — which seeks class-action status — challenges the validity of immigration detainers, which have been increasingly used in jails across the country under the federal government’s flagship immigration enforcement program.
“There has to be authority for them to actually deprive a person of liberty, and we’re saying there isn’t based on state and federal law,” Pasquarella said.
Inmates should be allowed to leave custody if they post bail or qualify for release, then federal immigration authorities could seek to take them into custody if they so choose, immigrant advocates said.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Nicole Nishida said the department may hold people at the request of federal immigration authorities. “If ICE tells us there’s a hold, we’re only doing what they wish,” Nishida said, adding that the detainers are usually placed for 48 hours but could go longer depending on the case.
ICE said in a statement that the agency uses detainers to ensure that potentially dangerous criminals are not released from jails. On its website, the agency says that if immigration agents fail to take custody of an inmate after 48 hours, excluding weekends and holidays, local law enforcement agencies are required to release the inmate.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction ordering the sheriff not to detain anyone solely on the basis of an immigration hold, and damages for plaintiffs who were unlawfully held. In the suit, the ACLU states the Sheriff’s Department recently agreed to put forth a policy clarifying that inmates should be able to post bail even if they have an immigration detainer.
The federal government’s Secure Communities program lets immigration agents check arrestees’ fingerprints against homeland security records to determine if someone might be in the country illegally.
In the past four years, immigration agents have removed more than 220,000 people from the country under the program. Roughly 12 percent of them came from Los Angeles County, according to federal government statistics.
SOURCE
Cuba's immigration reform casts spotlight on decades-old U.S. law
Cuba's decision this week to make it easier to leave and enter the country is unlikely in the short term to prompt a sudden exodus, but could result in a rethinking of preferential treatment Cuban migrants have long received in the United States.
Alarmed by the number of Cubans arriving in Miami for economic reasons, rather than the political causes that prompted earlier waves of migration from the island, even some Cuban exiles are increasingly questioning a decades-old law that has guaranteed Cubans safe haven in the United States.
The Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act of 1966 was passed during the Lyndon Johnson administration to adjust the status of some 300,000 Cubans who found themselves in legal limbo after fleeing Cuba's socialist revolution of 1959, arriving in the United States on temporary refugee visas.
The law was unusual, as it did not require the Cubans to make a case for political asylum, and automatically granted them entry and the path to permanent residency.
Nor did it envisage a cut-off date. In those early days, most Cubans - as well as U.S. policy-makers - never imagined the exodus would continue for decades, since they were convinced the communist government led by Fidel Castro would not last. The law has remained on the books ever since, giving Cubans a uniquely privileged immigration status, rivaled only by Hungarians in 1956.
"In all candor, it's anachronistic. The law really doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense today," said Jose Azel at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
Under new rules announced on Tuesday, Cubans will no longer need to obtain a special exit visa to travel abroad, and will need only a passport.
But most Cubans, who earn barely $25 a month on state salaries, will still face huge financial hurdles in order to travel, and opposition activists may still be banned.
U.S. officials say the new Cuban migration rules will not affect existing visa programs for Cubans seeking to travel to the United States.
"I think the question becomes whether more Cubans desire to travel and are applying for visas. ... So obviously, we need to see how it affects the flow of travel," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters on Tuesday.
The United States already accepts about 20,000 Cubans annually via a heavily oversubscribed immigration lottery, as well as thousands more under special programs for family members seeking reunification, and political asylum cases.
SOURCE
ACLU sues LA County sheriff for allegedly denying bail to arrestees on immigration holds
Guilty until proven innocent?
Arrestees who say they were denied bail because immigration agents wanted them held sued the Los Angeles County sheriff Friday claiming they were illegally detained for weeks or months.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California filed the lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles challenging Sheriff Lee Baca’s ability to detain arrestees solely on the basis of a request from the federal immigration agency, when the inmates are eligible for bail or other forms of release.
Plaintiff Duncan Roy — a British film director — said he was held in jail for nearly three months because Immigration and Customs Enforcement had filed paperwork asking the Sheriff’s Department to keep him in custody, even though he tried multiple times to post bail.
“The sheriff says, he’s on an ICE hold, and the ICE people say, well, he’s got to make bond,” said Roy, who was eventually released after ICE withdrew its request, known as an immigration detainer, or hold. “They keep you in this limbo where each is blaming the other organization, but basically they’re colluding with each other to keep you there.”
Roy, who later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor extortion charge, is one of several named plaintiffs among tens of thousands of inmates who should have been eligible for release but were detained because the department says it must honor the immigration holds, according to the ACLU.
ACLU staff attorney Jennie Pasquarella said the suit — which seeks class-action status — challenges the validity of immigration detainers, which have been increasingly used in jails across the country under the federal government’s flagship immigration enforcement program.
“There has to be authority for them to actually deprive a person of liberty, and we’re saying there isn’t based on state and federal law,” Pasquarella said.
Inmates should be allowed to leave custody if they post bail or qualify for release, then federal immigration authorities could seek to take them into custody if they so choose, immigrant advocates said.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Nicole Nishida said the department may hold people at the request of federal immigration authorities. “If ICE tells us there’s a hold, we’re only doing what they wish,” Nishida said, adding that the detainers are usually placed for 48 hours but could go longer depending on the case.
ICE said in a statement that the agency uses detainers to ensure that potentially dangerous criminals are not released from jails. On its website, the agency says that if immigration agents fail to take custody of an inmate after 48 hours, excluding weekends and holidays, local law enforcement agencies are required to release the inmate.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction ordering the sheriff not to detain anyone solely on the basis of an immigration hold, and damages for plaintiffs who were unlawfully held. In the suit, the ACLU states the Sheriff’s Department recently agreed to put forth a policy clarifying that inmates should be able to post bail even if they have an immigration detainer.
The federal government’s Secure Communities program lets immigration agents check arrestees’ fingerprints against homeland security records to determine if someone might be in the country illegally.
In the past four years, immigration agents have removed more than 220,000 people from the country under the program. Roughly 12 percent of them came from Los Angeles County, according to federal government statistics.
SOURCE
Cuba's immigration reform casts spotlight on decades-old U.S. law
Cuba's decision this week to make it easier to leave and enter the country is unlikely in the short term to prompt a sudden exodus, but could result in a rethinking of preferential treatment Cuban migrants have long received in the United States.
Alarmed by the number of Cubans arriving in Miami for economic reasons, rather than the political causes that prompted earlier waves of migration from the island, even some Cuban exiles are increasingly questioning a decades-old law that has guaranteed Cubans safe haven in the United States.
The Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act of 1966 was passed during the Lyndon Johnson administration to adjust the status of some 300,000 Cubans who found themselves in legal limbo after fleeing Cuba's socialist revolution of 1959, arriving in the United States on temporary refugee visas.
The law was unusual, as it did not require the Cubans to make a case for political asylum, and automatically granted them entry and the path to permanent residency.
Nor did it envisage a cut-off date. In those early days, most Cubans - as well as U.S. policy-makers - never imagined the exodus would continue for decades, since they were convinced the communist government led by Fidel Castro would not last. The law has remained on the books ever since, giving Cubans a uniquely privileged immigration status, rivaled only by Hungarians in 1956.
"In all candor, it's anachronistic. The law really doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense today," said Jose Azel at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
Under new rules announced on Tuesday, Cubans will no longer need to obtain a special exit visa to travel abroad, and will need only a passport.
But most Cubans, who earn barely $25 a month on state salaries, will still face huge financial hurdles in order to travel, and opposition activists may still be banned.
U.S. officials say the new Cuban migration rules will not affect existing visa programs for Cubans seeking to travel to the United States.
"I think the question becomes whether more Cubans desire to travel and are applying for visas. ... So obviously, we need to see how it affects the flow of travel," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters on Tuesday.
The United States already accepts about 20,000 Cubans annually via a heavily oversubscribed immigration lottery, as well as thousands more under special programs for family members seeking reunification, and political asylum cases.
SOURCE
Friday, October 19, 2012
Ninth circus Hands Arizona a Victory on Immigration Law, But Says No to Part of Alabama's
Strict immigration enforcement won one and lost one Wednesday in the courts.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal by a coalition of civil rights groups that are challenging the “show me your papers” provision of Arizona’s immigration law, known as SB 1070.
The provision calls on police, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned parts of the Arizona enforcement law known as SB1070 but ruled that a key provision on requiring police to ask people about their immigration status under certain circumstances can be implemented.
The Obama administration challenged that law in 2010 after Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law.
The coalition's lawyers say the dismissal was needed because it would be quicker to continue challenging the questioning requirement in a lower court rather than tying up the case for months in the appeals court.
In Montgomery, a federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a request from Alabama officials to reconsider its latest ruling in which the court invalidated some provisions of the state’s immigration law.
The Montgomery Advertiser reports that the court rejected a request that the full court review the decision of a three-judge panel.
The court did not give a reason for denying the request.
In August, the court invalidated several parts of the state's immigration law.
These included provisions that made contracts with immigrants unenforceable and that made it a crime to "harbor, conceal or shield" undocumented immigrants from law enforcement.
The 11th Circuit ruled the contracts provision was designed to make the lives of undocumented immigrants so difficult they would be forced to leave the state.
The appeals court ruled that the Alabama schools provision wrongly singles out children who are in the country illegally.
Alabama was the only state that passed such a requirement and the 11th Circuit previously had blocked that part of the law from being enforced.
The court also upheld Alabama's "show me your papers" provision in Alabama's law that allows police officers to ask someone they stop for another reason -and who they suspect may be in the country illegally- for their immigration documents.
The judges said fear of the law "significantly deters undocumented children from enrolling in and attending school ...." Last fall, educators in Alabama reported countless number of students withdrawing from schools as a result of the law.
Both private groups and the Obama administration filed lawsuits to block Alabama's law, considered the toughest in the country.
In Alabama, legal immigrants also reportedly left the state, leaving many employers in industries that depended largely on an immigrant labor force struggling with a shortage of workers.
Legal Latino employees evidently opted to leave their jobs and the area because they either felt the state was hostile, or because they had family members who were undocumented, some employers said.
Those employers have turned to refugees and Puerto Ricans in other states to fill the void.
They have imported hundreds of refugee and Puerto Rican workers after having tried to hire local residents, who either did not pass background screening or quit not long after starting. Refugees are lawfully present in the United States and, as such, are authorized to work here. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.
Alabama was one of several states that passed immigration laws in the last two years on the contention that the federal government has been derelict in its responsibility to control the borders and enforce laws that punish, and by extension would cut down on, illegal immigration.
SOURCE
Obama's Immigration Fib
On several occasions during Tuesday's debate, Barack Obama accused Mitt Romney of lying, which has become a sort of over-arching theme for a campaign that can't run on the president's record. But on the topic of immigration, it was Mr. Obama who was stretching the truth.
The president accused Mr. Romney of calling Arizona's controversial immigration-enforcement law "a model for the nation." Mr. Romney denied the assertion. "I said that the E-Verify portion of the Arizona law, which is the portion of the law which says that employers could be able to determine whether someone is here illegally or not illegally, that that was a model for the nation," said the former Massachusetts governor.
Mr. Romney is correct. During a Republican primary debate earlier this year, he expressed support for an Arizona statute that mandates the use of E-Verify, though in fact the statute was part of legislation enacted in 2007, not the law that passed in 2010 and led the Obama administration to sue the state. Mr. Romney has expressed support for the 2010 law as well, but only in the context of supporting the ability of states to address illegal immigration when the feds refuse to do so. Mr. Obama suggested that Mr. Romney said he wants every state to adopt Arizona's 2010 enforcement measure, which isn't true.
I've been as critical as anyone when it comes to the GOP's handling of the immigration issue, but Mr. Romney was right to call out the president for putting words in his mouth. Mr. Obama already enjoys a huge lead among Latino voters—recent polls put it at 30 percentage points—so it's passing strange that he felt the need to pile on with fibs.
SOURCE
Ninth circus Hands Arizona a Victory on Immigration Law, But Says No to Part of Alabama's
Strict immigration enforcement won one and lost one Wednesday in the courts.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal by a coalition of civil rights groups that are challenging the “show me your papers” provision of Arizona’s immigration law, known as SB 1070.
The provision calls on police, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned parts of the Arizona enforcement law known as SB1070 but ruled that a key provision on requiring police to ask people about their immigration status under certain circumstances can be implemented.
The Obama administration challenged that law in 2010 after Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law.
The coalition's lawyers say the dismissal was needed because it would be quicker to continue challenging the questioning requirement in a lower court rather than tying up the case for months in the appeals court.
In Montgomery, a federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a request from Alabama officials to reconsider its latest ruling in which the court invalidated some provisions of the state’s immigration law.
The Montgomery Advertiser reports that the court rejected a request that the full court review the decision of a three-judge panel.
The court did not give a reason for denying the request.
In August, the court invalidated several parts of the state's immigration law.
These included provisions that made contracts with immigrants unenforceable and that made it a crime to "harbor, conceal or shield" undocumented immigrants from law enforcement.
The 11th Circuit ruled the contracts provision was designed to make the lives of undocumented immigrants so difficult they would be forced to leave the state.
The appeals court ruled that the Alabama schools provision wrongly singles out children who are in the country illegally.
Alabama was the only state that passed such a requirement and the 11th Circuit previously had blocked that part of the law from being enforced.
The court also upheld Alabama's "show me your papers" provision in Alabama's law that allows police officers to ask someone they stop for another reason -and who they suspect may be in the country illegally- for their immigration documents.
The judges said fear of the law "significantly deters undocumented children from enrolling in and attending school ...." Last fall, educators in Alabama reported countless number of students withdrawing from schools as a result of the law.
Both private groups and the Obama administration filed lawsuits to block Alabama's law, considered the toughest in the country.
In Alabama, legal immigrants also reportedly left the state, leaving many employers in industries that depended largely on an immigrant labor force struggling with a shortage of workers.
Legal Latino employees evidently opted to leave their jobs and the area because they either felt the state was hostile, or because they had family members who were undocumented, some employers said.
Those employers have turned to refugees and Puerto Ricans in other states to fill the void.
They have imported hundreds of refugee and Puerto Rican workers after having tried to hire local residents, who either did not pass background screening or quit not long after starting. Refugees are lawfully present in the United States and, as such, are authorized to work here. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.
Alabama was one of several states that passed immigration laws in the last two years on the contention that the federal government has been derelict in its responsibility to control the borders and enforce laws that punish, and by extension would cut down on, illegal immigration.
SOURCE
Obama's Immigration Fib
On several occasions during Tuesday's debate, Barack Obama accused Mitt Romney of lying, which has become a sort of over-arching theme for a campaign that can't run on the president's record. But on the topic of immigration, it was Mr. Obama who was stretching the truth.
The president accused Mr. Romney of calling Arizona's controversial immigration-enforcement law "a model for the nation." Mr. Romney denied the assertion. "I said that the E-Verify portion of the Arizona law, which is the portion of the law which says that employers could be able to determine whether someone is here illegally or not illegally, that that was a model for the nation," said the former Massachusetts governor.
Mr. Romney is correct. During a Republican primary debate earlier this year, he expressed support for an Arizona statute that mandates the use of E-Verify, though in fact the statute was part of legislation enacted in 2007, not the law that passed in 2010 and led the Obama administration to sue the state. Mr. Romney has expressed support for the 2010 law as well, but only in the context of supporting the ability of states to address illegal immigration when the feds refuse to do so. Mr. Obama suggested that Mr. Romney said he wants every state to adopt Arizona's 2010 enforcement measure, which isn't true.
I've been as critical as anyone when it comes to the GOP's handling of the immigration issue, but Mr. Romney was right to call out the president for putting words in his mouth. Mr. Obama already enjoys a huge lead among Latino voters—recent polls put it at 30 percentage points—so it's passing strange that he felt the need to pile on with fibs.
SOURCE
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Romney softens immigration stance on 'self-deportation' at debate
Or so The Guardian says below
Mitt Romney continued his march towards a centrist position on immigration during the second presidential debate, presenting a friendly face to undocumented immigrants starkly in contrast to his previous position.
Quizzed about his support for the policy of "self-deportation" that he articulated during the primary season debates between Republicans, he portrayed it as a matter of choice on the part of individuals. "People make their own choice, and if they can't find the job they want, then they'll make a decision to go to a place where they have better opportunities."
But that ignored a crucial aspect of the "self-deportation" policy espoused not just by Romney during the primary season but by his main immigration advisers, notably the Kansas politician Kris Kobach who was the architect of several of the laws clamping down on undocumented immigrants introduced across the US.
As Kobach explained to the Guardian earlier this year, the idea would be to make life so uncomfortable for undocumented Latinos and jobs so hard to find that they would be forced out.
Romney, mindful no doubt of the importance of the Hispanic vote in several crucial battleground status such as Florida and Nevada, also went further than he has before in embracing the idea of offering a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children. He said that service in the US military would be "one way" that such a pathway would be found – in contrast to previous statements that military service would be the only way residency could be obtained.
Barack Obama did overstep the mark in one regard, however, in that he accused Romney of exhorting Arizona's law clamping down on undocumented Hispanics as a "model for the nation". In fact, during the primary season Romney lauded just one specific part of the Arizona law, SB 1070, called E-Verify – a system that allows employers to check a federal database to see if people applying for work are documented or not.
SOURCE
Boat People arriving in Australia now a flood
IMMIGRATION officials have conceded that more asylum seekers have arrived by boat since the budget than had been predicted, but they refused to be drawn on how much the extra numbers will cost taxpayers.
The government says people smugglers are profiting by as much as $2 million for each vessel that arrives.
The Coalition has seized on budget forecasts in May of 450 asylum seeker arrivals each month - a predicted total of 5400 for the financial year, which has already been eclipsed in the first three months starting in July.
The arrival of almost 500 asylum seekers on five boats at the weekend underlined the pressure on border controls. Nearly 8000 people have arrived by boat since July.
Labor's revised Pacific plan for Nauru and Papua New Guinea will accommodate about 2100 people, far fewer than the number who have arrived since August 13, when the policy was embraced.
The Home Affairs Minister, Jason Clare, said people smugglers were making more money than some drug smugglers and they would fight hard to keep making money. People smugglers earned more than $1 million per boat and sometimes up to $2 million, he said.
Immigration officials were questioned in parliamentary hearings yesterday about the surge in arrivals but deflected the potential cost to the budget, which Labor brought down with only a thin surplus.
The Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, denied offshore processing on Nauru, embraced by Labor in August after months of political stalemate over the people swap with Malaysia, had failed to deter arrivals.
''There is no doubt that there is wide awareness now of our new policies and that they are being noted,'' he told ABC Radio. ''However, as I've consistently said, we have a very significant challenge in that we are tackling the lies and the spin of people smugglers.''
The Immigration Department chief, Martin Bowles, said the number of asylum seekers was higher than expected. He said the costs were a matter for the government to deal with in the midyear budget update.
The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young asked officials who would bear responsibility for the psychological health of asylum seekers on Nauru.
SOURCE
Romney softens immigration stance on 'self-deportation' at debate
Or so The Guardian says below
Mitt Romney continued his march towards a centrist position on immigration during the second presidential debate, presenting a friendly face to undocumented immigrants starkly in contrast to his previous position.
Quizzed about his support for the policy of "self-deportation" that he articulated during the primary season debates between Republicans, he portrayed it as a matter of choice on the part of individuals. "People make their own choice, and if they can't find the job they want, then they'll make a decision to go to a place where they have better opportunities."
But that ignored a crucial aspect of the "self-deportation" policy espoused not just by Romney during the primary season but by his main immigration advisers, notably the Kansas politician Kris Kobach who was the architect of several of the laws clamping down on undocumented immigrants introduced across the US.
As Kobach explained to the Guardian earlier this year, the idea would be to make life so uncomfortable for undocumented Latinos and jobs so hard to find that they would be forced out.
Romney, mindful no doubt of the importance of the Hispanic vote in several crucial battleground status such as Florida and Nevada, also went further than he has before in embracing the idea of offering a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children. He said that service in the US military would be "one way" that such a pathway would be found – in contrast to previous statements that military service would be the only way residency could be obtained.
Barack Obama did overstep the mark in one regard, however, in that he accused Romney of exhorting Arizona's law clamping down on undocumented Hispanics as a "model for the nation". In fact, during the primary season Romney lauded just one specific part of the Arizona law, SB 1070, called E-Verify – a system that allows employers to check a federal database to see if people applying for work are documented or not.
SOURCE
Boat People arriving in Australia now a flood
IMMIGRATION officials have conceded that more asylum seekers have arrived by boat since the budget than had been predicted, but they refused to be drawn on how much the extra numbers will cost taxpayers.
The government says people smugglers are profiting by as much as $2 million for each vessel that arrives.
The Coalition has seized on budget forecasts in May of 450 asylum seeker arrivals each month - a predicted total of 5400 for the financial year, which has already been eclipsed in the first three months starting in July.
The arrival of almost 500 asylum seekers on five boats at the weekend underlined the pressure on border controls. Nearly 8000 people have arrived by boat since July.
Labor's revised Pacific plan for Nauru and Papua New Guinea will accommodate about 2100 people, far fewer than the number who have arrived since August 13, when the policy was embraced.
The Home Affairs Minister, Jason Clare, said people smugglers were making more money than some drug smugglers and they would fight hard to keep making money. People smugglers earned more than $1 million per boat and sometimes up to $2 million, he said.
Immigration officials were questioned in parliamentary hearings yesterday about the surge in arrivals but deflected the potential cost to the budget, which Labor brought down with only a thin surplus.
The Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, denied offshore processing on Nauru, embraced by Labor in August after months of political stalemate over the people swap with Malaysia, had failed to deter arrivals.
''There is no doubt that there is wide awareness now of our new policies and that they are being noted,'' he told ABC Radio. ''However, as I've consistently said, we have a very significant challenge in that we are tackling the lies and the spin of people smugglers.''
The Immigration Department chief, Martin Bowles, said the number of asylum seekers was higher than expected. He said the costs were a matter for the government to deal with in the midyear budget update.
The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young asked officials who would bear responsibility for the psychological health of asylum seekers on Nauru.
SOURCE
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
ID card for illegal immigrants breezes through L.A. council panel
A plan to provide illegal immigrants with an official city ID card easily won a key vote Tuesday when members of a Los Angeles City Council committee agreed to solicit bids for a third-party vendor to handle the program.
Councilman Ed Reyes, a member of the Arts, Parks, Health and Aging Committee, said it’s “about time” that L.A. residents, regardless of immigration status, have the ability to easily open bank accounts and access city services.
“This card allows people who have been living in the shadows to be out in the light of day," Reyes said, calling Los Angeles a cosmopolitan city with an international economy.
Reyes said opposition to the so-called City Services Card is inevitable because it touches on the hot-button issue of illegal immigration. But in the end, “cooler heads will prevail and understand the humanity of the suggestion,’’ Reyes said.
The committee voted unanimously to ask the full council to approve a request for proposal that would allow potential vendors to study the city’s plan and offer bids on running it.
The committee's review was the first step in a process to create the card system.
Critics say the proposal initially raised by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is the latest indication that Los Angeles leaders are taking an increasingly supportive view of undocumented immigrants as they encourage them to join in the city's civic life.
"It is clearly an accommodation," said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group critical of illegal immigration. "Los Angeles is making it easier for people who have violated federal immigration laws to live in the city."
But backers said the mayor was doing the right thing, pointing out that the initiative could reduce crime because fewer people would have to carry cash.
The idea for the city ID card originated in his office, the mayor said, as part of previous efforts to help immigrants open bank accounts so they wouldn't become targets of crime.
Councilman Richard Alarcon recently introduced a more limited proposal to create a new library card that could also serve as a debit card. But Villaraigosa said he wants to go further and have the city begin offering full-fledged photo IDs.
A handful of cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, issue identification cards to anyone who can prove residency, regardless of immigration status. Villaraigosa said it's time that the Los Angeles metro area — home to an estimated 4.3 million immigrants — joined them.
SOURCE
Turning back illegal boats bound for Australia discussed
THE federal opposition says people smuggling was discussed at leader Tony Abbott's meeting with Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. However, Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa, who was in the meeting on Monday, says Mr Abbott did not raise the coalition policy of turning back boats.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has confirmed Mr Abbott discussed people-smuggling issues with Mr Yudhoyono.
The issue of turning back the boats was discussed in a later meeting with Mr Natalegawa.
"The content of these discussions is private, as it should be," Mr Morrison told ABC Radio on Tuesday, adding the opportunity to discuss a broad range of matters at such a senior level was unprecedented for an opposition.
"(It) has been invaluable, serving to add further to the understanding and trust that already exists."
That would be critical to working in partnership with Indonesia to address people smuggling if the coalition was elected to power, Mr Morrison said.
In a speech to a business function in Jakarta on Monday, Mr Abbott said for Australia, people smuggling had become "a first order economic and security issue".
Border protection blowouts had cost almost $5 billion during the past four years.
As things stood, Australia had partially subcontracted its immigration program to people smugglers, Mr Abbott said.
On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said he had zero concerns about Mr Abbott's one-on-one with the Indonesian's president.
"No, I think it's very positive," he told ABC radio. "Any Australian opposition should have an engagement with Indonesia."
Senator Carr said the government had nothing to be worried about given its own excellent relationship with Jakarta. "I've had more meetings with Marty Natalegawa ... than I have with any other foreign minister," he said.
SOURCE
ID card for illegal immigrants breezes through L.A. council panel
A plan to provide illegal immigrants with an official city ID card easily won a key vote Tuesday when members of a Los Angeles City Council committee agreed to solicit bids for a third-party vendor to handle the program.
Councilman Ed Reyes, a member of the Arts, Parks, Health and Aging Committee, said it’s “about time” that L.A. residents, regardless of immigration status, have the ability to easily open bank accounts and access city services.
“This card allows people who have been living in the shadows to be out in the light of day," Reyes said, calling Los Angeles a cosmopolitan city with an international economy.
Reyes said opposition to the so-called City Services Card is inevitable because it touches on the hot-button issue of illegal immigration. But in the end, “cooler heads will prevail and understand the humanity of the suggestion,’’ Reyes said.
The committee voted unanimously to ask the full council to approve a request for proposal that would allow potential vendors to study the city’s plan and offer bids on running it.
The committee's review was the first step in a process to create the card system.
Critics say the proposal initially raised by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is the latest indication that Los Angeles leaders are taking an increasingly supportive view of undocumented immigrants as they encourage them to join in the city's civic life.
"It is clearly an accommodation," said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group critical of illegal immigration. "Los Angeles is making it easier for people who have violated federal immigration laws to live in the city."
But backers said the mayor was doing the right thing, pointing out that the initiative could reduce crime because fewer people would have to carry cash.
The idea for the city ID card originated in his office, the mayor said, as part of previous efforts to help immigrants open bank accounts so they wouldn't become targets of crime.
Councilman Richard Alarcon recently introduced a more limited proposal to create a new library card that could also serve as a debit card. But Villaraigosa said he wants to go further and have the city begin offering full-fledged photo IDs.
A handful of cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, issue identification cards to anyone who can prove residency, regardless of immigration status. Villaraigosa said it's time that the Los Angeles metro area — home to an estimated 4.3 million immigrants — joined them.
SOURCE
Turning back illegal boats bound for Australia discussed
THE federal opposition says people smuggling was discussed at leader Tony Abbott's meeting with Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. However, Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa, who was in the meeting on Monday, says Mr Abbott did not raise the coalition policy of turning back boats.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has confirmed Mr Abbott discussed people-smuggling issues with Mr Yudhoyono.
The issue of turning back the boats was discussed in a later meeting with Mr Natalegawa.
"The content of these discussions is private, as it should be," Mr Morrison told ABC Radio on Tuesday, adding the opportunity to discuss a broad range of matters at such a senior level was unprecedented for an opposition.
"(It) has been invaluable, serving to add further to the understanding and trust that already exists."
That would be critical to working in partnership with Indonesia to address people smuggling if the coalition was elected to power, Mr Morrison said.
In a speech to a business function in Jakarta on Monday, Mr Abbott said for Australia, people smuggling had become "a first order economic and security issue".
Border protection blowouts had cost almost $5 billion during the past four years.
As things stood, Australia had partially subcontracted its immigration program to people smugglers, Mr Abbott said.
On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said he had zero concerns about Mr Abbott's one-on-one with the Indonesian's president.
"No, I think it's very positive," he told ABC radio. "Any Australian opposition should have an engagement with Indonesia."
Senator Carr said the government had nothing to be worried about given its own excellent relationship with Jakarta. "I've had more meetings with Marty Natalegawa ... than I have with any other foreign minister," he said.
SOURCE
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publication
1. When Tragedy Is the Hallmark of Failed Policy The Death of Agent Nicholas Ivie (Memorandum)
Blogs
2. From Disruption to Dismantling: Feds Turn Up the Heat on MS-13
3. How USCIS Has Tilted DACA Decision-Making
4. DACA Amnesty Stats
5. Grand Old Man of Immigration Bar Weighs In vs. New H-1B Forms
6. The Caption Should Have Read: "EB-5 Investor Ducks Courthouse Camera"
7. ICE Declines to Detain Known Illegal Alien Stopped for Driving on a Suspended License
8. We Should Open Our Eyes to a Wider Set of Migration Issues
SCOTUS To Take Up Immigrant Voting Law
The Supreme Court entered another battle in the nationwide war over voter qualifications, agreeing Monday to consider whether Arizona can require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.
The case won’t affect the Nov. 6 election. The requirement has been blocked by a lower court, and Supreme Court arguments, as yet unscheduled, won’t take place until after Election Day. In June, the justices denied Arizona’s request to lift the lower court order while the state’s appeal proceeded.
But the suit could further set the lines between state and federal control over election procedures, a conflict that dates to the nation’s founding and continues to roil its politics.
The Arizona case involves a 2004 state law passed by voters requiring residents to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Organizations representing Hispanic and Native American voters, among others, filed suit contending that the requirement violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, informally called the motor voter law, which provides that citizens nationwide can register through a universal voter form, in addition to forms published by state authorities.
In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, held that while Arizona can require proof of citizenship for its own forms, it could not impose additional requirements on the motor voter registration procedure that Congress authorized.
Arizona argues that the motor voter law sets only a minimum set of registration requirements which states are free to supplement. The plaintiffs argue that the simpler motor voter forms are helpful when conducting registration drives, efforts that could be frustrated because few people are carrying proof of citizenship when they pass by registration tables on the street.
Arizona’s attorney general, Tom Horne, welcomed the Supreme Court’s move. Jon Greenbaum, a lawyer for the challengers, said he was confident the Supreme Court would uphold the lower-court ruling that the Arizona law violates federal law.
SOURCE
October 15, 2012
New study finds migrant doctors working in Australia get more complaints
I suspect that this even more so in Britain. I monitor British medical disasters daily at EYE ON BRITAIN and the erring doctors named mostly seem to have foreign names, with names like Mohammed, Hussein and Ali being particularly common. I will have to do a formal count of them some day
OVERSEAS-trained doctors are more likely than Australian-trained ones to have complaints made about them and disciplinary action taken, a new study says.
The University of Melbourne research, published in the Medical Journal of Australia's October 15 issue, found that the results differed markedly by overseas country of training.
The study found that doctors who qualified in Nigeria, Egypt, Poland, Russia, Pakistan, the Philippines and India had more complaints to medical boards than Australian-trained doctors.
The researchers analysed over 5000 complaints resolved by the medical boards in Victoria and Western Australia between 2001 and 2010.
They found that overall, overseas-trained doctors had 24 per cent higher odds of attracting complaints than Australian-trained doctors, and 41 per cent higher odds of having adverse disciplinary findings made against them.
The numbers of international medical graduates in Australian clinical practice have grown and now account for nearly 25 per cent of doctors in Australia.
The study's lead author Katie Elkin and research group leader David Studdert said high-profile cases featuring incompetent overseas-trained doctors had ignited public concerns.
But they said there had been very little hard evidence about whether the quality of care delivered by this large section of the national medical workforce was better or worse.
They found complaint rates against doctors trained in some countries were more than five times greater than complaint rates against doctors trained in other countries.
The authors said more research was needed into the reasons for the inter-country differences.
In an accompanying editorial, Professor Balakrishnan Nair said the report highlighted the need for better assessment, mentoring and support systems for overseas-trained doctors.
SOURCE
Sri Lankans not genuine refugees
ELECTRICIANS, security guards, government workers and businessmen were among a wave of middle-class asylum seekers caught leaving Sri Lanka by boat, the country's navy has revealed.
In a briefing to a Liberal MP on a study tour, Sri Lanka's navy revealed that most of the 2279 people arrested leaving on 52 boats this year from 24 locations were "economic migrants" looking for a better life in Australia.Sri Lankan authorities believed the asylum seekers had mortgaged property, taken out loans, pawned jewellery and received support from others to fund the $10,000 payment for people smugglers to take them to Australia.
The navy claimed in a briefing that asylum seekers chose to board unseaworthy one-engined boats for the dangerous 25 to 30-day journey to Australia in "appalling conditions" because of the "success rates" of Australia's asylum processing claim system.
Almost 100 of those arrested were businessmen, 179 were fishermen, 27 government workers, 87 drivers, 158 labourers, 15 electricians, 87 farmers and 43 masons.
Photographs taken by the navy (above) show filthy hulls into which dozens of people had been crammed along with pictures of each boat and a separate image of the asylum seekers, sometimes more than 100 from each boat, including pregnant women and very young children.
Sri Lankan officials have arrested eight people-smuggling kingpins, six of them in the Sri Lankan port city of Trincomalee.
Despite the arrests, 4109 Sri Lankans have reached Australia this year, including one boat carrying 70 people which arrived at the Cocos Islands yesterday. An unknown number have drowned.
Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to Australia, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe, said yesterday there was no way of knowing how many had died on voyages but that relatives had reported family members missing to police.
Liberal MP Don Randall was briefed two weeks ago by the head of the navy in a region of Sri Lanka.
He spoke with 36 asylum seekers who had been arrested, including a man with his children. All said they wanted to come to Australia for a better life. Others who had been arrested were fishermen wanting to earn more.
"He had the rest of his family with him, he had sold his house, he resigned from his public service job," Mr Randall said before adding the asylum seekers who were arrested were not tortured or mistreated upon their return. Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said that after the largest refugee camp in Sri Lanka was closed last month, following the end of the nation's civil war in 2009, the government had an opportunity to return asylum seekers.
"Labor's inaction is encouraging more people to ... undertake a voyage even more dangerous than the one from Indonesia," Mr Morrison said.Asked about the report, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen declined to comment.
The UNHCR has recently returned more than 230,000 internally displaced Sri Lankans to their villages and assisted 873 who voluntarily returned from overseas.
A spokesman said the UNHCR still recommends "all claims by asylum seekers from Sri Lanka be considered on their individual merits", which the Australian government said it complies with.
Meanwhile, an Iranian man attempted suicide yesterday at the Nauru processing camp.Refugee advocates said the asylum seeker was "blue" when found. A Department of Immigration spokeswoman said he suffered no injuries.
When asked about the report, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen declined to comment.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publication
1. When Tragedy Is the Hallmark of Failed Policy The Death of Agent Nicholas Ivie (Memorandum)
Blogs
2. From Disruption to Dismantling: Feds Turn Up the Heat on MS-13
3. How USCIS Has Tilted DACA Decision-Making
4. DACA Amnesty Stats
5. Grand Old Man of Immigration Bar Weighs In vs. New H-1B Forms
6. The Caption Should Have Read: "EB-5 Investor Ducks Courthouse Camera"
7. ICE Declines to Detain Known Illegal Alien Stopped for Driving on a Suspended License
8. We Should Open Our Eyes to a Wider Set of Migration Issues
SCOTUS To Take Up Immigrant Voting Law
The Supreme Court entered another battle in the nationwide war over voter qualifications, agreeing Monday to consider whether Arizona can require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.
The case won’t affect the Nov. 6 election. The requirement has been blocked by a lower court, and Supreme Court arguments, as yet unscheduled, won’t take place until after Election Day. In June, the justices denied Arizona’s request to lift the lower court order while the state’s appeal proceeded.
But the suit could further set the lines between state and federal control over election procedures, a conflict that dates to the nation’s founding and continues to roil its politics.
The Arizona case involves a 2004 state law passed by voters requiring residents to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Organizations representing Hispanic and Native American voters, among others, filed suit contending that the requirement violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, informally called the motor voter law, which provides that citizens nationwide can register through a universal voter form, in addition to forms published by state authorities.
In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, held that while Arizona can require proof of citizenship for its own forms, it could not impose additional requirements on the motor voter registration procedure that Congress authorized.
Arizona argues that the motor voter law sets only a minimum set of registration requirements which states are free to supplement. The plaintiffs argue that the simpler motor voter forms are helpful when conducting registration drives, efforts that could be frustrated because few people are carrying proof of citizenship when they pass by registration tables on the street.
Arizona’s attorney general, Tom Horne, welcomed the Supreme Court’s move. Jon Greenbaum, a lawyer for the challengers, said he was confident the Supreme Court would uphold the lower-court ruling that the Arizona law violates federal law.
SOURCE
October 15, 2012
New study finds migrant doctors working in Australia get more complaints
I suspect that this even more so in Britain. I monitor British medical disasters daily at EYE ON BRITAIN and the erring doctors named mostly seem to have foreign names, with names like Mohammed, Hussein and Ali being particularly common. I will have to do a formal count of them some day
OVERSEAS-trained doctors are more likely than Australian-trained ones to have complaints made about them and disciplinary action taken, a new study says.
The University of Melbourne research, published in the Medical Journal of Australia's October 15 issue, found that the results differed markedly by overseas country of training.
The study found that doctors who qualified in Nigeria, Egypt, Poland, Russia, Pakistan, the Philippines and India had more complaints to medical boards than Australian-trained doctors.
The researchers analysed over 5000 complaints resolved by the medical boards in Victoria and Western Australia between 2001 and 2010.
They found that overall, overseas-trained doctors had 24 per cent higher odds of attracting complaints than Australian-trained doctors, and 41 per cent higher odds of having adverse disciplinary findings made against them.
The numbers of international medical graduates in Australian clinical practice have grown and now account for nearly 25 per cent of doctors in Australia.
The study's lead author Katie Elkin and research group leader David Studdert said high-profile cases featuring incompetent overseas-trained doctors had ignited public concerns.
But they said there had been very little hard evidence about whether the quality of care delivered by this large section of the national medical workforce was better or worse.
They found complaint rates against doctors trained in some countries were more than five times greater than complaint rates against doctors trained in other countries.
The authors said more research was needed into the reasons for the inter-country differences.
In an accompanying editorial, Professor Balakrishnan Nair said the report highlighted the need for better assessment, mentoring and support systems for overseas-trained doctors.
SOURCE
Sri Lankans not genuine refugees
ELECTRICIANS, security guards, government workers and businessmen were among a wave of middle-class asylum seekers caught leaving Sri Lanka by boat, the country's navy has revealed.
In a briefing to a Liberal MP on a study tour, Sri Lanka's navy revealed that most of the 2279 people arrested leaving on 52 boats this year from 24 locations were "economic migrants" looking for a better life in Australia.Sri Lankan authorities believed the asylum seekers had mortgaged property, taken out loans, pawned jewellery and received support from others to fund the $10,000 payment for people smugglers to take them to Australia.
The navy claimed in a briefing that asylum seekers chose to board unseaworthy one-engined boats for the dangerous 25 to 30-day journey to Australia in "appalling conditions" because of the "success rates" of Australia's asylum processing claim system.
Almost 100 of those arrested were businessmen, 179 were fishermen, 27 government workers, 87 drivers, 158 labourers, 15 electricians, 87 farmers and 43 masons.
Photographs taken by the navy (above) show filthy hulls into which dozens of people had been crammed along with pictures of each boat and a separate image of the asylum seekers, sometimes more than 100 from each boat, including pregnant women and very young children.
Sri Lankan officials have arrested eight people-smuggling kingpins, six of them in the Sri Lankan port city of Trincomalee.
Despite the arrests, 4109 Sri Lankans have reached Australia this year, including one boat carrying 70 people which arrived at the Cocos Islands yesterday. An unknown number have drowned.
Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to Australia, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe, said yesterday there was no way of knowing how many had died on voyages but that relatives had reported family members missing to police.
Liberal MP Don Randall was briefed two weeks ago by the head of the navy in a region of Sri Lanka.
He spoke with 36 asylum seekers who had been arrested, including a man with his children. All said they wanted to come to Australia for a better life. Others who had been arrested were fishermen wanting to earn more.
"He had the rest of his family with him, he had sold his house, he resigned from his public service job," Mr Randall said before adding the asylum seekers who were arrested were not tortured or mistreated upon their return. Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said that after the largest refugee camp in Sri Lanka was closed last month, following the end of the nation's civil war in 2009, the government had an opportunity to return asylum seekers.
"Labor's inaction is encouraging more people to ... undertake a voyage even more dangerous than the one from Indonesia," Mr Morrison said.Asked about the report, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen declined to comment.
The UNHCR has recently returned more than 230,000 internally displaced Sri Lankans to their villages and assisted 873 who voluntarily returned from overseas.
A spokesman said the UNHCR still recommends "all claims by asylum seekers from Sri Lanka be considered on their individual merits", which the Australian government said it complies with.
Meanwhile, an Iranian man attempted suicide yesterday at the Nauru processing camp.Refugee advocates said the asylum seeker was "blue" when found. A Department of Immigration spokeswoman said he suffered no injuries.
When asked about the report, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen declined to comment.
SOURCE
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Thousands of Immigrants Get Deferrals
About 180,000 young illegal immigrants have applied for a two-year reprieve from deportation under a new immigration program, and 4,591 cases have been approved, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
The program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, opened on Aug. 15 after being put in place by the Obama administration. It protects eligible immigrants from deportation and allows them to apply for a work permit.
But the program doesn't offer legal residency or a path to citizenship, and participants must reapply for authorization every two years.
Among other criteria, applicants must provide documentation showing they arrived in the U.S. before they were 16 years old, are under the age of 31 and have lived continuously in the U.S for the past five years.
Some potential applicants are struggling with documentation—including problems associated with overseas birth certificates—and legal advice, advocates say.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of Homeland Security, anticipates most cases will take four to six months to decide. Once an application is complete, applicants are fingerprinted and photographed and then a background check is performed before a final decision is made to grant deferred action.
SOURCE
Obama's refusal to deport illegal aliens unconstitutional, say law professors
Two law professors, including one who served in the Bush Justice Department, have published a paper charging that President Obama violated the Constitution with his directive to law enforcement not to deport illegal aliens.
In the paper entitled, “The Obama Administration, the Dream Act and the Take Care Clause,” authors Robert Delahunty of the University of St. Thomas [Minnesota] and John Yoo, a law professor at University of California at Berkeley and former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general, blast Obama's moratorium on deporting certain illegal immigrants. The professors dismissed the idea that the decision on whether to deport illegal immigrants who are arrested for minor infractions is a matter of prosecutorial discretion.
“If there’s one case and it’s left to the prosecutor well that’s fine, but what Obama did was take a million cases and leave it up to prosecutorial discretion, “John Yoo said to FoxNews.com. “The only reason it’s under [Department of Homeland Security Secretary] Janet Napolitano’s discretion is because Obama had made his decision. If she’s doing it under her own, she would have to be fired.”
An abstract for the paper debunks the claim that the president has the Constitutional to not enforce civil laws crafted and passed by Congress.
“It’s the duty of the president. He must always uphold the law,” Yoo said, adding that the only exceptions in doing so are if laws are unconstitutional or if prosecuting them can be reasonably deemed not viable.
Officials from the White House declined to comment on the paper, referring FoxNews.com to DHS.
“The authority of the Secretary of Homeland Security to exercise prosecutorial discretion, including by granting deferred action, has long been established and has been recognized by the Supreme Court," said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard. "This authority was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court just this year [Arizona v. United States (2012)].”
“That said, DHS’s deferred action for childhood arrivals process is only a temporary measure that does not provide a path to citizenship; Congress must still act to provide a permanent solution to fix the broken immigration system. Until Congress acts, DHS is dedicated to implementing smart, effective reforms to the immigration system that allow it to focus its resources on common sense enforcement priorities, including criminals and other public safety threats."
In June, President Obama announced that the deporting of young, undocumented immigrants who match criteria from already-proposed DREAM Act lesgilastion would end under his administration’s watch. The effect was to put in place most of the measures in the act, but by administrative order, not through the legislative process. In August, a group of federal agents filed a lawsuit against DHS secretary Janet Napolitano, claiming that the new directive forces them to break the law.
Under the DREAM Act, illegal aliens who are eligible beneficiaries would not have faced deportation as long as they meet the following criteria:
* Proof of having arrived in the United States before age 16.
* Proof of residence in the United States for at least five consecutive years since their arrival date.
* Register with the Selective Service if they are male.
* Be between the ages of 12 and 35 at the time that the bill was enacted.
* Obtained a high school diploma of GED, or admitted to an institution of higher education.
* Be of good moral character.
Opponents of the DREAM Act, which still has not been passed in Congress, say that it - as well as Obama's order, encourages illegal immigration while adding economic and social burdens to the United States.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who was a key backer of the DREAM Act, blasted the president's preemption of the in June, when DHS announced policies on immigration enforcement that.
“There is broad support for the idea that we should figure out a way to help kids who are undocumented through no fault of their own, but there is also broad consensus that it should be done in a way that does not encourage illegal immigration in the future. This is a difficult balance to strike, one that this new policy, imposed by executive order, will make harder to achieve in the long run.”
“…by once again ignoring the Constitution and going around Congress, this short term policy will make it harder to find a balanced and responsible long term one.”
SOURCE
Thousands of Immigrants Get Deferrals
About 180,000 young illegal immigrants have applied for a two-year reprieve from deportation under a new immigration program, and 4,591 cases have been approved, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
The program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, opened on Aug. 15 after being put in place by the Obama administration. It protects eligible immigrants from deportation and allows them to apply for a work permit.
But the program doesn't offer legal residency or a path to citizenship, and participants must reapply for authorization every two years.
Among other criteria, applicants must provide documentation showing they arrived in the U.S. before they were 16 years old, are under the age of 31 and have lived continuously in the U.S for the past five years.
Some potential applicants are struggling with documentation—including problems associated with overseas birth certificates—and legal advice, advocates say.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of Homeland Security, anticipates most cases will take four to six months to decide. Once an application is complete, applicants are fingerprinted and photographed and then a background check is performed before a final decision is made to grant deferred action.
SOURCE
Obama's refusal to deport illegal aliens unconstitutional, say law professors
Two law professors, including one who served in the Bush Justice Department, have published a paper charging that President Obama violated the Constitution with his directive to law enforcement not to deport illegal aliens.
In the paper entitled, “The Obama Administration, the Dream Act and the Take Care Clause,” authors Robert Delahunty of the University of St. Thomas [Minnesota] and John Yoo, a law professor at University of California at Berkeley and former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general, blast Obama's moratorium on deporting certain illegal immigrants. The professors dismissed the idea that the decision on whether to deport illegal immigrants who are arrested for minor infractions is a matter of prosecutorial discretion.
“If there’s one case and it’s left to the prosecutor well that’s fine, but what Obama did was take a million cases and leave it up to prosecutorial discretion, “John Yoo said to FoxNews.com. “The only reason it’s under [Department of Homeland Security Secretary] Janet Napolitano’s discretion is because Obama had made his decision. If she’s doing it under her own, she would have to be fired.”
An abstract for the paper debunks the claim that the president has the Constitutional to not enforce civil laws crafted and passed by Congress.
“It’s the duty of the president. He must always uphold the law,” Yoo said, adding that the only exceptions in doing so are if laws are unconstitutional or if prosecuting them can be reasonably deemed not viable.
Officials from the White House declined to comment on the paper, referring FoxNews.com to DHS.
“The authority of the Secretary of Homeland Security to exercise prosecutorial discretion, including by granting deferred action, has long been established and has been recognized by the Supreme Court," said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard. "This authority was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court just this year [Arizona v. United States (2012)].”
“That said, DHS’s deferred action for childhood arrivals process is only a temporary measure that does not provide a path to citizenship; Congress must still act to provide a permanent solution to fix the broken immigration system. Until Congress acts, DHS is dedicated to implementing smart, effective reforms to the immigration system that allow it to focus its resources on common sense enforcement priorities, including criminals and other public safety threats."
In June, President Obama announced that the deporting of young, undocumented immigrants who match criteria from already-proposed DREAM Act lesgilastion would end under his administration’s watch. The effect was to put in place most of the measures in the act, but by administrative order, not through the legislative process. In August, a group of federal agents filed a lawsuit against DHS secretary Janet Napolitano, claiming that the new directive forces them to break the law.
Under the DREAM Act, illegal aliens who are eligible beneficiaries would not have faced deportation as long as they meet the following criteria:
* Proof of having arrived in the United States before age 16.
* Proof of residence in the United States for at least five consecutive years since their arrival date.
* Register with the Selective Service if they are male.
* Be between the ages of 12 and 35 at the time that the bill was enacted.
* Obtained a high school diploma of GED, or admitted to an institution of higher education.
* Be of good moral character.
Opponents of the DREAM Act, which still has not been passed in Congress, say that it - as well as Obama's order, encourages illegal immigration while adding economic and social burdens to the United States.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who was a key backer of the DREAM Act, blasted the president's preemption of the in June, when DHS announced policies on immigration enforcement that.
“There is broad support for the idea that we should figure out a way to help kids who are undocumented through no fault of their own, but there is also broad consensus that it should be done in a way that does not encourage illegal immigration in the future. This is a difficult balance to strike, one that this new policy, imposed by executive order, will make harder to achieve in the long run.”
“…by once again ignoring the Constitution and going around Congress, this short term policy will make it harder to find a balanced and responsible long term one.”
SOURCE
Friday, October 12, 2012
DREAM dying
Kris Kobach, architect of Arizona’s controversial immigration measure, as well as similar ones in other states, says he is confident that by January courts will declare Obama administration’s program for suspending deportation for some undocumented immigrants a violation of federal law.
Kobach told Fox News Latino that the debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, over the president’s program --which Romney said he will end if he assumes the presidency in January– likely will be “a moot issue by the time he takes office.”
The lawsuit, in which Kobach is a lead attorney, was filed in August in federal court in Dallas on behalf of 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees. It contends that DACA violates federal law and forces ICE employees to break the law by not arresting certain undocumented immigrants.
Kobach, who described himself in the interview as "an informal adviser" to the Romney campaign on immigration matters, made his comments Wednesday as Mississippi became the first state to join his lawsuit against the president’s program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
"States must protect their borders while the federal government continues to ignore this growing problem," said Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant in a news release. "I believe this action by the Obama administration is unconstitutional and circumvents Congress' authority.”
"The fact remains that illegal immigration is a real issue with real consequences, and ignoring the rule of law is irresponsible,” said Bryant, a Republican. “As governor, I cannot turn a blind eye to the problem of illegal immigration and its costs to Mississippi."
Romney, who took a hard line on immigration during the GOP primaries, has said that as president he would end DACA as soon as he assumes office. He assailed DACA as a stop-gap effort that fails to bring any real solution to illegal immigration, and vowed to put in a “permanent solution,” though he has not provided specific information about what that would entail.
Kobach said that Romney did not discuss DACA with him. Kobach, who is Kansas’s secretary of state, added that Romney “will enforce immigration law” as president. As for DACA, he said: “It’ll be a moot question by the time he takes office. I expect the judge in the case will have ruled by January and that he’ll find that the deferred action directive violated federal law.”
Under DACA, immigrants have to prove that they arrived in the United States before they turned 16, have been in the country for at least five years, are 30 or younger, are in school or have graduated or have served in the military may be eligible. They cannot have a criminal record or otherwise be considered a threat to public safety or national security.
Kobach characterizes DACA applicants as people who are a drain on the country.
“Most of the individuals who qualify who are encountered by ICE are already in the penal system,” he says, noting that he is not referring to those who come forward now to apply. “A very high percentage (of DACA immigrants) is within the jail system.”
More HERE
Right-winger feeds French immigration row with pastry tale
A right-wing politician vying to head France's opposition conservative party has raised a storm by suggesting Muslim youths tear pain au chocolat pastries from children's hands during Islam's fasting month.
The controversy has inflamed old strains over secular and mainly-Catholic France's struggle to assimilate Muslim culture.
Jean-Francois Cope, who is challenging a moderate rival to lead the main opposition conservative UMP party, made the allegation of bullying by young Muslims in front of an audience of supporters last week.
"There are areas where children cannot even eat their 'pains au chocolat' because it's Ramadan," Cope said, referring to an incident allegedly reported to him a few years ago by the mother of a child whose pastry was snatched at his school gate.
The remark, with its evocation of one of France's best-loved breakfast treats, has provoked accusations that Cope is seeking to boost his appeal with the hard-right of his UMP party and so raise his chances of winning next month's leadership contest.
"(Cope) has never hesitated in going too far when it's in his interest," said Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac, a leading figure in Hollande's Socialist government.
The comment has also drawn fire from UMP moderates, with ex-minister Francois Baroin calling it "toxic". Even National Front leader Marine Le Pen weighed in, sniffing that Cope was trying to mimic his mentor, ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"He only notices the reality of racism when he is in a political campaign," Le Pen told France 5 TV.
Yet Cope insists he is taking the lid off a real problem of anti-white racism. In a recent book, he relates an incident in the northern town of Meaux where he is mayor in which a woman was robbed by Arab youths who yelled: "Get lost Gaul woman".
Attitudes to immigration from largely North African former colonies since independence are complex and France, a secular nation of 65 million people, has struggled in the past to assimilate its 5 million-strong Muslim community.
France is also home to a well-established Jewish population of 600,000 that is Europe's largest.
While a study by the INSEE statistics institute released this week found 90 percent of children born to immigrants felt quite French, a survey by pollster TNS Sofres found 56 percent of respondents agreed with Cope that tensions in mixed-faith areas were a problem.
A PASTRY AND A CHAT
Muslims in the northern Paris suburbs said Cope seemed to be stirring up the issue of ethnic intolerance for political gain.
Abdel Hamza, 39, a bank employee, called it ridiculous. "On the other hand, Cope is pretty clever to make this into an issue. He knows it will make the government uncomfortable, that it puts them in a difficult position," he added.
Hollande has taken a tough line on crime in immigrant-heavy areas since taking power in a May election where security was a key voter concern, but he is also under pressure to bring down rampant unemployment among Arab youths in poor suburbs where opportunities are few.
"There is an urgent need to help these young people, because the far-right is trying to stir up tensions," said Leila Leghmara, a centrist politician in the suburb of Aubervilliers.
Seeking to ease tensions over the issue, the CCIF association that fights Islamophobia set up a stand in Paris's St Lazare station on Wednesday handing out free pains au chocolat to commuters and offering to discuss the issue.
CCIF volunteers said only one passer-by made an offensive remark as they handed out some 400 of the chocolate pastries.
"We got a warm welcome and lots of supportive comments. People told us they are fed up with petty remarks by politicians that stigmatize Muslims," said Marcia Burnier, 26.
"We dispute the idea that there is tension between Muslim and Jewish groups. The issue is France accepting its diverse communities." ($1 = 0.7751 euros)
SOURCE
DREAM dying
Kris Kobach, architect of Arizona’s controversial immigration measure, as well as similar ones in other states, says he is confident that by January courts will declare Obama administration’s program for suspending deportation for some undocumented immigrants a violation of federal law.
Kobach told Fox News Latino that the debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, over the president’s program --which Romney said he will end if he assumes the presidency in January– likely will be “a moot issue by the time he takes office.”
The lawsuit, in which Kobach is a lead attorney, was filed in August in federal court in Dallas on behalf of 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees. It contends that DACA violates federal law and forces ICE employees to break the law by not arresting certain undocumented immigrants.
Kobach, who described himself in the interview as "an informal adviser" to the Romney campaign on immigration matters, made his comments Wednesday as Mississippi became the first state to join his lawsuit against the president’s program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
"States must protect their borders while the federal government continues to ignore this growing problem," said Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant in a news release. "I believe this action by the Obama administration is unconstitutional and circumvents Congress' authority.”
"The fact remains that illegal immigration is a real issue with real consequences, and ignoring the rule of law is irresponsible,” said Bryant, a Republican. “As governor, I cannot turn a blind eye to the problem of illegal immigration and its costs to Mississippi."
Romney, who took a hard line on immigration during the GOP primaries, has said that as president he would end DACA as soon as he assumes office. He assailed DACA as a stop-gap effort that fails to bring any real solution to illegal immigration, and vowed to put in a “permanent solution,” though he has not provided specific information about what that would entail.
Kobach said that Romney did not discuss DACA with him. Kobach, who is Kansas’s secretary of state, added that Romney “will enforce immigration law” as president. As for DACA, he said: “It’ll be a moot question by the time he takes office. I expect the judge in the case will have ruled by January and that he’ll find that the deferred action directive violated federal law.”
Under DACA, immigrants have to prove that they arrived in the United States before they turned 16, have been in the country for at least five years, are 30 or younger, are in school or have graduated or have served in the military may be eligible. They cannot have a criminal record or otherwise be considered a threat to public safety or national security.
Kobach characterizes DACA applicants as people who are a drain on the country.
“Most of the individuals who qualify who are encountered by ICE are already in the penal system,” he says, noting that he is not referring to those who come forward now to apply. “A very high percentage (of DACA immigrants) is within the jail system.”
More HERE
Right-winger feeds French immigration row with pastry tale
A right-wing politician vying to head France's opposition conservative party has raised a storm by suggesting Muslim youths tear pain au chocolat pastries from children's hands during Islam's fasting month.
The controversy has inflamed old strains over secular and mainly-Catholic France's struggle to assimilate Muslim culture.
Jean-Francois Cope, who is challenging a moderate rival to lead the main opposition conservative UMP party, made the allegation of bullying by young Muslims in front of an audience of supporters last week.
"There are areas where children cannot even eat their 'pains au chocolat' because it's Ramadan," Cope said, referring to an incident allegedly reported to him a few years ago by the mother of a child whose pastry was snatched at his school gate.
The remark, with its evocation of one of France's best-loved breakfast treats, has provoked accusations that Cope is seeking to boost his appeal with the hard-right of his UMP party and so raise his chances of winning next month's leadership contest.
"(Cope) has never hesitated in going too far when it's in his interest," said Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac, a leading figure in Hollande's Socialist government.
The comment has also drawn fire from UMP moderates, with ex-minister Francois Baroin calling it "toxic". Even National Front leader Marine Le Pen weighed in, sniffing that Cope was trying to mimic his mentor, ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"He only notices the reality of racism when he is in a political campaign," Le Pen told France 5 TV.
Yet Cope insists he is taking the lid off a real problem of anti-white racism. In a recent book, he relates an incident in the northern town of Meaux where he is mayor in which a woman was robbed by Arab youths who yelled: "Get lost Gaul woman".
Attitudes to immigration from largely North African former colonies since independence are complex and France, a secular nation of 65 million people, has struggled in the past to assimilate its 5 million-strong Muslim community.
France is also home to a well-established Jewish population of 600,000 that is Europe's largest.
While a study by the INSEE statistics institute released this week found 90 percent of children born to immigrants felt quite French, a survey by pollster TNS Sofres found 56 percent of respondents agreed with Cope that tensions in mixed-faith areas were a problem.
A PASTRY AND A CHAT
Muslims in the northern Paris suburbs said Cope seemed to be stirring up the issue of ethnic intolerance for political gain.
Abdel Hamza, 39, a bank employee, called it ridiculous. "On the other hand, Cope is pretty clever to make this into an issue. He knows it will make the government uncomfortable, that it puts them in a difficult position," he added.
Hollande has taken a tough line on crime in immigrant-heavy areas since taking power in a May election where security was a key voter concern, but he is also under pressure to bring down rampant unemployment among Arab youths in poor suburbs where opportunities are few.
"There is an urgent need to help these young people, because the far-right is trying to stir up tensions," said Leila Leghmara, a centrist politician in the suburb of Aubervilliers.
Seeking to ease tensions over the issue, the CCIF association that fights Islamophobia set up a stand in Paris's St Lazare station on Wednesday handing out free pains au chocolat to commuters and offering to discuss the issue.
CCIF volunteers said only one passer-by made an offensive remark as they handed out some 400 of the chocolate pastries.
"We got a warm welcome and lots of supportive comments. People told us they are fed up with petty remarks by politicians that stigmatize Muslims," said Marcia Burnier, 26.
"We dispute the idea that there is tension between Muslim and Jewish groups. The issue is France accepting its diverse communities." ($1 = 0.7751 euros)
SOURCE
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Cockeyed U.S. immigration priorities
Widespread support for low-skilled illegals so where is the support for high-skilled legals?
I had the pleasure of hosting an event last week for Vivek Wadhwa to discuss his important and troubling new book, The Immigrant Exodus. Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned scholar, has done more than anyone else to call attention to the critical role that immigrants played in the rise of Silicon Valley and the vibrant tech economy that is rightly such a source of pride for many Americans. And his warning that we are now in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg needs to be widely read and addressed with urgency in Washington.
The importance of immigrant scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to the U.S. economy is now generally accepted, but much of what we know today is the result of pioneering survey work done first by AnnaLee Saxenian of the University of California, and later by larger teams assembled by Wadhwa, Saxenian, and other scholars. In a seminal 1999 study, Saxenian found that immigrants, particularly Indians and Chinese, comprised roughly one-third of the total scientific and engineering workforce of Silicon Valley. A 2007 survey by Wadhwa and others discovered that from 1995 to 2005, more than half of all Silicon Valley startups had at least one foreign-born founder; across the country the figure was just over one-quarter. These were astonishing findings given that just 13 percent of the U.S. population is foreign-born.
In theory, immigrant entrepreneurship should be growing even stronger. Wadhwa’s work has suggested that, on average, an immigrant who launches a company does so roughly 13 years after moving to the United States – a period of time long enough to build the skills and contacts necessary for entrepreneurial success. In the late 1990s, there had been a big surge in skilled immigration due to a temporary increase in the cap for H-1B visas. In theory, that should have resulted in an explosion in new immigrant founded companies over the past several years.
Instead, their latest survey – Then and Now: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs — shows a drop in the number of immigrant-found companies in Silicon Valley, from 52.4 percent from 1995 to 2005 to 43.9 percent from 2006 to 2012.
What is going on? Some of it certainly reflects the growing opportunities for Indian and Chinese students and immigrants who wish to return home. The explosive growth in China and the opening of the Indian economy, especially in high technology sectors, has created possibilities for engineers and entrepreneurs that were unthinkable fifteen or twenty years ago.
But much of the wound is self-inflicted, created by quotas and other restrictions that have made it increasingly difficult for talented immigrants to remain in the United States. How much harder is it? Vivek writes that when he moved to the United States in 1980 after graduating from the University of Canberra in Australia, he immediately found work as an entry-level programmer at Xerox and had his green card in eighteen months, allowing him to pursue better jobs. Today, he notes, if he had come on an H-1B visa, he would have been stuck in his entry-level job for as much as a decade waiting for his green card, and his wife would have been unable to work for the duration.
He writes in the book about one young Indian immigrant, Anand Chhatpar, who graduated at the top of his class in computer engineering in Mumbai and entered the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001. By his junior year he had launched a company, and was named by Business Week as one of the “top 5 young entrepreneurs” in the country. In 2008 he and his new wife jointly created Fame Express, which grossed about $1 million in two years building Facebook applications. But in September 2010 – still without permanent status in the United States — they had to return to India to apply for EB-1 temporary visas, reserved for skilled workers. Despite having companies and employees back in the United States, they were denied. Today, they are trying to run their companies from Bangalore.
Some of Wadhwa’s recommendations for clearing away these immigration hurdles are familiar – increasing green card quotas for skilled immigrants, eliminating the current cap that only permits 7 percent of green cards each year for any one country (huge ones like India and China included), and allowing spouses of H-1B holders to work. These remedies generally enjoy bipartisan support, but in the funhouse mirror politics of Washington, they still can’t get through Congress. Just before the congressional recess, Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith proposed an increase in green cards for skilled workers, but tied it to elimination of the diversity visa, which is supported by many Democrats. No serious effort was made to cut a deal, resulting in just one more symbolic vote.
But Wadhwa has some novel approaches as well. Instead of “stapling a green card” to the passports of foreign students who graduate with science and engineering degrees from American universities (which he fears would create “diploma mills”) he would extend the Optional Practical Training program to allow students to remain and work in the United States for up to four years. Those who are successful would then be able to apply for a green card on the merits. And he supports changes to the H-1B program that would allow visa holders to switch jobs and advance their careers without risking their immigrant status. In all likelihood, this would raise wages as companies vie to retain talented workers, addressing the legitimate concerns of some American tech workers that H-1B holders comprise a kind of captive, low-wage workforce.
SOURCE
Illegal immigrants to Australia to be diverted to New Guinean island
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has moved a resolution in Parliament to officially designate Manus Island in Papua New Guinea as a processing centre for asylum seekers.
Mr Bowen declared PNG as a regional processing country under the Migration Act this morning. He says Manus Island will eventually be able to accept 600 asylum seekers and should be ready to take the first group within weeks.
The Government is already sending asylum seekers to Nauru, with 30 men - 17 from Afghanistan and 13 from Sri Lanka - being the latest group to arrive.
Mr Bowen says Labor's offshore processing policy is starting to work. "It has been very clear to me for some time that we're in a battle of the truth with people smugglers - people smugglers out there saying 'don't worry about it, even if you get sent to Nauru it'll only be for a short time'," he said.
"And I think the people who've arrived in Australia have learned that that's not the case and several of them have taken the decision to return back to their country of origin."
Audio: Bowen signs off on Manus Island (AM)
Mr Bowen said he was not trying to exaggerate the number of people who had returned home, with hundreds still arriving in Australian waters each week.
"I'm not overstating the number who've returned home but I am pointing to that as something we haven't seen before in very significant numbers," he said.
"Of course we continue to talk to people about their options, but the fact that we've taken two relatively significant groups of people home to their homeland is, I think, a significant development. "It just points to the fact that they believe they've been misled by the people smugglers and that's clearly what's going on."
Mr Bowen says the Government is continuing talks over its proposed Malaysia deal despite the Opposition saying it has long-term issues with it. "We believe in it and the expert panel recommends it," he said.
"The Opposition's fanciful position is that all they need to do is introduce temporary protection visas and somehow get some magical agreement with Indonesia or not to turn boats around.
"Either get an agreement with them which they're not going to get or turn boats around to Indonesia without their agreement.
"The difference between the Malaysia agreement and turning boats around to Indonesia is that we have Malaysia's agreement to do it and it's safe, unlike turning boats around on the high seas."
SOURCE
Cockeyed U.S. immigration priorities
Widespread support for low-skilled illegals so where is the support for high-skilled legals?
I had the pleasure of hosting an event last week for Vivek Wadhwa to discuss his important and troubling new book, The Immigrant Exodus. Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned scholar, has done more than anyone else to call attention to the critical role that immigrants played in the rise of Silicon Valley and the vibrant tech economy that is rightly such a source of pride for many Americans. And his warning that we are now in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg needs to be widely read and addressed with urgency in Washington.
The importance of immigrant scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to the U.S. economy is now generally accepted, but much of what we know today is the result of pioneering survey work done first by AnnaLee Saxenian of the University of California, and later by larger teams assembled by Wadhwa, Saxenian, and other scholars. In a seminal 1999 study, Saxenian found that immigrants, particularly Indians and Chinese, comprised roughly one-third of the total scientific and engineering workforce of Silicon Valley. A 2007 survey by Wadhwa and others discovered that from 1995 to 2005, more than half of all Silicon Valley startups had at least one foreign-born founder; across the country the figure was just over one-quarter. These were astonishing findings given that just 13 percent of the U.S. population is foreign-born.
In theory, immigrant entrepreneurship should be growing even stronger. Wadhwa’s work has suggested that, on average, an immigrant who launches a company does so roughly 13 years after moving to the United States – a period of time long enough to build the skills and contacts necessary for entrepreneurial success. In the late 1990s, there had been a big surge in skilled immigration due to a temporary increase in the cap for H-1B visas. In theory, that should have resulted in an explosion in new immigrant founded companies over the past several years.
Instead, their latest survey – Then and Now: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs — shows a drop in the number of immigrant-found companies in Silicon Valley, from 52.4 percent from 1995 to 2005 to 43.9 percent from 2006 to 2012.
What is going on? Some of it certainly reflects the growing opportunities for Indian and Chinese students and immigrants who wish to return home. The explosive growth in China and the opening of the Indian economy, especially in high technology sectors, has created possibilities for engineers and entrepreneurs that were unthinkable fifteen or twenty years ago.
But much of the wound is self-inflicted, created by quotas and other restrictions that have made it increasingly difficult for talented immigrants to remain in the United States. How much harder is it? Vivek writes that when he moved to the United States in 1980 after graduating from the University of Canberra in Australia, he immediately found work as an entry-level programmer at Xerox and had his green card in eighteen months, allowing him to pursue better jobs. Today, he notes, if he had come on an H-1B visa, he would have been stuck in his entry-level job for as much as a decade waiting for his green card, and his wife would have been unable to work for the duration.
He writes in the book about one young Indian immigrant, Anand Chhatpar, who graduated at the top of his class in computer engineering in Mumbai and entered the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001. By his junior year he had launched a company, and was named by Business Week as one of the “top 5 young entrepreneurs” in the country. In 2008 he and his new wife jointly created Fame Express, which grossed about $1 million in two years building Facebook applications. But in September 2010 – still without permanent status in the United States — they had to return to India to apply for EB-1 temporary visas, reserved for skilled workers. Despite having companies and employees back in the United States, they were denied. Today, they are trying to run their companies from Bangalore.
Some of Wadhwa’s recommendations for clearing away these immigration hurdles are familiar – increasing green card quotas for skilled immigrants, eliminating the current cap that only permits 7 percent of green cards each year for any one country (huge ones like India and China included), and allowing spouses of H-1B holders to work. These remedies generally enjoy bipartisan support, but in the funhouse mirror politics of Washington, they still can’t get through Congress. Just before the congressional recess, Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith proposed an increase in green cards for skilled workers, but tied it to elimination of the diversity visa, which is supported by many Democrats. No serious effort was made to cut a deal, resulting in just one more symbolic vote.
But Wadhwa has some novel approaches as well. Instead of “stapling a green card” to the passports of foreign students who graduate with science and engineering degrees from American universities (which he fears would create “diploma mills”) he would extend the Optional Practical Training program to allow students to remain and work in the United States for up to four years. Those who are successful would then be able to apply for a green card on the merits. And he supports changes to the H-1B program that would allow visa holders to switch jobs and advance their careers without risking their immigrant status. In all likelihood, this would raise wages as companies vie to retain talented workers, addressing the legitimate concerns of some American tech workers that H-1B holders comprise a kind of captive, low-wage workforce.
SOURCE
Illegal immigrants to Australia to be diverted to New Guinean island
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has moved a resolution in Parliament to officially designate Manus Island in Papua New Guinea as a processing centre for asylum seekers.
Mr Bowen declared PNG as a regional processing country under the Migration Act this morning. He says Manus Island will eventually be able to accept 600 asylum seekers and should be ready to take the first group within weeks.
The Government is already sending asylum seekers to Nauru, with 30 men - 17 from Afghanistan and 13 from Sri Lanka - being the latest group to arrive.
Mr Bowen says Labor's offshore processing policy is starting to work. "It has been very clear to me for some time that we're in a battle of the truth with people smugglers - people smugglers out there saying 'don't worry about it, even if you get sent to Nauru it'll only be for a short time'," he said.
"And I think the people who've arrived in Australia have learned that that's not the case and several of them have taken the decision to return back to their country of origin."
Audio: Bowen signs off on Manus Island (AM)
Mr Bowen said he was not trying to exaggerate the number of people who had returned home, with hundreds still arriving in Australian waters each week.
"I'm not overstating the number who've returned home but I am pointing to that as something we haven't seen before in very significant numbers," he said.
"Of course we continue to talk to people about their options, but the fact that we've taken two relatively significant groups of people home to their homeland is, I think, a significant development. "It just points to the fact that they believe they've been misled by the people smugglers and that's clearly what's going on."
Mr Bowen says the Government is continuing talks over its proposed Malaysia deal despite the Opposition saying it has long-term issues with it. "We believe in it and the expert panel recommends it," he said.
"The Opposition's fanciful position is that all they need to do is introduce temporary protection visas and somehow get some magical agreement with Indonesia or not to turn boats around.
"Either get an agreement with them which they're not going to get or turn boats around to Indonesia without their agreement.
"The difference between the Malaysia agreement and turning boats around to Indonesia is that we have Malaysia's agreement to do it and it's safe, unlike turning boats around on the high seas."
SOURCE
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Obama Speaks Spanish in New Ad, Calls Undocumented Students an Inspiration
President Barack Obama features undocumented immigrants in a new campaign ad that he does entirely in Spanish. Titled “Buen Ejemplo,” which means “good example” in Spanish, Obama touts young undocumented immigrants known as DREAMers as people he admires and who inspire him. Their drive and determination, the ad suggests, serve as a good model for everyone.
Obama in June announced a new initiative that involved suspending deportation for two years for undocumented immigrants between ages 15 and 31 who were brought as minors and who have no criminal record, among other things. The initiative, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, also offered the chance to obtain work permits.
Romney has said that as president he would end DACA as soon as he assumes office.
In the ad, which features scenes of undocumented students and their parents, Obama says: “In the young people known as DREAMers, I see the same qualities Michelle and I try to instill in our daughters. They respect their parents, they study for a better life, and they want to give back to the only country they know and love."
“As a father, they inspire me. And as President, their courage reminds me that no obstacle is too great. No road too long. Onward!”
“Buen Ejemplo” is airing on radio and television in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia, all battleground states in what now indicates will be a close election.
The release of the ad, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, coincided with a media conference call, organized by the Obama campaign, that featured Benita Veliz, an undocumented immigrant and DREAMer who was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention in September, and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid , Nevada Democrat, drawing contrasts between Romney and Obama on the fate of DREAMers.
Both the Obama and Romney campaigns have been courting Latino voters, about 12 million of whom are expected to turn out to vote on Nov. 6. That turnout would be an increase of 26 percent from the 9.7 million who voted in 2008. Political experts say Romney would need 40 percent of Latino voters to win, and Obama would need 60 percent.
On Monday, Obama honored the legacy of the late civil rights and labor leader Cesar Chavez, whose “Si se puede” (“Yes, we can”) cry the president adopted as his campaign mantra. The president was in California Monday to participate in the dedication ceremony for the Cesar Chavez National Monument in California, a move that was seen as a way to win the good will of Latino voters.
Both Romney and Obama have made frequent trips to battleground states, including Florida, Nevada and Colorado, where Latinos could swing the vote.
The Romney campaign responded to a request for comment to Obama’s new ad with a statement that said: “President Obama had nearly four years to make good on his promise of immigration reform, but he has failed to do so and would rather play politics with this important issue."
“Mitt Romney will work in a bipartisan manner to achieve a long-term solution to our broken immigration system."
On Tuesday, the Romney campaign also put out a television ad, with a narrator speaking in Spanish, that says, according to a press release describing it, “The Hispanic community has worked hard to achieve the American Dream, but the President’s policies are hurting the growth of small businesses.”
It goes on to praise the entrepreneurial spirit of Latinos and vows that Romney will be the better candidate for strengthening small business growth.
Polls of likely Latino voters show that jobs and the economy are far more important issues to them when it comes to deciding on which candidate to support, but that the way immigration is discussed still matters. More than three-fourths of Latinos polled by Fox News Latino earlier this year said they support the DREAM Act.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. The Hispanic Vote (Blog)
2. DREAM Act: Rewarding Illegal Behavior to Build the New American Utopia (Blog)
3. Friendly Fire Incident Highlights Border Tensions, Strained Resources (Blog)
4. Law Profs: Obama's Deferred Action Not Supported by Constitution (Blog)
5. New Zealand Offers Bright Idea on Identifying Sham Universities (Blog)
6. Why Give Aid to a Nation that Doesn't Accept Its Own Criminal Deportees? (Blog)
7. Department of Preening Editorials (5): Verification is THE Key Element of Immigration Reform (Blog)
8. Department of Preening Editorials (4): "Self-Deportation", a Misused and Misunderstood Term (Blog)
9. Fusion: Reaching for the Unattainable in Energy and, Apparently, Homeland Security (Blog)
10. How About the Rest of the Story? (Blog)
11. People for the American Way Takes the Low Road with Romney Ad (Blog)
12. Department of Preening Editorials (3): Romney Does Not Support Amnesty for 11 Million Illegal Aliens (Blog)
13. Elvis Is Back in the Building! (or Coming to a Border Patrol Station Near You) (Blog)
14. MPI & Catholic Church Put on Dignified Pep Rally for More Migration (Blog)
15. Department of Preening Editorials (2): The Issue of Specificity (Blog)
16. DHS Data Suggest You Are Safer If You Marry a Citizen, Not an Alien (Blog)
17. California Governor Kills Sanctuary Bill (Blog)
18. Department of Preening Editorials (1): Mitt Romney's "Immigration Incoherence" (Blog)
Obama Speaks Spanish in New Ad, Calls Undocumented Students an Inspiration
President Barack Obama features undocumented immigrants in a new campaign ad that he does entirely in Spanish. Titled “Buen Ejemplo,” which means “good example” in Spanish, Obama touts young undocumented immigrants known as DREAMers as people he admires and who inspire him. Their drive and determination, the ad suggests, serve as a good model for everyone.
Obama in June announced a new initiative that involved suspending deportation for two years for undocumented immigrants between ages 15 and 31 who were brought as minors and who have no criminal record, among other things. The initiative, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, also offered the chance to obtain work permits.
Romney has said that as president he would end DACA as soon as he assumes office.
In the ad, which features scenes of undocumented students and their parents, Obama says: “In the young people known as DREAMers, I see the same qualities Michelle and I try to instill in our daughters. They respect their parents, they study for a better life, and they want to give back to the only country they know and love."
“As a father, they inspire me. And as President, their courage reminds me that no obstacle is too great. No road too long. Onward!”
“Buen Ejemplo” is airing on radio and television in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia, all battleground states in what now indicates will be a close election.
The release of the ad, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, coincided with a media conference call, organized by the Obama campaign, that featured Benita Veliz, an undocumented immigrant and DREAMer who was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention in September, and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid , Nevada Democrat, drawing contrasts between Romney and Obama on the fate of DREAMers.
Both the Obama and Romney campaigns have been courting Latino voters, about 12 million of whom are expected to turn out to vote on Nov. 6. That turnout would be an increase of 26 percent from the 9.7 million who voted in 2008. Political experts say Romney would need 40 percent of Latino voters to win, and Obama would need 60 percent.
On Monday, Obama honored the legacy of the late civil rights and labor leader Cesar Chavez, whose “Si se puede” (“Yes, we can”) cry the president adopted as his campaign mantra. The president was in California Monday to participate in the dedication ceremony for the Cesar Chavez National Monument in California, a move that was seen as a way to win the good will of Latino voters.
Both Romney and Obama have made frequent trips to battleground states, including Florida, Nevada and Colorado, where Latinos could swing the vote.
The Romney campaign responded to a request for comment to Obama’s new ad with a statement that said: “President Obama had nearly four years to make good on his promise of immigration reform, but he has failed to do so and would rather play politics with this important issue."
“Mitt Romney will work in a bipartisan manner to achieve a long-term solution to our broken immigration system."
On Tuesday, the Romney campaign also put out a television ad, with a narrator speaking in Spanish, that says, according to a press release describing it, “The Hispanic community has worked hard to achieve the American Dream, but the President’s policies are hurting the growth of small businesses.”
It goes on to praise the entrepreneurial spirit of Latinos and vows that Romney will be the better candidate for strengthening small business growth.
Polls of likely Latino voters show that jobs and the economy are far more important issues to them when it comes to deciding on which candidate to support, but that the way immigration is discussed still matters. More than three-fourths of Latinos polled by Fox News Latino earlier this year said they support the DREAM Act.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. The Hispanic Vote (Blog)
2. DREAM Act: Rewarding Illegal Behavior to Build the New American Utopia (Blog)
3. Friendly Fire Incident Highlights Border Tensions, Strained Resources (Blog)
4. Law Profs: Obama's Deferred Action Not Supported by Constitution (Blog)
5. New Zealand Offers Bright Idea on Identifying Sham Universities (Blog)
6. Why Give Aid to a Nation that Doesn't Accept Its Own Criminal Deportees? (Blog)
7. Department of Preening Editorials (5): Verification is THE Key Element of Immigration Reform (Blog)
8. Department of Preening Editorials (4): "Self-Deportation", a Misused and Misunderstood Term (Blog)
9. Fusion: Reaching for the Unattainable in Energy and, Apparently, Homeland Security (Blog)
10. How About the Rest of the Story? (Blog)
11. People for the American Way Takes the Low Road with Romney Ad (Blog)
12. Department of Preening Editorials (3): Romney Does Not Support Amnesty for 11 Million Illegal Aliens (Blog)
13. Elvis Is Back in the Building! (or Coming to a Border Patrol Station Near You) (Blog)
14. MPI & Catholic Church Put on Dignified Pep Rally for More Migration (Blog)
15. Department of Preening Editorials (2): The Issue of Specificity (Blog)
16. DHS Data Suggest You Are Safer If You Marry a Citizen, Not an Alien (Blog)
17. California Governor Kills Sanctuary Bill (Blog)
18. Department of Preening Editorials (1): Mitt Romney's "Immigration Incoherence" (Blog)
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
The 200 foreign suspects arrested each day by London police: But as figures soar, number of deportations falls
Almost 200 foreign criminal suspects were arrested every day by the country’s largest police force last year.
Just over 72,500 – a third of the total arrested – were held by the Metropolitan Police and questioned about crimes including murder, rape, robbery and fraud.
The figure is up almost a quarter on two years ago when 58,870 non-British suspects were arrested in London.
The rise emerged as Scotland Yard revealed it has drafted in immigration officials to all its 72 custody suites in a drive to target foreigner suspects.
Senior officers are determined to deal more effectively with the huge numbers of foreign nationals clogging up the criminal justice system.
They want UK Border Agency staff to help send home those wanted abroad or who fail to comply with the ‘good behaviour’ conditions of their residence.
But some fear that EU nationals caught and convicted in Britain can simply return to this country after serving their sentences abroad.
The latest figures were revealed in a Freedom of Information request which showed 72,505 foreign suspects were arrested last year in the capital.
This included 79 on suspicion of murder, 708 for rape, 1,863 for robbery, 2,801 for fraud and 2,489 for burglary.
Another 2,742 were arrested because they were wanted by police, 7,524 for shoplifting and 2,516 for drink-driving after crashing their vehicle.
The rising trend is mirrored elsewhere, with the country’s second largest force, West Midlands Police, arresting 11,801 between April 2011 and March this year.
That is an increase of more than half on the previous 12 months when 7,716 foreign suspects were held.
Meanwhile, the number of foreign criminals who were convicted and deported countrywide fell from 5,342 in 2010 to 4,649 in 2011.
Senior police in London believe that at least one of five of the ‘highest harm’ offenders in the capital are non-European nationals who could be deported.
They include violent gangsters, organised criminals involved in fraud and racketeering, and predatory sex offenders.
In some cases, deported criminals have been barred from returning to Britain for up to a decade but there are fears they are able to evade border controls.
Earlier this year, a report warned that dangerous foreign criminals may be slipping through the net even when arrested as police do not carry out basic checks.
The study said officers were failing to ask about previous convictions and demanded a review of checks to ensure the public is not put at risk.
In January, a judge demanded to know why child-rapist Victor Akulic was let into Britain from Lithuania.
After arriving here, he beat and raped a woman.
He had served nine years in his home country for raping a seven-year-old he lured into his house with lemonade.
Labour immigration spokesman Chris Bryant attacked the Government’s record.
He said: ‘It’s successful prosecutions and swift deportations that count.
‘Depressingly, the Tories are removing fewer foreign offenders than before, and more are absconding.
Yet again they’re letting down the police and the public.’
A Met spokesman said the latest drive ‘is not about targeting specific communities but about us targeting criminality’.
A UKBA spokesman said: ‘Those who come to the UK must abide by our laws.
‘We will always seek to deport any foreign criminals as quickly as possible.’
SOURCE
New Portuguese immigration law to hamper stay of convicted Africans
The stay of Angolan convicted citizens in Portugal will be difficult on account of the new Portuguese immigration law that is coming into force on Monday, as it orders the expulsion of individuals serving sentences of more than one year.
The new Portuguese law on entry, stay, exit and expulsion of foreigners from the territory orders that foreigners in Portugal sentenced to imprisonment of more than one year, shall not have their temporary and permanent residence extended.
The new law expects the expulsion of foreigners in the referred conditions and criminalisation of hiring illegal immigrants.
Angop learnt that over 200 Angolan inmates are receiving legal aid from the general consulate of Angola in Lisbon, after they were sentenced for drug dealing, document forgery, violence and others.
SOURCE
The 200 foreign suspects arrested each day by London police: But as figures soar, number of deportations falls
Almost 200 foreign criminal suspects were arrested every day by the country’s largest police force last year.
Just over 72,500 – a third of the total arrested – were held by the Metropolitan Police and questioned about crimes including murder, rape, robbery and fraud.
The figure is up almost a quarter on two years ago when 58,870 non-British suspects were arrested in London.
The rise emerged as Scotland Yard revealed it has drafted in immigration officials to all its 72 custody suites in a drive to target foreigner suspects.
Senior officers are determined to deal more effectively with the huge numbers of foreign nationals clogging up the criminal justice system.
They want UK Border Agency staff to help send home those wanted abroad or who fail to comply with the ‘good behaviour’ conditions of their residence.
But some fear that EU nationals caught and convicted in Britain can simply return to this country after serving their sentences abroad.
The latest figures were revealed in a Freedom of Information request which showed 72,505 foreign suspects were arrested last year in the capital.
This included 79 on suspicion of murder, 708 for rape, 1,863 for robbery, 2,801 for fraud and 2,489 for burglary.
Another 2,742 were arrested because they were wanted by police, 7,524 for shoplifting and 2,516 for drink-driving after crashing their vehicle.
The rising trend is mirrored elsewhere, with the country’s second largest force, West Midlands Police, arresting 11,801 between April 2011 and March this year.
That is an increase of more than half on the previous 12 months when 7,716 foreign suspects were held.
Meanwhile, the number of foreign criminals who were convicted and deported countrywide fell from 5,342 in 2010 to 4,649 in 2011.
Senior police in London believe that at least one of five of the ‘highest harm’ offenders in the capital are non-European nationals who could be deported.
They include violent gangsters, organised criminals involved in fraud and racketeering, and predatory sex offenders.
In some cases, deported criminals have been barred from returning to Britain for up to a decade but there are fears they are able to evade border controls.
Earlier this year, a report warned that dangerous foreign criminals may be slipping through the net even when arrested as police do not carry out basic checks.
The study said officers were failing to ask about previous convictions and demanded a review of checks to ensure the public is not put at risk.
In January, a judge demanded to know why child-rapist Victor Akulic was let into Britain from Lithuania.
After arriving here, he beat and raped a woman.
He had served nine years in his home country for raping a seven-year-old he lured into his house with lemonade.
Labour immigration spokesman Chris Bryant attacked the Government’s record.
He said: ‘It’s successful prosecutions and swift deportations that count.
‘Depressingly, the Tories are removing fewer foreign offenders than before, and more are absconding.
Yet again they’re letting down the police and the public.’
A Met spokesman said the latest drive ‘is not about targeting specific communities but about us targeting criminality’.
A UKBA spokesman said: ‘Those who come to the UK must abide by our laws.
‘We will always seek to deport any foreign criminals as quickly as possible.’
SOURCE
New Portuguese immigration law to hamper stay of convicted Africans
The stay of Angolan convicted citizens in Portugal will be difficult on account of the new Portuguese immigration law that is coming into force on Monday, as it orders the expulsion of individuals serving sentences of more than one year.
The new Portuguese law on entry, stay, exit and expulsion of foreigners from the territory orders that foreigners in Portugal sentenced to imprisonment of more than one year, shall not have their temporary and permanent residence extended.
The new law expects the expulsion of foreigners in the referred conditions and criminalisation of hiring illegal immigrants.
Angop learnt that over 200 Angolan inmates are receiving legal aid from the general consulate of Angola in Lisbon, after they were sentenced for drug dealing, document forgery, violence and others.
SOURCE
Monday, October 8, 2012
America's illegal immigrant burden
In present-day America, there is perhaps no better illustration of Bertold Brecht's vision of "dissolving one people and electing another" than the case of illegal immigration from Mexico and Latin America into the United States.
Among the many drivers of the on-going Balkanization of the United States, none is more potent than the unchecked river of humanity flowing across our southern border.
According to recent demographic data, there are approximately 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. These data, often collected by such left-leaning organizations such as the Pew Hispanic Center and the Center for Immigration Studies, understate the extent of illegal immigration; actual figures are almost certainly higher. Some authorities place the figure in the 18-22 million range, while others place the total as high as 30 million people. Since, by definition, illegal immigrants are undocumented, a precise count is probably impossible, especially given the dynamic nature of population flows. It is estimated that some 55% of illegals were from Mexico, with an additional 22% from other Latin American countries; illegals from other nations comprise the remainder of the total.
Unofficial crossings of the border have been going on for almost as long as the nations of Mexico and the United States have existed. Regions along the U.S.-Mexican border have long-been a hybrid of the two nation's cultures. "Tex-Mex" is an established staple in places like El Paso, Texas, where one is just as likely to hear the norteño music of Mexico as American country, western swing or blues. Prominent and wealthy Mexicans and Americans alike own homes and travel widely in both nations. Both nations depend on tourism from the other. Cross-border trade is booming.
Yet, for all of these signs of apparent normalcy, there exists an undercurrent of tension within American-Mexican relations, albeit one seldom remarked upon by the political and cultural elites of either nation. Mexico and the United States fought a bitter war from 1846-1848, after Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845. Much of the American southwest and California were originally part of the Spanish empire, just as Mexico herself once was. The U.S. has a long history of military intervention in Latin America; including the 1916 Punitive Expedition into Mexico by the U.S. Army in pursuit of Pancho Villa. Naysayers may scoff, but memories of such conflicts persist among Mexicans and other Latinos, many of whom resent the enormous power and influence of their northern neighbor. The Mexican folk saying applies, "Poor Mexico - so far from God and so close to the United States."
The tensions are not merely as a result of wars in the now-distant past; they arise out of the specific circumstances in both nations. Politicians on both sides of the border have demagogued the issue of illegal immigration for their own purposes, and influential business leaders routinely engage in doublespeak - expressing concern about open borders, but laughing all the way to the bank on the savings they gain by hiring undocumented workers. In both nations, illegal immigration has become a very big business, not only in the declared, open economy but in the black markets and the criminal underworld. Endemic corruption and narcoterrorismo in Mexico only worsen the problem.
The tensions in the United States arise from multiple factors, including but not limited to the following. During the prosperity of the 1990s and early 2000s, illegal immigration could remain mostly in the shadows, since work was plentiful for citizens and non-citizens alike. However, with the nation and the developed world now mired in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, jobs are no longer easy to find - especially ones that pay a decent, middle-class salary. The jobs held by millions of illegal workers now look much more attractive to Americans desperately in need of work. In some quarters, resentment is growing that illegals are taking work that would otherwise go to Americans.
Given the growing fiscal crisis of public-sector America, people are demanding answers and a closer look is being given to the back-breaking costs imposed by illegal immigration upon our schools, prisons/corrections, and healthcare systems and other public goods and services.
There is also a growing backlash among middle- and lower-class Americans that legislators and other elected leaders are not doing enough to solve the problems of illegal immigration. These groups have been the hardest hit by the presence of large numbers of illegal immigrants in the job market and also feel most-directly the cultural and other effects of open borders. There is a growing recognition that the political/economic/cultural elites who benefit the most from illegal immigration are also those who suffer the least from its negative consequences. This privatization of gains and socialization of costs quite naturally enrages more than a few taxpayers.
A final source of anger and resentment among certain Americans is that illegal immigration has been turned into a tool of political and economic warfare to be wielded against them. The left and the Democrats, doing their best to fulfill Bertold Brecht's vision, are doing everything in their power to import as many illegals as possible and then get them to the voting booth to vote Democrat. This is blatantly unconstitutional, criminal and treasonous matters not to them. For the GOP and the business community, illegal immigration is being used as a tool to break organized union labor and bid down wages. This, too, is lawless but no one at the Wall Street Journal seems to mind very much.
There is a growing sense that globalists within the American business community are colluding with their counterparts in the U.S. and Mexican governments to assure that the border remains open and weakly-enforced. The Mexican government is thereby allowed to export its social and economic problems to the United States while parasitically tapping into U.S. economy. Transfer payments by illegals in the United States are a vital source of hard currency for the Mexican government; an estimated $15 billion dollars annually is wire-transferred from the U.S. to Mexico. Another $25 billion is sent to Latin America. Needless to say, these monies are not taxed by the Internal Revenue Service and therefore generate no revenue for the U.S. Treasury.
Again and again, public opinion polls conclusively show (even across party lines) that the uncontrolled border with Mexico is one of the most serious concerns of voters, but the permanent political class and their crony capitalist pals continue to ignore the issue as much as possible.
In Mexico, tensions with the United States arise not only from economic and other disparities, but from the primary and secondary effects of the decades-long "war on drugs" being waged by Washington. Beginning in the 1980s, concerted efforts by the Reagan and Bush White Houses were mounted to root out and destroy the most powerful Colombian drug cartels and their leaders. By the 1990s, these efforts bore fruit as such notorious drug kingpins as Carlos Escobar were hunted down, captured or killed; likewise, increased pressure on the Medellín and other Colombian drug cartels made their illicit businesses riskier and much more costly. Consequently, many moved northward into Central America and ultimately, Mexico - where they found conditions much more favorable. Today, the drug cartels are as powerful as ever, and have exploited a series of weak and ineffectual governments in Mexico City to create what amounts to a "hollow state." Noted strategic thinker and analyst John Robb1 defines the hollow state as follows,
The narcoterroristas - the drug cartel paramilitaries - are now as well-armed and equipped as regular units of the Mexican army, and outgun all but the most heavily-armed police forces. The resultant conflict is a vicious and cruel form of fourth generation warfare (4GW), with the Mexican people caught in the crossfire. Thus, it is probably safe to regard a significant portion of illegal aliens in the United States as refugees from the violence in Mexico.
Adding fuel to the fire, there is a significant subset of nationalists within the Mexican government and military who are working actively to subvert U.S. border controls and immigration laws and regulations. These individuals are actively aiding the efforts of would-be "undocumented workers" to enter the United States. The Mexican government has produced audio-visual aids and written materials to assist illegal entrants into the U.S.; these materials tell immigrants how to apply fraudulently for public aid/welfare, food stamps and other government largesse; how to evade border patrols, and much more. On more than one occasion, the Mexican army itself has been observed escorting convoys of illegals being ferried into the United States; similarly, Mexican army units have trespassed onto U.S. soil while engaged in such activities. Indeed, to the nationalists, these efforts are part of the Reconquista, their sacred effort to take back territories they have always regarded as Mexican.
The foregoing analysis suggests that it is imperative to reframe the issue of the open border with Mexico - and illegal immigration generally - first and foremost as one of national security, and not simply economics, culture or demography. Noted geopolitical and military affairs analyst William Lind, an internationally-known authority on fourth-generation conflict and the co-creator of the "generations of war" model, has stated that the uncontrolled border with Mexico is the most serious threat to the security of the United States, bar none. Ominously, he predicts that if the situation is not brought under control, there will be a fourth-generation conflict on United States soil within a generation. 2 As we have seen, such conflicts almost always occur as part of the breaking up or "Balkanization" of a nation-state.
Uncontrolled immigration therefore must be regarded as a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, if not its continued existence as a sovereign and autonomous nation. If we do not heed the warnings of Robb, Lind and many others like them, America too will become nothing more than a hollow state.
SOURCE
Somalian immigrants 'should leave culture at door' remark by Maine mayor stirs outrage
The Mayor's remarks would seen to stem from his view that their Muslim culture hinders their integration into the workforce -- and the demand for welfare services that follows from that
Community leaders are demanding the resignation of a Maine mayor who said Somali immigrants living in his city should "accept our culture and leave your culture at the door.”
Organizers of Maine People's Alliance say the group has collected at least 1,400 signatures calling for Lewiston Mayor Robert E. Macdonald to step down over his remarks in September to the British Broadcasting Corp. that Somali immigrants were costing his city a lot of money, then saying they should ‘‘accept our culture and leave your culture at the door.’’
“It’s not just one remark, but a dozen or so,” Mike Tipping, spokesman for the Maine Alliance in Portland, Maine, told NBC News on Thursday. He said his group also created a video compilation of a dozen or so of the mayor's public remarks.
About 6,000 Somali immigrants have settled into this former mill town in search of affordable housing and a safe place to live.
Somali community leaders said residents in the state’s second-largest city have been welcoming – except for the mayor.
"The remarks are painful, hurtful and display the mayor's ignorance about our community. We demand an apology and a plan from his office on how he will work to unite his city, not further divide it," said Jama Mohamed, Communications Director for Somali Bantu Youth, in a statement to NBC News.
Macdonald has since tried to clarify his comments, saying immigrants should try and assimilate into American culture, not that they need to give up their language, religion or traditions.
The petition drive is meant as an expression of local sentiment as Lewiston has no formal recall procedure for its mayor, alliance members say.
SOURCE
October 7, 2012
US immigration chief: Same-sex ties are family ties
Same-sex couples will be considered “family relationships” in immigration proceedings, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a move that could help stem the deportation of those in gay or lesbian binational relationships.
Close family ties to the United States are a factor considered by authorities in deportation cases, and gay and lesbian advocates have long argued for same-sex couples to have the same immigration rights as opposite-sex couples.
“In an effort to make clear the definition of the phrase ‘family relationships,’ I have directed ICE to disseminate written guidance to the field that the interpretation of the phrase ‘family relationships’ includes long-term, same-sex partners,” Napolitano said in a letter.
Eight-four members of Congress signed a joint letter to Napolitano on July 31 asking for her to put into writing an order to prevent the deportation and separation of immigrants from their American citizen same-sex partners.
One of those who penned the letter, U.S. Congressman Michael Honda of California, said Napolitano’s response, which he received Thursday night, heralded “promising news.”
“In the wake of this important victory, we must take a step forward and continue the fight for immigration reform. Current immigration laws are tearing families apart and separating American citizens from their loves ones,” he said in a statement. “No one should have to choose between their spouse and their country, and no family should be left out of the immigration system.”
There are an estimated 36,000 binational gay couples in the U.S. Two such couples have brought lawsuits challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, a U.S. law passed in 1996 that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages and thereby denies various benefits given to heterosexual couples, such as the right to immigrate.
Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, called the announcement a “huge step forward.”
“Until now, LGBT families and their lawyers had nothing to rely on but an oral promise that prosecutorial discretion would include all families. Today, DHS has responded to Congress and made that promise real. The Administration’s written guidance will help families facing separation and the field officers who are reviewing their cases,” she said in a statement.
Tiven was referring to the prosecutorial discretion laid out in June 2011, when ICE Director John Morton issued a memo requiring staff to consider the circumstances presented in individual deportation cases, such as whether the person has close family ties to the U.S.
SOURCE
Australia: Immigration crackdown: over 10,000 student visas revoked
THE Immigration Department cancelled more than 10,000 student visas in the past financial year, with many students failing to fulfil course requirements.
The department revoked 2219 student visas in 2011/12 for failure to meet course progress or attendance benchmarks.
Two visas were cancelled on character grounds and 15 visas withdrawn for providing wrong information or bogus documents. A department spokesman said student visas were also cancelled if the holders falsely claimed to be students.
The department cancelled 3107 visas for non-genuine students, breaches of visa conditions and voluntary requests for cancellation. The department is currently compiling figures for the previous financial year.
Earlier this week, The Age reported an underground market for university essays in Australia was proliferating with "online essay mills" targeting international students through Chinese language social media sites.
In the year to August, there were 461,477 enrolments by full-fee paying international students in Australia. But enrolments had declined by 7.6 per cent compared with the same period the year before, according to Australian Education International.
These figures include students studying at university, TAFE and secondary school.
Foreign students make a massive contribution to the Australian economy with international education accounting for $16.3 billion in export income in 2010/11.
But International Association of Universities secretary-general Eva Egron-Polak said international students offered far greater value than income.
Ms Egron-Polak, who spoke at an international education conference in Melbourne this week, said universities around the world needed to foster stronger cultural and academic links with international students. "They really do enrich our lives and our study," she said.
Ms Egron-Polak said Australian universities would face stronger competition to attract foreign students from Asian countries, including China and Malaysia, which were improving the quality of their higher education sectors.
"Those countries have invested heavily in building their own capacity in higher education. China is now almost balancing the number of outgoing and incoming students," she said.
SOURCE
America's illegal immigrant burden
In present-day America, there is perhaps no better illustration of Bertold Brecht's vision of "dissolving one people and electing another" than the case of illegal immigration from Mexico and Latin America into the United States.
Among the many drivers of the on-going Balkanization of the United States, none is more potent than the unchecked river of humanity flowing across our southern border.
According to recent demographic data, there are approximately 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. These data, often collected by such left-leaning organizations such as the Pew Hispanic Center and the Center for Immigration Studies, understate the extent of illegal immigration; actual figures are almost certainly higher. Some authorities place the figure in the 18-22 million range, while others place the total as high as 30 million people. Since, by definition, illegal immigrants are undocumented, a precise count is probably impossible, especially given the dynamic nature of population flows. It is estimated that some 55% of illegals were from Mexico, with an additional 22% from other Latin American countries; illegals from other nations comprise the remainder of the total.
Unofficial crossings of the border have been going on for almost as long as the nations of Mexico and the United States have existed. Regions along the U.S.-Mexican border have long-been a hybrid of the two nation's cultures. "Tex-Mex" is an established staple in places like El Paso, Texas, where one is just as likely to hear the norteño music of Mexico as American country, western swing or blues. Prominent and wealthy Mexicans and Americans alike own homes and travel widely in both nations. Both nations depend on tourism from the other. Cross-border trade is booming.
Yet, for all of these signs of apparent normalcy, there exists an undercurrent of tension within American-Mexican relations, albeit one seldom remarked upon by the political and cultural elites of either nation. Mexico and the United States fought a bitter war from 1846-1848, after Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845. Much of the American southwest and California were originally part of the Spanish empire, just as Mexico herself once was. The U.S. has a long history of military intervention in Latin America; including the 1916 Punitive Expedition into Mexico by the U.S. Army in pursuit of Pancho Villa. Naysayers may scoff, but memories of such conflicts persist among Mexicans and other Latinos, many of whom resent the enormous power and influence of their northern neighbor. The Mexican folk saying applies, "Poor Mexico - so far from God and so close to the United States."
The tensions are not merely as a result of wars in the now-distant past; they arise out of the specific circumstances in both nations. Politicians on both sides of the border have demagogued the issue of illegal immigration for their own purposes, and influential business leaders routinely engage in doublespeak - expressing concern about open borders, but laughing all the way to the bank on the savings they gain by hiring undocumented workers. In both nations, illegal immigration has become a very big business, not only in the declared, open economy but in the black markets and the criminal underworld. Endemic corruption and narcoterrorismo in Mexico only worsen the problem.
The tensions in the United States arise from multiple factors, including but not limited to the following. During the prosperity of the 1990s and early 2000s, illegal immigration could remain mostly in the shadows, since work was plentiful for citizens and non-citizens alike. However, with the nation and the developed world now mired in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, jobs are no longer easy to find - especially ones that pay a decent, middle-class salary. The jobs held by millions of illegal workers now look much more attractive to Americans desperately in need of work. In some quarters, resentment is growing that illegals are taking work that would otherwise go to Americans.
Given the growing fiscal crisis of public-sector America, people are demanding answers and a closer look is being given to the back-breaking costs imposed by illegal immigration upon our schools, prisons/corrections, and healthcare systems and other public goods and services.
There is also a growing backlash among middle- and lower-class Americans that legislators and other elected leaders are not doing enough to solve the problems of illegal immigration. These groups have been the hardest hit by the presence of large numbers of illegal immigrants in the job market and also feel most-directly the cultural and other effects of open borders. There is a growing recognition that the political/economic/cultural elites who benefit the most from illegal immigration are also those who suffer the least from its negative consequences. This privatization of gains and socialization of costs quite naturally enrages more than a few taxpayers.
A final source of anger and resentment among certain Americans is that illegal immigration has been turned into a tool of political and economic warfare to be wielded against them. The left and the Democrats, doing their best to fulfill Bertold Brecht's vision, are doing everything in their power to import as many illegals as possible and then get them to the voting booth to vote Democrat. This is blatantly unconstitutional, criminal and treasonous matters not to them. For the GOP and the business community, illegal immigration is being used as a tool to break organized union labor and bid down wages. This, too, is lawless but no one at the Wall Street Journal seems to mind very much.
There is a growing sense that globalists within the American business community are colluding with their counterparts in the U.S. and Mexican governments to assure that the border remains open and weakly-enforced. The Mexican government is thereby allowed to export its social and economic problems to the United States while parasitically tapping into U.S. economy. Transfer payments by illegals in the United States are a vital source of hard currency for the Mexican government; an estimated $15 billion dollars annually is wire-transferred from the U.S. to Mexico. Another $25 billion is sent to Latin America. Needless to say, these monies are not taxed by the Internal Revenue Service and therefore generate no revenue for the U.S. Treasury.
Again and again, public opinion polls conclusively show (even across party lines) that the uncontrolled border with Mexico is one of the most serious concerns of voters, but the permanent political class and their crony capitalist pals continue to ignore the issue as much as possible.
In Mexico, tensions with the United States arise not only from economic and other disparities, but from the primary and secondary effects of the decades-long "war on drugs" being waged by Washington. Beginning in the 1980s, concerted efforts by the Reagan and Bush White Houses were mounted to root out and destroy the most powerful Colombian drug cartels and their leaders. By the 1990s, these efforts bore fruit as such notorious drug kingpins as Carlos Escobar were hunted down, captured or killed; likewise, increased pressure on the Medellín and other Colombian drug cartels made their illicit businesses riskier and much more costly. Consequently, many moved northward into Central America and ultimately, Mexico - where they found conditions much more favorable. Today, the drug cartels are as powerful as ever, and have exploited a series of weak and ineffectual governments in Mexico City to create what amounts to a "hollow state." Noted strategic thinker and analyst John Robb1 defines the hollow state as follows,
The hollow state has the trappings of a modern nation-state ("leaders", membership in international organizations, regulations, laws, and a bureaucracy) but it lacks any of the legitimacy, services, and control of its historical counter-part. It is merely a shell that has some influence over the spoils of the economy. The real power rests in the hands of corporations and criminal/guerrilla groups that vie with each other for control of sectors of wealth production.
The narcoterroristas - the drug cartel paramilitaries - are now as well-armed and equipped as regular units of the Mexican army, and outgun all but the most heavily-armed police forces. The resultant conflict is a vicious and cruel form of fourth generation warfare (4GW), with the Mexican people caught in the crossfire. Thus, it is probably safe to regard a significant portion of illegal aliens in the United States as refugees from the violence in Mexico.
Adding fuel to the fire, there is a significant subset of nationalists within the Mexican government and military who are working actively to subvert U.S. border controls and immigration laws and regulations. These individuals are actively aiding the efforts of would-be "undocumented workers" to enter the United States. The Mexican government has produced audio-visual aids and written materials to assist illegal entrants into the U.S.; these materials tell immigrants how to apply fraudulently for public aid/welfare, food stamps and other government largesse; how to evade border patrols, and much more. On more than one occasion, the Mexican army itself has been observed escorting convoys of illegals being ferried into the United States; similarly, Mexican army units have trespassed onto U.S. soil while engaged in such activities. Indeed, to the nationalists, these efforts are part of the Reconquista, their sacred effort to take back territories they have always regarded as Mexican.
The foregoing analysis suggests that it is imperative to reframe the issue of the open border with Mexico - and illegal immigration generally - first and foremost as one of national security, and not simply economics, culture or demography. Noted geopolitical and military affairs analyst William Lind, an internationally-known authority on fourth-generation conflict and the co-creator of the "generations of war" model, has stated that the uncontrolled border with Mexico is the most serious threat to the security of the United States, bar none. Ominously, he predicts that if the situation is not brought under control, there will be a fourth-generation conflict on United States soil within a generation. 2 As we have seen, such conflicts almost always occur as part of the breaking up or "Balkanization" of a nation-state.
Uncontrolled immigration therefore must be regarded as a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, if not its continued existence as a sovereign and autonomous nation. If we do not heed the warnings of Robb, Lind and many others like them, America too will become nothing more than a hollow state.
SOURCE
Somalian immigrants 'should leave culture at door' remark by Maine mayor stirs outrage
The Mayor's remarks would seen to stem from his view that their Muslim culture hinders their integration into the workforce -- and the demand for welfare services that follows from that
Community leaders are demanding the resignation of a Maine mayor who said Somali immigrants living in his city should "accept our culture and leave your culture at the door.”
Organizers of Maine People's Alliance say the group has collected at least 1,400 signatures calling for Lewiston Mayor Robert E. Macdonald to step down over his remarks in September to the British Broadcasting Corp. that Somali immigrants were costing his city a lot of money, then saying they should ‘‘accept our culture and leave your culture at the door.’’
“It’s not just one remark, but a dozen or so,” Mike Tipping, spokesman for the Maine Alliance in Portland, Maine, told NBC News on Thursday. He said his group also created a video compilation of a dozen or so of the mayor's public remarks.
About 6,000 Somali immigrants have settled into this former mill town in search of affordable housing and a safe place to live.
Somali community leaders said residents in the state’s second-largest city have been welcoming – except for the mayor.
"The remarks are painful, hurtful and display the mayor's ignorance about our community. We demand an apology and a plan from his office on how he will work to unite his city, not further divide it," said Jama Mohamed, Communications Director for Somali Bantu Youth, in a statement to NBC News.
Macdonald has since tried to clarify his comments, saying immigrants should try and assimilate into American culture, not that they need to give up their language, religion or traditions.
The petition drive is meant as an expression of local sentiment as Lewiston has no formal recall procedure for its mayor, alliance members say.
SOURCE
October 7, 2012
US immigration chief: Same-sex ties are family ties
Same-sex couples will be considered “family relationships” in immigration proceedings, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a move that could help stem the deportation of those in gay or lesbian binational relationships.
Close family ties to the United States are a factor considered by authorities in deportation cases, and gay and lesbian advocates have long argued for same-sex couples to have the same immigration rights as opposite-sex couples.
“In an effort to make clear the definition of the phrase ‘family relationships,’ I have directed ICE to disseminate written guidance to the field that the interpretation of the phrase ‘family relationships’ includes long-term, same-sex partners,” Napolitano said in a letter.
Eight-four members of Congress signed a joint letter to Napolitano on July 31 asking for her to put into writing an order to prevent the deportation and separation of immigrants from their American citizen same-sex partners.
One of those who penned the letter, U.S. Congressman Michael Honda of California, said Napolitano’s response, which he received Thursday night, heralded “promising news.”
“In the wake of this important victory, we must take a step forward and continue the fight for immigration reform. Current immigration laws are tearing families apart and separating American citizens from their loves ones,” he said in a statement. “No one should have to choose between their spouse and their country, and no family should be left out of the immigration system.”
There are an estimated 36,000 binational gay couples in the U.S. Two such couples have brought lawsuits challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, a U.S. law passed in 1996 that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages and thereby denies various benefits given to heterosexual couples, such as the right to immigrate.
Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, called the announcement a “huge step forward.”
“Until now, LGBT families and their lawyers had nothing to rely on but an oral promise that prosecutorial discretion would include all families. Today, DHS has responded to Congress and made that promise real. The Administration’s written guidance will help families facing separation and the field officers who are reviewing their cases,” she said in a statement.
Tiven was referring to the prosecutorial discretion laid out in June 2011, when ICE Director John Morton issued a memo requiring staff to consider the circumstances presented in individual deportation cases, such as whether the person has close family ties to the U.S.
SOURCE
Australia: Immigration crackdown: over 10,000 student visas revoked
THE Immigration Department cancelled more than 10,000 student visas in the past financial year, with many students failing to fulfil course requirements.
The department revoked 2219 student visas in 2011/12 for failure to meet course progress or attendance benchmarks.
Two visas were cancelled on character grounds and 15 visas withdrawn for providing wrong information or bogus documents. A department spokesman said student visas were also cancelled if the holders falsely claimed to be students.
The department cancelled 3107 visas for non-genuine students, breaches of visa conditions and voluntary requests for cancellation. The department is currently compiling figures for the previous financial year.
Earlier this week, The Age reported an underground market for university essays in Australia was proliferating with "online essay mills" targeting international students through Chinese language social media sites.
In the year to August, there were 461,477 enrolments by full-fee paying international students in Australia. But enrolments had declined by 7.6 per cent compared with the same period the year before, according to Australian Education International.
These figures include students studying at university, TAFE and secondary school.
Foreign students make a massive contribution to the Australian economy with international education accounting for $16.3 billion in export income in 2010/11.
But International Association of Universities secretary-general Eva Egron-Polak said international students offered far greater value than income.
Ms Egron-Polak, who spoke at an international education conference in Melbourne this week, said universities around the world needed to foster stronger cultural and academic links with international students. "They really do enrich our lives and our study," she said.
Ms Egron-Polak said Australian universities would face stronger competition to attract foreign students from Asian countries, including China and Malaysia, which were improving the quality of their higher education sectors.
"Those countries have invested heavily in building their own capacity in higher education. China is now almost balancing the number of outgoing and incoming students," she said.
SOURCE
Friday, October 5, 2012
Tragedy is the Hallmark of Failed Policy
The Death of Border Patrol Agent Nicolas Ivie
A new Center for Immigration Studies memorandum outlines the facts surrounding the recent attack on U.S. Border Patrol agents in Arizona. The memo includes detailed maps and an analysis of national border policy. U.S. law enforcement and residents of border states are targets for violence by illegal aliens who are emboldened by a porous border and lax enforcement of immigration law.
“I doubt this attack was a random act of violence. It is more likely to have been the Mexican cartels making good on threats to target U.S. law enforcement in retaliation for hampering drug trafficking operations,” comments Janice Kephart, Director of National Security Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. “Tragedies such as the murder of Border Patrol Agent Ivie are in part tragedies because of failed and corrupt policies and a government which doesn’t seem to understand the danger of illegal-alien entry into this country.”
The memo can be found online here
The border can be made secure with the correct combination of infrastructure, technology, personnel, and policy. The high number of border crossings and the resulting violence indicate that border states need increased federal support. The ambush of Nicholas Ivie illustrates how political leadership that protects lawbreakers at the expense of law-abiding citizens and law enforcement officers produces tragic results.
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: Marguerite Telford, mrt@cis.org (202) 466-8185. 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
LAPD won’t honor federal requests to detain some illegal immigrants
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced Thursday that his department will no longer honor requests from federal immigration officials to detain hundreds of illegal immigrants who are arrested each year for low-level crimes and wanted for deportation.
The proposed changes to LAPD protocols are the latest, and most dramatic, move by Beck to redefine the department's position on immigration issues. While the change is expected to impact only about 400 arrests a year, it marks a dramatic attempt by the nation's second-largest police department to distance itself from federal immigration policies that Beck says unfairly treats nonviolent offenders who are illegal immigrants.
Earlier this year, the chief pushed through a controversial plan that limits the cases in which police officers impound vehicles of drivers operating without a license -- a group consisting largely of illegal immigrants. And he came out in favor of issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Those earlier forays into the contentious arena of immigration policy earned Beck criticism from those who saw him as going soft on the rule of law and praise from immigration reform advocates.
This latest proposal, announced at a morning news conference, is certain to put Beck squarely back in that spotlight. The chief said he hopes to have the new rules in place by the start of the new year. They first must be approved by the Police Commission, a civilian oversight board.
Currently, the LAPD forwards information to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on the roughly 100,000 people it arrests and books into custody each year. In about 3,400 cases each year, Beck said, the federal agency requests the LAPD to place a 48-hour hold on the people arrested in order to give federal agents time to take custody of them and begin deportation proceedings. The LAPD has honored all of those requests in the past.
Under the terms of the new plan, however, the LAPD would not keep people in custody for immigration officials if they have been arrested for certain nonviolent misdemeanors. Beck said the details of who would be impacted are still being worked out, but gave illegal vending, driving without a license and drinking in public as examples of the types of crimes that will be exempt. Documented gang members or anyone with a violent criminal past will still be held for immigration officials, Beck said.
Beck presented the changes as a way for the department to rebuild trust with the city's enormous immigrant population -- a trust that, he said, has been eroded over the years by the heavy-handed approach immigration officials have taken in which they have failed to distinguish violent, dangerous criminals from those committing petty crimes.
“I believe it makes the city a safer place for everyone,” Beck said. “We need to build trust in these communities. We need to build cooperation.”
The move comes on the heels of Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision this week to veto the Trust Act, a proposed law that would have gone much further than Beck’s proposed changes in barring local law enforcement officials from cooperating with federal authorities in detaining suspected illegal immigrants, except in cases of serious or violent crime.
ICE officials had no immediate comment on the LAPD’s policy change.
However, in January, ICE Director John Morton expressed serious concerns about the decision by authorities in Cook County, Ill., to ignore all of the so-called detainer requests. Morton said the action “undermines public safety,” and hindered the federal agency’s “ability to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.”
Morton also said that ordinance could violate federal law and urged local officials to reconsider.
Regarding the legality of his proposed move, Beck said City Atty. Carmen Trutanich's staff had provided him a legal opinion that local police departments can choose whether to honor ICE detainer requests.
SOURCE
Tragedy is the Hallmark of Failed Policy
The Death of Border Patrol Agent Nicolas Ivie
A new Center for Immigration Studies memorandum outlines the facts surrounding the recent attack on U.S. Border Patrol agents in Arizona. The memo includes detailed maps and an analysis of national border policy. U.S. law enforcement and residents of border states are targets for violence by illegal aliens who are emboldened by a porous border and lax enforcement of immigration law.
“I doubt this attack was a random act of violence. It is more likely to have been the Mexican cartels making good on threats to target U.S. law enforcement in retaliation for hampering drug trafficking operations,” comments Janice Kephart, Director of National Security Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. “Tragedies such as the murder of Border Patrol Agent Ivie are in part tragedies because of failed and corrupt policies and a government which doesn’t seem to understand the danger of illegal-alien entry into this country.”
The memo can be found online here
The border can be made secure with the correct combination of infrastructure, technology, personnel, and policy. The high number of border crossings and the resulting violence indicate that border states need increased federal support. The ambush of Nicholas Ivie illustrates how political leadership that protects lawbreakers at the expense of law-abiding citizens and law enforcement officers produces tragic results.
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: Marguerite Telford, mrt@cis.org (202) 466-8185. 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
LAPD won’t honor federal requests to detain some illegal immigrants
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced Thursday that his department will no longer honor requests from federal immigration officials to detain hundreds of illegal immigrants who are arrested each year for low-level crimes and wanted for deportation.
The proposed changes to LAPD protocols are the latest, and most dramatic, move by Beck to redefine the department's position on immigration issues. While the change is expected to impact only about 400 arrests a year, it marks a dramatic attempt by the nation's second-largest police department to distance itself from federal immigration policies that Beck says unfairly treats nonviolent offenders who are illegal immigrants.
Earlier this year, the chief pushed through a controversial plan that limits the cases in which police officers impound vehicles of drivers operating without a license -- a group consisting largely of illegal immigrants. And he came out in favor of issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Those earlier forays into the contentious arena of immigration policy earned Beck criticism from those who saw him as going soft on the rule of law and praise from immigration reform advocates.
This latest proposal, announced at a morning news conference, is certain to put Beck squarely back in that spotlight. The chief said he hopes to have the new rules in place by the start of the new year. They first must be approved by the Police Commission, a civilian oversight board.
Currently, the LAPD forwards information to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on the roughly 100,000 people it arrests and books into custody each year. In about 3,400 cases each year, Beck said, the federal agency requests the LAPD to place a 48-hour hold on the people arrested in order to give federal agents time to take custody of them and begin deportation proceedings. The LAPD has honored all of those requests in the past.
Under the terms of the new plan, however, the LAPD would not keep people in custody for immigration officials if they have been arrested for certain nonviolent misdemeanors. Beck said the details of who would be impacted are still being worked out, but gave illegal vending, driving without a license and drinking in public as examples of the types of crimes that will be exempt. Documented gang members or anyone with a violent criminal past will still be held for immigration officials, Beck said.
Beck presented the changes as a way for the department to rebuild trust with the city's enormous immigrant population -- a trust that, he said, has been eroded over the years by the heavy-handed approach immigration officials have taken in which they have failed to distinguish violent, dangerous criminals from those committing petty crimes.
“I believe it makes the city a safer place for everyone,” Beck said. “We need to build trust in these communities. We need to build cooperation.”
The move comes on the heels of Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision this week to veto the Trust Act, a proposed law that would have gone much further than Beck’s proposed changes in barring local law enforcement officials from cooperating with federal authorities in detaining suspected illegal immigrants, except in cases of serious or violent crime.
ICE officials had no immediate comment on the LAPD’s policy change.
However, in January, ICE Director John Morton expressed serious concerns about the decision by authorities in Cook County, Ill., to ignore all of the so-called detainer requests. Morton said the action “undermines public safety,” and hindered the federal agency’s “ability to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.”
Morton also said that ordinance could violate federal law and urged local officials to reconsider.
Regarding the legality of his proposed move, Beck said City Atty. Carmen Trutanich's staff had provided him a legal opinion that local police departments can choose whether to honor ICE detainer requests.
SOURCE
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Romney Dials Back Acceptance of Obama Immigration Program
With hours to go before the presidential candidates meet in Denver for their first debate, Mitt Romney has scaled back his acceptance of a program by President Obama to grant reprieves from deportation to hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.
On Monday, after months of pressure to clarify whether he would end the program if elected, Mr. Romney said in an interview with The Denver Post that he would not cancel two-year deportation deferrals already granted by the Obama administration.
“I’m not going to take something they’ve purchased,” Mr. Romney said.
But on Wednesday morning, campaign aides clarified that Mr. Romney intended to halt the program after he took office and would not issue any new deferrals.
“We’re not going to continue Obama’s program,” an aide said by e-mail. “We’re going to replace it and would only honor visas already issued.”
Mr. Romney has said that instead of Mr. Obama’s temporary measure, he would seek a long-term solution for young undocumented immigrants. He has said he would support legislation to give permanent resident green cards to illegal immigrants who serve in the military.
“He will seek from day one to work as quickly as he can for a permanent solution that will supersede what Barack Obama did,” said Alberto Martinez, an adviser to the Romney campaign on immigration. “He will replace certainty and permanence for something that is uncertain and not permanent.”
Mr. Martinez confirmed that Mr. Romney, as president, would not issue any new deportation deferrals. But he said Mr. Romney would not deport undocumented students who would have been eligible for a deferral.
Mr. Romney has not offered details of a broader plan to give legal status to those immigrants. An estimated 1.2 million immigrants are immediately eligible for reprieves under Mr. Obama’s program.
Undocumented youth leaders said they were dismayed by Mr. Romney’s turnaround. “Dreamers across the nation are disappointed to learn that if elected to the presidency, Governor Mitt Romney would dismantle the Dreamer deferred action policy,” Lorella Praeli, a leader of the United We Dream Network, said Wednesday. She was referring to a group of young undocumented immigrants who call themselves Dreamers, after a bill called the Dream Act.
Mr. Romney’s revision could have a major impact on the deferral program, which began to receive applications on Aug. 15. Since there is no filing deadline, many illegal immigrants have said they were holding back from applying until after the Nov. 6 elections, fearing that Mr. Romney would stop the program.
Still, more than 100,000 immigrants have applied for deferrals and work permits that come with them. After the first month officials confirmed 29 approvals, and they said the pace of decisions could slow as the volume increases.
Immigration policy analysts were perplexed that Mr. Romney referred to the deferrals as visas, noting that the program does not grant visas. Mr. Obama created the program by executive action after the Dream Act stalled in Congress.
SOURCE
U-turn: British government to consider asylum plea of Afghan interpreter blown up on British front line patrol
British bureaucrats are one of the world's lowest life-forms
The Home Office made an extraordinary U-turn tonight and withdrew a letter telling an Afghan interpreter blown up by the Taliban while on patrol with British troops his asylum application was rejected.
The rare about-turn came hours after publicity highlighting the farcical handling of the case of Mohammad Rafi Hottak by the controversial UK Border Agency, whose refusal of the claim was met with disbelief and anger by the military and MPs.
Last night the Agency said it would look again at the case after it appeared that the most basic checks had not been made by officers investigating the 26 year-old's claim despite it having been lodged 14 months ago.
A delighted Mr Hottak hailed the decision as a 'victory for common sense', adding that: ' The reasons given for rejection were unbelievable and showed thorough checks had just not been made in my case.
'I now have renewed hope but I am still cautious given what has happened… this latest decision to cancel the letter shows at least that people are still working to help me find justice. I still can't believe the letter I was sent.'
In that astonishing letter of rejection, which raised new questions about the handling of asylum cases, Mr Hottak was told one of the reasons he would not be allowed to build a new life in Britain was because Home Office investigators did not have evidence of how he was injured.
Incredibly, the father of three was also told he had provided no evidence he was an Afghan, he had the same fingerprints as another asylum claimant and there was no evidence his life was under threat if he had remained in his homeland.
In fact, all the details could have been simply obtained from Ministry of Defence records, including those of how Mr Hottak was blown up by an improvised explosives device – a blast that killed a British officer – and that his life was saved by surgeons in hospital at Camp Bastion.
A devastated Mr Hottak, whose asylum case has already been raised in Parliament, claimed: 'It is as if the Home Office has been blind to my case and what happened to me and fellow interpreters in Afghanistan. I have army officers who I worked with supporting my case but this appears to mean nothing.
'I am depressed and I will appeal, I always saw Britain as a just country that I was proud to serve, that provided shelter for those whose lives were at risk but this has shaken that belief. All I want is a better future for myself and my kids.'
The rejection shocked both MPs and those in the military who worked beside Mr Hottak in the most dangerous parts of Helmand province.
Julian Brazier MP, a member of the Defence select Committee, said he would raise the matter with both Immigration and Armed Forces ministers while Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, called for Home Secretary Theresa May to investigate.
One soldier has written to the Home Office speaking at his 'disappointment' as the handling of a 'hero's' case, saying Britain was turning its back on him and branding him a liar.
Faced with personal death threats and those to his family, Mr Hottak had paid £8,000 to people smugglers more than a year ago, to reach Britain, walking into a Central London police station to make his plea for asylum.
Fluent in three languages, including English, Mr Hottak worked for the US military as an interpreter in 2004 before switching to the British two years later following in the footsteps of his elder brother.
It was on the morning of November 14, 2007 that while on foot patrol with a joint British Afghan force near the centre of Sangin, Helmand province, an IED was triggered.
Mr Hottak's boss Captain John McDermid, 43, of 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment was killed, Mr Hottak badly wounded.
He still recalls the huge flash, the noise and the searing pain as he was thrown several metres into the air before ending up bleeding profusely as Army medics rushed to the aid of the injured.
The interpreter suffered horrific shrapnel wounds to the head, neck, arms and chest that required 170 stitches. He also temporarily lost the use of his hand and was deaf in one ear for more than a year.
Thanks to the work of doctors, Mr Hottak returned to work after three months but was unfit for front line duties and was given a job at Camp Souter, the main British recruitment base in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
His role involved interviewing prospective interpreters as well as liasing with the families of colleagues killed or injured, sometimes returning the remains of the dead to their families.
It was then that he began to receive death threats both by letter and telephone – threats he told British officers about. Some threatened him, some his family. He moved house and changed telephones but the threats continued.
One Taliban letter referred to Mr Hottak and his brother by name. It warned: 'They are doing a very important job for the aggressive infidels, so we want you to catch them and deal with them through Islamic Sharia,' said the note, hand-written in Pashtu, the main language in southern Afghanistan.
'If you can't catch these two, catch their father so they will come to rescue him.'
At one point a British officer wrote him a note to take to a senior police officer in Kabul to ask him for help. But Mr Hottak said: 'The first thing the police officer said was, “You work for the Nato forces so they should look after you, not us. There are hundreds of people like you and I cannot provide bodyguards for all of them'."
Underlining the threats was the fact that the Taliban had been responsible for the kidnap and murders of translators as well as the intimidation of their families who were warned that unless their relatives left the British, they would become targets.
More than 40 Afghan translators are said to have resigned from working with the British because of the threats.
Mr Hottak, who has not seen his youngest child, is now living in a hostel in Leicester, where he is unable to work and receives £36 a week to live on.
He is doing a course at a local college and says : 'Other translators have been granted asylum but they are refusing me on the weakest possible reasons. I have Army officers who vouch for who I am, what happened to me and the fact that I served loyally and well with British troops yet this seems to count for very little.'
He added : 'I am desperate and depressed, I risked my life to help British soldiers, my family and Afghanistan and it seems to count for nothing.
'I read reports of killers and criminals who have been granted asylum – it seems that they are desirable but people like me who have never done anything wrong and whose life will be in danger in my own home because I worked with British troops are not. It is a strange situation.'
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee and Mr Hottak's MP, has called the young man's treatment a disgrace.
Mr Hottak said that one reason for his asylum rejection was that investigators could not confirm that his surname was Afghan – something that could have been done simply through Google.
Another was that military identification cards supporting the application contained different spellings of his name – Afghan names are spelt in a variety of ways when written in English.
Last night a UKBA spokesperson said: ‘The increased level of publicity around this case has led to new and significant information, which was not provided during the application process, coming to light today.
'As a result of this additional information, we have informed Mr Hottak this evening that we have withdrawn our decision and will fully review his application.’
SOURCE
Romney Dials Back Acceptance of Obama Immigration Program
With hours to go before the presidential candidates meet in Denver for their first debate, Mitt Romney has scaled back his acceptance of a program by President Obama to grant reprieves from deportation to hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.
On Monday, after months of pressure to clarify whether he would end the program if elected, Mr. Romney said in an interview with The Denver Post that he would not cancel two-year deportation deferrals already granted by the Obama administration.
“I’m not going to take something they’ve purchased,” Mr. Romney said.
But on Wednesday morning, campaign aides clarified that Mr. Romney intended to halt the program after he took office and would not issue any new deferrals.
“We’re not going to continue Obama’s program,” an aide said by e-mail. “We’re going to replace it and would only honor visas already issued.”
Mr. Romney has said that instead of Mr. Obama’s temporary measure, he would seek a long-term solution for young undocumented immigrants. He has said he would support legislation to give permanent resident green cards to illegal immigrants who serve in the military.
“He will seek from day one to work as quickly as he can for a permanent solution that will supersede what Barack Obama did,” said Alberto Martinez, an adviser to the Romney campaign on immigration. “He will replace certainty and permanence for something that is uncertain and not permanent.”
Mr. Martinez confirmed that Mr. Romney, as president, would not issue any new deportation deferrals. But he said Mr. Romney would not deport undocumented students who would have been eligible for a deferral.
Mr. Romney has not offered details of a broader plan to give legal status to those immigrants. An estimated 1.2 million immigrants are immediately eligible for reprieves under Mr. Obama’s program.
Undocumented youth leaders said they were dismayed by Mr. Romney’s turnaround. “Dreamers across the nation are disappointed to learn that if elected to the presidency, Governor Mitt Romney would dismantle the Dreamer deferred action policy,” Lorella Praeli, a leader of the United We Dream Network, said Wednesday. She was referring to a group of young undocumented immigrants who call themselves Dreamers, after a bill called the Dream Act.
Mr. Romney’s revision could have a major impact on the deferral program, which began to receive applications on Aug. 15. Since there is no filing deadline, many illegal immigrants have said they were holding back from applying until after the Nov. 6 elections, fearing that Mr. Romney would stop the program.
Still, more than 100,000 immigrants have applied for deferrals and work permits that come with them. After the first month officials confirmed 29 approvals, and they said the pace of decisions could slow as the volume increases.
Immigration policy analysts were perplexed that Mr. Romney referred to the deferrals as visas, noting that the program does not grant visas. Mr. Obama created the program by executive action after the Dream Act stalled in Congress.
SOURCE
U-turn: British government to consider asylum plea of Afghan interpreter blown up on British front line patrol
British bureaucrats are one of the world's lowest life-forms
The Home Office made an extraordinary U-turn tonight and withdrew a letter telling an Afghan interpreter blown up by the Taliban while on patrol with British troops his asylum application was rejected.
The rare about-turn came hours after publicity highlighting the farcical handling of the case of Mohammad Rafi Hottak by the controversial UK Border Agency, whose refusal of the claim was met with disbelief and anger by the military and MPs.
Last night the Agency said it would look again at the case after it appeared that the most basic checks had not been made by officers investigating the 26 year-old's claim despite it having been lodged 14 months ago.
A delighted Mr Hottak hailed the decision as a 'victory for common sense', adding that: ' The reasons given for rejection were unbelievable and showed thorough checks had just not been made in my case.
'I now have renewed hope but I am still cautious given what has happened… this latest decision to cancel the letter shows at least that people are still working to help me find justice. I still can't believe the letter I was sent.'
In that astonishing letter of rejection, which raised new questions about the handling of asylum cases, Mr Hottak was told one of the reasons he would not be allowed to build a new life in Britain was because Home Office investigators did not have evidence of how he was injured.
Incredibly, the father of three was also told he had provided no evidence he was an Afghan, he had the same fingerprints as another asylum claimant and there was no evidence his life was under threat if he had remained in his homeland.
In fact, all the details could have been simply obtained from Ministry of Defence records, including those of how Mr Hottak was blown up by an improvised explosives device – a blast that killed a British officer – and that his life was saved by surgeons in hospital at Camp Bastion.
A devastated Mr Hottak, whose asylum case has already been raised in Parliament, claimed: 'It is as if the Home Office has been blind to my case and what happened to me and fellow interpreters in Afghanistan. I have army officers who I worked with supporting my case but this appears to mean nothing.
'I am depressed and I will appeal, I always saw Britain as a just country that I was proud to serve, that provided shelter for those whose lives were at risk but this has shaken that belief. All I want is a better future for myself and my kids.'
The rejection shocked both MPs and those in the military who worked beside Mr Hottak in the most dangerous parts of Helmand province.
Julian Brazier MP, a member of the Defence select Committee, said he would raise the matter with both Immigration and Armed Forces ministers while Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, called for Home Secretary Theresa May to investigate.
One soldier has written to the Home Office speaking at his 'disappointment' as the handling of a 'hero's' case, saying Britain was turning its back on him and branding him a liar.
Faced with personal death threats and those to his family, Mr Hottak had paid £8,000 to people smugglers more than a year ago, to reach Britain, walking into a Central London police station to make his plea for asylum.
Fluent in three languages, including English, Mr Hottak worked for the US military as an interpreter in 2004 before switching to the British two years later following in the footsteps of his elder brother.
It was on the morning of November 14, 2007 that while on foot patrol with a joint British Afghan force near the centre of Sangin, Helmand province, an IED was triggered.
Mr Hottak's boss Captain John McDermid, 43, of 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment was killed, Mr Hottak badly wounded.
He still recalls the huge flash, the noise and the searing pain as he was thrown several metres into the air before ending up bleeding profusely as Army medics rushed to the aid of the injured.
The interpreter suffered horrific shrapnel wounds to the head, neck, arms and chest that required 170 stitches. He also temporarily lost the use of his hand and was deaf in one ear for more than a year.
Thanks to the work of doctors, Mr Hottak returned to work after three months but was unfit for front line duties and was given a job at Camp Souter, the main British recruitment base in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
His role involved interviewing prospective interpreters as well as liasing with the families of colleagues killed or injured, sometimes returning the remains of the dead to their families.
It was then that he began to receive death threats both by letter and telephone – threats he told British officers about. Some threatened him, some his family. He moved house and changed telephones but the threats continued.
One Taliban letter referred to Mr Hottak and his brother by name. It warned: 'They are doing a very important job for the aggressive infidels, so we want you to catch them and deal with them through Islamic Sharia,' said the note, hand-written in Pashtu, the main language in southern Afghanistan.
'If you can't catch these two, catch their father so they will come to rescue him.'
At one point a British officer wrote him a note to take to a senior police officer in Kabul to ask him for help. But Mr Hottak said: 'The first thing the police officer said was, “You work for the Nato forces so they should look after you, not us. There are hundreds of people like you and I cannot provide bodyguards for all of them'."
Underlining the threats was the fact that the Taliban had been responsible for the kidnap and murders of translators as well as the intimidation of their families who were warned that unless their relatives left the British, they would become targets.
More than 40 Afghan translators are said to have resigned from working with the British because of the threats.
Mr Hottak, who has not seen his youngest child, is now living in a hostel in Leicester, where he is unable to work and receives £36 a week to live on.
He is doing a course at a local college and says : 'Other translators have been granted asylum but they are refusing me on the weakest possible reasons. I have Army officers who vouch for who I am, what happened to me and the fact that I served loyally and well with British troops yet this seems to count for very little.'
He added : 'I am desperate and depressed, I risked my life to help British soldiers, my family and Afghanistan and it seems to count for nothing.
'I read reports of killers and criminals who have been granted asylum – it seems that they are desirable but people like me who have never done anything wrong and whose life will be in danger in my own home because I worked with British troops are not. It is a strange situation.'
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee and Mr Hottak's MP, has called the young man's treatment a disgrace.
Mr Hottak said that one reason for his asylum rejection was that investigators could not confirm that his surname was Afghan – something that could have been done simply through Google.
Another was that military identification cards supporting the application contained different spellings of his name – Afghan names are spelt in a variety of ways when written in English.
Last night a UKBA spokesperson said: ‘The increased level of publicity around this case has led to new and significant information, which was not provided during the application process, coming to light today.
'As a result of this additional information, we have informed Mr Hottak this evening that we have withdrawn our decision and will fully review his application.’
SOURCE
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Romney will keep Obama's immigration policy
Mitt Romney softened his stance on one of President Obama's immigration directives allowing certain undocumented immigrant youth to stay in the U.S. legally.
In an interview with The Denver Post Monday, Romney said he would not reverse an executive order issued by President Obama that would allow children of illegal immigrants to obtain a visa, permitting them to live and work in the U.S. legally for two years, if they meet certain criteria.
"The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid. I'm not going to take something that they've purchased," Romney said. "Before those visas have expired we will have the full immigration reform plan that I've proposed."
Months after the president issued the directive, Romney's admission that he would not reverse the executive order as president clarifies his position on the issue.
When asked by "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer in June if he would repeal the order, Romney said, "Well, let's step back and look at the issue," declining to give a straight answer. At the time, Romney also called the president's decision partly political.
"It's not really showing a huge amount of courage to give a confusing answer on an issue that's been around for more than 100 days," Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
The president's directive, which he ordered in June, is a way to circumvent Congress' stalemate over the DREAM Act, legislation that would give legal status to children of illegal immigrants who obtain higher education or join the military. Romney has supported the military component of the legislation but not the part involving education.
This is not the only issue involving immigration where Romney has softened. During the Republican primary he said he supported self-deportation, making laws so stringent that immigrants are driven out. He has not used the term since he clinched the Republican nomination. He now says he supports bolstering legal immigration, especially for highly-skilled workers, and securing the border.
Immigration in depth
According to numerous polls, the president is winning among Latino voters by more than 30 points.
Romney spoke to the Denver Post before a campaign rally in Colorado, where he is spending time preparing for Wednesday night's presidential debate.
In response to the news of Romney's new policy position, Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Romney's interview with the Denver Post "raised more questions about what exactly is the policy would support."
"It's not really showing a huge amount of courage to give a confusing answer on an issue that's been around for more than 100 days," she said, noting that the president signed the executive order in question more than 100 days ago.
SOURCE
Immigration-rights advocates criticize Gov. Brown's veto of Trust Act
Immigration-rights advocates are criticizing Gov. Jerry Brown for signing what they called a hollow, symbolic bill while vetoing one of the most closely watched pieces of immigration legislation in the country.
The bill that Brown signed, which lets some young immigrants have driver's licenses, allows nothing beyond what is permitted under a new federal program granting a two-year reprieve from deportation.
But the bill that the governor vetoed -- the so-called Trust Act -- would have barred local law enforcement officials from cooperating with federal authorities in detaining suspected illegal immigrants, except in the cases of serious or violent crime.
"Gov. Brown waited until the eleventh hour to veto the most ... impactful bill that would bring tremendous relief for the immigrant community," said Carlos Amador of Dream Team Los Angeles. "But he decided to sign a symbolic and hollow bill that doesn't bring anything more than what we already had ... to apply for a driver's license."
Brown's actions amounted to a setback for illegal immigrants, said Yale law professor Michael Wishnie.
"I'm signing this bill that's unnecessary ... and that somehow balances out" the Trust Act? "It doesn't add up," Wishnie said.
Under the federal Secure Communities program, everyone arrested in California on criminal charges is evaluated for immigration status. At the request of federal authorities, sheriff's deputies can detain suspects for 48 hours before handing them over to federal custody.
In his veto message, the governor said the Trust Act legislation was "fatally flawed" because some crimes, such as child abuse, drug trafficking and the selling of weapons, would not trigger the deportation process.
"I believe it's unwise to interfere with a sheriff's discretion to comply with a detainer issued for people with these kinds of troubling criminal records," Brown wrote. "The significant flaws in this bill can be fixed, and I will work with the Legislature to see that the bill is corrected forthwith."
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca had vowed to defy the legislation if it was signed. But the California State Sheriffs' Assn. was open to discussing a modified version of the measure, said Marin County Sheriff Bob Doyle. Many sheriffs, including Baca, objected to the bill because they said it would have forced them to choose between state and federal law.
"Our interests are always in public safety. I don't think states should be getting in the immigration business. I think that's the federal government's responsibility," Doyle said. "I personally believe that if someone's here illegally, they should be returned to their country of origin."
Despite Brown's veto, California remains one of the nation's most immigrant-friendly states, allowing undocumented college students to pay in-state tuition and, soon, to receive state financial aid.
"It's arguably the most welcoming environment for illegal immigrants," said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-illegal-immigration group. "It's hard to imagine any rational reason for expanding the welcome wagon. Once again, illegal aliens are in the driver's seat in California."
SOURCE
Romney will keep Obama's immigration policy
Mitt Romney softened his stance on one of President Obama's immigration directives allowing certain undocumented immigrant youth to stay in the U.S. legally.
In an interview with The Denver Post Monday, Romney said he would not reverse an executive order issued by President Obama that would allow children of illegal immigrants to obtain a visa, permitting them to live and work in the U.S. legally for two years, if they meet certain criteria.
"The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid. I'm not going to take something that they've purchased," Romney said. "Before those visas have expired we will have the full immigration reform plan that I've proposed."
Months after the president issued the directive, Romney's admission that he would not reverse the executive order as president clarifies his position on the issue.
When asked by "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer in June if he would repeal the order, Romney said, "Well, let's step back and look at the issue," declining to give a straight answer. At the time, Romney also called the president's decision partly political.
"It's not really showing a huge amount of courage to give a confusing answer on an issue that's been around for more than 100 days," Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
The president's directive, which he ordered in June, is a way to circumvent Congress' stalemate over the DREAM Act, legislation that would give legal status to children of illegal immigrants who obtain higher education or join the military. Romney has supported the military component of the legislation but not the part involving education.
This is not the only issue involving immigration where Romney has softened. During the Republican primary he said he supported self-deportation, making laws so stringent that immigrants are driven out. He has not used the term since he clinched the Republican nomination. He now says he supports bolstering legal immigration, especially for highly-skilled workers, and securing the border.
Immigration in depth
According to numerous polls, the president is winning among Latino voters by more than 30 points.
Romney spoke to the Denver Post before a campaign rally in Colorado, where he is spending time preparing for Wednesday night's presidential debate.
In response to the news of Romney's new policy position, Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Romney's interview with the Denver Post "raised more questions about what exactly is the policy would support."
"It's not really showing a huge amount of courage to give a confusing answer on an issue that's been around for more than 100 days," she said, noting that the president signed the executive order in question more than 100 days ago.
SOURCE
Immigration-rights advocates criticize Gov. Brown's veto of Trust Act
Immigration-rights advocates are criticizing Gov. Jerry Brown for signing what they called a hollow, symbolic bill while vetoing one of the most closely watched pieces of immigration legislation in the country.
The bill that Brown signed, which lets some young immigrants have driver's licenses, allows nothing beyond what is permitted under a new federal program granting a two-year reprieve from deportation.
But the bill that the governor vetoed -- the so-called Trust Act -- would have barred local law enforcement officials from cooperating with federal authorities in detaining suspected illegal immigrants, except in the cases of serious or violent crime.
"Gov. Brown waited until the eleventh hour to veto the most ... impactful bill that would bring tremendous relief for the immigrant community," said Carlos Amador of Dream Team Los Angeles. "But he decided to sign a symbolic and hollow bill that doesn't bring anything more than what we already had ... to apply for a driver's license."
Brown's actions amounted to a setback for illegal immigrants, said Yale law professor Michael Wishnie.
"I'm signing this bill that's unnecessary ... and that somehow balances out" the Trust Act? "It doesn't add up," Wishnie said.
Under the federal Secure Communities program, everyone arrested in California on criminal charges is evaluated for immigration status. At the request of federal authorities, sheriff's deputies can detain suspects for 48 hours before handing them over to federal custody.
In his veto message, the governor said the Trust Act legislation was "fatally flawed" because some crimes, such as child abuse, drug trafficking and the selling of weapons, would not trigger the deportation process.
"I believe it's unwise to interfere with a sheriff's discretion to comply with a detainer issued for people with these kinds of troubling criminal records," Brown wrote. "The significant flaws in this bill can be fixed, and I will work with the Legislature to see that the bill is corrected forthwith."
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca had vowed to defy the legislation if it was signed. But the California State Sheriffs' Assn. was open to discussing a modified version of the measure, said Marin County Sheriff Bob Doyle. Many sheriffs, including Baca, objected to the bill because they said it would have forced them to choose between state and federal law.
"Our interests are always in public safety. I don't think states should be getting in the immigration business. I think that's the federal government's responsibility," Doyle said. "I personally believe that if someone's here illegally, they should be returned to their country of origin."
Despite Brown's veto, California remains one of the nation's most immigrant-friendly states, allowing undocumented college students to pay in-state tuition and, soon, to receive state financial aid.
"It's arguably the most welcoming environment for illegal immigrants," said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-illegal-immigration group. "It's hard to imagine any rational reason for expanding the welcome wagon. Once again, illegal aliens are in the driver's seat in California."
SOURCE
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
California Legislation Gives Undocumented Immigrants License to Drive
The newest legislative move in California marks a small victory for the states undocumented immigrants.
In the new bill, signed into action late Sunday night by Gov. Jerry Brown, some undocumented immigrants could get California drivers licenses.
AB2189 by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, will let the Department of Motor Vehicles issue licenses to undocumented immigrants eligible for work permits under a new Obama administration policy. The bill requires the department to accept as proof of legal residence whatever document the federal government provides to participants in its deferred action program.
Cedillo said his bill will make roads safer while letting young immigrants drive to school and to work. His reasoning drew support from several Republican lawmakers, while other Republicans argued the state should leave immigration issues to the federal government.
"It is a victory for those who were brought here through no choice of their own, played by the rules, and are only asking to be included in and contribute to American society," Cedillo said in a statement.
He said California is the first state to grant drivers' licenses to the group singled out under the Obama administration's policy. Cedillo praised Brown for choosing "public safety over politics" by signing the bill.
"President Obama has recognized the unique status of these students, and making them eligible to apply for driver's licenses is an obvious next step," Brown spokesman Gil Duran said.
Meanwhile, Brown vetoed AB1081, which could have protected undocumented immigrants from deportation if they committed minor infractions. The bill has been dubbed "anti-Arizona" legislation, a reference to that state's immigrant identification law.
The so-called Trust Act would have let California opt out of some parts of a federal program that requires local law enforcement officers to check the fingerprints of people they arrest against a federal immigration database and hold those who are in the country illegally.
It would have barred local law enforcement officers from detaining suspects for possible deportation unless they are charged with serious or violent felonies.
Brown backed comprehensive federal immigration reform, and said in a veto message that federal agents "shouldn't try to coerce local law enforcement officials into detaining people who've been picked up for minor offenses and pose no reasonable threat to their community."
However, he said the list of serious or violent felonies in the bill is "fatally flawed because it omits many serious crimes." He said those include child abuse, drug trafficking, and weapons violations, among others. He promised to work with lawmakers to fix the bill's wording.
California law enforcement officials have turned over about 80,000 undocumented immigrants for deportation since 2009, though fewer than half had committed a serious or violent felony. The majority of those deported by the federal government under the Secure Communities program have come from California.
Supporters say the program targets otherwise law-abiding immigrants who commit minor traffic infractions, sell food without a permit or are arrested on misdemeanors charges but never convicted. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, said the program wastes local resources and causes mistrust between immigrants and law enforcement agencies.
Several Republican legislators objected that Ammiano's bill would have removed a valuable tool for ridding California of lawbreakers.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Blogs
1. Mexican President-Elect Criticizes Texas Justice System
2. DACA Data
3. Birth Tourism Baby Calls United States a "Foreign Country"
4. USCIS Does the Right Thing and Overrules Its Own Ombudsman
5. New Poll: Latino Voters Identify as Americans First and Don't Vote on the Immigration Issue
6. Obama Administration Promises to Ignore SSN Fraud, Protect Law-Breaking Businesses
7. Study Finds Skilled Low-Wage Workers
8. ICE Offers Social Work Services to Foreign Students
9. There's Nothing as Permanent as a Temporary Immigration Status
10. Non-Citizen Voting Suits Spread to Michigan
11. T.J. Bonner's Unfortunate Circumstance
12. Should a U.S. University President Need an Interpreter at a Criminal Trial?
13. The Huddled Masses vs. the Best & the Brightest
14. Taming the Crocodile: Reasons to Doubt U.S. Decision to De-List MEK as a Terrorist Group
15. Obama's de Facto Amnesty Shows He's No Solomon
16. Marriage Fraud in a "He Did It" or, Maybe, "She Did It" Case
California Legislation Gives Undocumented Immigrants License to Drive
The newest legislative move in California marks a small victory for the states undocumented immigrants.
In the new bill, signed into action late Sunday night by Gov. Jerry Brown, some undocumented immigrants could get California drivers licenses.
AB2189 by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, will let the Department of Motor Vehicles issue licenses to undocumented immigrants eligible for work permits under a new Obama administration policy. The bill requires the department to accept as proof of legal residence whatever document the federal government provides to participants in its deferred action program.
Cedillo said his bill will make roads safer while letting young immigrants drive to school and to work. His reasoning drew support from several Republican lawmakers, while other Republicans argued the state should leave immigration issues to the federal government.
"It is a victory for those who were brought here through no choice of their own, played by the rules, and are only asking to be included in and contribute to American society," Cedillo said in a statement.
He said California is the first state to grant drivers' licenses to the group singled out under the Obama administration's policy. Cedillo praised Brown for choosing "public safety over politics" by signing the bill.
"President Obama has recognized the unique status of these students, and making them eligible to apply for driver's licenses is an obvious next step," Brown spokesman Gil Duran said.
Meanwhile, Brown vetoed AB1081, which could have protected undocumented immigrants from deportation if they committed minor infractions. The bill has been dubbed "anti-Arizona" legislation, a reference to that state's immigrant identification law.
The so-called Trust Act would have let California opt out of some parts of a federal program that requires local law enforcement officers to check the fingerprints of people they arrest against a federal immigration database and hold those who are in the country illegally.
It would have barred local law enforcement officers from detaining suspects for possible deportation unless they are charged with serious or violent felonies.
Brown backed comprehensive federal immigration reform, and said in a veto message that federal agents "shouldn't try to coerce local law enforcement officials into detaining people who've been picked up for minor offenses and pose no reasonable threat to their community."
However, he said the list of serious or violent felonies in the bill is "fatally flawed because it omits many serious crimes." He said those include child abuse, drug trafficking, and weapons violations, among others. He promised to work with lawmakers to fix the bill's wording.
California law enforcement officials have turned over about 80,000 undocumented immigrants for deportation since 2009, though fewer than half had committed a serious or violent felony. The majority of those deported by the federal government under the Secure Communities program have come from California.
Supporters say the program targets otherwise law-abiding immigrants who commit minor traffic infractions, sell food without a permit or are arrested on misdemeanors charges but never convicted. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, said the program wastes local resources and causes mistrust between immigrants and law enforcement agencies.
Several Republican legislators objected that Ammiano's bill would have removed a valuable tool for ridding California of lawbreakers.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Blogs
1. Mexican President-Elect Criticizes Texas Justice System
2. DACA Data
3. Birth Tourism Baby Calls United States a "Foreign Country"
4. USCIS Does the Right Thing and Overrules Its Own Ombudsman
5. New Poll: Latino Voters Identify as Americans First and Don't Vote on the Immigration Issue
6. Obama Administration Promises to Ignore SSN Fraud, Protect Law-Breaking Businesses
7. Study Finds Skilled Low-Wage Workers
8. ICE Offers Social Work Services to Foreign Students
9. There's Nothing as Permanent as a Temporary Immigration Status
10. Non-Citizen Voting Suits Spread to Michigan
11. T.J. Bonner's Unfortunate Circumstance
12. Should a U.S. University President Need an Interpreter at a Criminal Trial?
13. The Huddled Masses vs. the Best & the Brightest
14. Taming the Crocodile: Reasons to Doubt U.S. Decision to De-List MEK as a Terrorist Group
15. Obama's de Facto Amnesty Shows He's No Solomon
16. Marriage Fraud in a "He Did It" or, Maybe, "She Did It" Case
Monday, October 1, 2012
Censorship of immigration debate in Canada
Very Canadian. Censorship as a means of expressing disapproval is childish -- like sticking your fingers in your ears. One would have hoped that the Canadian parliament was more mature than that
The right for MPs to say and discuss almost anything they want is one of the central privileges of Parliament, but a couple of divisive debates over the past week tested the thresholds of dialogue in the House of Commons.
In one case, two spokespeople from the Canadian Immigration Forum were barred from speaking at the Commons immigration committee Wednesday because content on their website was deemed offensive -- including an interview with Canadian white supremacist Paul Fromm.
Madi Lussier, one of the two witnesses from the Canadian Immigration Forum not permitted to speak to the Commons committee, wiped away tears as she expressed her frustrations. The group's website is mostly an aggregator of articles on different issues touching on immigration, but divided into provocative sections with names such as "Chinafication" and "Arabization."
She has advocated a moratorium on immigration for 50 years, and warned that "European" values might be at risk of disappearing in Canada.
NDP MP Jinny Sims was the first to argue against the group appearing. She said there are certain lines that cannot be crossed when allowing groups to testify at committee hearings.
"Well, I think (the website) definitely reflects the views of a white supremacist," Sims said.
"We live in a diverse country, and a very inclusive country, and for a parliamentary committee to give due deference to both perspectives at an immigration committee, I think would not do this Parliament very proud."
Conservative MP Rick Dykstra, parliamentary secretary to the immigration minister, said that once the opposition began lumping his party in with the views of the witnesses, it became impossible to have a rational discussion about their testimony.
"Once you stir the dust up to the point you can't see anymore, you've got to clear the room, and I think it was the right decision to make," said Dykstra.
But Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, says it's disappointing that the committee did not allow the Canadian Immigration Forum to appear.
"Every point of view -- however ugly and obnoxious most Canadians might find it -- should be allowed to be aired in hearings before our parliamentarians," said Schafer.
"I think it's important, for example, that they understand the passionate racism that exists in some quarters in Canada and understand the reasons and justifications that such people give."
SOURCE
Australia: More Sri Lankans head home instead of Nauru
This is all credit to conservative leader Tony Abbott, who insisted on Nauru re-opening
Sri Lankan men leaving Christmas Island for Colombo last week. They were followed by a second voluntary group yesterday.
Sri Lankan men leaving Christmas Island for Colombo last week. They were followed by a second voluntary group yesterday.
A SECOND group of Sri Lankan men left Christmas Island yesterday, having chosen to return to Colombo rather than be sent to Nauru while their claims for asylum are processed.
"Regular transfers to Nauru and more Sri Lankans returning home is further proof that people smugglers only sell lies and make false promises about what awaits people in Australia," the Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, said.
"People in immigration detention can request their removal from Australia at any point in time."
The men included two from Nauru, 20 from Christmas Island and six from mainland facilities including Villawood and Yongah Hill, Mr Bowen said.
Advertisement
Authorities intercepted another two asylum seekers boats on Friday, carrying a total of 133 people, all of whom have been taken to Christmas Island.
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.
Censorship of immigration debate in Canada
Very Canadian. Censorship as a means of expressing disapproval is childish -- like sticking your fingers in your ears. One would have hoped that the Canadian parliament was more mature than that
The right for MPs to say and discuss almost anything they want is one of the central privileges of Parliament, but a couple of divisive debates over the past week tested the thresholds of dialogue in the House of Commons.
In one case, two spokespeople from the Canadian Immigration Forum were barred from speaking at the Commons immigration committee Wednesday because content on their website was deemed offensive -- including an interview with Canadian white supremacist Paul Fromm.
Madi Lussier, one of the two witnesses from the Canadian Immigration Forum not permitted to speak to the Commons committee, wiped away tears as she expressed her frustrations. The group's website is mostly an aggregator of articles on different issues touching on immigration, but divided into provocative sections with names such as "Chinafication" and "Arabization."
She has advocated a moratorium on immigration for 50 years, and warned that "European" values might be at risk of disappearing in Canada.
NDP MP Jinny Sims was the first to argue against the group appearing. She said there are certain lines that cannot be crossed when allowing groups to testify at committee hearings.
"Well, I think (the website) definitely reflects the views of a white supremacist," Sims said.
"We live in a diverse country, and a very inclusive country, and for a parliamentary committee to give due deference to both perspectives at an immigration committee, I think would not do this Parliament very proud."
Conservative MP Rick Dykstra, parliamentary secretary to the immigration minister, said that once the opposition began lumping his party in with the views of the witnesses, it became impossible to have a rational discussion about their testimony.
"Once you stir the dust up to the point you can't see anymore, you've got to clear the room, and I think it was the right decision to make," said Dykstra.
But Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, says it's disappointing that the committee did not allow the Canadian Immigration Forum to appear.
"Every point of view -- however ugly and obnoxious most Canadians might find it -- should be allowed to be aired in hearings before our parliamentarians," said Schafer.
"I think it's important, for example, that they understand the passionate racism that exists in some quarters in Canada and understand the reasons and justifications that such people give."
SOURCE
Australia: More Sri Lankans head home instead of Nauru
This is all credit to conservative leader Tony Abbott, who insisted on Nauru re-opening
Sri Lankan men leaving Christmas Island for Colombo last week. They were followed by a second voluntary group yesterday.
Sri Lankan men leaving Christmas Island for Colombo last week. They were followed by a second voluntary group yesterday.
A SECOND group of Sri Lankan men left Christmas Island yesterday, having chosen to return to Colombo rather than be sent to Nauru while their claims for asylum are processed.
"Regular transfers to Nauru and more Sri Lankans returning home is further proof that people smugglers only sell lies and make false promises about what awaits people in Australia," the Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, said.
"People in immigration detention can request their removal from Australia at any point in time."
The men included two from Nauru, 20 from Christmas Island and six from mainland facilities including Villawood and Yongah Hill, Mr Bowen said.
Advertisement
Authorities intercepted another two asylum seekers boats on Friday, carrying a total of 133 people, all of whom have been taken to Christmas Island.
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.