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31 July, 2010
Appeal seeks to reinstate all parts of Arizona lawLawyers for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday asked a federal appeals court to reverse a judge’s decision to block key portions of SB 1070, the state’s controversial immigration law.
The lawyers want a three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, to take up the case on an expedited basis.
At issue is whether US District Judge Susan Bolton was correct when she ruled that major sections of the Arizona law would have impermissibly interfered with the federal government’s authority to decide how best to enforce immigration laws. A stripped down version of the Arizona law took effect Thursday.
In authorizing the appeal, Governor Brewer said the problems prompting the Arizona law were caused by lax enforcement of immigration statutes by the federal government.
“America is not going to sit back and allow the ongoing federal failures to continue,” she said. “We are a nation of laws and we believe they need to be enforced.” Brewer added, “I will not back down.”
On Wednesday, Judge Bolton issued a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of key parts of the new law, including a provision requiring law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone during a routine stop whenever police had reasonable suspicion that the individual was an illegal immigrant.
Critics of the law, including President Obama, said the provision would likely lead to illegal racial profiling. The Justice Department joined other plaintiffs in a lawsuit and urged Bolton to block implementation of the new law.
But rather than press the racial profiling issue, Justice Department lawyers argued that the Arizona law impermissibly intruded into areas of authority (immigration and border security) reserved to the federal government.
State officials countered that the Arizona law was written to complement federal immigration statutes, not supplant them.
Bolton disagreed, ruling that several provisions in the state measure were preempted by conflicting federal laws and the policies of the Obama administration. The judge issued a temporary injunction, meaning that she would temporarily block implementation of parts of the law pending a full trial.
Under normal circumstances, the legal challenges to the Arizona law would now be subject to a trial before Bolton. But because of the importance of the issue, state officials took the somewhat unusual step of asking the appeals court to hear their appeal even before a trial has been held.
“This appeal involves an issue of significant importance – the State of Arizona’s right to implement a law its Legislature enacted to address the irreparable harm Arizona is suffering as a result of unchecked unlawful immigration,” the Arizona lawyers said in their brief to the Ninth Circuit.
They urged the appeals court to speed up its consideration of the case in light of the “serious criminal, environmental, and economic problems Arizona has been suffering as a consequence of illegal immigration and the lack of effective enforcement activity by the federal government.”
The governor’s lawyers asked for the court to embrace a schedule that would call for the state’s opening brief by August 12, a response by the Justice Department by August 26, and a reply by Arizona by September 2. They asked that the court schedule the case for oral argument the week of September 13.
If the Ninth Circuit declines to take up the case, or takes it up and upholds Bolton’s ruling, Arizona could then still file an expedited appeal to the US Supreme Court.
At the center of the case is a dispute over the intersection of federal authority to set immigration policies and enforce immigration law versus state government efforts to protect the health and safety of local residents threatened by a large influx of illegal immigrants by making passing a state law that mirrors several unenforced federal laws.
“If the federal government wants to be in charge of illegal immigration and they want no help from the states, it then needs to do its job,” Brewer said. “Arizona would not be faced with this problem if the federal government honored its responsibilities.”
She added, “Illegal immigration is an ongoing crisis the State of Arizona did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.”
Why Australia’s Labor Party can’t stop the boat-borne illegals from arrivingShould the Gillard [Labor] government be re-elected, the boatpeople issue will continue to plague it and Labor’s internal divisions will come much more strongly to the fore.
There is no equivalence between Gillard’s proposed regional processing centre in East Timor and Abbott’s proposed centre on Nauru. For a start, the geography is radically different. No one will intentionally sail to Nauru. It’s just too far away.
Secondly, its purpose is designed to prevent people-smugglers from being able to achieve for their clients the ultimate prize: permanent residency in Australia. It is only about solving the Australian problem. Illegal immigrants would be sent there and processed. They would be treated humanely and all their human rights observed. They would be free to go to any country that would have them, or free at any time to go home. Of course there is a small element of semi-bluff. If the boats stopped absolutely, then a future Abbott government might decide, as the Howard government did, to exercise a special act of generosity and allow some of the people to come to Australia. But that would only be after some years, and after the boats had absolutely stopped.
At the same time, an Abbott government would institute temporary protection visas without family reunion rights. Despite the braying and self-regarding protests of the Malcolm Frasers and Julian Burnsides and others in their camp, TPVs are completely consistent with the 1951 Refugee Convention. According to a recent speech by UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, there are about 16 million refugees today. The vast majority of these will not be resettled anywhere, but will ultimately go home. Temporary protection is the norm.
This is not a question of compassion. This column has always supported a big immigration program, bigger than either of the main parties now supports, including a substantial refugee component. But it also supports an orderly program in which Australia chooses who gets to live here. The government’s soft policies on boatpeople, and its formerly high rate of acceptance of boatpeople as genuine refugees, has encouraged many thousands to get into boats. According to the opposition, perhaps 170 people have drowned in the process. That’s not compassionate.
Gillard’s proposal for a regional processing centre in East Timor is entirely different from Abbott’s proposal for Nauru. Her insistence that the centre has to be located in a country which is a signatory to the 1951 convention is nonsensical. Most of the refugee camps from which Australia took Indochinese refugees in the 1970s and 80s were located in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, which were not signatories to the convention. Similarly, many countries that are signatories, such as Singapore, do not take any refugees for resettlement. Another convention signatory, China, has been known to force genuine refugees back to North Korea. Being a signatory to the convention is completely meaningless.
Moreover, any centre established in East Timor would become a plaything in East Timorese domestic politics, and inevitably a point of leverage for any East Timorese government in its relationship with Australia.
But most significantly, as this column has previously pointed out, it would be positive magnet of enormous power, attracting boatpeople from far away. In the joint press conference between Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and Australia’s Stephen Smith, it was clear the Indonesians have absolutely no enthusiasm for this crazy idea at all. Natalegawa, the most diplomatic and helpful of men, kept stressing that the region should not focus on establishing this centre, and even less should it focus on the putative centre’s location.
The Rudd-Gillard government policies that have resulted in so many boatpeople coming to Australia have been a huge headache for Jakarta. Indonesia was a significant beneficiary of the Howard government stopping the flow of boatpeople.
It is absurd to slander the Australian people for being concerned about this unregulated flow of people, mostly from Afghanistan, the nation with perhaps the broadest and longest tradition of Islamist extremism. Some estimates are that all up 10,000 boatpeople will arrive this year.
Until recently, 95 per cent were being granted, almost automatically, refugee status and permanent residency in Australia. Say next year there are 10,000 Afghan boatpeople and they are all accepted into Australia. With permanent residency there would come family reunion rights. Say then that each brings even three relatives over time. That would be 40,000 Afghans who were never part of a considered immigration program. It is entirely reasonable for the Australian people to be concerned about this.
Given her strong rhetoric but meaningless policies on this issue, Gillard could well get back into government and deliver nothing in the way of stopping the boats. This could set her up for a public reaction, as occurred against Kevin Rudd, that she promised much and delivered nothing. On the other hand, to actually stop the boats she will have to take measures that the bleeding heart section of her party will hate. This issue will run and run.
30 July, 2010
“Undocumented” no longer makes the cut. Illegals are now “displaced foreign travelers”In the Forest Service’s news release about the recent string of marijuana busts, I discovered a term of art I’d never encountered before:
“During the raid, a U.S. Forest Service K-9 team located Gauldry Almonte-Hernandez, a displaced foreign traveler from Michoacán Mexico, who had tried to flee the area and hide while officers were performing entry into the marijuana garden”
“Displaced foreign traveler”? Makes it sound like he meant to go to Disneyland, got lost, and ended up at a pot plantation in the woods south of Hayfork.
Nearly 100,000 new homes must be built every year for immigrants to BritainA lot of new housing in Britain is welfare housing for the poor so this will mean a big and expensive obligation for the taxpayer
Nearly 100,000 new homes must be built every year just to provide housing for immigrants, ministers disclosed yesterday. Four out of every ten new houses or flats [apartments] built to cope with the rising population will go to a migrant, they said.
Over a 25-year period, immigrants will require 2.5million extra homes unless the Government meets its pledges to bring about a major reduction in numbers arriving to live in Britain.
Communities Department spokesman Andrew Stunell said estimates of housing demand and the expected level of housing required by immigrants were prepared in March 2009, but only now revealed.
He said in a Commons written answer: ‘It is estimated that net international migration could account, on average, for 40 per cent of the net growth of households in England over the projection period from 2006 to 2031.’
The housing projections from the Communities Department say that at current birthrates and expected rates of immigration, 252,000 new homes a year will be needed each year until 2031.
Of these, 36,000 will be needed because there will be more people living alone and fewer couples and families, and 116,000 because of rising birthrates. The remaining 100,000 will be needed to house migrants, based on 2006 population figures.
At present the Office for National Statistics estimates that net immigration will run at 180,000 a year for the foreseeable future.
29 July, 2010
Federal Judge Blocks Key Portions of Arizona Illegal Immigration LawA federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to President Obama and other opponents of the crackdown and a setback for Gov. Jan Brewer other supporters. (AP)
A federal judge on Wednesday blocked some of the toughest provisions in the Arizona illegal immigration law, putting on hold the state’s attempt to have local police enforce federal immigration policy.
Though the rest of the law is still set to go into effect Thursday, the partial injunction on SB 1070 means Arizona, for the time being, will not be able to require police officers to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton also struck down the section of law that makes it a crime not to carry immigration registration papers and the provision that makes it a crime for an illegal immigrant to seek or perform work.
“The bottom line is we’ve known all along that it is the responsibility of the feds,” Brewer told The Associated Press. “They haven’t done their job so we were going to help them do that.”
The Mexican government praised the judge’s decision. Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa told reporters that the injunction was a “first step in the right direction.”
In all, Bolton struck down four sections of the law, the ones that opponents called the most controversial. Bolton said she was putting those sections on hold until the courts resolve the issues.
The ruling said the Obama administration, which sought the injunction, is likely to “succeed on the merits” in showing the above provisions are preempted by federal law.
“The court by no means disregards Arizona’s interests in controlling illegal immigration and addressing the concurrent problems with crime including the trafficking of humans, drugs, guns, and money,” the ruling said. “Even though Arizona’s interests may be consistent with those of the federal government, it is not in the public interest for Arizona to enforce preempted laws.”
A number of provisions will still go into effect as the case is litigated. Arizona will be able to block state officials from so-called “sanctuary city” policies limiting enforcement of federal law; require that state officials work with federal officials on illegal immigration; allow civil suits over sanctuary cities; and make it a crime to pick up day laborers.
The ruling came just as police were making last-minute preparations to begin enforcement of the law and protesters were planning large demonstrations to speak out against the measure. At least one group planned to block access to federal offices, daring officers to ask them about their immigration status.
Justice Department spokeswoman Hannah August said the court “ruled correctly” with its decision Wednesday.
“While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive,” August said.
The Department of Homeland Security released a statement saying the decision “affirms the federal government’s responsibilities” to enforce immigration law. The department claimed “unprecedented resources” have been devoted to that effort.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., one of the most vocal advocates on immigration issues on Capitol Hill, applauded the decision. “Arresting people based on their appearance and holding them until you can investigate their immigration status is patently un-American and unconstitutional,” he said.
But supporters of the policy slammed the court’s decision. “This fight is far from over. In fact, it is just the beginning, and at the end of what is certain to be a long legal struggle, Arizona will prevail in its right to protect our citizens,” Brewer said.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., called the ruling “misguided.”
“The federal government has a right and a responsibility to enforce existing laws, but when they fail to meet that responsibility, we should not stand in the way of the states that take action to respond to the very real threat of border violence, drug cartels and human smuggling,” he said in a written statement. “There’s nowhere in the Constitution that says a state is limited to what it absolutely won’t do and can be stopped for what it might do and to exercise a judgment against a state that has passed a law that is consistent with existing federal law is beyond absurd.”
The volume of the protests will likely be turned down a few notches because of the ruling by Bolton, a Clinton appointee who suddenly became a crucial figure in the immigration debate when she was assigned the seven lawsuits filed against the Arizona law.
Lawyers for the state contend the law was a constitutionally sound attempt by Arizona — the busiest illegal gateway into the country — to assist federal immigration agents and lessen border woes such as the heavy costs for educating, jailing and providing health care for illegal immigrants.
Opponents argued the law will lead to racial profiling, conflict with federal immigration law and distract local police from fighting more serious crimes. The U.S. Justice Department, civil rights groups and a Phoenix police officer had asked the judge for an injunction to prevent the law from being enforced.
Localities inside Arizona were already preparing to interpret the law in different ways. The Tucson Unified School District’s Governing Board approved by a 5-0 vote a policy Tuesday that maintains the district’s stance of not enforcing immigration laws in the district’s schools.
The hardest-line approach was expected in the Phoenix area, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio plans his 17th crime and immigration sweep. He planned to hold the sweep regardless of the ruling.
Arpaio, known for his tough stance against illegal immigration, plans to send out about 200 deputies and volunteers who will be looking for traffic violators, people wanted on criminal warrants and others. He has used that tactic before to arrest dozens of people, many of them illegal immigrants. “We don’t wait. We just do it,” he said. “If there’s a new law out, we’re going to enforce it.”
Elsewhere in the state, police officials were busy wrapping up training sessions this week. Many of the state’s 15,000 police officers have been watching a DVD released this month that signs that might indicate a person is an illegal immigrant are speaking poor English, looking nervous or traveling in an overcrowded vehicle. It warned that race and ethnicity do not.
Some agencies added extra materials, including a test, a role-playing exercise or a question-and-answer session with prosecutors.
Australian parents not consulted over refugee pupil planThis is treating them as if they have already been accepted as permanent residents. Will the schools have to hire Afghan interpreters?
UP to 60 asylum-seeker children will be enrolled in Darwin schools in a move that has angered some parents who claim they weren’t consulted.
The Immigration Department yesterday confirmed it was in discussions with Northern Territory education officials about getting the children, most of them Afghans, a proper education. A spokesman said it was important for their development that the children attend school.
But some parents have reacted angrily to the move, saying they were not consulted and that school resources were diverted to make way for the influx. One parent told ABC radio he only heard about the plan after receiving an email addressed to the Anula school council.
“We found out through the back door,” he said. “We were told nothing. The school council organised a meeting the previous Monday. The department never came to us to explain anything. No one’s consulted anyone.”
While the Immigration spokesman said it was too early to say which schools would be involved, NT Education Union’s Adam Lampe said he was advised last week that Anula Primary School and Sanderson Middle School had been selected to receive the children.
Anula principal Karen Modoo declined to discuss the proposal and directed calls to NT Education where the executive director of school education, Alan Green, said there would be community consultation and that only schools with room and dedicated English programs would be considered. “There’s no question of us cramping kids into Anula or any other school,” Mr Green said. “They’ll only go there if they fit.”
Mr Lampe said educating the asylum-seeker children was a “great initiative”. “These kids need to be taken care of,” Mr Lampe said. “It’s being federally funded so there are no negatives here.”
But while both Anula and Sanderson have an intensive English unit that each caters to about 100 students, Mr Lampe said more teachers would have to be recruited from interstate.
A spokeswoman for NT Education Minister Chris Burns rejected suggestions the move would put Territory schools under strain.
Asylum-seeker children have previously received schooling on Christmas Island and in the remote West Australian town of Leonora, where officials say they have settled in well.
28 July, 2010
Australian Labor Party told its soft immigration policy ‘pulling’ the boat-borne illegalsImmigration authorities were warned the government’s high success rate for refugee claims was acting as a “major pull factor” that encouraged boatpeople to make the voyage to Australia. Senior government sources have told The Australian the government was warned to brace for an influx of between 5000 and 10,000 boatpeople this year.
It is understood the government was told, before it announced its freeze on new asylum claims, that Australia’s success rate for claims was “out of whack” with the rest of the world and was encouraging people-smugglers.
In the early part of this year, the “recognition rate”, or success rate, for Afghan asylum-seekers was above 90 per cent. Senior government sources have told The Australian that the warning was contained in a document sent to the Rudd government prior to April 9, when it froze new Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum claims.
“It said our recognition rates were completely out of whack and this was a major pull factor,” a senior government source familiar with the advice told The Australian.
Both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have vowed to get tough on border security, with both promising to open offshore processing centres in third countries if they win the election.
Since the boats began arriving in late 2008, the government has consistently blamed instability abroad as the main cause of the surge. In October, Kevin Rudd blamed “huge push factors” in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka for the rush of boats. “Countries around the world are dealing with the same challenge,” Mr Rudd said.
But the warning is the clearest evidence yet that domestic policies have been a major factor in pulling boats to Australia’s shores.
It also suggests that for months, government agencies have been working at cross purposes, with the Immigration Department contributing to the very problem other agencies, such as the Australian Federal Police and the Customs Service and Border Protection Command, have been working to curtail.
The document compared Australia’s recognition rate, or success rate for new refugee claims, with those of the US, Canada and particularly Europe.
It concluded Australia was running an exceptionally generous refugee program that was acting as a magnet for boatpeople. “A lot of work was done on (the document),” the government source told The Australian.
It is understood that, while the document warned about the high approval levels, it did not explicitly recommend a cut to the rate. “Essentially, what it was about was that we need to address this by providing to decision-makers better advice, more accurate advice,” the source said.
Up until six months ago the success rate for Afghan asylum-seekers, who have made up more than half the total number of unauthorised boat arrivals since late 2008, was 95 per cent. It has since fallen to 30 per cent. The drop has left most Afghanistan country experts baffled as they say it has not been matched by a corresponding improvement in security.
The source said official government estimates had predicted between 5000 and 10,000 unauthorised boat arrivals this year. So far, 4067 asylum-seekers and crew have arrived in Australia by boat this year. On current trends, 2010 will set a new record for boat arrivals, eclipsing the 5516 asylum-seekers who arrived in 2001, the year of the Tampa crisis.
The government advice appears to have been acted on, with the success rate falling rapidly since the beginning of the year.
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the Howard government also recognised Afghan asylum claims at rates of around 95 per cent from 1998-99 to 2000-01.
But he said last month the Afghan refusal rate exceeded 70 per cent. “If upheld at review, this increasing rate of refusals will result in many more people being returned to their homeland,” the spokesman said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on the document, saying it did not discuss advice sent to ministers. And last night a spokesman for the Immigration Department said it would not discuss “advice or interdepartmental information-sharing”. “Having said that, this in no way confirms the claims made or that such a document exists,” a spokesman said.
However, The Australian has been told high recognition rates have been an issue within government for some time, with those responsible for border security arguing they are acting as a magnet.
The plummeting refugee success rate has coincided with the government’s announcement in April that it was freezing new asylum claims in order to assess evolving circumstances in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. But the extent of the drop, as well as its timing, has given rise to wider questions about the integrity of what is supposed to be an objective refugee selection process.
Refugee Council president John Gibson told The Australian last week there was no way the current success rate reflected the current conditions in Afghanistan. “In terms of Afghans, there is a question mark over the integrity of the process,” Mr Gibson said.
Some sources in the refugee sector have suggested the government was approving refugee claims at high rates to avoid a bottleneck in the Christmas Island detention centre.
In April, the Rudd government belatedly announced it would be forced to transfer people to centres on the mainland, because of chronic overcrowding on Christmas Island, which had been expanded from its original capacity of 400 people to about 2500.
In comments sent to The Australian last week, Immigration Department secretary Andrew Metcalfe “categorically denied” claims the high success rate was driven by a desire to move people quickly through the Christmas Island detention centre, or that it was subject to political interference.
“Any such suggestions are baseless and totally without foundation,” Mr Metcalfe said.
He said new country information for Afghanistan had been prepared in February. But the department has refused to release the updated country information it is using as the basis of the tougher assessments, despite promising to do so in April.
The Department maintains it will release its guidance notes for Afghanistan when they have been “finalised”. Afghans are easily the largest category of asylum-seekers to arrive in Australia. Immigration Department figures show more than 3797 Afghans have arrived since the current surge in boat arrivals began in late 2008.
Deportation of illegal immigrants increases under Obama administrationIn a bid to remake the enforcement of federal immigration laws, the Obama administration is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants and auditing hundreds of businesses that blithely hire undocumented workers.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration’s 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007. The pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush’s final year in office.
The effort is part of President Obama’s larger project “to make our national laws actually work,” as he put it in a speech this month at American University. Partly designed to entice Republicans to support comprehensive immigration reform, the mission is proving difficult and politically perilous.
Obama is drawing flak from those who contend the administration is weak on border security and from those who are disappointed he has not done more to fulfill his campaign promise to help the country’s estimated 11 million illegal residents. Trying to thread a needle, the president contends enforcement — including the deployment of fresh troops to the Mexico border — is a necessary but insufficient solution.
A June 30 memorandum from ICE director John Morton instructed officers to focus their “principal attention” on felons and repeat lawbreakers. The policy, influenced by a series of sometimes-heated White House meetings, also targets repeat border crossers and declares that parents caring for children or the infirm should be detained only in unusual cases.
“We’re trying to put our money where our mouth is,” Morton said in an interview, describing the goal as a “rational” immigration policy. “You’ve got to have aggressive enforcement against criminal offenders. You have to have a secure border. You have to have some integrity in the system.”
Morton said the 400,000 people expected to be deported this year — either physically removed or allowed to leave on their own power — represent the maximum the overburdened processing, detention and immigration court system can handle.
The Obama administration has been moving away from using work-site raids to target employers. Just 765 undocumented workers have been arrested at their jobs this fiscal year, compared with 5,100 in 2008, according to Department of Homeland Security figures. Instead, officers have increased employer audits, studying the employee documentation of 2,875 companies suspected of hiring illegal workers and assessing $6.4 million in fines.
On the ground, a program known as Secure Communities uses the fingerprints of people in custody for other reasons to identify deportable immigrants. Morton predicts it will “overhaul the face of immigration.” The administration has expanded the system to 437 jails and prisons from 14 and aims to extend it to “every law enforcement jurisdiction” by 2013.
The Secure Communities project has identified 240,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, according to DHS figures. Of those, about 30,000 have been deported, including 8,600 convicted of what the agency calls “the most egregious offenses.”
More HERE
27 July, 2010
More immigration fraud in BritainMarriage fraud
Thousands of marriage visas were granted to Pakistanis last year without proper checks, a damning report reveals today.
Immigration officials ignored possible evidence of fraud in nearly a third of applications which resulted in visas being granted, inspectors said.
John Vine, Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, said the lack of proper scrutiny amounted to a failure to protect Britain’s borders.
Figures from last year showed 6,750 Pakistanis were granted marriage visas – allowing them to come to live with their husband or wife in this country – meaning more than 2,000 visas may have been wrongly granted in just 12 months.
The revelation is the latest in a string of damaging blows for UKBA. Last year MPs branded the agency ‘not fit for purpose’ after officials admitted losing track of 40,000 people who arrived on visas which have since expired.
Only last week it emerged the giant £1.2billion e-Borders scheme – designed to track illegal immigrants, terrorists and foreign criminals – was more than a year behind schedule.
Rules dictate that for a marriage visa to be awarded, both husband and wife must show they have enough money to support themselves. This can include references from employers as proof of employment or bank account statements to show evidence of savings.
But inspectors found that in 31 per cent of cases in which visas were granted, officials failed to scrutinise evidence that applicants might be lying. They found ‘unexplained cash deposits’ in accounts, or references from employers which contained obvious spelling mistakes – suggesting they could be fake.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, called for a ‘thorough investigation’ into the revelations. He said: ‘This is very serious indeed. Thousands are being granted not just access to “Lack of scrutiny” Britain but a meal ticket for life on bogus applications.’
In one case uncovered by inspectors, a visa was granted despite the resident husband receiving council tax benefits and lying about his job. Further checks revealed the reference letter from his employer was fake and he was claiming a raft of other benefits and tax credits.
Each visa grants the holder the right to live here for two years, and after that they can apply to remain indefinitely.
Mr Vine attacked ‘serious organisational failings’ and a ‘lack of rigorous scrutiny’ in the cases inspectors examined.
The chaos came after processing was moved from Pakistan to Croydon and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, he said. Of the 49 cases inspectors looked at, 15 showed visas were granted without proper checks. Of those, nine needed further checks on financial support and six of references containing mistakes suggesting they were fake.
Immigration minister Damian Green said he was ‘very concerned’ about the findings. He said: ‘This report covers a period when the Agency had to make significant changes to the Pakistan visa operations due to the bombing of the Marriott Hotel and the deteriorating security situation in the country. ‘I am determined to drive up standards and ensure that UK border controls are robust.’
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘It is completely wrong to draw global conclusions from this very small sample.’
Meanwhile English language tests will become compulsory for immigrants wanting to join their husband or wife in Britain from November, ministers confirmed yesterday.
Migrants from outside the EU who are married or engaged to a Briton will have to prove they have ‘conversational’ English before they can settle in the country.
Fake finances of Indian students
Indian police have smashed a scam in which hundreds of immigrants were illegally awarded UK student visas. Three people have been charged with providing forged bank statements needed to gain a visa. One member of the gang, said to be the bank manager, is still at large.
Officers say they have evidence that up to 100 applications were falsified, but they believe this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Police moved after the British High Commission in New Dehli said too many applicants from the Punjab state were submitting documents issued by one branch of Canara, a state-owned bank.
Police spokesman Rakesh Aggarwal said: ‘Three accused, including mastermind Aruin Kumar Kumar and his accomplices, Satish Kumar and Jasbir Singh, have been arrested. We are still looking for the bank manager, Rajiv Ranjan.’
He added that police were planning to conduct more raids in the region. The gang swindled thousands of pounds from applicants who wanted to study in Britain but did not have adequate funds and needed bank statements to show they were financially sound to support their education in the country.
They charged £1,300 a student for the fake documents. Police have seized allegedly forged letterheads, stamps and other documents.
Officials said there had also been complaints from the neighbouring Nawanshahr district regarding allegedly fake bank statements being provided to applicants seeking visas for other countries.
Now the climate modelers are having fun with immigrationYou can get anything you like out of a climate model. It is just a patchwork of guesses and leaves out lots of influential factors. Just alter one assumption (e.g. the effect of clouds) and the answers can change dramatically
According a new computer model, a total of nearly seven million additional Mexicans could emigrate to the U.S. by 2080 as a result of reduced crop yields brought about by a hotter, drier climate—assuming other factors influencing immigration remain unchanged.
“The model shows that climate-driven refugees could be a big deal in the future,” said study co-author Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Using data on Mexican emigration as well as climate and crop yields in 30 Mexican states between 1995 and 2005, Oppenheimer and colleagues created the computer model to predict the effect of climate change on the rate of people crossing the border.
In that ten-year period, 2 percent of the Mexican population emigrated to the U.S. for every 10 percent reduction in crop yield.
Using the model to extrapolate this real-world figure over the next 70 years, the researchers calculated that 1.4 to 6.7 million adult Mexicans—a number roughly equal to 10 percent of Mexico’s current adult population—could migrate to the U.S. by 2080.
The research is one of the first attempts by scientists to put hard numbers on how climate change can affect human migration patterns.
“Our study is the first to build a model that can be used for projecting the effects on migration of future climate change,” Oppenheimer said.
Global Warming Study “a Simplification”
Though the new global warming study is “original and very interesting,” it shouldn’t be interpreted as a forecast of what will happen, economist Ian Goldin, who wasn’t involved in the project, said via email.
“The [end of the] time range—2080—is a very long time off, and there are many other factors [besides climate change] which may lead to a very different outcome,” said Goldin, director of the University of Oxford’s James Martin 21st Century School.
Barry Smit, a climate-impact scientist at the University of Guelph in Canada, agreed.
“I wouldn’t take these numbers to the bank,” said Smit, who also wasn’t involved in the research, which is published in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
To reach their conclusions, the authors had to make some “heroic assumptions,” Smit said, such as that the current economic and political situations of the U.S. and Mexico won’t change for decades.
Study co-author Oppenheimer acknowledged there are many uncertainties in his team’s model. But it’s important for scientists to investigate climate change-induced migration quantitatively, he said.
“This is the first time anybody’s built a model to do this,” Oppenheimer said. “It’s a simplification, and there are a lot of assumptions, but it’s the start of a learning process. As we learn more, the model will improve, and the numbers will get more reliable.”
More HERE
26 July, 2010
Australia’s Leftist government has finally wised up about Afghan “asylum” fraudsKevin Rudd’s suspension of new Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum claims was followed by a rapid drop in successful asylum claims.
In April, the Rudd government announced all new Afghan asylum claims would be suspended for six months and new Sri Lankan claims for three months while decision-makers reviewed local conditions.
But prominent refugee lawyer David Manne said the announcement had been followed by a sharp drop in success rates for his clients. “There is no doubt that there was a correlation in timing between a pattern of high refusal rates and the announcement of the suspension and our political leaders telegraphing that we could expect higher refusal rates.”
The Australian has been told the approval rate for Afghan refugees has plummeted from more than 95 per cent just six months ago to a rate of just 30 per cent.
Sources close to the process suggested a desire by decision-makers to avoid a bottleneck in the Christmas Island detention centre as well as a lack of information about the situation in Afghanistan were among the reasons for the stratospherically high Afghan success rate.
Refugee Council president John Gibson said there was “no way the (current) decision-making reflects the situation on the ground” in Afghanistan. “In terms of Afghans, there is a question mark over the integrity of the process,” Mr Gibson said.
Yesterday, a spokesman for the Immigration Department “categorically denied” any political interference in the refugee selection process. “Any such suggestions are baseless and totally without foundation,” he said.
The spokesman said new country information had been formulated in February, indicating that most Australia-bound Afghans had experienced greater stability “in recent times”. No details were given about what that new information was, but the spokesman confirmed their recognition rates had fallen on the strength of it.
The sudden drop has prompted the UNHCR to ask the Gillard government for an explanation, although Mr Towle said the UNHCR had not yet received one.
The Australian National University’s William Maley said if anything, the outlook for Hazaras in Afghanistan had worsened over the past six months.
Leftist “compassion” at work again, in its usual destructive way170 dead would-be immigrants since Australia’s “softer” policies towards boat-borne illegals
Former coalition immigration minister Philip Ruddock says about 170 asylum seekers headed for Australia have died since the federal government changed Australia’s border protection policies.
But Mr Ruddock, who served as immigration minister under the previous Howard government, wouldn’t directly blame Labor for their deaths. “We believe that 170 people have lost their lives since Labor relaxed the policies here in Australia,” he told ABC TV on Monday. “I’m saying that they were encouraged to get in boats again because of policies being changed.”
Mr Ruddock said all the measures the coalition put in place to combat unauthorised boat arrivals – including offshore processing – needed to be implemented again to stem the flow.
The Liberal backbencher said it didn’t matter where offshore processing actually took place, so long as the disincentive existed.
25 July, 2010
NE: Suits seek halt to town’s illegal immigrant lawTwo lawsuits were filed yesterday against the town of Fremont, Neb., seeking to overturn an ordinance banning illegal immigrants from renting homes or taking jobs.
Fremont, a rural town with a population of about 25,000, found itself at the frontline of the immigration debate when it passed the law in a special election last month.
It was due to go into effect July 29, but a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union seeks an immediate injunction while the legal battle ensues. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund also filed suit against the city.
About 45 percent of the town’s eligible voters turned out, approving the ordinance 57 percent to 43 percent. Supporters of the new law, which was put to a vote after a two-year debate, said it was needed because illegal immigrants were taking away jobs from legal workers and because the federal government has refused to take strong enough action against illegal immigration.
The ACLU’s lawsuit claims that the law is unconstitutional because immigration policy is the sole responsibility of the federal government. It also states that the measure risks racial profiling and fanning discrimination against anyone deemed to be foreign.
Australia’s conservative coalition plans to slash immigrationImmigration is a big issue in Australia’s impending Federal election
Australia’s immigration levels are unsustainable and will be slashed under a coalition government, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says. The coalition would cut the annual migrant intake from the current level of 300,000 to 170,000 in its first term of government, he said. “Three hundred thousand is just not sustainable,” Mr Abbott told reporters in Canberra on Sunday.
The plan was separate from the asylum seeker issue. Mr Abbott said skilled migration programs would continue. “We will maintain, though, various employer-nominated categories because it’s important that business has the skills as a people that it needs,” he said.
Mr Abbott, who was born in London in 1957, said he was a migrant himself. “The coalition parties are pro-immigrant parties but it’s very important that our immigration program has the support of our people and that is what this policy is designed to do.”
Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said a coalition government would restore migration growth to the long-run average of 1.4 per cent, down from the two per cent now and slightly higher than the global average of 1.2 per cent. Cutting the intake would preserve the quality of life for future generations of Australians, he said.
“That was the fundamental dishonesty of the prime minister last week,” he said. “If she doesn’t like our number, she should say so. If she thinks our number is too low or too high, she should say what her number is.”
Asked what a coalition government would consider as an acceptable population level for Australia, Mr Abbott said it would be “a lot lower” than the 36 million by 2050 figure nominated by former prime minister Kevin Rudd. “We would be guided, not ruled, by a white paper which we would commission shortly after coming to government, which would inform decisions that would be announced at some time next year.”
Mr Abbott said a coalition government would take advice from a productivity and sustainability commission about the compatibility of population levels with economic and environmental sustainability. “But it will always be the government responsibility to set the number,” he said.
The opposition leader said Prime Minister Julia Gillard was keen to talk about population but not be honest about the role of immigration in the debate. “You cannot have a population discussion without also having an immigration discussion,” he said.
Mr Abbott challenged Ms Gillard to nominate an alternative figure if Labor did not agree with the coalition’s intake target.
Economic forecaster BIS Shrapnel has said annual net migration from overseas – which includes permanent migration and longer-term but temporary stays – will fall from 298,900 over the year to June 2009 to 240,000 over the year to June 2010, then to 175,000 in 2010-11 and 145,000 in 2011-12. BIS Shrapnel said the slowdown reflected a slackening in the job market and fewer enrolments by foreign students.
Mr Abbott said he was “all in favour” of Australia selling education to overseas students. “But what I don’t want us to be doing is selling immigration outcomes in the guise of selling education,” he said.
24 July, 2010
New fears over British immigration controls as government sacks e-Borders system supplierA £1.2billion ‘electronic borders’ system which is supposed to protect Britain from illegal immigrants, terrorists and foreign criminals descended into shambles last night. The Government sacked the U.S.-based firm paid by Labour to introduce the programme after it was hit by chronic delays.
As a result, 100million journeys a year in and out of the UK will continue to go unrecorded by officials in charge of the massive ‘e-Borders’ project. Ministers will also remain unable comprehensively to count people in and out of the country – leaving them in the dark about the true scale of illegal immigration. At the earliest, it will now be 2015 before the UK Border Agency can check and record every arrival and departure.
The e-Borders system had its origins in a grilling of Tony Blair by Jeremy Paxman during the 2005 general election campaign. The then-PM shifted uneasily in his chair while being asked by Mr Paxman – no fewer than 20 times – how many illegal immigrants were in the UK. Pathetically, he was unable to give a satisfactory answer.
The reason, Mr Blair said, was that nobody was counting immigrants in and out of the country, so it was impossible to know precisely who was living here. Thus, Labour began work on the ‘e-Borders’ programme electronically to log every journey in and out of the country.
Five years may have passed since Mr Blair’s humiliation on Newsnight. But if David Cameron were asked the same question today, the answer would be the same: ‘I do not have a clue’.
However, even with its current limited coverage, with only 50 per cent of journeys logged, information gained through e-Borders has led to more than 6,200 arrests – including 46 murderers and 126 sex attackers. The question, given the shambles in the implementation of the programme, is how many more could be slipping through the net.
The coalition is furious because it had been relying on the system working to help implement its tougher border controls and immigration cap. Immigration minister Damian Green said: ‘This Government supports e-Borders, which helps reduce the threat of terrorism, crime and immigration abuse through the electronic collection and checking of individual passenger details against police, security and immigration watch lists.
‘Regrettably, however, the Home Secretary has no confidence in the prime supplier of the e-Borders contract, Raytheon, which since July 2009 has been in breach of contract. ‘With critical parts of the programme already running at least 12 months late, we have taken the decision to terminate the e-Borders contract with them.’
As he revealed the sacking, Mr Green told MPs that £188 million had already been spent on supplier costs.
Britain has not kept complete records of passenger movements since Labour scrapped embarkation controls in 1998.
British magistrate is forced to apologise for saying migrant ‘abused our hospitality’A magistrate has been forced to apologise for complaining that a foreign defendant was ‘abusing our hospitality’, it was revealed yesterday. The JP was punished by senior judges for having ‘displayed prejudice’ against people who are not British.
A disciplinary board found the magistrate had failed to show ‘the qualities of social awareness and sound judgement’ expected of a court official. They even considered sacking him from the bench, it was revealed.
Ministers in the Coalition government have previously used similar phrases about foreign criminals abusing British hospitality.
The action against the magistrate brought a wave of protest from MPs and criminal law experts who questioned why the use of such a phrase about a defendant accused of crime was in any way insulting or biased.
There was also criticism of the Office for Judicial Complaints, the organisation led by judges that polices wrongdoing on the bench, for its failure to name the male magistrate or give details of the case for which he was disciplined. The magistrate was ‘reprimanded’ on the orders of Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge and ordered to ‘ undertake further training’. He was also removed from a mentoring list of JPs who help to train other magistrates.
In its annual report, the OJC says ‘a judicial office holder had used words in open court with regard to a non-British defendant, that could have been construed as displaying prejudice against them for not being British, including saying, “We take exception to people coming to our shores and abusing our hospitality”.’
Criminologist Dr David Green of the Civitas think-tank said: ‘the magistrate has been sent for “further training”, which sounds to me like re-education as once practised by communist China and North Korea. ‘His phrase implies no hostility to somebody because they are a foreigner. ‘It is a perfectly reasonable remark for a magistrate to make about a criminal and no matter for disciplinary action.’
Douglas Carswell, the Tory MP for Clacton, said the system for enforcing good behaviour among judges and magistrates had ceased to follow democratic values.
Among politicians who have used the magistrate’s phrase is Tony Blair, who as Prime Minister in 2006 wrote of ‘foreign nationals’ suspected of terrorism, ‘if he then abuses our hospitality and threatens us, i feel he should take his chance back in his own home country’.
A Home Office statement on crime last year said of foreigners: ‘We will not tolerate those that abuse our hospitality by becoming involved in crime.’
Last month Coalition Justice minister Crispin Blunt said in a Commons written answer: ‘Foreign nationals who come to our country and abuse our hospitality by breaking our laws should face the full force of the law.’
Dr Green added: ‘It is difficult to understand why the Office for Judicial Complaints has not made the details public so that people can make up their own minds.’
Tthe OCJ report said ‘inappropriate behaviour or comments include rudeness, aggressive behaviour and the use of insulting, profane, racist or sexist language’. It said that over the past year such behaviour has resulted in ‘informal guidance’ from the Lord Chief Justice on nine occasions, four cases of formal advice, and four reprimands.
Four judges or magistrates resigned over inappropriate behaviour or comments, and five were sacked.
23 July, 2010
No easy ride for Obama versus ArizonaA U.S. judge grilled lawyers for the Obama administration and Arizona on Thursday over the legality of the state’s tough, new immigration law set to take effect next week, but gave no timetable for a ruling.
The Obama administration is seeking a preliminary injunction blocking next Thursday’s implementation of the law that requires state and local police, during lawful contact, to investigate the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton peppered lawyers for both sides during a 90-minute hearing over whether the state law contravenes federal authority over immigration law, and if predictions by critics that it will lead to racial profiling were overstated and unwarranted. Her ruling could come at any time.
Bolton asked Justice Department counsel Edwin Kneedler to explain how the state law trumped the federal government’s authority, asking “why can’t Arizona be as inhospitable as they wish” to people who have entered the United States illegally.
She also questioned the lawyer for the state of Arizona over the administration’s concern about the impact on U.S. foreign policy. Mexico and other countries have expressed outrage over the new law. “It seems to have gotten some people from foreign countries upset with us,” she said during the oral arguments.
The fight over the Arizona law has complicated the White House’s effort to break the deadlock with Republicans in the U.S. Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration law, an already difficult task in an election year.
Opinion polls consistently show the Arizona law is supported by a solid majority of U.S. voters, posing risks for Obama in opposing the measure, which he warns could lead to a ‘patchwork’ of conflicting state laws across the country.
The Obama administration lawyer contended that the federal government was responsible for setting immigration laws and that the Arizona measure threatened to undermine U.S. foreign policy.
“What we have is an unprecedented package of enforcement measures to adopt a state policy … in exclusive disagreement with the federal government,” Kneedler said..
ARIZONA SAYS PLEAS HAVE ‘GONE UNHEEDED’
Arizona argued the federal government had failed to enforce federal immigration laws and therefore state legislators were forced to pass the law to try to stem the flow of illegal immigrants over the state’s border with Mexico and cut down on drug trafficking and crime.
“A law that is unenforced is no law at all,” said John Bouma, the lawyer representing Arizona. “We have had repeated pleas … that have basically gone unheeded.”
Bolton could issue a preliminary injunction if she finds the Obama administration would ultimately succeed in its quest to have the law struck down.
“A ruling in either direction will probably be a very strong signal about how this judge views the validity of the Arizona law and the strength of the administration’s arguments,” said Carissa Hessick, an associate law professor at Arizona State University. At stake is “whether the administration has the full authority over immigration policy and immigration enforcement,” she added.
Several hundred protesters demonstrated outside the courthouse during the hearing, chanting and banging drums. Police said seven were arrested for blocking traffic.
Britain becoming less British at a great rateOne baby in four born to migrants; Number of foreign-born mothers has doubled
Almost a quarter of babies are born to immigrant mothers, an official breakdown showed yesterday. It found that 24.7 per cent of children born last year have mothers who were born abroad – and that their numbers have doubled since the late 1990s. The sharply rising numbers of babies with foreign-born mothers came despite an overall fall in births.
The figures produced fresh warnings to ministers that immigration rates must be brought down to avoid the growing threat of overpopulation in Britain.
Numbers of children born to mothers from outside the country have been growing fast in recent years as immigration has reached record levels. In 1998 there were 86,456 babies born in England and Wales to mothers born abroad. These mothers are considered likely to be long-term migrants by statisticians. Last year, the total had reached 174,400, according to the figures from the Office for National Statistics. Over the same period, the share of babies with foreign-born mothers rose from 13.6 per cent to 24.7 per cent.
The rising proportion of children of migrant mothers is a result both of high levels of immigration and higher birthrates among newly-arrived families. Last year, the ONS calculated that women born in Britain will average 1.84 children each during their lifetimes, while women who came to this country from abroad will have 2.51 children during their lives. Immigration and higher birthrates are the greatest factor in pushing up population rates.
The ONS has predicted that the UK population will hit the sensitive 70million mark in 2029.
Alp Mehmet, of the Migrationwatch think-tank, said: ‘These figures confirm that action is necessary to bring down immigration levels and the Government have to get on with it. ‘Nothing that anyone has said in recent months has altered the prospect that there will be 70million people in the country in 20 years’ time.’
The breakdown of figures was published by the ONS yesterday in its final tally of births and birthrates in 2009. Overall, the number of babies born in England and Wales fell slightly from 708,711 in 2008 to 706,248 last year.
The numbers of babies whose mothers were born abroad went up by around 3,500, from 170,834 to 174,400. The three most common countries of origin of foreign-born mothers are Pakistan, Poland and India.
Around one in ten babies are now born to mothers from New Commonwealth countries, according to the ONS breakdown. In some towns with high numbers of immigrants, a majority of young children now have mothers who were born abroad.
In London around half of babies have foreign-born mothers. And in some London boroughs, such as Newham and Brent, around three quarters of children have mothers who were born abroad.
22 July, 2010
Judge to decide on Arizona’s immigration lawA federal judge is to weigh evidence on whether to block Arizona’s tough new immigration law Thursday, a week before the measure is to take effect.
The suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, other groups and 10 individuals, has not been as high-profile as the U.S. Justice Department challenge but has many more plaintiffs and defendants, The Arizona Republic reported.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton will decide whether plaintiffs meet criteria for a preliminary injunction to block the law from taking effect. It authorizes law enforcement officers to ask people to produce documentation if there is “reasonable suspicion” they are in the country illegally.
The plaintiffs, who also include Service Employees International Union and a non-profit organization that helps immigrants, argue the law “encourages racial profiling, endangers public safety and betrays American values.”
Plaintiff Jim Shee, a U.S.-born 70-year-old of Spanish and Chinese descent, told the Republic he has been stopped twice by local law enforcement and asked to show his “papers.”
Friendly House, a Phoenix non-profit, became a plaintiff in the ACLU suit because it believes the law will deter clients from getting help the organization offers, including employment services, childcare and food boxes, interim Chief Executive Officer Terri Leon said. Friendly House serves serves legal residents, citizens and illegal immigrants.
Another plaintiff in the suit, Luz Santiago, 59, a pastor at the predominantly Hispanic church Iglesia Pueblo de Dios in Mesa, said more than a week before the law takes effect, it stirs considerable anxiety among her congregation, about 80 percent of them Hispanics in the country illegally.
“I have seen so much fear in the community,” Santiago said. “I see fear in the eyes of children of my congregation that their parents may one day go out somewhere and not come home. It makes me feel very depressed. The United States is supposed to represent freedom.”
Santiago, who moved from Chicago to Arizona three decades ago, said nothing has had as big an impact on the immigrant community as the law and it has already kept Hispanics away from businesses in droves.
“To see empty stores, to see people not walking around like they used to, the empty apartment complexes, it reminds me of movies of Old West ghost towns,” she said. “There is a mass exodus from Arizona.”
Australian PM dodges migrant intake questionThis seems to be confirmation that her only response to immigration-driven population pressures on basic services will be to sent more migrants to plkaces outside the big cities — a policy that did not work for Gough Whitlam — see here and here — and has no chance of working anywhere outside a totalitarian State
JULIA Gillard has refused to say whether she plans to cut back the migrant intake in line with her argument for a reassessment of population policy.
On Tuesday Ms Gillard said in a speech that the nation needed to ask itself whether it was time to stop packing more people into Sydney’s western suburbs when the region’s infrastructure and services were struggling to meet the demands of the existing population. In doing so she became the first prime minister in decades to question the notion that a growing population will drive economic growth and prosperity.
Asked on Sydney radio station 2UE today whether this meant she wanted to pare back the nation’s immigration intake, Ms Gillard, a Welsh migrant, refused to be drawn. “I think that’s a question not just about numbers but where they are going,” she said.
Ms Gillard said the issue was not as simple as simply putting up the house full sign in western Sydney. Instead, it was time for the nation to take pause and ensure communities had proper infrastructure and services and that growth happened where there were adequate services to cope with its impacts. “Let’s just get it all right,” she said. “Let’s have skilled migrants go where we need them.”
She said councils in western Sydney did not want “Just to see a rush to a big Australia” but that councils in other parts of the nation which suffered labour shortages were “crying out” for more people.
21 July, 2010
Spousal Abuse Asylum?Worrisome Trend Threatens Credibility of System
Many activist-minded attorney groups are working to expand opportunities for asylum by pushing analysis that contradicts the original intent and traditional interpretation of asylum law. One of the more significant recent efforts – making alleged individualized cases of spousal abuse qualify for asylum – has gained traction under the Obama administration.
A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines this development. ‘Open-Border Asylum: How the Newfound Category of ‘Spousal Abuse Asylum’ Raises More Questions than It Answers,’ by Legal Policy Analyst Jon Feere, focuses on the recent case of Rodi Alvarado Peña, a Guatemalan woman who claims to have been the victim of spousal abuse in her home country and who was granted asylum by the Obama administration last fall. Her case is part of a larger effort to lower the bar to asylum so that larger numbers of people can immigrate to the United States every year outside of numerical limits set by Congress.
* Asylum is traditionally granted in instances where a foreign government is persecuting an individual; the new standard raises many legal questions by allowing for asylum based on alleged violence from individual actors.
* The new standard involves individualized, unique, and potentially unverifiable cases of domestic abuse, providing a significant opportunity for fraud.
* The administration has not explained how it will address the alleged abuser should he attempt to immigrate to the United States.
* Individuals who can relocate safely within their home country ordinarily cannot qualify for asylum, yet the administration has not indicated how adjudicators should measure the abilities and failings of other countries on the issue of spousal abuse.
* The administration fails to understand the importance of border security in providing meaningful protection from alleged abusers.
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: Jon Feere, (202) 466-8185, jdf@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
New from the Center for Immigration Studies1. Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns and 850 Illegal Aliens
Excerpt: Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns, and 850 Illegal Aliens” is the Center for Immigration Studies’ second web-based film on the impact of illegal alien activity in Arizona. The Center’s first video on the subject, “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border: Coyotes, Bears, and Trails,” has received over 50,000 views to date. This new 10-minute mini-documentary raises the bar, featuring footage of both illegal-alien entry as well as gun- and drug-smuggling. At minimum, the inescapable conclusion is that hidden cameras reveal a reality that illegal-alien activity is escalating.
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2. Coverage of Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2
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3. Mark Krikorian debates Illegal Aliens and Employment
Video
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4. The Medicaid Costs of Legalizing Illegal Aliens
Excerpt: The recently enacted health reform law, in part, expands eligibility for the Medicaid program. Illegal aliens remain ineligible for Medicaid beyond emergency services. However, this could change if they are legalized. This Memorandum estimates the potential Medicaid costs associated with legalization. The costs associated with the new affordability credits for those with income above the Medicaid threshold are not included here, and would be in addition to the extra Medicaid costs.
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Excerpt: The Obama Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law, S.B. 1070, has been criticized on several grounds: It has no merit, since the measure is consistent with federal law. It is hypocritical, since there are no lawsuits against so-called sanctuary cities, which unlike Arizona are explicitly in violation of federal immigration law. It is premature, since the law doesn’t even go into effect until July 29. It is a political stunt, intended to increase Hispanic turnout in November.
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6. Immigration enforcement must come first: Feds can’t change neglected system overnight
Excerpt: The debate over the new Arizona law – and the lawsuit it has spawned – has thrust immigration back into the national spotlight. It also has reminded us of a central question in that debate – should we enforce the law first, or should we legalize illegal immigrants and then begin to enforce the law vigorously. The president argues for the legalize-first-enforce-second approach, while the public generally favors enforcement first. In truth, any enforcement strategy will take years to implement, given the administrative, legal and political challenges it will face. If we ignore this fact and proceed with an amnesty before we have met these challenges, we will simply repeat the 1986 amnesty, which legalized nearly 3 million illegal immigrants who were then replaced by new illegal immigrants as enforcement languished.
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. 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
20 July, 2010
VA: New immigrant detention center will be mid-Atlantic’s largestThe largest immigrant detention center in the mid-Atlantic will soon open in Prince Edward County, an effort to accommodate Virginia’s unprecedented surge in detentions of illegal immigrants picked up on criminal charges.
The $21 million, privately run center will house up to 584 immigrant detainees when it opens its doors. Over the next year, it might grow to hold 1,000 prisoners, most of them snagged by the federal government’s growing Secure Communities program, which aims to find and deport criminal illegal immigrants.
Last month, Virginia became the second state, after Delaware, to implement the program statewide, requiring jails and prisons to screen prisoners by immigration status and check their fingerprints against the country’s immigration database.
With three months left in the fiscal year, the number of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions detained in Virginia and the District has increased by 50 percent from last year’s total, to 2,414. Those numbers are expected to increase now that the program is being implemented statewide.
The new facility “is mostly here to address the impact of Secure Communities,” said Robert Helwig, assistant director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We do anticipate a surge in detainees.”
The immigration debate has grown increasingly polarized, and the Secure Communities program has become a symbol of that division. John T. Morton, head of ICE, calls it the agency’s attempt to “secure the nation and protect public safety.” But many immigrant advocates, including Enid Gonzalez, a lawyer at CASA of Maryland, say the program “claims to keep violent criminals off the streets, but instead it’s just incarcerating innocent busboys.”
There’s one point on which experts across the spectrum agree: Without additional detention space, the program cannot function. ICE has detained fewer than one-quarter of the immigrants identified by Secure Communities, a range of suspected criminals facing charges as varied as misdemeanors and murder. “The Obama administration can’t expect to increase enforcement measures without increasing detention capacity,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Richmond-based Immigration Centers of America built the detention center in the last days of the Bush administration, as the number of immigrants in federal custody hit an all-time high. ICA began work on it even before the government committed to sending detainees there. The town was, and still is, largely united in support of the detention center, which is expected to bring 300 jobs to the economically battered town of 7,500.
“They have to send these people somewhere,” said Farmville Mayor Sydnor C. Newman Jr. “Thank God they chose Farmville.” The town, which has lost manufacturing jobs in recent years, stands to receive about $213,000 a year in revenue from a $1-per-detainee daily fee the company will pay.
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Token deployment of National Guard troops to border about to beginNational Guard troops will head to the U.S.-Mexico border Aug. 1 for a yearlong deployment to keep a lookout for illegal border crossers and smugglers and help in criminal investigations, federal officials said Monday.
The troops will be armed but can use their weapons only to protect themselves, Gen. Craig McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told a Pentagon news conference. The troops will undergo initial training and be fully deployed along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border by September.
The announcement provides details on how the government will implement President Barack Obama’s May decision to bolster border security and comes as drug-related violence has escalated in Mexico, where several people died over the weekend in a car bombing and in a separate massacre at a private party. It also comes as the U.S. debate over illegal immigration has intensified in an election year.
“The border is more secure and more resourced than it has ever been, but there is more to be done,” said Alan Bersin, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, part of the Homeland Security Department.
The 1,200 troops will be distributed among four border states, with Arizona getting 524; Texas, 250; California, 224 and New Mexico, 72. Another 130 would be assigned to a national liaison office.
Bersin also said the Homeland Security Department will provide six more aircraft, including helicopters, to the border. He said at least 300 Customs and Border Protection agents and inspection officers would be sent to the Tucson area, along with mobile surveillance vans and additional technology.
“It will help,” Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, said Monday in Santa Fe, N.M., where he was attending the annual meeting of the Conference of Western Attorneys General. “Manpower clearly has been deficient. Technology has been somewhat deficient, and they’re bolstering that.”
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, said the deployment isn’t enough “nor tied to a strategy to comprehensively defeat the increasingly violent drug- and alien-smuggling cartels that operate in Arizona on a daily basis.”
Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl of Arizona said Obama’s administration was taking a step in the right direction but a lot more needs to be done. U.S. Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Gabrielle Giffords, both D-Ariz., separately called the announced actions welcome but insufficient.
“This is the kind of action we want from the administration — not suing the state,” Kirkpatrick said, referring to the Department of Justice’s challenge to the new Arizona immigration enforcement law. “However, we should continue to move forward with a much larger commitment of National Guard troops right away and with an expansion of the Border Patrol to strengthen security for the long run.”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry also criticized the troops as “grossly insufficient” for the Texas border in a letter to the administration last week.
President George W. Bush deployed 6,000 National Guard troops to the border in June 2006, also a midterm election year. The troops were part of his effort to persuade the Republican-led Congress to pass his immigration reform proposals that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The troops’ deployment ended in July 2008.
McKinley said even though the four border states are contributing 54,000 troops to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they still have a sizable number available for other deployments or disaster response. More can be deployed at state cost if governors wish, but the 1,200 are being paid for by the federal government, he said.
“Right now I cannot see a case where we would be overextending the National Guard for this effort,” he said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement also is beefing up its presence in Arizona, said John Morton, the Homeland Security Department assistant secretary overseeing the agency.
Morton said ICE is opening a new office in Ajo, Ariz., to focus exclusively on cross-border crime and to deploy a specialized investigative team in Douglas, near where an Arizona rancher was shot and killed while surveying his ranch on the border.
Also, the agency will send ICE lawyers to U.S. attorneys offices to help prosecute felons who illegally re-enter the country after deportation. It also will increase the number of ICE agents in Mexico to 40, making it the largest of ICE’s 63 offices in 44 countries.
“We are placing a particular emphasis on the Tucson sector in Arizona, an area favored by smugglers and the principal point of illegal entry into the United States along the southwest border,” Morton said.
19 July, 2010
Americans’ views on immigration reveal complexitiesA Texan viewpoint
When it comes to the highly inflamed issue of immigration, Americans hold complex and seemingly contradictory views. On one hand, a clear majority of Americans in numerous polls — including Texans — support Arizona’s tough new law, which would require police officers to ask suspected illegal immigrants for identification.
A Gallup Poll released earlier this month shows just 33 percent of the public approve of the Obama administration’s lawsuit attempt to have the law nullified, while 50 percent disagree with it.
But it’s more complicated than that. A whopping 82 percent of people who support the Arizona law also support comprehensive national immigration reform that includes a path for current illegal immigrants to become citizens, according to a bipartisan poll conducted in June by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic firm, and Public Opinion Strategies, a group of Republican pollsters.
“It seems inconsistent,” concedes David Mermin, a partner at Lake Research Partners. “But what’s consistent is a desire for action.”
The common thread running through public opinion on immigration is anger: anger at the federal government for failing to enforce immigration laws, anger at businesses for hiring illegal immigrants, anger at landlords for renting to them and anger at Congress for inaction.
And while most Americans favor a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who pay a fine and otherwise obey the law, 59 percent of voters say the government should secure the United States’ southern border before addressing reform legislation, a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll in late June found.
Scott Rasmussen, whose polling firm has conducted numerous polls on immigration-related issues, said those numbers reflect people’s displeasure with Washington.
“Of people who are angry about immigration, over 80 percent are angry at the federal government,” said Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports.
Texans want actionTexans strongly favor action from the U.S. military: 69 percent say American troops should be used along the Mexican border to prevent illegal immigration, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted June 16.
That hasn’t happened. The Obama administration has approved sending 1,200 National Guard troops to the southern border, with 250 to be stationed along Texas’ 1,250-mile share of it.
In the absence of an aggressive federal response, voters across the country are inclined to accept state action. When the Lake/Public Opinion poll asked supporters of the Arizona law why they supported it, 52 percent gave as their reason, “the state took action because the federal government has failed to solve the problem.”
Rasmussen found that 59 percent of Texans would favor an Arizona-style enforcement measure.
Mermin says inaction in Washington is becoming a contentious point for voters. “There’s a lot of things people are frustrated with – the economy, BP,” he said. “(Immigration) feels like another unsolved problem we haven’t been able to deal with effectively.”
Anger at employersBut the anger doesn’t end there. Rasmussen said that most Americans are more upset with people who profit from illegal immigration than with the immigrants themselves. Seventy percent of Americans support strict government action against employers who hire illegal immigrants, a Rasmussen poll published June 4 found.
“People would like to see people who hire them face sanctions,” said Rasmussen. “They’d like to see the politicians that protect them face sanctions, [and] they’d like to see landlords who provide housing face sanctions.”
The public frustration is reflected in the meager 39 percent approval rating for President Obama’s handling of immigration, according to a Washington Post poll last month.
Obama called for comprehensive immigration reform in a speech last week, but with other divisive legislative issues on Congress’ plate, movement on immigration is unlikely any time soon.
As a result of the repeated delays, said Rasmussen, people increasingly don’t see Washington as a viable agent for change on immigration. “There is a huge distrust of Washington when it comes to immigration,” said Rasmussen. “Overwhelmingly, (Arizonans) prefer the Arizona officials over Washington officials.”
At last some detail about how the Australian Left plans to deal with the pressure on services caused by high levels of immigrationIt looks like Prime Minister Gillard’s idea is to keep the immigrants coming but send them to small towns rather than the major cities. Just how she is going to enforce that is unknown. Her Labor Party predecessor, Gough Whitlam, tried that in the ’70s with his policy of decentralization but the big cities just kept on growing regardless. Quite laughable really: Just more ill-considered “policy on the run”. It’s exactly what got Kevin Rudd tossed out of the top job
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard is risking a backlash from Labor voters, ditching Kevin Rudd’s “big Australia” concept and promising to “take a breath” to get immigration right.
Vowing to “always put our quality of life first”, she linked rapid population growth with Australians’ declining quality of life. “Let’s not make our national goal a `big Australia’,” Ms Gillard said.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott seized on her population sustainability focus, immediately linking it to the other election wildcard, asylum seekers.
Ms Gillard’s focus on sustainability is also a reversal of the stance of the former prime minister, Mr Rudd. “There is no easy way to simply go on absorbing large-scale population increases without something giving way,” Ms Gillard said. “We need to think carefully about our future population – and where and how growth can be accommodated in the years to come.”
Mr Abbott said he thought Australians “want to feel like they are in charge of their destiny.” “That’s the problem with the boat-people issue. We feel that we’ve become a soft touch,” he said. “We feel that people are in a sense taking advantage of us; that the people smugglers and not the Australian Government, and ultimately the Australian people, are in charge of the immigration program.”
But refugee advocates remain concerned that the immigration debate is a cipher for a more inflammatory debate below the surface about border protection and asylum seekers in the wake of continuing unlawful arrivals and the Government’s attempts to neutralise the problem.
Ms Gillard’s “sustainable Australia” comments overturn decades of support for high immigration intakes and echo Pauline Hanson’s One Nation message to Australians worried excessive immigration would disadvantage them. “Australia cannot and should not hurtle down the track towards a big population,” Ms Gillard said.
The new objective of a sustainable Australia “that preserves our quality of life and respects our environment”, reveals her main campaign theme in the August 21 election and is likely to be the guiding principle of her yet-to-be-revealed climate-change policy.
Three “expert panels” will inquire into issues like liveability, sustainable development, and productivity, with the objective of drafting Australia’s first population strategy.
The move is designed to woo outer-suburban voters once referred to as “Howard’s battlers”. It aims to quell their concerns over traffic congestion, competition for GP appointments, and housing.
Research by both parties shows these voters hold the election in their hands because they occupy many marginal seats.
In her first official dip into the national wallet, Ms Gillard committed a future Labor government to providing $200 million to give 15 regional towns up to $15 million each to help them cope with population growth. The money, from existing programs, would help build up to 15,000 new homes over three years as well as roads and other infrastructure.
But only one SA town, Mt Gambier, will be eligible for the new assistance, in what could emerge as a recurring problem for SA because the main election contest is on the eastern seaboard.
In NSW, 19 towns will get assistance, 10 in Queensland and eight in Victoria.
Whyalla Mayor Jim Pollock was unimpressed, but remained hopeful a prime ministerial visit to the upper Spencer Gulf later in the campaign would yield a better result.
“I’m personally very disappointed that Whyalla and the upper Spencer Gulf and Eyre Peninsula have not been considered, given the concerns we had with the super mining tax, which really was very concerning to Whyalla and OneSteel,” he said. “We could quite easily do with more population growth here in Whyalla and hopefully the PM has us and the region in mind.”
Previous attempts by state governments to encourage people to move to smaller population centres have usually failed. But Ms Gillard hopes improvements in infrastructure can entice some to consider the shift. “I say to regional Australia, let us use common sense and hard work as our compass and partnership as our way ahead,” she said.
18 July, 2010
Nine states back Arizona’s illegal immigration lawsStates have the authority to enforce immigration laws and protect their borders, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said Wednesday in a legal brief on behalf of nine states supporting Arizona’s immigration law.
Cox, one of five Republicans running for Michigan governor, said Michigan is the lead state backing Arizona in federal court and is joined by Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia, as well as the Northern Mariana Islands.
The Arizona law, set to take effect July 29, directs officers to question people about their immigration status during the enforcement of other laws such as traffic stops and if there’s a reasonable suspicion they’re in the U.S. illegally.
President Barack Obama’s administration recently filed suit in federal court to block it, arguing immigration is a federal issue. The law’s backers say Congress isn’t doing anything meaningful about illegal immigration, so it’s the state’s duty to step up.
“Arizona, Michigan and every other state have the authority to enforce immigration laws, and it is appalling to see President Obama use taxpayer dollars to stop a state’s efforts to protect its own borders,” Cox said in a statement.
Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, in a statement released by Cox’s office, said she was thankful for the support.
In a telephone interview, Cox said the nine states supporting Arizona represents “a lot of states,” considering it was only Monday that he asked other state attorneys general to join him. The brief was filed in U.S. District Court in Arizona on the same day as the deadline for such filings.
“By lawsuit, rather than by legislation, the federal government seeks to negate this preexisting power of the states to verify a person’s immigration status and similarly seeks to reject the assistance that the states can lawfully provide to the Federal government,” the brief states.
The brief doesn’t represent the first time Cox has clashed with the Obama administration. Earlier this year, he joined with more than a dozen other attorneys general to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of federal health care changes signed into law by the Democratic president.
Like with his stance on health care, the immigration brief again puts Cox at odds with Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Granholm, who can’t seek re-election because of term limits, disagrees with the Arizona law, her press secretary Liz Boyd said. The Michigan primary is less than three weeks away on Aug. 3.
Australian Leftist leader promising to curb immigration-driven population growthAll talk? She’s been saying this ever since she got the top job but no details so far on how she will do it
Prime Minister Julia Gillard is set to deliver a speech in Brisbane today to quell concerns surrounding the stresses on Australia’s cities from a rising population.
There is likely to be a major focus on Australia’s population and immigration levels during the five-week election campaign….
When Kevin Rudd was prime minister he said he made “no apologies for a big Australia” but Ms Gillard has already made it clear that she is not in favour of that.
Today Ms Gillard will use a speech to the Eidos Institute in Brisbane to state Labor’s case for a sustainable population that would support people’s quality of life.
She will say that it is “no surprise that people living in the suburbs of Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and the Gold Coast are concerned by the talk of our population rushing to 36 or 40 million.”
Just days after she took over the prime ministership from Kevin Rudd, Ms Gillard changed the title of Tony Burke’s portfolio from population to sustainable population.
This morning Mr Burke told ABC1′s Insiders that there are serious issues of congestion in Australia’s cities. “There has been a practice for years in Australia that will just keep packing more and more people into the same handful of cities,” he said. “The word sustainability actually gets us back to the core principle of asking the question, it’s not just about constant economic growth driven by property prices continuing to soar.”
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has told Sky News the Government is panicking on the issue. “Julia Gillard says she is against Kevin Rudd’s big Australia. She never said that when Kevin Rudd announced it,” he said. “It does look like a panicked change of policy with the election in the offing.”
Mr Abbott also says a Coalition government would take a different approach to the immigration intake. “I’m not against a higher population,” he said. “What I completely reject is that we should just take for granted that we’re going to bring in 180,000 or 300,000 [immigrants], which are the current figures, year in year out, come what may come 2050 and beyond.”
Mr Abbott did not specify what he the immigration intake would be under the Coalition but said it should be reassessed each year.
17 July, 2010
Federal prosecutions of immigrants soarObama continues enforcement tactic championed under Bush. Maybe even he has got the message that enforcement comes before reform
Federal prosecutions of immigrants soared to new levels this spring, as the Obama administration continued an aggressive enforcement strategy championed under President George W. Bush, according to a new study released Thursday.
The 4,145 cases referred to federal prosecutors in March and April was the largest number for any two-month stretch since the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was created five years ago, the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found. They ranged from misdemeanor illegal entry to prosecutions of immigrants with criminal records.
The government’s heavy focus on immigration investigations already is creating a heavy burden for the swamped courts along the U.S.-Mexico border, whose judges handle hundreds more cases than most of their counterparts in the rest of the country.
Federal authorities claim that workload would grow if Arizona’s controversial new immigration law were implemented. The new law requires police, while enforcing other laws, to check the immigration status of anyone they have a reasonable suspicion is in the country illegally. It will take effect July 29 unless blocked by a court.
“People already are working 10- or 12-hour days and on weekends to just meet the caseload,” said Matt Dykeman, a clerk in the U.S. District of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where the percentage of cases referred by Customs and Border Patrol increased by 54 percent from February to April this year. “It’s not an eight-hour day, because you have to process them and get them in court for that detention hearing.”
Some of the increase may be due to seasonal upticks in the flow of migrants, who often tend to cross the border in time for the summer harvest or other temporary work, Dykeman said. Hundreds of acres of fruit and vegetable crops are ripening in California’s Central Valley, for instance, where farm laborers flock in the warm months seeking jobs picking and harvesting.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both investigative agencies, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on TRAC’s findings.
The nonprofit academic research group obtained the latest figures from the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act. That agency also declined to comment on the findings.
U.S. Attorneys along the southwest border, from Texas to California, handle the bulk of cases referred by the border patrol.
Department of Homeland Security figures show that the number of illegal immigrants in the country has fallen in recent years. As of January 2009, an estimated 10.8 million people were in the country illegally, 1 million less than the 2007 peak, according to DHS. At the same time, deportations have been increasing, climbing from 185,944 in 2007 to 387,790 last year.
Are Muslims the “right kind of migrant” for Australia?And guess the religion of most of the illegals arriving by boat? Comments below by Andrew Bolt
My excuse for this column is Julia Gillard [Australia's new Leftist Prime minister]. She’s the one who says we need to bring in “the right kind of migrants”. More importantly, our new Prime Minister says she wants us to talk frankly at last about boat people – and, I presume – other immigrants.
“I’d like to sweep away any sense that people should close down any debate, including this debate, through a sense of self-censorship or political correctness,” she declared.
I hope she means it, because here are some facts of the kind that normally invite screams of “racist” and an inquisition from our shut-your-face human rights tribunals.
They are the kind of facts that also have so many voters so steamed up about just a few thousand boat people – or, to put it another way, about thousands of people who barge in, having destroyed their identity documents, and expect us to believe they’ll be model citizens.
BRITISH police this month revealed that most men charged in London for gun crime, robberies and street crime are black, even though blacks make up just 12 per cent of Londoners.
BRITAIN’S Centre for Social Cohesion this month said two-thirds of 124 Islamist terrorists convicted there since 1999 were of British nationality, and almost half were of Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Indian heritage.
A THIRD of the gang members in Canada’s prisons have African ancestry, although just 2.5 per cent of the population are African Canadians.
SWEDES with a Middle Eastern nationality are 6.6 times more likely than Swedish citizens to be in prison. For Africans it’s 10.9 times.
Now to Australia …
THE 20 people convicted here for terrorism offences are all Muslim.
AUSTRALIANS born in Tonga and Samoa are about five times more likely than the rest of us to be jailed.
AUSTRALIANS born in Romania, Vietnam, Sudan and Lebanon have jail rates much higher than the average (and Chinese and Indians much lower).
So, yes, let’s talk about bringing in “the right kind of migrants”.
Before I do, let me make the standard disclaimers. You’re right, most people from whatever community or group I’ve mentioned are law-abiding, and race is not related to crime. It’s culture that counts. Now back to the adult talk.
Many Western societies, especially in Europe, now realise how dumb they were to not consider how the cultures of some immigrants might limit their ability to fit in. Too scared of seeming racist, they today reap the whirlwind.
Large, unassimilated minorities in France have made some suburbs almost no-go areas, with regular race riots.
In Britain, home-born Muslim extremists have killed scores of fellow Britons.
In Scandinavia, crime has soared, and cartoonists in Sweden and Denmark are targets of assassination plots from angry Muslims.
In Holland, the director of a film critical of Islam was butchered.
Australia has been spared anything quite so dramatic, perhaps thanks to our superb ability to assimilate so many nationalities and faiths, from Greeks to Chinese, and Buddhists to Sikhs.
Even so, with one category of immigrant we now have more trouble than we’ve known before.
A significant minority of our 340,000 Muslims seem not only unable to fully assimilate, but unwilling. Some seem even antagonistic to the society that has given them a safe and rich home.
Examples? A conference of 500 Muslims in Sydney last week, organised by the Muslim Hizb ut-Tahrir group, was told that democracy was haram (forbidden) for Muslims, and believers “must adhere to Islam and Islam alone”. This group so believes its loyalty to Islam trumps its loyalty to its new home that it refuses to condemn suicide attacks on our troops in Muslim lands.
Or take our most prominent Muslim cleric, Egyptian-born Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly. Rather than help to preserve the peace of his new home, he’s praised suicide bombers as “heroes”, described the September 11 terrorist attacks as “God’s work against oppressors”, and exalted the Hezbollah terrorist group.
Just last month he addressed an anti-Israel rally in Sydney, waving a Turkish flag and crying “Down with Israel”, “Turkey is coming!” and “Iran is ready!”
He knows he has an audience for such them-against-us war talk. When five local Muslims were convicted this year of planning terrorist attacks against us, 10 imams and 20 Muslim “community leaders” met at his Lakemba mosque to draw up a statement – not to decry this wicked plot, but to attack the police.
No wonder the Federal Government’s White Paper on counter-terrorism this year warned that since 2004 we’d had an “increase in the terrorist threat from people born or raised in Australia, who have become influenced by the violent jihadist message”.
It added: “The scale of the problem will continue to depend on factors such as the size and make-up of local Muslim populations, including their ethnic and/or migrant origins.”
Which means the more Muslims we take in (up to 28,000 a year now), the more trouble we may expect from them or, more often, their children.
All this you may still shrug off, trusting to our genius for making migrants feel at home. But I fear we may have reached a tipping point both in numbers and in attitudes.
When my own parents migrated here half a century ago, Australia had a strong sense of self and of pride. It then gladly built a future (think Snowy River scheme) and felt no shame for our past.
But now? We ask children from very proud, if not xenophobic, immigrant cultures to pledge a deeper loyalty to an Australia that we ourselves damn as racist, greedy and planet-raping. Why would they agree to such a lousy deal?
The latest example is a new guide to teaching Islam in schools, published by Melbourne University’s Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies. It barely mentions the Islamist terrorism that is the main cause of what it dismisses as our “racism” towards Muslims, and refers to al-Qaida, the killer of so many of us, as merely one of several “famous names”.
Terrorism is brushed off as one of the “constant reminders of this distrust” between the West and Islam, for which the West is blamed most.
Only one reason is given for high Muslim unemployment – “underlying discrimination and prejudice towards non-Europeans in Australia”. So why have Christian Lebanese done so much better here on almost every measure, even providing Victoria with a premier and NSW with a governor?
Is the difference really nothing to do with Islam, the faith of so many poor nations? Is Muslim poverty, terrorism and crime really just the fault of our miserable society?
Or is our real fault to have apologised too much for what we are, and to have failed to protect this great society from newcomers too disposed by their culture to reject our own?
16 July, 2010
The war on ArizonaNot since President Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock and JFK sent U.S. marshals to the University of Alabama has the federal government seemed so at war with a state of the union.
Arkansas and Alabama were defying U.S. court orders to desegregate. But Barack Obama’s war on Arizona is not a war of necessity. It is a war of choice — an unprovoked war, undertaken not to defend constitutional or civil rights, but to pander to his party’s left and Hispanic voters.
New Mexico’s Gov. Bill Richardson, himself Hispanic, gave the game away. At the Boston governors conference, he assured colleagues, nervous over the administration attacks on Arizona’s immigration law, that “Obama is popular with Hispanic voters, and this is going to be a popular move with them nationally.”
Eric Holder fended off criticism of his Justice Department suit against Arizona that alleges the state usurped federal responsibility by saying he has not ruled out a second suit for “racial profiling.”
Rather than work with Arizona to secure the border and send the illegals home, the Obamaites are taking Mexico’s side against Arizona, and against the faithful execution of U.S. law.
In a shocking and telling episode in the Rose Garden, Obama stood by mute as Felipe Calderon attacked the Arizona law as “discriminatory.” The next day, Democrats in Congress, with Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano joining in, cheered the Mexican president’s slander that Arizona introduced “racial profiling to law enforcement.”
There was a time when such an insult to a state of our union, on U.S. soil by a foreign ruler, would have produced a diplomatic crisis, if not pistols at dawn.
Some of us recall Ike walking out of a Paris summit with Nikita Khrushchev rather than apologize for sending U-2s over Russia, and JFK, after the Bay of Pigs, retorting to Khrushchev that the United States did not need any lectures on intervention from people “whose character is forever stamped on the bloody streets of Budapest.”
Democrats cheer as Arizona is attacked by a Mexican leader whose country treats illegal entry as a felony and illegal aliens with a brutality no American would tolerate.
And what exactly is at the heart of the Arizona law?
Simply this: Being in this country illegally is now a misdemeanor in Arizona, as it is in U.S. law. And as a 1940 U.S. law requires resident aliens to carry their green cards or work visas at all times, Arizona will require police to request such identification if, in a “lawful contact” — a traffic violation or altercation — the officer entertains a “reasonable suspicion” the individual may be here illegally.
Is this really Nazi Germany? Does this really justify the hysteria? And if this is the Gestapo, why did Holder not make this feature of the law the grounds for his Justice Department suit?
Answer: Calderon and Obama notwithstanding, racial profiling is prohibited by the Arizona law. Nor is there any evidence racial or ethnic profiling will be condoned by Arizona. The law has not even taken effect.
Unlike San Francisco and other towns that declare themselves to be “sanctuary cities” and refuse to cooperate with U.S. immigration authorities, Arizona is not challenging or usurping U.S. law, but trying to assist the U.S. government in enforcing the immigration laws.
Why is Arizona under attack for simply trying to help enforce our immigration laws? Because the Obama administration cannot, will not or does not even wish to see those laws enforced.
The U.S. government is today derelict in its constitutional duty.
And this is approaching an existential crisis for America. For there are in Arizona 450,000 illegal aliens, a population of law-breakers in a single state approaching the size of the entire U.S. Army.
Though we have 15 million Americans unemployed, near 10 percent of our workforce, with a higher share of African-Americans jobless, we have 8 million illegal aliens holding jobs. And last year the administration handed out over a million green cards and work visas to foreigners to come and take jobs that would have gone to American citizens.
In communist countries in the Cold War, all understood that the government did not represent the people. The state was at war with the nation.
That idea is taking root in America — the idea that our government no longer seeks to represent us. And as one watches Obama and Congress take the side of a foreign leader attacking an American state, and the government refuse to do its duty and defend the borders or send the illegals back home, questions arise.
In this ongoing invasion of the United States that has brought 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens into our midst, whose side is the government on? Ours or theirs? What is the reason for the refusal to secure our border?
Why do Democrats insist that the illegal aliens be put on a “path to citizenship”? Is the real objective the abolition of the old America we grew up in?
New Video: Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border“Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns, and 850 Illegal Aliens” is the Center for Immigration Studies’ second web-based film on the impact of illegal alien activity in Arizona. The Center’s first video on the subject, “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border: Coyotes, Bears, and Trails,” has received over 52,000 views to date. This new 10-minute mini-documentary raises the bar, featuring footage of both illegal-alien entry as well as gun- and drug-smuggling. At minimum, the inescapable conclusion is that hidden cameras reveal a reality that illegal-alien activity is escalating.
The hidden camera footage, acquired from a variety of sources, indicates that there is an unfortunate lack of federal law enforcement presence on Arizona’s federal land on the border in Nogales, in the Coronado National Forest (15 miles inside the border), and the Casa Grande Sector (80 miles inside the border). Also significant to the story are responses received as part of Freedom of Information Act requests made by Janice Kephart, the Center’s Director of National Security Studies, in August 2009. Featured in the film is a 2004 federal government PowerPoint showing the near-complete devastation of a borderland national park due to illegal-alien activity, highlighting the disconnect between the situation on the ground in Arizona and Washington rhetoric.
“Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Drugs, Guns, and 850 Illegal Aliens,” is available online here
The first film, “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border: Coyotes, Bears, and Trails,” is available here
The blog describing the federal government response to the July 2009 video is available here
All of the Center for Immigration Studies’ videos are available online here
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Janice Kephart, 202-466-8185, jlk@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
15 July, 2010
How migration and high birth rates ‘will increase UK population to 78 MILLION by 2051′The population of the UK could reach nearly 80million by the middle of this century, according to new research. Higher levels of immigration, higher birth rates and people living longer would push the total to 78.8 million by 2051, academics found. The increase – of nearly 20 million since 2001 – would be likely to make the UK the largest country in Europe.
The research, by academics at the University of Leeds, also predicts major changes to the ethnic mix of the UK population. They found ethnic minorities would make up one in five of the population by mid century, up from fewer than one in ten a decade ago.
Official statisticians have long projected the population would hit 70million by 2029. But the new estimate, from independent researchers, shows increases potentially continuing into later decades.
Population projections carry a greater degree of uncertainty over longer time periods because different factors influencing its size can change in importance. The academics produced a range of estimates according to different birth, death and migration rates. According to the highest projection, the population will reach 78,848,000 in 2051.
The highest figure assumes immigration increasing from current levels – although the coalition government has already put a temporary cap on some forms of migration and plans further reductions.
Of the 78.8million Britons in 2051, some 55million would regard themselves as White Britons – an increase from the current figure of 52.5million. But measured as a slice of the population, that would represent a fall from more than one in eight to fewer than one in seven.
Numbers of ‘other whites’ – a category which includes Eastern European migrants – are projected to increase dramatically, to nearly seven million, or one in ten of the population. In 2001 – before the mass wave of Eastern European migration caused by the accession of former Soviet states to the EU – they made up just 2.5 per cent.
The study predicts an increase in the number of Indians – nearly doubling from 1,432,000 to 2,672,000. There will also be sharp rises in numbers from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The three- year study found minority groups would be better integrated in society and more likely to live in affluent areas.
Project leader Professor Philip Rees said: ‘The ethnic make-up of the UK’s population is evolving significantly. ‘Groups outside the white British majority are increasing in size and share, not just in the areas of initial migration, but throughout the country, and our projections suggest that this trend is set to continue through to 2051. ‘At a regional level, ethnic minorities will shift out of deprived inner city areas to more affluent areas, which echoes the way white groups have migrated in the past.’
Commentators said a population of 80million would be a ‘nightmare’. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the MigrationWatch UK think tank said the research demonstrated the need for cuts in migrant numbers. ‘The prospect of better integration is welcome but will be a huge challenge if the ethnic minority population is to more than double,’ he said. ‘That apart, a population of nearly 80 million in mid century on this tiny island is a nightmare. These projections underline the case for getting immigration right down as the Government have promised.’
Home Secretary Theresa May unveiled the country’s first cap on migrant numbers last month – reducing the number of permits for skilled workers by five per cent. The temporary limit on the number of non-EU workers will be followed by a final cap to be unveiled next April. David Cameron has pledged to reduce net migration – currently 176,000 to the low tens of thousands.
Around 70 per cent of the current population increases are due to immigration – through direct arrivals or children born to them. The current UK population of 61,398,000 is an increase of three million since 1997. But even that count may be too low because no one can estimate how many migrants have come into the country illegally.
Labour’s supposedly ‘tough’ points-based system actually led to increases in the number of foreign workers and students cleared to live here. The number of non-EU migrants given work permits, or permission to carry on working in Britain, rose by 20 per cent, from 159,535 in 2007 – the year before points were introduced – to 190,640 last year, including dependents. The number of student approvals increased by a third, from 208,800 to 273,445 a year later.
New Australian government’s immigration policy is “killing” the government concernedAs well it might. Australia’s recent acquisition of a new red-headed Prime Minister has done NOTHING to stop the constant flow of boat-borne illegals
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard’s asylum seeker policy was dealt another major blow yesterday after her Immigration Minister said the issue was “killing the Government”. Immigration Minister Chris Evans was caught out in an unguarded moment at a university conference in Sydney discussing one of the key issues of the forthcoming election.
His comments came as border protection forces intercepted the 147th asylum seeker boat in two years – and the third since Sunday night.
Senator Evans was attending a conference for immigration specialists hosted by the University of NSW when he was asked how politically toxic the asylum seeker debate was. He said one of his “greatest failures” as Immigration Minister was “losing control” of the immigration debate, according to a 2UE reporter who, unknown to Senator Evans, was at the conference.
He said the debate was “killing the Government”, which will be seen as an admission that Prime Minister Gillard’s attempt to find a host for an offshore refugee procesing centre has not diminished voter anger on the issue. Government sources insisted Senator Evans had been referring to policy under the former prime minister Kevin Rudd but it appeared he was referring to the present.
“I have previously acknowledged that this has been a difficult debate for the Government over a long period of time and that there has been a level of public concern surrounding the issue,” Senator Mr Evans said in a statement late yesterday. “The debate has changed substantially since Julia Gillard became Prime Minister and seized the opportunity to confront the issue and speak honestly and frankly with the Australian people.”
But Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison accused the Government of being more interested in “polls and spin” than “real action”. “It is Labor’s policies that have failed, not their message nor their messenger,” Mr Morrison said.
Senator Evans said the Labor Party now had a “clear way forward under Prime Minister Gillard”. “We are focused on developing a regional protection framework and are already engaged in discussions with East Timor,” he said.
Mr Morrison said Senator Evans’ biggest failure had been to wind back the border protection regime he inherited from the Howard government, and referred to the 147 “illegal boats” and the more than 7000 asylum seekers who had arrived since then.
The latest boatload of suspected asylum seekers was intercepted yesterday morning, northwest of Browse Island in the Indian Ocean. Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said 84 passengers and three crew were on board. Since Sunday, 192 asylum seekers have been re-routed to Christmas Island.
14 July, 2010
The Arizona-haters would be aghast at JapanYet Japan is probably the safest and most courteous place on earth — and to rub it in they are also exceptionally intelligent, prosperous and long-lived. Figure that one out
Racial profiling had never struck me as a personal issue. I am a Japanese woman living in Japan after all, where less than 2 percent of the population is foreign. And even among that sliver of a share, the majority is Asian. How could racial profiling exist if most everyone looks the same?
I was awakened from such naïveté a few years ago when I started getting pulled aside by police, apparently to see if I was an illegal immigrant. On three occasions, officers sidled up to me at busy train stations, flashing their badges and asking me where I was headed. When they concluded I was a Japanese national, they sent me on my way.
Earlier this year, two officers approached me as I was exiting Tokyo Station and asked to see an ID and the contents of my purse. I refused their repeated requests while demanding an explanation until one of the officers finally told me, “You are tall and dark-colored and look like a foreigner.” He then added, “Every day we catch four to five overstays this way,” referring to immigrants with expired visas.
I was stunned by the officer’s blatant profiling of me based on what I perceive as my only slightly unusual features: a bit taller than average height and a shade of a sun tan. But microscopic vision for sniffing out differences is a common trait among the Japanese who are often uncomfortable with dealings outside of their familiar zones.
The officers who approached me on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant were presumably acting on Japan’s Police Duties Execution Law. It states: “A police officer may stop and question any person who has reasonable ground to be suspected of having committed or being about to commit a crime.”
The Japanese law is broader than the controversial legislation in the U.S. state of Arizona that goes into effect this month, which allows police to confirm someone’s immigration status only after stopping the person on other grounds. “The same thing as in Arizona has been in place in Japan for a long time without much criticism,” says my cousin and lawyer Genichi Yamaguchi.
Most Japanese are unaware of these racially motivated checks. But even if they knew about them, it is questionable how much they would object. Profiling is a common practice here with casual exchanging of personal information. The details collected from a business card or queries such as asking where one attended university or what blood type one is serve as clues to allow people to predict how each party will behave.
As a single parent who has lived overseas and is blood type A, I am stereotyped as hard-nosed enough to have decided to go it alone, blithe from surviving dealings with all sorts of people and having the seriousness attributed in popular beliefs here to people of my blood group.
Such typecasting takes on racist overtones when applied to foreigners. “Chinese don’t know train manners,” I overheard a man say recently in response to a Chinese woman talking loudly on her cellphone in the compartment. On a bus tour of the Western city of Nara, several Japanese passengers complained that the Filipinos aboard who had trouble keeping up with the rushed sightseeing pace “don’t understand ‘dantai kodo,”’ or group behavior. When one of the Filipinos went to the restroom, a Japanese woman grumbled that she should have held back in deference to the group schedule. Such intolerance — when the government is on a major campaign to increase tourism to the country, and just this month eased visa application requirements for Chinese visitors.
There are even disturbing signs that Japanese increasingly don’t want to bother trying to understand the unfamiliar territory beyond their borders. Only one student from Japan entered Harvard University’s freshman class last year, bringing the total number of full-time Japanese undergraduates to five, compared to a total of 36 from China and 42 from South Korea.
A 2007 Web-based survey by the Nomura Research Institute revealed a growing reluctance to live overseas among younger Japanese. While 33 percent of men and 23.9 percent of women in their 60s and older said they would have some aversion to either themselves or their spouses going to work overseas, the share of people with that sentiment reached 42.9 percent and 38.9 percent respectively for people in their 20s.
The next time a police officer stops me, I plan to explain that suspecting me of a crime simply because I look foreign constitutes racial profiling. Only there is no term for the practice in the Japanese language.
A small population for a big island?Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich is an immigrant to Australia from Germany. He says below that Australia is much better off than Europe when it comes to coping with high levels of immigration. What he overlooks is that Australians have to endure the ever-increasing traffic jams and rising housing prices that have accompanied rapid immigrant-driven population growth. The authorities are trying to cope — with all sorts of new roadworks, for instance — but being constantly held up by incessant roadworks is itself a big downer
Prime Minister Julia Gillard is working hard to distance herself from her predecessor as she redefines Australia’s population policy. Kevin Rudd had famously declared that he made no apologies for supporting ‘a big Australia.’ Gillard seems to prefer a ‘small Australia,’ although she is yet to spell out the details of her thinking.
I have been living in Australia for some time now, but this ongoing population debate still puzzles me. I vividly remember, when I was researching Australian housing policies a few years ago, a planner in the NSW state government telling me that ‘we are full.’ I had just flown in from Europe, the last four hours over vast areas of sparsely inhabited land, so this blunt statement came as a bit of a surprise.
Of course, great parts of the continent are not liveable. Yet travelling up and down the east coast, you will find more empty, habitable space than anywhere between Finland and Sicily. And the lack of water also seems to be a bit of a myth. After all, Sydney has much higher annual precipitation (1,213 mm) than London (583 mm), Berlin (570 mm), or Paris (652 mm). I had never seen real rain until I came to Australia.
Apart from the strange idea that Australia is full, another aspect of the population debate perplexes me. In Europe, the main concern is about population ageing and shrinking. People are getting older, and not even migration can make up for the continent’s low fertility levels. Governments are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the worsening demographic situation. An older population means fewer taxpayers and more welfare spending; it is a toxic combination for public finances and economic growth.
In Australia, we have the opportunity to cushion the ageing process with both relatively high fertility rates and strong migration, mainly consisting of well-qualified, young migrants. European politicians would kill for such circumstances. They would love to have our problem of dealing with a fast growing population because they know that dealing with the opposite is vastly more unpleasant.
My colleague Jessica Brown and I are just about to finish a research project that looks into the demographic options for Australia. Our preliminary conclusion is clear: the real challenge in population policy is not size but age.
It would be desirable if the Prime Minister turned her attention from the futile debate over ‘Big vs. Small Australia’ to the more pertinent question of coping with a greying Australia.
The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated July 9. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.
13 July, 2010
New from the Center for Immigration Studies1. Steven Camarota Discusses Immigration
Excerpt: On Wednesday, July 7, I traveled to C-Span’s studios to be interviewed on Washington Journal. On the program, I explain the Center for Immigration Studies’ view on the Federal government’s lawsuit against Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070. Additionally, the Obama administration’s renewed push for amnesty is also discussed. A video of the Washington Journal program is now available on the C-Span website.
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2. Prejudging the Ariz. immigration law issue
Excerpt: “ADL joins Arizona lawsuit” reflects the groupthink that has stifled debate on immigration within the Jewish establishment while lowering journalistic standards.
Its opening sentence prejudges the issue by saying that Arizona’s state Senate bill 1070 is termed “restrictive.” The “news story” also alleges the law grants “police wide latitude to stop individuals and check their immigration status.”
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3. Where Do Alien Fraudulent Card-Users Fit into the Big Picture?
Excerpt: There are four basic ways of becoming an illegal alien in the US, and perhaps the government is focusing too much attention on the least of these flows. The four routes are:
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4. Observations on DOJ’s Anti-Arizona Lawsuit
Excerpt: The Justice Department’s questionable lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law makes for a target-rich environment. This legal action raises countless questions constitutional, legal, political. Here are just a few observations.
First, contrary to Justice’s assertion, Congress hasn’t preempted state statutes like Arizona’s (see Kris Kobach’s detailed analysis of inherent state authority and preemption here). States are fully within their rights to exercise their inherent authorities to enact laws that seek to control conduct, including the actions of foreign residents within their borders, whether related to employment, housing, or crime.
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5. What Would the DREAM Act Do to Higher Education?
Excerpt: Does the U.S. want to push about two million, mostly not-very-interested-in-education young people into our already overcrowded and under-funded colleges so that they can claim legal status in the U.S., which they now lack?
That’s one question that is not asked in a new report on the proposed DREAM Act, a specialized amnesty proposal that relates to people who came to the U.S. illegally before the age of 16.
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6. A Guestworker Program (H-IJ) to Solve the Immigration Judge Shortage?
Excerpt: It’s odd that the government has not figured this out for itself.
There is a continuing, one might say chronic, shortage of Immigration Judges in the Justice Department. When then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales poked into the problem in 2006 there were 24 fully funded vacancies. Now according to an excellent report, ‘Backlog in Immigration Cases Continues to Climb,’ there are 48 of them.
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7. Some New Migration Numbers – and Some Comments Thereon
Excerpt: Some recently released Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) numbers reminded me that a huge chunk of the American population is the responsibility (in some manner) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Putting together some numbers which OIS records but does not assemble, we have the following…
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. 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
12 July, 2010
The new Leftist solution to illegal immigration to Australia: Spin a web of liesBy ANDREW BOLT
I THOUGHT Julia Gillard would finally rid us of Kevin Rudd’s noxious spin and brazen lies. But after her boat people speech, I feel sick.
The woman has started her reign with the same cold deceit with which Rudd ended his. Smoother delivery, sure, but the spin is just as shameless. Turns out Rudd’s spin was part of the new Labor brand.
The worst of it – in a speech riddled with this cancer – came when Gillard announced she hoped one day to send boat people to East Timor for processing, so they couldn’t be sure they’d end up here for the $10,000 that they’d paid a people smuggler.
Sound familiar? Yes, it’s the same “Pacific Solution” John Howard once had and which Gillard condemned year after year as cruel, costly and useless.
Here she is last year: “We also said . . . we were going to end the Pacific Solution which had cost so much money for so little result.” Here she is in 2007: “We have committed to ending the so-called Pacific Solution.” So the difference now is …?
Well, Gillard’s plan is to send boat people this time not to Nauru but East Timor, which to the Left is a holy land. Think Gusmao. Viva the Revolution!
Oops, sorry – there is one more difference. Rather than use again the detention centre at Nauru which we’ve already built, Gillard will spend a fortune on a new one in East Timor.
And until then the boats will keep coming, with 83 this year already. But get this. Rather than admit that Labor was wrong to dismantle the Pacific Solution and was now bringing it back, Gillard looked you in the eye and insisted you see black as white. “My Government is not interested in pursuing a new Pacific Solution,” she said without blushing. We’re not doing what you see us doing.
And guess what? Just hearing our charming first female Prime Minister insist her Pacific Solution was not a Pacific Solution was all it took to have some commentators doubt their own judgment and praise as “balanced” a plan they’d damned in Howard as inhumane. What a country.
You may think I’m overreacting to one line in a speech which one day may slow the flood of boat people that Labor stupidly unleashed by weakening our laws, following a policy drawn up largely by Gillard as its former immigration spokesman.
Don’t kid yourself. Gillard’s speech was full of such deceptions as she papered over chasms in Labor’s credibility.
Gillard’s claim: We are taking these steps in response to the increase in unauthorised people movements in our region and around the world.
The increase in boat people has been bigger here than almost anywhere else, thanks to Labor’s softening of our boat laws. Before those changes, we’d been getting on average just three boats a year. Now we’re getting three a week.
Gillard’s claim: I speak of the claim often made by Opposition politicians that they will, to quote, “turn the boats back”. This needs to be seen for what it is. It is a shallow slogan. It is nonsense.
Such hypocrisy. Guess which Labor leader in 2007 promised he’d “turn ‘em back” too? Hint: Kevin Rudd. And which redhead said in 2002 that she wanted to do “everything we can to stop people smuggling” and “turning boats around that are seaworthy, that can make the return journey and are in international waters fits in with that”. Hint: No, it wasn’t Pauline Hanson, was it, Julia?
Gillard’s claim: Tony Abbott claims that the Howard government had an active policy of turning boats back. This is simply not true. For the entire time of the Howard government, only seven boats were turned back. The Howard government did not turn a boat back after 2003.
The reason Howard didn’t turn back boats after 2003 was that there were almost none left. The message had been sent and boat arrivals were down to three a year. Labor, however, has sent not one back.
Gillard’s claim: The Opposition is trying to sell the Australian community a fairy tale in which all you have to do is go out to an asylum seeker boat and turn it around and everything will be fixed. The facts are the boat will be scuttled and start to sink.
Boats are being scuttled now. Five Afghans were killed last year when they blew up their boat off Ashmore Reef. Twelve Sri Lankans drowned last year when their boat capsized off the Cocos Islands, just as they were being rescued. The Tamils who refused to leave our Oceanic Viking had been picked up after sending an SOS and reportedly drilling holes in their hull.
As for Abbott, he’s said only that he would turn back boats when, naturally, it was safe to do so. His more important promises are to bring back the Pacific Solution and to deny refugee status in most cases to boat people who dump their passports before landing here.
Gillard claims: The facts are that this nation would then be confronted with a stark choice: Either we could leave the scene in the certain knowledge people including children would drown or we could rescue the asylum seekers from the water. Gillard is insinuating the Liberals are so evil they’d leave people to drown. Labor made this same baseless suggestion after the sinking in Indonesian waters in 2001 of the Siev X.
Gillard claims: Today let me say one thing loud and clear: Our nation would not leave children to drown. Again that disgusting suggestion that the Liberals are child killers. The truth is it’s Labor which has policies that kill children. Since it weakened our border laws in 2008, up to 170 boat people have drowned at sea, lured to their deaths.
This is the stain on Labor’s conscience, and on Gillard’s – yet she damns the Liberals.
Labor’s policies, drawn up by Gillard, inspired a new flood of boats which has cost up to 170 lives and $1b of your money and left us with record numbers in detention.
Gillard is now offering a never-never fix – a new Pacific Solution in which boat people would be sent to some detention centre in East Timor. But that centre is not built. Gillard admits East Timor’s President Jose Ramos-Horta has only “welcomed the conversation about this possibility”.
This is no fix. It’s just cynical spin, with half-baked plans rushed out to clear the decks for a dash to the polls before more boats expose the con.
New British immigration detention centre a shambles alreadyDetainees bully staff at ‘unsafe’ asylum centre
Detainees and staff at Britain’s newest immigration removal centre are frequently the victims of bullying and violence, a damning report concludes.
The investigation by Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, also found that drugs were widely available at the detention centre near Gatwick airport, which only opened a year ago. Ms Owers called on the Government to urgently address the “fundamentally unsafe state” of Brook House, which is run by private company G4S.
In the six months leading up to the inspector’s visit, detainees and staff reported 105 assaults, the majority against immigration guards.
Nearly half of immigrants held in Brook said that they had been victimised by other detainees and 37 per cent said they had been insulted or assaulted by a member of staff.
In two incidents, guards were found to have “illegitimately” used their shields against immigrants. In one case, guards used force against a detainee who had urinated through the door of his cell. One of the officers said in his statement: “I entered first with the shield. ‘A’ was standing up by the table and I hit him with the shield.”
But Dame Owers said that many of the guards lacked the confidence and experience to deal with violence and bullying. “Our surveys, interviews and observations all evidenced a degree of despair amongst detainees about safety at Brook House which we have rarely encountered. Bullying and violence were serious problems and – unusually for the immigration detention estate – drugs were a serious problem.”
She added: “Many detainees were ex-prisoners and a number compared their experience in Brook House negatively to that in prison. There had been significant staff turnover, particularly following an outbreak of serious disorder the previous summer. While many staff tried hard to maintain order and control, many felt embattled and some lacked the confidence to manage bad behaviour. A number of staff reported feeling unsupported by managers, and detainees claimed that some staff were bullied by more difficult detainees.”
Brook House, the latest addition to the UK Border Agency removals estate, was opened on 18 March 2009. It is supposed to provide short term accommodation for 426 males.
But a fifth of detainees had been detained for more than six months and four were found to be children. In the three worst cases, adults had been held for more than three years solely under immigration powers.
Dame Owers said: “The challenge at Brook House was significantly compounded by poor design, which built in boredom by providing too little purposeful activity on the erroneous assumption that detainees would only be staying a few days.”
David Wood, the strategic director for criminality and detention for the UK Border Agency, said: “We are extremely disappointed with this report, but accept its broad conclusions. That is why we have acted so swiftly to implement the vast majority of the improvements recommended. Since the inspection, we have introduced an anti-bullying policy and additional support for staff, including designated mentors.
“We are also developing a comprehensive drugs strategy for the estate to supplement the intelligence-led approach we have to preventing drugs coming in and being used in the centre. The vast majority of detainees in Brook House have committed very serious crimes, including drugs, sex and violent offences.”
11 July, 2010
British judge opens door to ‘bogus’ students: Visa crackdown overturned by High CourtRules meant to stop immigrants falsely coming to Britain with student visas were overturned by a judge yesterday. The High Court decision will mean a flood of migrants entering the country in the guise of language students, politicians and migration analysts warned.
Former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson laid down regulations earlier this year blocking students from coming into the country to start language courses unless they already spoke English to a good standard.
But Mr Justice Foskett said that the rules had been wrongly established through changes to existing guidelines. There should have been a legally binding change to the rules approved by Parliament, he found.
The decision was a victory for language schools headed by the English UK group, which represents 440 schools and colleges based on the south coast, London, Oxford and Cambridge.
Its chief executive Tony Milns said: ‘We believe that his decision is good for the UK economy, to which the English language sector contributes about £1.5billion in foreign earnings each year.’ Last year 273,445 students were given visas to come to Britain for courses, nearly 50,000 more than in 2008. Critics say that many cheat the system to get into the country and stay permanently.
Apart from abuses by migrants who have no intention of attending the courses for which their visas are granted, the student system is also thought to have been exploited by women looking to bring husbands into the country.
In March Mr Johnson made it more difficult to get a visa under Labour’s ‘points based’ system by raising the level of English required for those looking to come on English language courses to ‘intermediate’ from ‘elementary’.
Home Secretary Theresa May will now have to choose whether to remake the Labour rules – this time ensuring they have been correctly approved by MPs – or to postpone changes until wider reforms of the immigration system are pushed through.
Mrs May has pledged to get population increases through immigration down to the ‘tens of thousands’ per year level last seen in the 1990s.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We are carefully considering this judgment. This Government is committed to undertake a review into the Student Tier of the points based system in its entirety later this year to ensure that every student who comes to the UK is genuine.’
But shadow immigration minister Phil Woolas, who was Immigration Minister when the rules were brought in, said: ‘If the Government is serious about tackling illegal immigration it will mount an immediate and robust appeal against this decision.
‘This follows on from the decision of the new Home Secretary to drop the English language requirement for spouses and families of asylum seekers. For all its bluster, the Conservative-led government already appears to be losing its grip on immigration policy.’
Sir Andrew Green of the Migrationwatch think-tank said: ‘Student visas are a huge gap in our immigration system. The previous government’s points-based system, still in effect, has led to a flood of applications from India, Bangladesh and Nepal, often from people with completely inadequate English for the course they clam to be joining.’
‘It is now absolutely essential that this massive loophole be closed by whatever formalities are necessary,’ he added.
Australian government policy for dealing with illegals falling into a holeWhat does Gillard need a new “processing centre” for anyway? The U.N. has said Sri Lanka is no longer a refugee concern so she could put all the Tamils on the next plane back
PAPUA New Guinea yesterday joined the East Timor Parliament in saying “no” to Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s asylum seeker “solution”, leaving a key plank of the Labor Government’s re-election campaign in tatters.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith had on Thursday briefed his PNG counterpart on the plan, under which asylum seekers bound for Australia would have been processed at Manus Island detention centre.
Betha Somare, the spokeswoman for PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare, said the PNG Government had closed down the centre and considered the matter ended.
“Our official position has been that the asylum seekers issue is an internal Australian problem,” Ms Somare said.
East Timor’s Parliament has resoundingly rejected Ms Gillard’s plans to process asylum seekers there.
The setback comes amid reports that the number of people smugglers caught bringing asylum seekers to Australian shores has risen to such a level that they are now being farmed out to the states to hold.
The Daily Telegraph has been told that Queensland has been forced to take 10 traffickers while NSW’s jails will take 40 over the next five weeks.
A NSW government source said the states’ prisons were needed because with the growing number of asylum seekers came the traffickers paid to bring them illegally to Australia.
The Federal Government had at least 120 people smugglers in its care, the source said.
Mr Smith briefed PNG Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Abal of his Government’s hopes to create a regional processing centre while attending a prescheduled meeting in Milne Bay.
Ms Somare said Mr Abal would need to discuss any PNG solution with cabinet. “It will depend on when Foreign Affairs brings that forward in a submission to cabinet,” she said.
Other countries in the region which are signatories to the UN Convention of Refugees are New Zealand, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.
If PNG did not show any interest, the only options after East Timor are the Solomons and Tuvalu.
Mr Smith said it was a general conversation and he had not made a request to use PNG for a facility or discussed the reopening of the Manus detention centre. “I have not sought from Sam any indication about any particular location,” Mr Smith told reporters.
Ms Gillard’s proposal for an East Timorese processing centre was rejected by its parliament on Wednesday amid claims she had been wrong to brief President Jose Ramos Horta rather than the man with true power, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.
On Thursday Ms Gillard backed down from claims she was seeking a Timor Solution but yesterday she maintained that the East Timor option was still open to her Government. “We’re focused on a dialogue with East Timor, I couldn’t be any clearer about that,” she said yesterday. “Let’s be very clear, we are in dialogue with East Timor . . . we are now pursuing that dialogue in circumstances where the President of East Timor and Prime Minister said they are open to that dialogue.”
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said Ms Gillard was being inconsistent. “She’s now mentioned PNG, and she’s still talking to East Timor,” he said. “No one really knows what’s going on because it’s changing as they desperately try to backfill for the domestic political debate.”
Ms Gillard indicated she would not rule out using Manus Island, which belongs to PNG and became notorious under John Howard’s Pacific Solution. Port Moresby radio was yesterday reporting that Manus Islanders were interested in offering their island to Australia.
But Sir Michael’s Government inherited and then shut the Manus facility – now completely dismantled – from the previous Morauta Government, which had struck a deal with John Howard.
The Opposition said Ms Gillard’s hopes of getting neighbours to participate in the creation of the facility would take years.
10 July, 2010
Obama’s immigration lawsuit doesn’t poll wellAmericans are as divided over President Obama’s immigration lawsuit as they are over the immigration itself. Americans oppose the suit against Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration by a ratio of 50% to 33%, according to a new Gallup Poll.
“Emotions run high on both sides of the issue,” Gallup reported. “The substantial majority of those in favor and those opposed to the lawsuit say they feel strongly about their position.”
The poll also reflects “a partisan divergence,” according to the Gallup report: “Almost 8 out of 10 Republicans are opposed, while 56% of Democrats are in favor. Independents tilt toward opposition.”
The Arizona law basically gives law enforcement officers more authority to ask people about their citizenship. Obama said the measure could encourage racial profiling, though the lawsuit filed by his Justice Department argues only that Arizona infringed on federal responsibility for policing the border.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, said her state had to act because the federal government has failed to stop illegal immigration.
This is Gallup’s “bottom line” on the immigration poll:
The fact that Americans are more likely to oppose than favor the federal government’s lawsuit against Arizona’s controversial immigration law is in line with previous polling showing that Americans generally favor the Arizona bill. This means the Obama administration is sailing against the tide of public opinion in its efforts to block the law, although members of Obama’s own party certainly support the administration.
The political implications of the lawsuit are difficult to predict with precision at this juncture. Republican leaders will hope that reaction against the lawsuit generates more support for GOP candidates running on an anti-administration platform, while Democrats may hope that the lawsuit solidifies support among Hispanic voters in key congressional districts and states with close Senate and gubernatorial races.
RI crackdown on illegals — contrast with MassachusettsRhode Island State Trooper Nuno Vasconcelos was patrolling Interstate 95 a few months ago when he came upon a two-car accident in heavy traffic. The trooper pulled up, stepped out of his cruiser, and asked one of the drivers for his license.
The man said he did not have a license, and under questioning, confessed that he was here illegally from Guatemala.
If the accident had happened 15 miles north in Massachusetts, the man would probably have been arrested for driving without a license, which carries a fine of up to $1,000 and 10 days in jail, then released pending an appearance in district court.
But in Rhode Island, illegal immigrants face a far greater penalty: deportation. From Woonsocket to Westerly, the troopers patrolling the nation’s smallest state are reporting all illegal immigrants they encounter, even on routine stops such as speeding, to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.
“There are police chiefs throughout New England who hide from the issue . . . and I’m not hiding from it,’’ said Colonel Brendan P. Doherty, the towering commander of the Rhode Island State Police. “I would feel that I’m derelict in my duties to look the other way.’’
Rhode Island’s collaboration with federal immigration authorities is controversial; critics say the practice increases racial profiling and makes immigrants afraid to help police solve crimes.
But it is a practice that Governor Deval Patrick’s opponents in the governor’s race are urging Massachusetts to revive. The Patrick administration has staunchly opposed having state troopers enforce immigration laws, and shortly after he took office in 2007, the governor rescinded a pact by his predecessor, Mitt Romney, to assign 30 troopers to the so-called federal 287(g) program, which trains local police to enforce federal immigration law.
Massachusetts troopers say they work with federal immigration agents on criminal cases, but otherwise focus on enforcing state laws.
“We investigate not just traffic violators but also homicides, sexual assaults, drug trafficking, and any number of serious, violent crimes,’’ said David Procopio, Massachusetts State Police spokesman. “We cannot have some of these people fearing that they’re going to be deported if they talk to us.’’
The wildly disparate approaches of the two neighboring states — one that helps federal officials enforce immigration law, one that does not — illustrate how police are often caught in the middle between politics and public safety.
With Congress mired in an increasingly angry debate over the 12 million illegal immigrants nationwide, police are left to contend with the fallout, from hard-core criminals who hide their identities to hard-working laborers who drive without licenses because they need to earn money to send home to their families.
By some accounts, having states collaborate more closely with ICE could improve public safety. ICE has repeatedly urged police departments to take advantage of its Law Enforcement Support Center in Vermont, a 24-hour network that is distinct from the controversial 287(g) program.
Bruce Foucart, special agent in charge of ICE in New England, said the center helps police verify the identities of immigrants who are suspected, arrested, or convicted of crimes, and aids ICE by informing them about people who are here illegally. The federal agency can then decide whether to detain an immigrant for deportation or release them pending a hearing in immigration court.
“Does that make for good public safety? Yes,’’ Foucart said. “How do you know who it is until you check him through the [center]?’’
Since Patrick rescinded Romney’s order, Massachusetts State Police communication with the Vermont center has plunged.
Last fiscal year, Massachusetts troopers checked the immigration status of 575 people with the federal support center in Vermont, an 87 percent drop from 4,461 checks in 2006.
Instead, Patrick had the Department of Correction screen inmates and report those here illegally to federal officials. Since 2007, the Department of Correction has turned over 524 inmates to federal officials.
In Rhode Island, a much smaller state, the State Police checks soared in the same time period, from 125 to 222.
Providence police started using the Vermont center daily in 2008 after an illegal immigrant with prior arrests and an outstanding deportation order kidnapped and raped a woman.
Patrick’s challengers for governor, Republican candidate Charles D. Baker and independent Timothy P. Cahill, called on Massachusetts to reinstate Romney’s plan. They raised the issue in May after an illegal immigrant from Mexico rear-ended a state representative’s car.
In Rhode Island, home to 1 million people and 30,000 illegal immigrants, the immigration debate has been far more incendiary.
In 2008, Governor Donald L. Carcieri, a Republican, issued an executive order mandating immigration checks on all new state workers and ordering State Police to assist federal immigration officials.
Sitting in his office in an old farmhouse off a country highway, Doherty said the State Police had collaborated with federal immigration officials before, but the relationship has become more formal in recent years. In 2007, he said, he trained all state troopers in how to deal with noncitizens because of widespread confusion and because Congress did not resolve the issue of illegal immigration. Troopers learned to notify consulates when noncitizens are arrested, how to recognize different forms of identification, and how to deal with different cultures.
In 2009, Doherty took it a step further and enrolled in the 287(g) program, which designated four troopers as immigration task force agents to assist in investigating drug and human trafficking and other crimes.
They also help regular troopers report illegal immigrants to ICE. Troopers say the issue typically comes up during criminal investigations or when motorists don’t have driver’s licenses, and police need to verify their identities with the center in Vermont.
Troopers also ask for passengers’ identification, which they say is standard policy. Passengers could decline, but most hand over their identification.
The Rhode Island ACLU and other critics say they are concerned that the State Police’s efforts are leading to racial profiling. Steven Brown, ACLU executive director, said police should focus on enforcing state law, not federal law, and questioned why they are singling out immigrants for enforcement.
For instance, he said, if they stop a young white man driving a Porsche for speeding, would they also check with the IRS to see whether he is paying his taxes?
“If everything’s in order, why are you pursing anything at all in the absence of the crime?’’ he asked.
Juan Garcia, a community advocate in Providence, said he regularly receives reports that State Police are appearing more frequently in mostly Latino neighborhoods.
“They’re stopping Guatemalans and Latinos,’’ he said. “We’ve seen a growth in this.’’
Separate ride-alongs with two troopers, Vasconcelos and Al Ruggiero, recently showed that troopers often have little time to react before deciding to pull someone over. Cars weave in and out of traffic or zip by at high speeds.
Both troopers said they run into illegal immigrants occasionally, perhaps once every few weeks or months. “They’re treated with respect,’’ Ruggiero said. “We’re not out profiling.’’
Vasconcelos, the son of Cape Verdean immigrants who was born in Mozambique, said troopers feel compassion for undocumented immigrants who are just here to work; but, he said, troopers must enforce the law.
“To be honest, being an immigrant myself, I do feel, in a way, bad, but the law’s the law,’’ he said. “My job is to enforce the law. You try not to let personal emotions get involved.’’
9 July, 2010
British Judge says homosexual asylum seekers should be allowed to stay because ‘gays must be free to enjoy pop concerts and cocktails’London to become the queer capital of the world. Get set for a flood of welfare-dependant Africans heading to England
Gay asylum seekers must be ‘free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts and drinking exotically coloured cocktails’ without fear of persecution, a senior judge declared yesterday.
Lord Rodger’s extraordinary comments came in a judgment which could allow thousands of homosexuals to claim asylum in Britain. He said they should have the same rights to display their sexuality as straight men who ‘play rugby, drink beer and talk about girls with their mates’.
The Home Office has been refusing asylum claims by gay men on the grounds they could hide their sexuality – and therefore avoid persecution at home – by behaving discreetly. But, in test cases brought by men from Cameroon and Iran, three Supreme Court judges unanimously ruled the policy was a breach of the UN Convention on Refugees. It sets the precedent that no gay man should be returned to a country which treats homosexuality harshly on the expectation they will ‘act straight’. Lord Rodger, one of the most senior judges in Britain, said gay men had a right to ‘live openly and freely’.
The Government – which had already promised to review its treatment of homosexual asylum seekers – welcomed the ruling, as did gay rights and refugee groups. Home Secretary Theresa May said: ‘We have already promised to stop the removal of asylum seekers who have had to leave particular countries because their sexual orientation or gender identification puts them at proven risk of imprisonment, torture or execution. ‘I do not believe it is acceptable to send people home and expect them to hide their sexuality to avoid persecution.’
But critics warned it could lead to the UK – which is among the first nations to take such a position – becoming a leading destination for asylum seekers who are claiming to be gay.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: ‘This could lead to a potentially massive expansion of asylum claims as it could apply to literally millions of people around the world. ‘An applicant has now only to show that he – or she – is homosexual and intends to return and live openly in one of the many countries where it is illegal to be granted asylum in the UK.
‘The judges are no doubt interpreting the letter of the international convention correctly but the consequences are potentially huge. ‘The principle of asylum is, rightly, widely supported but it should be a matter of domestic law.’ …
There are more than 75 countries where homosexuality is illegal.This can range from the outlawing of gay sex to – in the most hardline countries – the banning of holding hands, kissing or any other public act of affection. This makes it inevitable, as Lord Hope said yesterday, that ‘more and more’ gay asylum seekers would seek protection in the UK.
The judge, who sat alongside Lord Rodger on the Supreme Court panel, predicted they would come from countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, where evangelical Christian churches engage in ‘rampant homophobic teaching’. He added that homosexual men and women are also certain to flee here from Muslim nations where there is an ‘ ultraconservative interpretation of Islamic law’, such as Iran. Other countries singled out by the judgment included Malawi and Uganda….
The Home Office says it does not log how many asylum claims – there were 24,550 last year – were based on sexual persecution-But Stonewall, the gay rights group, says the refusal rate for gay claimants was 97 per cent – compared with 77 per cent for applications as a whole.
What is certain is this 97 per cent figure will now plummet. But the danger, Migrationwatch claims, is that not all of the thousands of beneficiaries will be genuine. Rather, the group says, they will be claiming to be gay in the knowledge that – if they are from a country where homosexuality is persecuted – they will not be sent home.
AZ pol wants to cut off power to illegalsBut “Wong is wrong” seems to be the general response
Ratcheting up the debate over immigration in his state, a candidate for the Arizona utilities commission is threatening to cut off power and gas to illegal immigrants if he’s elected. “It is not a right. It is a service,” Barry Wong, candidate for the Arizona Corporation Commission, told The Arizona Republic.
The Republican candidate argues that the policy would be a cost-saving measure for consumers. Though it would cost money for power companies to check immigration status, he said it would ultimately save money because power companies would not have to build new plants to serve the illegal immigrant community, presumably passing on that savings to consumers. His plan, if elected to the five-person commission, would be to require utilities to check immigration status.
“There is a cost ratepayers shouldn’t have to bear because of the illegal immigrant population,” he said, while acknowledging the idea would probably attract “criticism about human-rights violations.”
Though Arizona has drawn praise and criticism alike from all corners of the country for its new law making illegal immigration a state crime, support was hard to come by for Wong’s proposal.
None of the other candidates for the commission would endorse his idea. The CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry also blasted Wong in a column in the Republic, accusing him of trying to “score cheap political points” while marking a “new low” in the state’s immigration debate. “To deny someone access to electricity based on his or her immigration status is not only a wrongheaded policy proposal, it’s just cruel,” Glenn Hamer wrote, calling the candidate’s economic argument “absurd.”
Wong, who was born in the United States, is the son of Chinese immigrants. He previously served in the Arizona House of Representatives.
It’s not the first time the issue of Arizona’s power supply has come up in the immigration debate. After the Los Angeles government decided to boycott Arizona in May over its law, Corporation Commissioner Gary Pierce wrote a letter to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa threatening to cut off power to the city. Los Angeles and Arizona officials later acknowledged that the state could not unilaterally sever those power contracts.
8 July, 2010
Illegal immigrant warning at unmanned British portsIllegal immigrants are slipping in to Britain through sea ports unmanned by immigration officers, the border agency watchdog signalled yesterday. At Holyhead port in Wales, there is only enough staff to cover one in four shifts even though it is deemed high risk and 26 immigration offenders were caught there in one month alone. Other minor ports in Wales and the South West are not manned at all, raising concerns over border security, a report by John Vine, the chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, found.
The lack of security also raises the prospect that potential terrorists could be exploiting the gaps to get into the UK. One anti-immigration campaigner warned the agency had “left of the side door to Britain wide open”.
An inspection of UKBA operations in Wales and the South West found some of the 17 airports and seaports in the region had either limited or no immigration officers.
Holyhead only has enough staff to fill five out of 21 eight-hour shifts even though the agency accepted it was a high risk port for migrants to get in to the country illegally.
Special branch officers, who are based at the port, discovered 26 immigration offenders during last October alone – the equivalent of almost one a day – raising questions over how many were not spotted.
The inspection report said: “Resource constraints severely limited the amount of immigration work that could be carried out at Holyhead and we were concerned that the level of immigration work undertaken is not balanced against the known high risk that is present.
“Staff raised concerns that some of the smaller ports in the region were not staffed and there was a risk that potential immigration offenders were not being detected. “This brings in to question the current level of security of the border.”
The lack of permanent immigration controls was blamed on the fact the minor ports only received passengers from the so-called Common Travel Area, which allows free movement between the UK and the Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
However, a failure to check passports or visas at such ports will renew fears that illegal immigrants or criminals can exploit the travel area to avoid border controls.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: “This is astonishing. We have heard for years about the huge investment in security at Dover, but it seems that we have left the side door to Britain wide open. “Yet again the public have been systematically misled about the effect of our border controls.”
The report also criticised poor resources around the region which saw some computer systems crash for days at a time while staff from Bristol had to drive to Cardiff to check fingerprints after the scanner was moved.
There are 300 UKBA staff in the Wales and South West region which contains sea or airports at Avonmouth, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Falmouth, Fishguard, Holyhead, Newquay, Pembroke Docks, Plymouth, Poole, Swansea, Newport, Cardiff Docks, Barry and Port Talbot.
Damian Green, the immigration minister said: “The new Government is committed to creating a dedicated Border Police Force to enhance national security, improve immigration controls and crack down on trafficking of people, weapons and drugs. It will also help us in fighting illegal working.
“The UK Border Agency manages security at the border according to the assessed risk. The Agency has already started to address the issues raised by the Inspector’s report and is committed to continuing intelligence-led checks on all people and goods entering the UK via Welsh ports.”
In December last year, Mr Vine warned hundreds of lorry drivers caught smuggling illegal immigrants into Britain are escaping punishment because of backlogs in the immigration system.
Thousands of pounds in fines are outstanding and hundreds of vehicles that should have been seized have not, some dating back seven years, he warned.
New Australian policy on illegal immigrants sounds completely useless so farProcessing them offshore is all well and good but what is the result of the processing going to be? How is it going to stop the flow and what is she going to do about sending these sham refugees back whence they came? So far she sounds like Rudd all over again to me. Abbott sums it up very well below and Andrew Bolt has a detailed fisking
JULIA Gillard will “relentlessly” pursue the creation of a regional processing centre, claiming it would be a “durable solution” to the asylum-seeker problem.
The Prime Minister defended her proposal today as Tony Abbott hit the airwaves to attack the policy as insufficient to stop boat arrivals and to accuse Labor as hypocritical on border protection.
“It would be a better solution and a more durable solution to have a regional processing centre where asylum seeker claims are processed and a fair sharing then of the refugees who are found to be genuine through that process,” Ms Gillard told ABC radio.
She also defended her credentials as a manager of strategic regional partnerships and indicated she would take a co-operative approach to discussing her proposal with Australia’s neighbours.
“I have had some foreign policy experiences including representing this nation in the United States and in other countries,” she said. “But I believe I do bring to the job a perspective about co-operation about getting things done, about the remarkable things that can flow when you get people around a table working together. “I’m going to take that same perspective to talking about the regional processing centre.” [She sounds like Obama in drag]
Mr Abbott said the proposal was a vindication of Opposition support for offshore processing. “It certainly makes a mockery of the ferocious criticism which the Labor party has made of the Coalition on this issue,” he told ABC radio. “It really does make a mockery of all of that moral rectitude that we saw in abundance from the Labor Party for years. “But look, it’s good that she’s accepted that the Coalition was right all along.”
The opposition leader said the centre would not prevent boats from coming without the introduction of other measures such as temporary protection visas. “All that would happen under Labor is that East Timor would become a way station. People would not be allowed to stay in East Timor. It would just be, if you like, an East Timorese vacation before finally coming to Australia.” “You aren’t going to stop the boats just by negotiating with foreign countries. You’ve got to make changes here in Australia.”
But Immigration Minister Chris Evans disagreed, saying the regional processing centre would reduce the number of arrivals. “The international regional processing centre should see, we think, the number of arrivals to Australia reduced,” he told ABC radio.
“There’ll certainly be strong deterrence about getting on a boat to Australia. If you get on a boat to Australia and you end up in a processing centre in East Timor or anywhere else as a result, why would you do it? Why would you pay a people smuggler?”
However, Mr Evans conceded further discussion was needed with East Timor about the construction of such a centre given Ms Gillard’s announcement was met with surprise and scepticism by many in the country. East Timor has not yet committed itself to the concept and President Ramos-Horta revealed yesterday he had told Ms Gillard he would first need to discuss the idea with the Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.
Mr Abbott attacked the government over the level of consultation that had occurred before the announcement yesterday. “There’s no evidence there was any serious talks with the New Zealanders, with the East Timorese,” he told ABC radio. “There is no chance whatsoever of a Gillard government ever building a processing centre in East Timor.”
Mr Abbott described Ms Gillard as a “late convert panicked by the polls and with an election imminent”.
7 July, 2010
New from the Center for Immigration Studies1. Steven Camarota Debates Philadelphia Enforcement
Video
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2. Drop amnesty talk, enforce law
Excerpt: President Obama’s speech Thursday did not add anything to the immigration debate. He tried to make a case for the same package that amnesty advocates have been offering for years now: legal status for illegal immigrants and increased future legal immigration in exchange for promises of enforcement in the future. He announced no new initiatives, no bills about to be introduced, no executive branch action. It was just another serving of the same rhetoric.
But more important than the lack of news is the broader question: Is such a package deal a good idea or not? The answer is “no.” There are many aspects to the issue, but let’s look at just two:
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3. Use What You Got: We already have a national ID-card system; now we should refine it
Excerpt: It’s not news that Americans have a deep-seated fear of efforts by the state to register and document the citizenry. During the 1996 immigration debate, open-borders activists lobbied Congress with bar-code tattoos on their forearms, implying that proposed identity-verification measures were akin to Nazi concentration-camp methods. Google “national ID” with “Nazi” and you get 50,000 hits. And, of course, Arizona’s recent legislation introducing into state law the existing federal document requirements for foreigners has spawned much demagoguery about the impending arrival of fascism.
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4. The ABA Opposes Arizona and Angers Its Membership
Excerpt: The American Bar Association is taking some heat from its dues-paying members for filing an amicus brief aimed at stopping Arizona’s S.B. 1070.
As explained on its website, the ABA ‘provides law school accreditation, continuing legal education, information about the law, programs to assist lawyers and judges in their work, and initiatives to improve the legal system for the public.’
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Excerpt: The President’s call-for-amnesty speech, given Thursday at American University, should raise one main question in every American’s mind: Whose side is President Obama on?
This bully pulpit brow-beating demanded all or nothing on immigration: no enforcement without legalization of all illegal aliens, plus the DREAM Act and AgJOBS amnesties, and the creation of yet another guestworker program – this one a mega-guestworker program to ensure that every foreigner who wants a job in America and can’t qualify for one of the many current guestworker visas can further flood the U.S. labor pool. This speech pretty much confirms what Sen. Kyl contends President Obama said in a recent conversation, that the administration is holding enforcement hostage to amnesty-plus.
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6. Shootout Near Mexico Hometown of Rep. Grijalva’s Father
Excerpt: The bloody confrontation Thursday between rival Mexican smuggling gangs just south of the Arizona border is a jolt to the entire region. It has particular resonance for people like U.S. Rep Raul Grijalva of Arizona, whose father emigrated from the area of the shootout, which left 21 dead.
The violence took place between the hamlets of Saric and Tubutama, along a notorious smuggling corridor. Nearby is the town of Altar, which for more than a decade has been a major staging area for illegal immigrants headed for the Arizona border.
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Excerpt: So, I figured the president’s major address on immigration might reveal something important. I’m at Cub Scout camp out in western Virginia, but I had to go to the laundromat anyway, so I watched the stream of the address using their free wi-fi while the clothes spun and tumbled. And what was the news that came out of it?
Nothing. Bupkes. Zilch.
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8. House Panel Flatlines Immigration, Customs Appropriations
Excerpt: The House Appropriations Subcommittee for Homeland Security reported last week that it had flatlined funds for Border, Immigration and Trade Security functions.
Detailed figures are not immediately available and the moneys voted included some customs, as opposed to immigration, activities, but last year’s budget was $16,161,000,000 for this work, and it will be $16,143,000,000 for the coming year, a reduction of about one-tenth of one percent. The funds voted were within a few million of what the Administration had requested. (I have excluded moneys for the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office in these calculations.)
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9. A New Recruit to the Enforcement-First Caucus
Excerpt: Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal has come around to enforcement-first perspective; his column can be summed up by its subtitle: ‘Secure the border and a healthy debate might follow.’
McGurn opens his column well enough, but after condemning ‘those who effectively oppose real enforcement of any immigration law,’ he resorts to a false equivalence:
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10. Similarities and Differences as U.K. and U.S. Face Immigration Decisions
Excerpt: Both the British and American governments want to change their nations’ immigration policies; both, apparently, are currently engaged in maneuvers that fuzz the issues.
There are both parallels and differences between the two nations’ systems, as they face similar questions: Should migration be reduced? And what should be done about the current population of illegal aliens?
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11. Napolitano Announces Border Initiatives
Excerpt: Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano recently announced several new border protection initiatives in a renewed attempt to secure the Southwest border in Arizona. She laid out these strategies at a symposium sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies last Wednesday, June 23.
‘No one is happy with the status quo [on immigration and the border],’ Napolitano said. ‘I’m certainly not and neither is the president.’
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. 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
6 July, 2010
Police chief at odds with Utah lawmakers over immigrationA pledge by Utah lawmakers to enact an Arizona-like illegal immigration law creates a battlefield not just with immigrants, but also between the Legislature and Salt Lake City.
After all, Police Chief Chris Burbank — with Mayor Ralph Becker’s blessing — excoriates the Grand Canyon State measure as “evil” and “racial profiling.” Before Congress last month, he accused a conservative cadre of Utah legislators of using “racist rhetoric” to enact an “obvious xenophobic agenda.” Invited back to Washington last week, Burbank called President Barack Obama’s immigration address “spot on,” adding that overzealous state leaders don’t share the sanctity of civil rights.
Both Burbank and Becker have since been assailed by angry calls and hundreds of e-mails from residents across Utah and beyond. Many of the e-mails, obtained through an open-records request, call for the chief to be fired. Others fear Utah’s capital becoming a “sanctuary city.” And scores, using racist rhetoric, question why the city’s top cop sounds like a progressive politician. Relatively few praise Burbank’s “courage.”
Utah lawmakers in the influential Patrick Henry Caucus intend to push a tough immigration bill when the Legislature convenes in January. But even though the governor agrees Utah needs immigration reform, Burbank insists police should play no part in enforcement that he considers tantamount to profiling.
“We’re going to be viewed as the racist arm of government,” says Burbank, who grew up playing squash with Mexicans, Pakistanis and Muslims. “It’s just wrong.”
Suddenly, his public reservations threaten to end the newfound peace between Utah’s most-populous city and the state. And the ramifications could extend beyond politics to the pocketbook. It’s one thing to aggravate the right-reaching residents of Sandy, South Jordan and Grantsville. It’s quite another to offend the Legislature’s GOP leaders.
“Anytime you start throwing spears with inflammatory names, it does create problems,” warns House Speaker Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, who would like to see Becker rein in his police chief.
“If the mayor is not stepping up and speaking out [against Burbank],” Clark says, “I would take that as a passive sanction.”
Becker downplays the confrontational tone, saying the “broken set” of federal immigration policies spurs highly charged emotions. “There are people who react in ways that are probably inappropriate in their nastiness,” the mayor says. “But we see this around the country. It is not unique to Utah.”
Burbank notes about a third of his city’s population is Latino and would be “subject to inappropriate police scrutiny” under an Arizona-like law. He finds the criticism he faces disheartening because illegal immigration is a civil violation of federal law and has nothing to do with criminal activity. The vitriol “is motivated by racial prejudice.”
Australian PM to send back asylum seekers who arrive by boat?There should be no problem with Tamils. Both Tamil Nadu (in India) and the Sri Lankan government will accept them. The terrorists among them could go to Tamil Nadu and actually be welcomed
HUNDREDS of Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum-seekers are likely to be sent home under Julia Gillard’s tough policy agenda to deter boatpeople.
As the Prime Minister prepared to unveil a new approach to tackling the issue this week – possibly including a resumption to the processing of Sri Lankan boatpeople – The Australian understands officials are working on a pact with Afghanistan over returning asylum-seekers.
It is believed the agreement, which is not expected to be included in this week’s announcement, would involve assurances from Kabul guaranteeing the safety of unsuccessful asylum-seekers.
Although up to 60 per cent of Afghan asylum-seekers have had their claims rejected, only two have been returned home since the surge in boatpeople started in late 2008.
Federal Cabinet will hold talks on the new approach today ahead of the Thursday deadline for a decision on whether the three-month freeze on the processing of Sri Lankan asylum-seeker claims will be extended or terminated.
New guidelines from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees are expected to remove the blanket assumption that any Tamil asylum-seeker from Sri Lanka’s war-torn north should be considered a refugee. It will be replaced by assessments likely to focus on high-risk groups, such as Tamils associated with the defeated Tamil Tigers or critics of the Sri Lankan Government.
Sources said that while the Government was expecting the new UNHCR guidelines before Thursday’s deadline, Australia was not bound by them.
As Australian officials confirmed the arrival of another suspected asylum-seeker boat over the weekend near Christmas Island, carrying 34 passengers and two crew, Ms Gillard again signalled a policy shift on the issue, pledging to cast aside “political correctness”.
The move would send a tough message to families considering paying people-smugglers for passage to Australia.
“There is no doubt about it, the best deterrent is to return people back home who are not refugees,” a Gillard Government source said last night.
5 July, 2010
Politicians finally hear the people say ‘enough’ on immigrationVoters in Australia and Britain have had their fill of out-of-control multiculturalism
AT first blush, Julia Gillard’s volte-face over immigration would seem to be as unlikely as Osama bin Laden singing the Star Spangled Banner or Richard Dawkins taking holy orders.
Here is a politician with a solid pedigree on the “anti-racist” Left rejecting former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s call for a “Big Australia” formed by continuing large-scale immigration.
Instead, Gillard has said she understands the anxieties of folk in western Sydney, western Melbourne or the Gold Coast growth corridor in Queensland.
As for the boats of asylum-seekers, Gillard has made clear she wants to be even more effective in stopping them in order to protect “our sanctuary” and “the Australian way”.
In other words, Gillard is signalling that she sympathises with the concern that large-scale immigration and multiculturalism are threatening Australia’s core values and identity, a position the Left denounces as bigotry.
Consequently, Gillard’s remarks have produced predictable cries of “racism” and “dog-whistling”. So why has the new Labor leader ventured into this particular cultural minefield? The explanation is that something tumultuous is happening, not just in Australia but in Britain too, something so unusual that people are stumbling around in a state of stunned disorientation.
It is that politicians are at last actually taking seriously what their electorates are saying to them about immigration and multiculturalism. This is that they will no longer put up with a policy which threatens to destroy their country’s values and way of life, and will vote accordingly.
In Britain even more than in Australia – where at least John Howard or Tony Abbott have tackled such issues – race and culture have long been totally taboo. No debate has been possible about whether mass immigration might be a bad thing for communities or the country as a whole.
Even to question this has been to invite instant denunciation as a racist from the dominant left-wing intelligentsia, for whom anti-racism has long been their signature creed.
The Conservative leader and now Prime Minister, David Cameron, who is driven by the need to bury the label of “the nasty party” that was hung round the Tories’ neck, was accordingly too nervous even to mention immigration during the recent election campaign, even though it was at the very top of the list of voters’ concerns.
But Cameron didn’t win the election, and is now forced to govern in a coalition with the left-wing LibDems. His failure to talk about immigration is said to be the reason why he failed to win an election that was thought impossible for him to lose.
Nothing concentrates the political mind so well as the spectre of defeat. And so now in both Britain and Australia a political sea change is taking place.
In both countries, voters are stating unequivocally that they have seen through all the spin about multiculturalism, all the false arguments about the alleged economic advantages of mass immigration, all the bullying and name-calling about racism.
They look at their neighbourhoods and realise that their culture and national identity are being replaced by something entirely new. No one has ever asked them for their consent to this. And they are simply not going to take it any more.
In Britain, the public services are buckling under the sheer weight of the numbers coming into the country.
More explosive is the cultural transformation, particularly by the large influx and expansion of Muslims who, rather than accommodating themselves to British society, expect it to accommodate itself to them.
So Britain is being steadily Islamised, with more than 1700 mosques, the development of a parallel jurisdiction of sharia law in Muslim enclaves, banks offering sharia financing, extremists given free rein on campuses and relentless pressure to suppress and censor any criticism of Islam or the Muslim community.
In parts of Australia too there are similar worries about the growth of the Muslim community, the pressure not to criticise any aggression it may display and the simultaneous onslaught upon Australian values by the likes of [Muslim cleric] Sheik Hilaly.
Listening to such concerns pays electoral dividends, as shown by Abbott, who has made such headway by defending the traditional values and national integrity of Australia as an entirely justifiable and moral position.
So Gillard is now humming the same tune, saying she sympathises with voters’ desire for strong management of Australia’s borders, and pledging “sustainable population” increase with the “right kind of immigrant”.
A similar political convulsion is occurring in Britain. The Conservative Home Secretary, Theresa May, has promised to put a cap on immigration, a pledge that was in the Conservative manifesto but rarely mentioned during the election campaign.
Even more striking is the abrupt change of tune among several contenders for the leadership of the defeated British Labour Party. While front-runner David Miliband is sticking with its open-door immigration policy, his younger brother Ed has said “we never had an answer for the people who were worried about it”.
Former Labour health secretary Andy Burnham claims the party has been “in denial” about the issue, which was “the biggest doorstep issue in constituencies where Labour lost”.
Most jaw-dropping of all, former education secretary and hard man of the Left Ed Balls has said high levels of immigration under Labour had affected the pay and conditions of “too many people”, and has called for better protection for British workers if the European Union expands any further.
Such death-bed conversions are of course driven by cynical political considerations. Nevertheless, they are levering open an ideological fixation which has not just sunk democratic politics into disrepute but driven culture and morality in both Britain and Australia off the rails altogether.
For the doctrines of anti-racism and multiculturalism have not ended intolerance, prejudice or discrimination. They have instead institutionalised reverse discrimination and up-ended truth, morality and justice.
Following the Marxist doctrine that prejudice is restricted to those with power, they have given Third-World ethnic minorities special protection from rules or conventions that apply to everyone else.
They have also served to falsify the history of both Britain and Australia in the minds of countless thousands of young people, who are taught propaganda based on a false or distorted story of national oppression and shame.
Multiculturalism threatens to undermine societies, by removing the cultural glue that binds all citizens together and balkanising the country into interest groups fighting for supremacy.
Once upon a time, the need to have strong borders and endorse a historic cultural identity were axiomatic elements of citizenship and national survival.
But mass immigration and multiculturalism are predicated on what is called “transnationalism”, the belief that the nation is the source of all the ills of the world and must be replaced by supranational institutions and cultural identities.
This is precisely what -at a visceral level – the people of both Australia and Britain understand and are refusing to accept. And at last, in both Australia and Britain, politicians are being forced to listen.
Border security is about more than fruit picking, housemaids and day laborThe police chief of a town in a violent border region is found decapitated, his head in his lap, hours after gunmen with Kalashnikov rifles killed the deputy police chief and his bodyguard in a nearby municipality.
Assassins kill the leading candidate for governor in a neighboring border state. Military and intelligence forces respond to a credible threat to blow up a dam that, if successful, could flood an area with 4 million residents.
Iraq? Afghanistan? No — Mexico in recent months, just across the Rio Grande from Texas. The police killings were in Nuevo Leon, the assassination in Tamaulipas, and the dam was at Falcon Lake, straddling the border between Tamaulipas and Starr County, Texas.
Too often, discussions about the border, including President Barack Obama’s address July 1, devolve into the passionate debate about immigration. That debate and the emotions it engenders tend to obscure a more fundamental issue: Our nation’s porous border is a threat to U.S. national security.
Migrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America who come here to pick crops, wash dishes and clean houses don’t represent a fifth column of foreign invaders. They are people looking for better lives, discouraged from seeking legal entry by an immigration system that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the powerful current created when the world’s wealthiest nation shares a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation.
But here’s an inescapable truth. The same routes and crossing points, the same coyotes and smugglers who manual laborers rely on to enter the United States can also be used by intruders with far less benign objectives.
The most obvious examples are the drug cartels battling each other and the Mexican government for control of the lucrative trafficking routes into the United States.
The armed groups that have turned Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, into a war zone — 200 people dead in only one week last month — have distribution networks that crisscross this country.
The cartels, their paramilitary enforcers and street gangs move illicit drugs north and cash and guns back south. In the multi-billion-dollar drug trade, the border is irrelevant. And there’s no reason to believe the people doing the beheadings and assassinations will indefinitely be solicitous about keeping violence on one side of an international boundary, as the alleged plot to blow up Falcon Dam suggests.
In May, the Department of Homeland Security warned law enforcement officials in Texas of the potential illegal entry from Mexico of a suspected member of the al-Shabaab terrorist group, an al-Qaida affiliate in Somalia.
Why would terrorists from Somalia or anywhere else choose to clandestinely enter the United States from Mexico? Because if millions of Mexican laborers can do it, so can they.
That’s the troubling fact at the heart of what the U.S. government calls “special interest aliens” — illegal immigrants from countries that pose a national security threat. Hundreds of them are apprehended in the United States each year. No one knows how many are being missed.
A recent report from the U.S. Southern Command obtained by the Washington Examiner raises a warning flag.
“Of particular concern is the smuggling of criminal aliens and gang members who pose public safety threats to communities throughout the border region and the country,” it cautions. “These individuals include hundreds of undocumented aliens from special interest countries, primarily China, but also Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan.”
People who wish to do harm to the United States can and are entering the country undetected. That ought to be the starting point of any national discussion about the border.
4 July, 2010
Obama Fails to Square the Illegal-Immigration CircleBy Victor Davis Hanson
There was very little new in the president’s speech — certainly not his tired hope-and-change trope of blending legal and illegal immigration (“The scientific breakthroughs of Albert Einstein, the inventions of Nikola Tesla, the great ventures of Andrew Carnegie’s U.S. Steel and Sergey Brin’s Google — all this was possible because of immigrants”). There is broad public support for the former but not the latter — so he had to imply that those who oppose massive illegal immigration are unappreciative of the great contribution of legal immigrants. (And note his use of euphemism in “11 million undocumented immigrants”— as if immigrants simply forgot their documents upon entry.)
Confusion was thematic, and evident in, e.g., the idea that “being an American is not a matter of blood or birth. It’s a matter of faith. It’s a matter of fidelity to the shared values that we all hold so dear.” If so, anyone in the world with the requisite beliefs and virtues would be an American. Actually being one of course requires either birth in the United States or lawful naturalization.
It is disturbing to hear a president confess that he cannot enforce the law or secure the border. (“But our borders are just too vast for us to be able to solve the problem only with fences and border patrols. It won’t work. Our borders will not be secure as long as our limited resources are devoted to not only stopping gangs and potential terrorists, but also the hundreds of thousands who attempt to cross each year simply to find work.”) I hope the Taliban are not listening to that admission.
For most of our history, illegal immigration was not a problem of the present magnitude, and the country had confidence that it could enforce its borders when it wished to. What has changed is not the terrain, or the reality that many wish to enter illegally, but our attitudes about such fundamental issues as the rule of law, national sovereignty, and assimilation. Indeed, the president ordered a halt to the building of the border fence, suggesting an absence of will rather than a hopeless task.
I agree with the president that employers bear a great deal of the responsibility for illegal immigration. But one cannot admire the plucky illegal alien for wanting to work and at the same time demonize the employer who fulfills his dream (“Businesses must be held accountable if they break the law by deliberately hiring and exploiting undocumented workers”). Parse the logic: If it is understandable that well-intended persons break the law to find work, then it must be equally understandable that other well-intended persons wish to help them do it. In truth, employer and employee alike put their economic interests above adherence to the law. They alike worry less about the social costs of illegal immigration than about their own welfare. That one is a wealthier American and the other a poorer Latin American alien does not change this.
The president likes the passive voice and the use of abstraction, which suggest that illegal aliens are guided not by their own choices but by impersonal forces: “Crimes go unreported as victims and witnesses fear coming forward. And this makes it harder for the police to catch violent criminals and keep neighborhoods safe. And billions in tax revenue are lost each year because many undocumented workers are paid under the table.” Note the absence of any reference to thousands of illegal aliens who commit crimes or the mounting cost of incarcerating them, which in California, for example, is nearing $1 billion a year.
Of course, tens of billions are also lost in the remittances that illegal aliens send south of the border. This lost income not only hurts our economy, but induces the states and the federal government to make up for the remitted cash by providing its senders with entitlements to housing, nutrition, education, and legal advocacy.
There was not a word about the responsibility of the Mexican government, or the need for market reforms to open Mexico’s economy to create jobs and capital. In a long speech about a problem that increasingly involves Mexico and Mexican nationals, Obama mentioned Mexico just once, and only in conjunction with the story of a former Mexican national who became a citizen. Yet Mexican president Felipe Calderón, speaking from the White House lawn, has recently blasted one of our states as acting in prejudicial fashion. (No wonder he opposes a policy that would curtail the remittances that subsidize his government’s social-welfare responsibilities.)
The subtext of the speech was politics of the very sort the text often deplored. Obama has to square a circle: He and his base, as we saw in the campaign of 2008, want veritable open borders that will result in more Democratic constituents, who in turn will change the politics of the Southwest; more recipients of federal largess; and more government workers to dispense it. This is in line with a postmodern sense that sovereignty is passé and commitment to principle is as mundane as obedience to the law. On the other hand, a vast majority of the American people, of all races, oppose illegal immigration for reasons that have nothing to do with race or class, and simply want the borders enforced.
So, presto: You confuse illegal and legal immigration, deplore politicking, blame the opportunistic employer more than the opportunistic illegal-alien employee, and pretend to lecture all sides while in fact demanding amnesty (something doable) as a condition of closing the border (something impossible). That’s pretty much where we are, and it will not work.
Assimilation and the Founding FathersBy Michelle Malkin
In his immigration speech on Thursday, President Obama heralded America as a “nation of immigrants” defined not by blood or birth, but by “fidelity to the shared values that we all hold so dear.” If only it were so. Left-wing academics and activists spurned assimilation as a common goal long ago. Their fidelity lies with bilingualism (a euphemism for native language maintenance over English-first instruction), identity politics, ethnic militancy and a borderless continent.
Obama blames “politics” for the intractable immigration debate. Whose politics? The amnesty mob has taken to ambushing congressional offices this week to scream at lawmakers to choose “reform” (giving a blanket path to citizenship to millions of illegal aliens) or “racism” (their description of any and every legislative measure to stiffen sanctions for and deter the acts of border-jumping, visa-overstaying and deportation-evading).
Is there no middle ground for all sides to agree that clearing naturalization application backlogs should take priority over expanding illegal alien benefits, or that tracking and deporting violent illegal alien criminals should take precedence over handing out driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, or that streamlining the employee citizenship verification process for businesses (E-verify) and fixing outdated visa tracking databases should come before indiscriminately expanding temporary visa and guest worker programs?
Must every response to even the most modest of immigration enforcement measures be “RAAAAACIST”?
Further, as I’ve noted many times over the years when debating both Democrats and Republicans who fall back on empty phrases to justify putting the amnesty cart before the enforcement horse, we are not a “nation of immigrants.” This is both a factual error and a warm-and-fuzzy non sequitur. Eighty-five percent of the residents currently in the United States were born here. Yes, we are almost all descendants of immigrants. But we are not a “nation of immigrants.” (And the politically correct president certainly wouldn’t argue that Native American Indians, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians and descendants of black slaves “immigrated” here in any common sense of the word, would he?)
_Even if we were a “nation of immigrants,” it does not explain why we should be against sensible immigration control. The Founding Fathers were emphatically insistent on protecting the country against indiscriminate mass immigration. They insisted on assimilation as a pre-condition, not an afterthought. Historian John Fonte assembled their wisdom, and it bears repeating this Independence Day weekend:
George Washington, in a letter to John Adams, stated that immigrants should be absorbed into American life so that “by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people.”
In a 1790 speech to Congress on the naturalization of immigrants, James Madison stated that America should welcome the immigrant who could assimilate, but exclude the immigrant who could not readily “incorporate himself into our society.”
Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1802: “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.”
Hamilton further warned that “The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others, it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils.
It has been often likely to compromise the interests of our own country in favor of another. The permanent effect of such a policy will be, that in times of great public danger there will be always a numerous body of men, of whom there may be just grounds of distrust; the suspicion alone will weaken the strength of the nation, but their force may be actually employed in assisting an invader.”
The survival of the American republic, Hamilton maintained, depends upon “the preservation of a national spirit and a national character.” “To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens the moment they put foot in our country would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.”
As pro-amnesty extremists moan that “we didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us” and illegal alien marchers haul foreign flags above Old Glory, President Obama pretends that the “common national sentiment” our Founding Fathers embraced still binds us all together. Many of us still have faith in a strong, sovereign America — the unhyphenated, the law-abiding, the gratitude-filled sons and daughters and grandchildren of legal immigrants for whom such distinctions still matter. But it’s no thanks to the assimilation saboteurs who put “one world” over “one nation under God.”
3 July, 2010
Training video for Arizona law takes heatOfficers warned that attempts will be made to entrap them
In a training video released to Arizona law enforcement officers Thursday, state officials repeatedly discourage racial profiling when enforcing the state’s new immigration law — but some Hispanic civil rights groups say some of the instructions constitute a recipe for racial profiling.
In the video, factors such as “dress,” “traveling in tandem” and “significant difficulty communicating in English” are given as clues that a person may be an illegal immigrant.
“This list has obviously been drawn to legitimize racial profiling,” said Foster Maer, senior litigator for LatinoJustice. “I don’t believe the police will approach white people and ask them for their papers because of the way they’re dressed.”
The legislation, signed into law April 23 by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, requires police to determine a person’s immigration status if they are stopped, detained or arrested and there is “reasonable suspicion” they are in the country illegally.
The training video was created by the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board and will be made available — not required — to all 15,000 law enforcement officers in the state.
Levi Bolton of the Arizona Police Association, who helped produce the training, said they listened to critics of the law, as well as federal immigration officials to put together the list. He said each is simply one factor that can contribute to the overall determination of a person’s legal status. “I’m wondering if people have stopped listening and emotion is carrying the furor,” Bolton said.
More than 10 minutes of the video warns officers that racial profiling will not be tolerated. Officials in the video warn officers they’ll be watched closely when they begin enforcing the immigration law July 29.
Lyle Mann, executive director of the training board, warns officers that opponents of the bill will set up “field tests” to trap officers abusing the law. “You should expect to be videotaped and audiotaped. You should expect your reports to be examined in a way they haven’t been examined before,” attorney Beverly Ginn says in the video.
Brave young Palestinian who helped Israel wins asylum after Obama admin. drops objectionsWhy the matter went so far in the courts is the mystery. Hatred of Israel? It should have been an open-and-shut case
Until Wednesday, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security had tried to deport a former Hamas member who it claimed had been involved in terrorism and was a threat to the United States. But, as the late radio newscaster Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story.
The ex-Hamas terrorist is Mosab Hasan Yousef who has been the subject of postings on FrumForum by me and others. Four months ago he published a memoir describing a decade in which he was of the best assets of the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency. During his fifteen minute immigration hearing in San Diego, a Homeland Security lawyer declared that the department was dropping its objection to Yousef remaining in the United States, and immigration judge Rico Bartolomei, granted him political asylum. The government attorney, Kerri Calcador offered no explanation for Homeland Security’s change of heart.
Even though Yousef has been vindicated one must wonder why the U.S. government put him through a frightful ordeal in the first place. Yousef, quite realistically, anticipated that if he were sent back to the West Bank, as Homeland Security wants, he would have certainly been killed. On his blog last month he wrote, “Exposing terrorist secrets and warning the world cost me everything. I am a traitor to my people, disowned by family, a man without a country. And now the country that I have come to for sanctuary is turning its back.” His father, who is a senior leader in Hamas and now serving a six-year sentence in an Israeli prison, has disowned him.
On his blog, Yousef admitted, “Yes, while working for Israeli intelligence, I posed as a terrorist. Yes, I carried a gun. Yes, I was in terrorist meetings with Yasser Arafat, my father and other terrorist leaders. It was part of my job.” Yousef says that he would give reports about these meetings to Shin Bet. To prove that Yousef posted a terrorist threat to the United States, Homeland Security cited a passage in his own book in which he identifies three suspects in a suicide bombing to a Shin Bet official. Yousef though also drove the suspects to a safe house. Yousef says that his work for Israel required that he do anything that he could to learn about Hamas, and that neither he nor Shin Bet knew that his passengers were suspects in a suicide bombing when he gave them a ride. In an editorial early in June, the Wall Street Journal suggested that the U.S. government never took its own charges against Yousef very seriously. “If Mr. Yousef were a security threat, you’d expect that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency would have found reason to detain him. Yet he remains free to travel and even to book-selling circuit.”
Recently, a New York Times story by reporter Julia Preston discussed the increased difficulty of obtaining political asylum in the U.S.. Immigration judges have, according to Preston, “created several legal hurdles for asylum seekers fleeing [Central American] gangs, requiring them to prove that they are part of a ‘particular social group’ that is widely recognized in their home society as being under attack, something like a persecuted ethnic minority.”
Deborah Anker a law professor and the head of the Immigration and the Clinical Program at Harvard says, “Requirements have been imposed that make no sense in terms of prior jurisprudence and are impossible to interpret.” Respected federal judge Richard Posner has branded the new standards as “illogical” and “perverse”.
Preston’s story suggests that these new legal standards could have deadly consequences for young men in Central America who escaped to the United States in order to avoid recruitment by criminal gangs. “I’ve done about a hundred cases of Salvadorian males who have refused to join gangs,” says Missouri immigration lawyer Roy Petty. “I have to tell them that they are probably going to lose. The immigration system did not believe that these people are really in danger.” Once they are returned to their country, they run a high risk of being killed by the criminal gangs that they tried to escape. Preston writes, “While the civil wars of Central America subsided by the 1990s, the number of people seeking refuge from criminal gangs there has soared in the last decade as the maras, as they are known in Spanish, have extended their violent networks across the region. In many cities the gangs have become more powerful than the police.”
Still, Yousef’s case is qualitatively different from those escaping gangs in Central America. Members of Congress and other prominent individuals have attested to how his underground work prevented terrorist attacks in Israel and in other countries. Former CIA Director James Woolsey called him “a remarkable young man” who should be commended for “his extraordinary heroism and courage”. Woolsey also said that Yousef’s deportation would “set us back years in the war on terror”.
But probably the most extraordinary testimony for his courage comes from Gonen ben Itzhak who was his Shin Bet handler. Itzhak, now retired, publicly revealed that he was an Israeli intelligence agent only to declare his support for Yousef as the date of his immigration hearing approached. He told Fox News that Yousef saved “Americans, Jews, Palestinians and other human beings.”
Yousef says that he has gained expertise that enables him to help the United States fight Islamic terrorism. Ben Itzhak heartily agrees. The Fort Hood shooter and the individuals who wanted to set off bombs on an airliner on Christmas day and in Times Square can slip through security while Yousef who has and is willing to help the West fight terrorism is threatened with deportation leading to his probable death. That alone shows that there are serious flaws in the way that the United States fights terrorism.
2 July, 2010
South Carolina’s businesses must comply with anti-illegal immigration law; audits to increaseA last major piece of the state of South Carolina’s anti-illegal immigration law took effect Thursday as all small businesses became subject to fines and potential shutdowns for employing illegal workers.
All businesses in the state must now check their new hires’ legal status and fire any existing workers known to be in the country illegally. The law is one of the toughest in the United States and had been applied for a year to companies with more than 100 workers.
“Every employee on the payroll, regardless of their date hired, has to be legal,” said Jim Knight, office administrator and spokesman for the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. He said investigators will randomly check all companies, though auditors will focus on businesses that traditionally employ illegal workers such as landscaping and construction firms, hotels, restaurants and chicken processors.
The state Office of Immigrant Worker Compliance has more than doubled its number of investigators, to 23, as 110,000 additional businesses fall under the law.
The law takes full effect amid persisting controversy over an Arizona law that requires officers enforcing another law to question a person’s immigration status if there’s a reasonable suspicion the person is in the country illegally. South Carolina Republicans are vowing to seek a similar law next year.
The move by South Carolina lawmakers to expand the budget for the state office from $750,000 to $2 million this coming year comes even amid fiscal crisis and the layoffs of hundreds of state workers and the gutting of whole agencies. But supporters said it was crucial to crack down on illegal workers.
State Sen. Larry Martin said small business owners have long complained that they had to hire illegals to compete, or risk losing work to competitors who did so and underbid them. “No longer will they have the excuse they’ve got to do it because their competitor does it,” Martin said. Also, “there’s a degree of exploitation of illegal immigrants by unscrupulous employers. This will bring it to light.”
But employers in targeted industries say the focus on them is unfair. They’re concerned the law could drive away legal immigrants in this tourism-driven state, making it more difficult to hire people in jobs with already high turnover rates.
Legal workers could leave because they feel they’re being unjustly targeted or they fear for a family member who’s not legal, said Tom Sponseller, president of the Hospitality Association of South Carolina. “In our case, these are jobs a lot of people don’t want because it’s hot, hard work,” said Donna Shealy Foster, executive director of the South Carolina Nursery and Landscape Association.
Noting greenhouse and nursery work is South Carolina’s second-largest cash crop, she said, “When you don’t have a work force, it’s hard to put out a product.”
The law requires employers to check workers’ legality through a federal database or by hiring only workers who hold a driver’s license from South Carolina or other approved state. Otherwise they could face fines of up to $1,000 per worker, and a business repeatedly found to knowingly employ an illegal worker could be closed for months.
In the past year, 10 auditors checked 1,850 businesses and found 175 had broken the law. Most violations involved failing to verify workers within five days of hiring them. Auditors found illegal workers in 10 cases, Knight said.
The only company fined in the past year was a landscaping business with the most number of illegal workers — 11. The company paid a $11,500 fine and had to shut down for 10 days after it was cited twice, Knight said. Under the law, fines are waived for first-time violators who correct the problem within three days.
ACLU Issues Travel Warnings to ArizonaACLU on the side of lawbreaking? It fits.
The nation’s top civil liberties group on Wednesday issued travel alerts for Arizona, saying the state’s new law cracking down on illegal immigrants could lead to racial profiling and warrantless arrests.
American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Arizona, New Mexico and 26 other states put out the warnings in advance of the Fourth of July weekend. The Arizona chapter has received reports that law enforcement officers are already targeting some people even though the law doesn’t take effect until July 29, its executive director said.
Sgt. Kevin Wood, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, said Wednesday that its officers were not racially profiling people they come in contact with.
The alerts are designed to teach people about their rights if police stop and question them.
The Arizona law requires police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person’s immigration status if officers have a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally. It also makes it a state crime for legal immigrants to not carry their immigration
documents and bans day laborers and people who seek their services from blocking traffic on streets.Attorneys defending the law against constitutional challenges filed by the ACLU and others argue that the Legislature amended it to strengthen restrictions against using race as the basis for questioning by police. Five lawsuits are pending in federal court, and the U.S. Justice Department is believed to be preparing a legal challenge.
Despite the legislative action, the ACLU still believes that officers will inappropriately target minorities. “We have a long history of racial profiling in this state, and this is basically going to really exacerbate that problem,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona.
The ACLU’s warnings were accompanied by a “bust card” that citizens or non-citizens can print out or download to their mobile phone instructing them about their rights during encounters with police. “There is a tremendous amount of misinformation out there about the law,” Soler Meetze said. “It’s a very complicated piece of legislation that gives police unprecedented powers to stop and question people about their identity and their citizenship. I think it is important for people to have this information easily accessible.”
Arizona’s police training board is developing a video training program expected to be revealed Thursday for the state’s 15,000 law officers. An outline of the training program said it will teach officers that race and ethnicity cannot be used as targets when enforcing the new illegal immigration law.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law in late April, setting off a firestorm of protests from immigrant rights supporters and an equally vociferous response from supporters of the state’s efforts to tackle its illegal immigration problem.
Brewer’s spokesman said in a statement that the ACLU’s actions proved how “hopelessly out of touch they are with the vast majority of Arizonans, as well as most Americans.”
“The legislation includes very specific language that makes it abundantly clear that racial profiling is and will continue to be illegal in Arizona,” wrote spokesman Paul Senseman. “Instead of spreading fear, hate, and disinformation about the legislation, it would be helpful for the ACLU to instead join Governor Brewer’s demand that the federal government stop discussing and begin implementing an honest plan to secure our nation’s border.”
1 July, 2010
Migrants to Britain must get private healthcare: Firms told to provide foreign workers with insurance to take pressure off NHSA good idea
Immigrant workers will be forced to have private healthcare, it has emerged. The surprise measure is designed to prevent them placing further strain on the National Health Service. It was included in the announcement that – for the first time – there will be a cap on the number of non-EU workers allowed into the UK.
Firms employing a migrant worker from outside the EU will have to pay for health cover for the duration of their contract – at a cost of hundreds of pounds. It means that migrants will not be competing with local people for NHS appointments and surgery.
Ministers are concerned that immigration is placing enormous strain on the Health Service, as well as on schools and housing. Last year, for example, research published by the think tank Migrationwatch showed that in 2007-8 alone, more than 600,000 migrants registered with a GP.
Under the new proposals, non-EU migrants would still receive accident and emergency treatment on the NHS but would have to pay through private insurance for other services, including GP visits and most operations.
Those who already have work permits will be exempt, but when the permit runs out and they have to re-apply, they will be expected to take out medical cover.
However, the system cannot be imposed on either asylum seekers, or on migrants from within the EU because of existing reciprocal arrangements between member countries.
Home Secretary Theresa May said the ‘social’ consequences of migration would be considered when the level of the cap on numbers is decided. She added: ‘We all recognise some of the social issues about pressure on public services, pressure on schools and hospitals and also pressure on housing.’
The figure will be decided later this year, with the help of the Migration Advisory Committee. In the meantime, an interim cap is being imposed to prevent a rush of visa applications by those trying to beat the crack down. The total number of permits issued will be five per cent lower than last year, which means 1,300 fewer arrivals.
The interim cap does not include the transfer of workers into the UK by multinational companies – a tactic which allowed 30,000 to relocate here last year. This has prompted speculation the cap policy has been watered down in the face of a Cabinet revolt led by Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable. However, the Home Office insists the decision relates to the interim cap only, and intra-company transfers could yet be included.
Entrepreneurs are exempt from the cap but may be obliged in future to show their business ideas would create more than the presently required two jobs in the UK.
Care home bosses warned that the measures could harm their ability to recruit staff with the right skills.
But Immigration minister Damian Green said: ‘We not only have a large number of unemployed British people who we need to train up much better than we have done in the past ten years, but also there is now a home labour market of the entire European Union – that is the best part of 500 million people.’
He added: ‘You hear a lot, inevitably, from interest groups at times like this but the biggest interest group in this is the British people as a whole. ‘It was one of the things where you got a pretty clear message from the election campaign that they did think that immigration was too high.’
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to President Barack Obama on illegal immigration: ‘Do your job!’
Governor Jan Brewer is taking the immigration fight straight to President Obama. Upset with the federal government’s inaction on combating illegal immigration, the Arizona governor has made a campaign ad that addresses the President directly. “Washington is broken Mr. President,” the governor says. “Do your job. Secure our borders.”
In the ad, Brewer poses next to newly erected signs near the Arizona border which read “Danger – Public Warning, Travel Not Recommended.”
The governor claims that the federal government created the signs as a response to her meeting with President Obama. “Two weeks ago I met with President Obama. He promised that we would get word from his administration,” Brewer says. “Well, we finally got the message: these signs.”
However, the Bureau of Land Management said that the signs were erected at the suggestion of local rangers who were concerned about the increase in drug violence, according to KPHO.
In addition, the White House has detailed a plan to send 1,200 National Guard troops to the US Mexico border, with 524 going directly to Arizona. Brewer has requested 6,000 National Guard troops stationed along the border.
The governor, who recently passed a controversial anti-immigration bill, is up for reelection in the fall.
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.
