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31 July, 2012

UK Border Agency sending home illegal immigrants on virtually empty chartered jets

The UK Border Agency has been hit by new controversy after it emerged it was spending millions of pounds deporting failed asylum seekers on near empty chartered flights.

UKBA has spent £133million in the last five years, or an average of £5,000, sending each person back to their home country, according to information released under a Freedom of Information request.

But the figures released to the Sunday Express show that many of the planes are leaving more than half empty due to last-minute appeals by those trying to stay in UK.

And some flights are left deliberately unfilled because the UK has arrangements with host countries not to send too many people back in one go, it is claimed.

Under strict regulations those facing deportation must be given 72 hours notice - enough time to launch a legal challenge and delay their expulsion.

On some flights, staff on the plane outnumbered those being deported by more than three to one.

During the last 12 months the agency has spent £9million chartering 37 flights, equating to £250,000 per plane.

In November, last year, a flight destined for Ghana had 233 seats, but returned only 23 people and had 58 staff aboard.

In December, last year, another plane heading to Afghanistan returned only 59 people but required 115 staff aboard who occupied most of the 224 available seats.

The TaxPayers' Alliance said: ‘These flights come at a huge cost to British taxpayers so they have to be planned far more carefully.

'Last minute appeals will happen but the bill for hard-pressed families is enormous and the more money saved the better. 'Any international agreements that throw up more red tape just cost taxpayers more of their hard-earned cash and have to be reviewed.’

The cost of air deportations has increased by more than 40 per cent over the years.

A spokesman for the UK Border Agency said: ‘It is right those with no right to be here should go home and these flights still represent a cost effective way of removing in volume.

‘The increased expenditure on charter flights reflects the general rise in the cost of air travel and the fact that our charters operate almost exclusively to long-haul destinations.’

Earlier this month it was revealed border chiefs are struggling with an enormous backlog of 276,000 immigration cases.

The growing total includes asylum seekers, foreign criminals and illegal migrants and is equivalent to the population of Newcastle.

MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Committee said the UK had become a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ for migrants, a country where it is ‘easy to get in, but impossible to keep track of anyone, let alone get them out’.

Some 21,000 new asylum cases have built up because officials were able to process only 63 per cent of last year’s applications.

In addition, there are 150,000 legal immigrants who came as students and workers but whose visas have since expired. This figure is rising by 100 every day.  The UK Border Agency does not know if these immigrants are still here, despite the fact they have no right to stay.

Forty per cent of this group had never been sent a letter telling them to leave the country, as all those with expired visas should.

Tens of thousands of these lapsed visa cases date back more than five years and are a legacy of Labour’s catastrophic mismanagement of Britain’s immigration system.

There are also 3,900 foreign criminals living in the community and free to commit more crimes, including more than 800 who have been at large for five years or more.

On top of this, another 101,000 asylum and immigration cases remain from the backlog of more than 450,000 found lying around in officials’ cupboards and drawers six years ago.

SOURCE






Australia's Leftist government has put up a huge magnet to attract illegal immigrants

The truth is stranger than fiction:  $10,000 packages given to some illegal arrivals plus no wait for welfare payments  -- plus free mobile phones and free healthcare

It is a lie that will not die. It has been sent to tens of thousands of Australians in an email that has been circulating for years. The latest variation compares the amount paid to Australian aged pensioners with the benefits available to refugees. It claims the weekly allowance for pensioners is $253 while the weekly allowance for refugees is $472.50, plus a weekly hardship payment of $145, meaning refugees are eligible for more than twice as much government support as pensioners. It's a concoction. The problem for the federal government is that the truth is in some ways worse than the lie.

As long ago as 2009 the Department of Immigration felt compelled to issue this press release: "Figures quoted in these emails bear no resemblance to income-support payments to asylum seekers and refugees settling in Australia … Asylum seekers in Australia who have not yet had their protection claims decided have no access to Centrelink benefits.

"Irregular maritime arrivals are subject to thorough security and identity checks and must satisfy the character test before a decision is made about protection … In Australia, refugees granted permanent visas have access to benefits on the same basis and at the same rates as other Australian permanent residents."

Things have loosened up since then. Some asylum seekers now do qualify for welfare before their claims have been decided. The system of "thorough security and identity checks" has been compromised. This has damaged the federal Labor government, damaged the reputation of the Prime Minister, and damaged the traditional links between blue collar workers and the Labor Party. It has inflicted as much political damage on Labor as the carbon tax about-face.

In trying to understand the persistently dreadful opinion polls for the Gillard government, I keep coming back to this issue, a policy debacle for which Kevin Rudd, not Julia Gillard, bears primary responsibility, though on her watch it has gone from embarrassing to potentially terminal.

What follows are half a dozen elements that are already of concern to the Australian Federal Police, but about which the AFP must remain mute:

  The police have not seen as large a gap in quality control in the flow of unskilled and welfare-dependent arrivals since the refugee flow from Lebanon in the 1970s.

About 90 per cent of those who arrive via illegal boat entries have been granted permanent residence, yet the overwhelming majority have entered Malaysia or Indonesia by legal means, then destroyed their identity papers with the intent of making it difficult for Australia to check their bona fides.

The amount of workplace participation among refugees and asylum-seekers remains low for some time. After four years, only about 25 per cent are engaged in full-time work. (The issue is examined in a Department of Immigration report, Settlement Outcomes for New Arrivals, published in April last year.)

Under intense political pressure, the federal government is emptying the detention centres by issuing bridging visas which allow detainees to enter the community, work, and receive welfare benefits before their final status has been determined. This has slashed the average time spent in detention from nine months to three months but the quicker turnover has compressed the scrutiny process.

Some of the high take-up of welfare payments among asylum seekers and refugees is being recycled into bringing relatives to Australia, including via people smugglers.

The Royal Australian Navy is being used as a pick-up service by people smugglers who call navy vessels to advise them of their need for assistance.

Little wonder that numbers are exploding. In the three years before the election of the Rudd government, 71 people arrived on 10 illegal boats. It took a year for the impact of Labor's dismantling of the previous border security regime to kick in. Over the past three years 341 illegal boats have brought 20,248 asylum-seekers. Another 363 have drowned. Uncounted others have perished or turned back.

All these problems are personified by "Captain Emad", who fled Australia in June even though he had been under investigation by police. The man, Abu Khalid, was a people smuggler who came to Australia by passing himself off as an asylum seeker. He brought his wife, three children and a grandchild. All received refugee status, settled in Canberra and were provided with public housing despite using different identities to those they used to enter Indonesia from Iraq. Yet even after Khalid's activities were exposed by the ABC's Four Corners program, he was allowed to leave.

Systemic deceit has been rewarded by systemic support. Even some asylum seekers who have avoided immigration control, destroyed their identity documents and not yet had their claims decided are eligible for support under the Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme.

Among the benefits that can be made available to those granted protection visas, and those granted refugee status, is a one-off household formation package of up to $9850. Families can be eligible for education assistance of up to $9220. People granted refugee status become eligible for welfare payments immediately without having to wait the two-year period set for immigrants. Single applicants are eligible for a Newstart Allowance. Parents are eligible for Centrelink's parenting payment. Refugees, and some on bridging visas, also receive Medicare assistance for medical, hospital, dental, medicine and optical costs. Mobile phones are provided to those who arrive as unaccompanied minors.

This is the honeypot that has combined with civil strife to cause entire villages to empty in Sri Lanka and thousands of young men to travel from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan to get on illegal boats to Australia.

The viral email about Australia's generosity to refugees may be wrong in its details, but the truth is a story of government gullibility without end.

SOURCE



30 July, 2012


Romney to Push Complete Immigration Reform

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor said if Mitt Romney were elected president, it would be very possible to have immigration reform. In an interview, Giuliani said if Romney were to be elected with a Congress that is ruled by the Republicans, then complete immigration reform would be passed.

The former New York mayor from 1994 to 2001 made the remarks in a Florida interview. He is currently in Florida campaign for the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.

Giuliani said that Romney would be humane and sensible with undocumented immigrants who are currently living in the country, who have complied with U.S. laws and are currently working. He compared it to the compassionate conservatism George W. Bush, the former U.S. President. Giuliani said the way to move forward with immigration reform was by stopping all illegal immigration and a solution that is sensible that a good president like Romney would be able to do.

However, during the Republican primaries, Romney had an iron-fisted approach towards immigration. He rejected any method of giving the illegal immigrants a path to become residents or citizens. He thought illegal immigrants should self-deport themselves, in other words, return to their homeland on their own.

He has shifted his stance to a softer position since he effectively secured the nomination from the GOP.

Hispanics are actively being courted by both Romney and Obama. The Hispanic vote looks to be crucial in at least four key battleground states including Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Colorado.

Over 12.2 million Hispanics are expected to vote in November and to win the candidate will need to win a minimum of 40% of their vote.

SOURCE




Spain cracks down on "poor" immigrants

Ministers were last night under pressure to tighten border controls for EU citizens after Spain demanded ‘proof of income’ from expats  hoping to live in the country.

The move – taken in response to the country’s economic crisis – was said by one Tory MP to have ‘driven a coach and horses’ through the EU’s cherished principle of the free movement of peoples, and immediately triggered calls for David Cameron to adopt tougher measures.

Madrid hopes to save more than €1 billion euros (£780 million) a year by clamping down on ‘economic migrants’ from other EU countries, including the UK.

A new ministerial order, slipped out by the Spanish government on July 9, states that any EU citizen living in Spain for more than three months must prove they will not become a financial burden on the State by producing a job contract or documents confirming they have enough money to support themselves.

If they are jobless, they must also show they are covered by health insurance. The decree, which potentially affects thousands of Britons seeking a new life in the country, declares that Spain will now adopt  a stricter interpretation of the ‘free movement’ principle.

The Spanish government has justified the measures by pointing to Article 7 of the 2004 EU directive on free movement, which gives EU member states the power to define it ‘without prejudice to national border controls’ – in other words, entry conditions can be imposed on other EU citizens by member governments.

The UK has also enacted the provision – and the Home Office insists that it does demand that EU citizens should not be ‘an unreasonable  burden on public funds’ before allowing them to stay in the UK.

However, Phil Woolas, who served as Immigration Minister between 2008 and 2010, told The Mail on  Sunday last night that the powers were almost never used.  He said: ‘We do have the powers  to deport EU citizens – but they are ignored by the British authorities. We should heed the Spanish example and change our approach.

It is only fair that we enforce the laws available to us and stop turning a blind eye to abuses by EU citizens.’

Mr Woolas revealed that when he was a Minister he tried to deport a group of Polish rough-sleepers who had set up camp  in Peterborough town centre – but was repeatedly told by officials that he had no powers to do so.

‘The idea that we check bank statements to ensure these people are not a burden is just nonsense,’ he said. ‘Freedom of movement is still the prevailing doctrine.’

The Spanish government admits in a preamble to the legislation that it has failed in the past to regulate immigration from within the EU.

This, it says, ‘has implied  a serious economic loss to Spain, especially because of the impossibility of guaranteeing the refund of expenditure caused by the provision of health  and social services to European citizens’.

Since 2007, EU citizens living in Spain for more than three months have had to register with the authorities, but there have been no checks on their financial situation.

British diplomats in Madrid are trying to establish how the rule change will affect the 400,000 Britons who have homes in Spain.

One Foreign Office source said: ‘We don’t yet know how much money a British citizen would be expected to have in their bank in order to qualify. It is all a bit unclear. Frankly, we think the Spanish could have handled this a little better.’

Last night Tory MP Douglas Carswell said he had written to Immigration Minister Damian Green to ask if the UK Government had the power to impose similar measures. ‘Spain’s decision to insist on medical insurance is a key idea – and if  introduced by us could reduce the burden on our services,’ he said.

‘The fact that the Home Office says these powers are already available to us suggests our failure to enforce them should be taken as an indictment of the mandarin class.’

Another Tory MP, James Clappison, said: ‘This move drives a coach and horses through the freedom of movement principle and we should take inspiration from it.’

Spain is in the grip of its worst  economic crisis since the Forties and is almost certain to require a bailout in the coming weeks.  Official figures released on Friday show that unemployment has soared to a record 5.7 million – a staggering 24.6 per cent of the workforce.

The centre-right government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy has introduced the new controls in an attempt to cut expenditure on health and social services. Health minister Ana Mato said recently that 700,000 foreigners had moved to Spain just to obtain free health care.

The country has become a favourite destination for ‘health tourists’ from other EU countries, attracted by short waiting lists, cheap treatment and excellent hospitals.

Under EU law, citizens of member states are entitled to receive health care in any member country. But Spanish authorities say their finances are being drained by the arrangement, with local media claiming Britons are the worst offenders.

In contrast to the Spanish regulations, EU citizens coming to live in Britain do not need to register or take out health insurance. And the only requirement on those not in work is that they should not become an ‘unreasonable burden’ on public funds. A spokesman for the Spanish Embassy in London said: ‘You either must hold a job or have the means to support yourself to ensure that you do not become a burden on the Spanish state.

‘Those people who do not hold a job would have to show that they have contracted a medical insurance service to cover them during their stay in Spain, and also that they have the appropriate means to support themselves and any other member of their families. Pensioners do not need medical insurance.’

A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘This change simply brings Spain in line with many other EU countries. The British Embassy has issued guidance in English for British expatriates in Spain via its website. We understand the new rules will affect a relatively small number of expatriates.’

A UK Border Agency spokesman said: ‘EU nationals who want to stay in the UK for more than three months must have proof they are working, studying or are self-sufficient.  ‘Wherever we encounter someone breaking the rules, we will take steps to remove them.’

SOURCE<



29 July, 2012

Population boom caused by high birth rate and immigration will force British schools to create 1m more places by 2020

Nearly one million extra school places will be needed within eight years as rising birth rates and immigration push pupil numbers to a  50-year high.

The population boom has already pushed many primary schools to ‘breaking point’ and forced town halls to draw up emergency plans to teach children in disused shops and warehouses.

Now figures from the Department for Education have shown the number of pupils in state schools is expected to rise to 7,950,000 by the end of the decade – 935,000 more than now.

Primary and nursery schools will need an extra 736,000 places by 2020, with the remaining places required at secondary and special schools. Pupil numbers are forecast to reach levels last seen in the 1970s.

The figures also show 106,000 fewer places would be needed by 2020 if migration was reduced to zero.

The growing shortage of places is likely to lead to the opening of more ‘super’ primaries accommodating up to 1,000 children.

All areas will see an increase in demand for primary places but shortages are most acute in the South-East.

Councils in London are already in talks over using vacant buildings as makeshift schools as they battle to house hundreds of young children who still do not have a place for September.

Other measures being considered include teaching children in shifts, breaking class size limits and scrapping the ‘sibling rule’, which gives priority to children with brothers or sisters already at the school.

The figures last night sparked a political row as the Tories blamed Labour for the crisis.

Lord Hill, the Schools Minister, said the Coalition was spending more than £4billion on extra primary schools.  ‘The last Government knew there was an issue as early as 2004 but sadly did nothing,’ he said.  ‘Worse than that, they actually cut funding for new places while squandering millions on expensive secondary schools.’

But Stephen Twigg, shadow education secretary, said: ‘Labour have been warning the Government for months about the huge shortfall in places.

‘But instead of addressing this crisis head-on, the Government has slashed the capital budget by nearly two thirds and are creating free schools, many of which are in areas where there isn’t a demand for extra places or from parents.’

He said the figures showed a ‘crisis’ in primary places in England.  ‘Many schools are at breaking point with pupils potentially being taught in warehouses and empty shops,’ he said.

The shortage of places is driven by immigration and a rise in the birth rate which began in 2002 and is predicted to continue until 2014.

A fifth of primary schools are full, and although there are hundreds of thousands of unfilled places nationally, they are not in areas expected to face a squeeze.

The Mail revealed earlier this year how Labour ordered councils to axe spare places and close schools despite warnings of a looming shortage.

A Freedom of Information request showed that from May 2007, government projections showed a rapidly increasing primary school population in each year from 2009.  Despite this, Labour told councils to remove surplus primary places or risk losing capital funding.

SOURCE




 
Arizona deputy says he risked life for illegal immigrant

A deputy from a controversial Arizona sheriff's office countered accusations of racial profiling on Thursday, telling a court that he had risked his life to rescue a Latino illegal immigrant from armed kidnappers.

Carlos Rangel told a civil trial alleging Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that, at the behest of federal immigration police, he went undercover to play the role of the immigrant's relative to meet kidnappers, one of whom pointed a gun at him.

The kidnappers were arrested and the immigrant was released.

Asked by defense lawyer Tom Liddy, Rangel if he was an "anti-Hispanic bigot", Rangel answered: "No. I am not."

Arpaio, who styles himself "America's toughest sheriff," and his office are defendants in a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Phoenix that will test whether police can target illegal immigrants without racially profiling Hispanic citizens and legal residents.

The 80-year-old lawman testified this week he was against racial profiling and denied his office arrested people because of the color of their skin.

The sheriff, who is seeking re-election to a sixth term in November, has been a lightning rod for controversy over his aggressive enforcement of immigration laws in the state, which borders Mexico, as well as his investigation into the validity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Arizona was in the news last month when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a key element of the state's crackdown on illegal immigrants requiring police to investigate those they stop and suspect of being in the country illegally.

Arpaio faces a separate, broader lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department in May, alleging systematic profiling, sloppy and indifferent police work and a disregard for minority rights.

The civil lawsuit was lodged in the name of Manuel Ortega Melendres, one of five Hispanics who say they were stopped by deputies because they were Latino, which Arpaio denies. It was later opened to all Latino drivers stopped since 2007.

Melendres, a Mexican tourist on a valid visa in a truck was pulled over ostensibly because the white driver was speeding.

Rangel, who arrested Melendres, was asked by plaintiffs' counsel if he had questioned the driver. He told the court he had no grounds to investigate the driver.

When asked by Liddy if he had ever racially profiled anyone while working at the sheriff's office, Rangel, a 13-year veteran of the force, replied: "No".

In later testimony, a Hispanic woman who is a U.S. citizen told the court she was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy in 2009 on suspicion she had drugs, alcohol and weapons in her car as she drove home from studying at a Phoenix valley university.

Despite telling the deputy she was pregnant, Lorena Escamilla said, she was thrown roughly onto the back seat of his patrol car. A subsequent search of her car did not find any drugs. While she was cited for failure to produce identification and not having insurance, charges against her were dropped.

Escamilla said she later filed a charge of assault with Phoenix police department against the deputy and has since been fearful of being pulled over by the officer.

Also testifying was a Hispanic mother who was in a vehicle with a group of Boy Scouts that was pulled over in 2009 by a deputy for speeding while returning from the Grand Canyon.

Diona Solis, who is also a U.S. citizen, said the deputy was "rude" and "mocking" and unnecessarily requested identification from the boys in the car aged 8 to 11, among them her son.

"The boys were minors ... I thought it was unreasonable to ask them for IDs ... they hadn't done anything wrong," she said.

SOURCE



28 July, 2012

Sabbath



27 July, 2012

The new shape of immigration

There has been a veritable blizzard of major news stories lately. Between the continuing crisis of the European Union, the spate of major rulings from the Supreme Court, and the continuing presidential election campaign, we’re all a bit overwhelmed.

But a recent report from the Pew Research Center bears immigration news worth noting and commenting upon.

The report, aptly called “The Rise of Asian Americans,” is a hefty tome indeed, at 215 pages chock full of data. It reveals that for the first time in history, the plurality of all new American immigrants now hails from Asia — primarily China (23.2% of all Asian Americans), India (18.4%), Japan (7.5%), Korea (9.9%), the Philippines (19.7%), and Vietnam (10.0%).

As recently as 2007, the plurality of immigrants was Hispanic, primarily from Mexico. That year, 540,000 immigrants were Hispanic, compared to 390,000 Asians. But in 2010, Asians were 36% of new immigrants, while Hispanics dropped to 31%.

This culminates the decade-long, precipitous slide in Hispanic immigration, which was at 1.2 million in 2000, fell to about half that in 2002, went up to about 800,000 in 2005, and has dropped steadily since, to less than 400,000 in 2010.

By contrast, the number of Asian Americans quadrupled between 1980 and 2010, and now stands at 18.2 million, counting native- and foreign-born, adults and children. (The Pew Center’s count is slightly higher than the Census Bureau’s, with the difference being that Pew counts people with only one Asian parent as Asian. That is nearly 6% of the population, quite a rise from the 1% it was back in 1965. (By comparison, non-Hispanic whites are 63.3%, Hispanics are 16.7% and blacks 12.3%). The report projects that by mid-century, the number of Asian Americans will hit 41 million.

Of course, this is just a projection by the Pew Center, which is certainly reputable, but obviously fallible. Still, these figures are suggestive.

The reasons for this shift are varied. There are relevant demographic shifts abroad, such as the drop in the birth rate in Mexico, which as recently as the 1960s was one of the highest on the planet, with the average woman having nearly seven children — higher even than Indian and Chinese women — but now is roughly the same as the US rate (a little over two children per average woman).

But the report mentions what is clearly the major factor: our nation’s continuing shift from a manufacturing to an epistemic or knowledge-based economy. Blue-collar jobs, especially the low-skilled ones, simply have been increasingly less in demand over the past quarter-century. And a prolonged recession and slow recovery such as the one we are enduring only increases the gap in employment levels between blue- and white-collar workers.

So the disappearance of a lot of blue-collar jobs, especially in construction, has meant that more opportunities have opened for Asian immigrants, who tend to have higher educational attainment than recent Hispanic immigrants.

Add to this another factor: we have tightened the southern border, which means that Asians, who tend to get more student and high-tech (H1-B) work visas, are now in a better position to come here.

A major factor in their success is the fact that Asian Americans have a lower rate of single-parent households than does the population as a whole (20% versus 37%). They are more likely to be married than is average for Americans (59% versus 51%), and have fewer births to single mothers (16% versus 41%).

However, of paramount importance is the level of higher education. Nearly half (49%) of all Asian American workers have a bachelor’s degree, which is more than half again as many as the average — 28% — for all American workers. For non-Hispanic whites, it is 31%, for blacks 18%, and for Hispanics 13%.

Asian students — both American-born and foreign — tend disproportionately to choose more technical college majors, which is no doubt another factor in their success. In 2010, they received 45% of all engineering doctorates awarded at American universities, 38% of all computer and math doctorates, 33% of all physical sciences doctorates, 25% of all life sciences doctorates, and 19% of all social science doctorates.

Since Asians are culturally very inclined to pursue higher education, and since the US has an extensive but still relatively inexpensive source of higher education, and again since our economy is increasingly knowledge-based, it is no surprise that as a group Asian-Americans are moving sharply upward economically.

That rise has been as dramatic as it has been rapid. Asian Americans now have the highest median household income of any broad American ethnic group — European Americans included. Asian-American households average $66,000 a year, nearly a third higher than the median of all American households (which is $49,800). Whites average $54,000, Hispanics $40,000, and blacks $33,300.

Among Asian Americans, median annual family income varies. Indians average $88,000, Filipinos $75,000, Japanese $65,390, Chinese $65,050, Vietnamese $53,400, and Koreans $50,000. But all this is quite remarkable, considering that according to Pew’s figures, nearly three-fourths (74%) of Asian American adults were born abroad.

SOURCE





Has Ron Unz built his castle on sand?

I originally  put this piece up on DISSECTING LEFTISM but I think it has a place here too

Among his many worthy attributes, Ron Unz, publisher of The American Conservative, is an expert on the statistics of Hispanic crime.  He concludes that Hispanics are not as crime-prone as many people think.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to match his expertise and one reason why is that many of the available statistics that form the fodder for analysis of Hispanic crime are very likely hopelessly wrong.   They are sandy ground on which to build anything.

I confess that I have myself used official U.S. census data  to look at Hispanic crime but reflection tells me that  I was pissing into the wind.  Using surveys and censuses to study a group who have a fervent desire to stay beneath official notice is surely a foolish enterprise.  A huge slice of the target group will simply be missed by surveys and censuses.  It is presumably for that reason that the year 2000 US census showed only 0.7% of  Mexican born males aged 18-35 as having a criminal record.   And other Hispanic groups are similar.  That compares with 3.04% of the male  population as a whole in that age group.  According to the census, Hispanics in the USA are super-law-abiding.  You don't have to be very cynical to conclude from that that the boot is on the other foot:  Only unusually law-abiding Hispanics fill out the census.

But Ron Unz does not confine his attention to surveys and censuses.  He also uses what prison statistics he can get his hands on.  So perhaps he still has something.  If he does, Obama is a colossal liar.

Now I don't rule that out.  I think Obama is only as honest as it suits him.  But his oft-repeated claim that he deports 400,000 illegals a year has never been challenged to my knowledge and it is surely something that could fairly easily be challenged by anyone in touch with such matters if it were grossly inaccurate.  It is, moreover, only a small increase over what was recorded in the Bush years.  And Obama assures us not only that the deportees are all criminals but that they are SERIOUS criminals.  Minor offenders are let off.  But 400,000 is 3.3% of the approximately 12 million Hispanics in the USA.  And that 3.3% is being repeated EVERY year.  So over a 10 year period a THIRD of the Hispanic population would have been deported.  So is it 33.3% of the Hispanic population rather than 0.7% who have criminal records?

I put the Obama claims to Ron Unz in correspondence and his reply was:  "Relying upon the Obama deportation data as evidence of "serious criminality" is totally absurd: the deportations involve things like traffic tickets, driving without a license (illegals being unable to obtain licenses), or lying about immigration status"

So I guess it's his word against Obama's.  Not an easy choice in the circumstances.  Given Obama's obvious reluctance to deport, I find it hard to believe that he does so on trivial grounds.  I am inclined to think that the Hispanic community would have rumbled him by now were he doing so  -- JR

UPDATE:

I posted the article above elsewhere yesterday so already have a reply to it from Ron Unz.  He has emailed me the following curiously "ad hominem" reply as follows:

I do agree that if I'm correct then the public speeches of President Obama would be "colossal lies," though probably no more than the political rhetoric of most politicians.

However, perhaps being a psychometrician in Australia you are perhaps unfamiliar with the dynamics of the American criminal justice system. In particular, illegal immigrants who commit "serious crimes" are NOT immediately deported, and never have been. Instead, they are *prosecuted* and sent to prison.  Sometimes, after they have finished their lengthy prison sentence (for a "serious crime"), they are then afterward deported.

Think a bit about it. Suppose an illegal immigrant raped or killed someone. If he were just deported instead of being punished, he might very well just sneak back again, and once he turned up in the same neighborhood, having escaped any punishment for his crimes, the public outcry would be enormous and all the responsible politicians would be defeated for reelection.

From what you say, you are a trained psychometrian and have every right to dispute my IQ analysis on technical grounds. If you invest some time and effort, you could certainly familiarize yourself with the detailed evidence on Hispanic crime rates to challenge my article (which, incidentally, has over the last couple of years persuaded pretty much everyone of an open mind).

But you make yourself look extraordinarily foolish when you take a political campaign phrase by President Obama that he has only been deporting illegal immigrants who are "serious criminals" to therefore conclude that at least 10% of all illegal immigrants are "serious criminals."

If you bothered reading any of the hundreds or thousands of major newspaper articles on this contentious subject, you would quickly see it was absurd. I'm not sure that I can think of even a single American-based rightwing blogger or writer---no matter how fanatically anti-immigrant or extreme in views---who has ever made the claim that you make.

I don't claim to be an expert on Australian society, but I'm sure if I'm tried I could take some random phrase by some local politican and use it to draw social conclusions which were utterly absurd and ridiculous, making me look like an idiot. I strongly suggest that you focus on your areas of expertise.

Ron Unz

My reply to the above was as follows:

LOL

So you are telling me that MY castle is built on sand because I live in Australia!

I don't think I was overlooking anything.  I actually have a blog called "Gun Watch" that posts daily on American crimes of violence so I think I am pretty aware of what goes on in American courts.  I think that does in its way give me some small expertise on the subject.  I certainly read a lot of cases.

And a key observation is that most offenders receive only short jail terms, and under  plea bargains, may spend no time in jail at all.  So some offenders rack up a huge "rap sheet".  In other words, there are a lot of "serious criminals" wandering around America.

One thing for certain is that ICE is very picky about whom they deport.  They have too few resources to deport everyone who comes to light.  And when people like sheriff Joe try to send them illegals they often delay until the offender has to be released.

So I actually support Obama's various edicts that only serious offenders who are presented to them should be deported.  And such presentations can come off the street or at the time of jail release

So I see Obama as having a consistent and sensible policy that is the result of a lot of heavily contested political debate and believe what he says in this instance. It is core policy, not some random utterance

I presume that Ron Unz will now turn his data-analytical virtuosity to a dissection of Obama's deportation statistics.  He would do us all a great favour if he did that.  CIS already have a heap of data on  immigration  so with their help he should be able to get access to the raw data fairly readily, one imagines  -- JR



26 July, 2012

High-skilled immigration restrictions are economically senseless

Employer discrimination based on national origin has been illegal in the United States since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, yet American immigration law has continued to discriminate in that exact manner. If the government insists on restricting foreign workers’ access to U.S. markets, it should do so on the basis of merit, not nationality. Last week, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) took an important step toward that goal, but it is a flawed one.

The Senators struck a deal to allow the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act (H.R. 3012) to move forward in the Senate. The bill would allocate employment-based green cards irrespective of national origin by eliminating country-specific limitations. Current law limits any particular country to 7 percent of the 140,000 employment-based green cards issued each year. This has resulted in extremely long waiting periods for workers from large countries like India and China that often extend for years, and even decades.

This discrimination is economically senseless and unjust, and Congress has finally realized it. Unfortunately, Sen. Grassley, who had placed a “hold” on the bill, decided to allow it to move forward not for noble reasons, but rather because Sen. Schumer, Chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, signed on to an “agreement to include provisions that give greater authority to program overseers to investigate visa fraud and abuse.” This would expand the Department of Labor’s (DOL) powers to harass businesses that employ highly skilled immigrants.

Grassley’s amendments would give DOL “overseers” broad discretion to delay and audit applications for H-1B visas for temporary highly skilled workers. Current law allows the DOL to audit applications, which are submitted by employers, only after a visa has been issued and a complaint alleging visa fraud has been filed. The Grassley amendments’ overly broad and vague language would allow DOL officials to delay and block valid visa applications that would currently gain approval. All they would need is to allege “clear indicators of fraud or misrepresentation of material fact.”

Since the legislation provides no guidance on what these “indicators” should be, Labor officials would essentially have free rein to hold up any application at their discretion. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) already considers being a small business—defined as having “less than 25 employees” or a “gross annual income less than $10 million”—as basis to suspect fraud, a conclusion based on the fact that large employers can afford better labor consultants to assure fewer mistakes on applications. Employers would also have no right to challenge such spurious audits in court.

Delays like these cost both money and time. This includes time needed to fill out an application, which by delaying applications past the deadline could turn this audit power into a de facto rejection power. That is especially likely as the 60-day limit for complaint-driven audits would not apply to these new investigations. On top of these, the Grassley amendments authorize annual compliance audits for any H-1B employer without any indication of fraud.

CIS administrative procedures already place considerable burdens on businesses, most notably through a huge increase in the number of “Requests for Evidence” on visa applications. These can delay applications for months. From 2008 to 2011, Requests for Evidence for high skilled visas—L-1B, H-1B, and O-1As—increased by 24 percent, 8 percent, and 14 percent, respectively. In the same period, H-1B rejections have increased from 11 percent in 2007 to between 17 and 29 percent under President Obama.

“We must bow to the genius of all, whatever group of mankind they may represent,” wrote Anthropologist Franz Boas a century ago, “as all have worked together in the development of the civilizations.” Boas was defending non-Western European immigrants against racist arguments for their exclusion. While he lost his fight in 1924, Congress now seems ready to end such discrimination, but it should focus on that goal, not on more regulation, so America can finally have an immigration law that acknowledges “the genius of all, whatever group of mankind they may represent.”

SOURCE





REAL migrant scandal  in Britain?  We  still pretend we control our borders - when the truth is Brussels won't let us

Yesterday, yet again, we saw headline news being made by a shocking  tale of incompetence and mismanagement by the UK Border Agency, the body set up in 2008 to control immigration to this country.

The backlog of cases piled up in the agency’s labyrinthine system, we are told, amounts to 276,000, equivalent to the population of Newcastle. Most of the migrants are here illegally and should have been sent home years ago.

They include 150,000 foreign workers and students still in Britain even though they were refused extensions to their visas; 101,000 untraced ‘asylum seekers’ left over from when 450,000 ‘forgotten files’ were discovered in 2005; and 3,900 foreign offenders released by the courts to protect their human rights.

Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, calls the Border Agency ‘a Bermuda triangle’ for immigrants who find it easy enough to get into Britain from anywhere in the world, but then vanish off the radar because there is no way of tracing them, let alone deporting them because they entered illegally or have broken our laws.

Scandals surrounding our immigration policy are so commonplace that we all accept it is completely out  of control.

MPs like Mr Vaz — whose committee is so exasperated it is now reporting on the Border Agency’s performance every three months — regularly jump up and down asking for something to be done.

But even though it is officially predicted that within eight years Britain’s population will have increased by another five million, nothing ever happens.

Home Secretaries from Labour’s John Reid and Charles Clarke to the Coalition’s Theresa May have faced a torrent of criticism — to which they reply with limp bureaucratic statements, promising action.

But things just go from bad to worse.

Behind this dismal picture, however, lies a much bigger story and one we are simply not being told about. The reason why our immigration policy is in such a shambles is that we do not have any control over it.

The real explanation for almost everything we find so horrifying about this mess is that virtually every aspect of our policy is no longer decided here in Britain at all, but is dictated by a morass of international rules and, above all, by those emanating from the EU.

We are familiar with the fact that, since ten more countries joined the EU in 2004, including Poland and those of formerly Communist eastern Europe, we have had to admit anyone from the 28 countries of the EU, giving them the right to live and work here and to enjoy a wide range of benefits such as our NHS and schools.

But if you examine the section of the EU’s ‘Europa’ website headed ‘Free movement of persons, asylum and immigration’, you will see three pages of headings covering every  conceivable aspect of immigration policy, from visa rules to our duties to asylum seekers.

As these headings make clear, the rules, many based on UN and other international agreements, cover not just the way we must treat EU citizens but how we deal with immigrants from the rest of the world.

The scandal of this is twofold. It is not just that successive governments have handed over to the EU the power to dictate every aspect of who we must admit to live and work in Britain, it is also the extent to which politicians such as Mrs May will not honestly and openly admit this.

Ministers and MPs continue to pretend that we at least have some control over immigration by what they slyly call ‘non-EU citizens’.

But the truth is that we have signed up to a vast system of international rules about how we must treat migrants, no matter where they come from — which mean that our politicians and officials, like those of the UK Border Agency, no longer have any choice but to obey them.

The reason why the Border Agency is faced with this horrifying backlog of cases involving immigrants, most of whom should no longer be here, is that in everything it does the agency tries to follow more zealously than any other country in Europe the procedures of the system we signed up to, a system so tortuously complex that it is unworkable.

And on top of this we have all the absurdities piled on us by the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights, into British law.

It was under this act, for instance, that an Iraqi asylum seeker was allowed to stay in Britain — even though in 2003 he had left 12-year-old Amy Houston to ‘die like a dog’ after hitting her with his car while driving with no insurance and no licence, and then running away, leaving her still conscious under the car.

To deport him, argued lawyers at a case which finally concluded in 2010, would have interfered with his right to a family life, with a partner and children whom he hadn’t even seen for several years.

A vast human rights industry has been built up on this Act, enriching hundreds of lawyers who can talk judges into an endless stream of decisions which stand common sense and justice on their heads — none more obviously crazy than those involving dangerous foreign citizens who should never have been allowed to stay here in the first place.

But the most sinister aspect about how we have ceded any control over our immigration policy to this European system lies in the purpose behind it.

The real intention of the European system, as we can see from various EU directives and judgments by the European courts, is to undermine any sense of national identity.

The aim is to turn Europe into a melting pot of different nationalities so intermingled with each other that the one thing they have in common is their ‘European identity’. EU directive 2004/38, for instance, allows citizens of any EU country and their families to live freely anywhere in the EU, on the grounds that this will ‘strengthen the feeling of Union citizenship’, which is ‘one of the fundamental objectives of the Union’.

But this is equally the guiding principle behind the rules applying to all those immigrants from Asia, Africa and elsewhere who, having managed to get into Europe themselves, are then permitted under EU rules to bring in all their relatives.

The idea is that, in gratitude to the EU whose rules have allowed them to settle here, such immigrants will come  to feel a sense of ‘European identity’ — their primary  loyalty being to ‘Europe’ rather than to the country they have settled in.

The irony, as we see in Britain when Asians and Africans come to live here, is that many immigrants either feel their loyalty is still to the country they came from, or else they want to become ‘British’. In almost no cases do they think of themselves as ‘European’.

We have long recognised that almost anything the EU turns its hand to fails to work as it was intended. But never was that more evident than in the shambles it has made of its immigration policies — policies our own government has dutifully obeyed, with such catastrophic results.

Yet still our politicians refuse to explain to us where those policies come from.

When the furore broke over that Iraqi asylum seeker who was allowed to remain in Britain after so callously mowing down young Amy, David Cameron — then in opposition — promised her father that he would ‘scrap the Human Rights Act’ to replace it with a ‘British Bill of Rights’.

But, of course, he could never have done anything of the sort because we are now committed to those human rights rules by our membership of the EU. And as Mr Cameron recently told us, the last thing he would ever do is campaign for Britain to leave the EU.

We must therefore accept all the consequences of that commitment — even if it means an immigration policy quite deliberately designed by  the EU to destroy our identity as a nation.

SOURCE



25 July, 2012

A small note on immigrant crime

In response to my article "Race, IQ and wealth:  A preliminary reply", Ron Unz left a comment about immigrant crime.  He refers to an article of his  and a subsequent debate which points out the need to take into account the ages of criminals in assessing whether or not they commit more crime than native born people.  He shows that the Hispanic crime rate can even be particuarly low once you make that adjustment.

The article I quoted as a source of information shows that too.  Foreign-born Mexican males, ages 18 to 39 (presumably mostly illegals) have a crime-rate of less than 1% of their population.  And that is data from the 2000 official U.S. census,  which is about as good as we are going to get.

Unz seems to have missed my main point however:  That the CHILDREN of Mexicans who are males aged 18 to 39 are an entirely different kettle of fish,  with a crime-rate  of nearly 6% of their population.  The figure for the total population is 3.04%

So the problem of crime from illegal Mexican immigration is there but not quite where it is usually placed.

Given the apparent low overall crime rate among Hispanics, it is a considerable puzzle that Obama claims to deport 400,000 of them every year.  And these, again according to Obama, are only the SERIOUS criminals.  Minor offenders are let go.

Say that Obama has deported 1,200,000 during his term of office and that there are 12 million illegals in the USA.  That means that 10% of the illegal population (not less than 1%) are criminals, and serious criminals at that.  Something doesn't add up.  Don't ask me why.

One thing is clear though:  Obama is the chief pusher of the idea that the USA suffers from a lot of crime from illegals.







More than 60,000 ‘bogus’ students came to UK last year as ministers are accused of having ‘bottled out’ on the issue

Mininsters were accused of having ‘bottled out’ on tackling bogus students last night - as it emerged some 60,000 may have entered the country last year.

The study by the MigrationWatch think tank, based on official figures, suggests more than one in four of all non-EU students entering the country last year were not genuine.

The figures will spur demands for a further toughening of the student regime, and reinforce opposition to Lib Dem calls for students to be removed from the immigration numbers altogether.

David Cameron, under pressure from Business Secretary Vince Cable and the higher education industry, is considering taking students out of net migration statistics.

That is despite his own immigration minister saying to do so would ‘destroy public confidence in the Government’s immigration policy’.

Students are thought to add around 75,000 to the UK population every year - with thousands staying on illegally.

A Home Office-commissioned study conducted thousands of interviews with applicants from around the world.

Applicants were tested on their ability to speak and write English, quizzed on whether they actually intended to study and not work, and asked if they intended to return home afterwards.

The results showed nearly half of all applicants from Pakistan should have been refused, nearly 60 per cent from India, one third of those from China and 62 per cent from Burma. The vast majority were applying to study at private colleges, but nearly one in seven were university applicants.

When these proportions are applied to the number of arrivals last year from each country, it adds up to more than 63,000 who could be considered ‘bogus’.

From this month around 10,000 such interviews will be conducted with suspect applicants. But it emerged the question of whether a student intends to return home has been dropped.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch said: ‘We now have clear evidence of abuse on a major scale.

‘Bogus students come here to work illegally and thus take jobs from British workers. If it is clear from the circumstances that a student is unlikely to go home, the visa should not be granted in the first place.

‘After all, many of the advantages claimed for foreign students depend on their going home after their studies. These half measures simply will not do. The government have bottled out on bogus students.

‘If they are serious about immigration they must face down the self-interested demands of the Higher Education sector and pursue the public interest.’

Higher education chiefs say the reduction in student numbers could cost the country billions of pounds in lost income.

Over the weekend, it emerged that London Metropolitan University had its licence to bring in non-EU students suspended because of Home Office concerns over its handling of applicants.

In 2000 around 54,000 non-EU students entered the UK to study but by last year this figure stood at 201,000

The numbers increased by 30 per cent in the first year of Labour’s disastrous points based migration system. As a result officials had to halt all applications from parts of the world because of the flood of questionable forms.

The concerns were backed by National Audit Office report which estimated bogus numbers may have been as high as 50,000 who actually came to work in the first year of points system.

SOURCE



24 July, 2012

Britain's backlog of migrants is 276,000 and growing as border chiefs struggle to deal with rising number of cases

Border chiefs are struggling with an enormous backlog of 276,000 immigration cases.  The growing total includes asylum seekers, foreign criminals and illegal migrants and is equivalent to the population of Newcastle.

MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Committee said the UK had become a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ for migrants, a country where it is ‘easy to get in, but impossible to keep track of anyone, let alone get them out’.

Some 21,000 new asylum cases have built up because officials were able to process only 63 per cent of last year’s applications.

In addition, there are 150,000 legal immigrants who came as students and workers but whose visas have since expired. This figure is rising by 100 every day.

The UK Border Agency does not know if these immigrants are still here, despite the fact they have no right to stay. Forty per cent of this group had never been sent a letter telling them to leave the country, as all those with expired visas should.

Tens of thousands of these lapsed visa cases date back more than five years and are a legacy of Labour’s catastrophic mismanagement of Britain’s immigration system.

There are also 3,900 foreign criminals living in the community and free to commit more crimes, including more than 800 who have been at large for five years or more.

Former Home Secretary John Reid, left, described his partner as 'not fit for purpose' while his predecessor Charles Clarke, right, quit after it emerged more 1,000 foreign prisoners had been released without consideration for deportation

On top of this, another 101,000 asylum and immigration cases remain from the backlog of more than 450,000 found lying around in officials’ cupboards and drawers six years ago.

They were revealed by the then Home Secretary John Reid, who described his own department’s immigration system as ‘not fit for purpose’.

These cases have been placed in a ‘controlled archive’ – effectively put on ice – because they cannot be found. No action will be taken against them unless their whereabouts are discovered as a result of unrelated police or local authority inquiries.

Around 60 per cent of the 450,000 were allowed to stay in the country, many because so much time had passed since their application that they had settled here and had a family.

Mr Reid’s predecessor Charles Clarke was forced to quit after it emerged that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners had been released between 1999 and 2006 without even being considered for deportation.

Astonishingly, despite more than six years passing since that scandal came to light, 60 of those offenders remain untraced and are still at large in the UK.

Keith Vaz, the committee’s chairman, said the backlog, which will take years to clear, was unacceptable, adding that the agency seems to have ‘acquired its own Bermuda Triangle’.

‘It’s easy to get in, but near impossible to keep track of anyone, let alone get them out,’ the Labour MP said. ‘This is the first time the committee has collated all the cases at the UK Border Agency that await resolution.

‘This backlog is now equivalent to the entire population of Newcastle upon Tyne.’

The cross-party group attacked Article 8 of the Human Rights Act which it said ‘weighs too heavily on the side of offenders rather than the safety of the public’.

This, they said, ‘allows criminals facing deportation to live freely in our communities and to endlessly prevent their removal through spurious claims about their right to a private and family life under Article 8’.

But the MPs endorsed Government changes to make it easier to remove foreign criminals, adding: ‘The rights of offenders must be balanced against the rights of law-abiding citizens to live their lives in peace, free from the threat of crime.’

The report also called for deportation proceedings to begin as soon as a prisoner is sentenced, instead of during their prison term, to speed up the process.

The Home Office said: ‘This report highlights improvements we have made to tackle the huge backlog of cases we inherited.

‘Over 2,000 overstayers have recently been removed following targeted enforcement activity, foreign offenders are being removed more quickly and we are performing well against visa processing targets.

‘Talented students are welcome, but we have introduced new powers to toughen up the system, keeping out the fraudulent and unqualified.

‘The report has raised some legitimate concerns about issues that we are already tackling.’

SOURCE





 Recent posts at CIS  below

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

Publications

1. Indirect Immigration Policy Making in the U.S. Always Opens Our Borders (Paper)

2. Obama Calls Retreat with Border Station Closures (Op-ed)

Television Appearance

3. Steven Camarota Discusses Lawsuite Challenging Dream Decree on FOX News (Video)

Blogs

4. America's Immigration Myths (Blog)

5. Criminal Alien 'DREAMer' Assaults ICE Agent, Gets Released on Prosecutorial Discretion (Blog)

6. Four New Threads Appear in Foreign Worker Program Tapestry (Blog)

7. Foreign Students Still Flying High (Blog)

8. Even Wal-Mart Objects to H-2B Worker Abuse by Supplier (Blog)

9. Time to Sanction the Sanctuaries (Blog)

10. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (9): Why Immigration Grand Bargains Fail — The Amnesty Trap (Blog)

11. Trying to Make Dreams Come True (Blog)

12. Suro and Washington Post Seek to Fuzz Our Thinking on Immigration Policy (Blog)

13. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (8): Immigration Grand Bargains Fail (Blog)

14. STEM Sham (Blog)

15. Ex-NFL Player Engaged in Immigration and Food Stamp Fraud — and Bigamy (Blog)

16. More on the Chicago 'Welcoming' Ordinance: Fig Leafs and Pandering (Blog)

17. We Are Americans, Just Not Legally? (Blog)



23 July, 2012

The foreign criminals Britain doesn't try to deport

Two hundred and fifty foreign criminals who should have been deported at the end of their prison sentences were allowed to stay in Britain on human rights grounds last year without their claims being challenged in court.

In each case, the Home Office accepted their argument that deporting them would breach their human rights rather than asking a judge to decide. The number has increased fivefold in four years, throwing into doubt the commitment of Theresa May, the Home Secretary, to deporting foreign criminals.

They were allowed to stay despite Damian Green, the immigration minister, telling the Commons last December that the Government was "doing everything in our power to increase the number and speed of removals".

The figures, disclosed to The Telegraph under the Freedom of Information Act, show that there were 56 such cases in 2008, rising to 80 in 2009, 217 in 2010 and 250 in 2011 and that:

• In 2011, at least one terrorist – and possibly up to four – was allowed to stay, as well as up to eight killers and rapists. Also among the total were 20 robbers and up to eight paedophiles, plus as many as four people convicted of firearms offences.

• In 2010, the Home Office conceded in the cases of up to four murderers and up to four people convicted of manslaughter, as well as up to four rapists, up to eight paedophiles and 43 people convicted of violent crime or robbery.

The Home Office refused to name any of the 250 criminals, even though all have been convicted in open court of serious crimes that command a prison sentence of at least one year.

It also refused to disclose numbers of many categories of criminal. A spokesman said this was "in order to protect individual identities".

The Home Office said there was a "strong likelihood" the criminals would have won their case if it had gone to court, meaning it was futile to attempt to deport them. A spokesman said: "There is no point in wasting taxpayers' money contesting cases where we were advised we would lose. We examined each claim individually but case law based on the old rules meant the courts were highly likely to uphold them.

"In every case, and regardless of the crime, deportation cannot take place if doing so would breach the UK's international obligations under, for example, the European Convention on Human Rights or the Refugee Convention.

"The rights of the individual are assessed in all cases and UKBA does concede deportation where there is a strong likelihood that those rights would be breached."

The existence of the 250 emerged after Mrs May introduced tougher rules for courts on the use of the "right to family life" to stay in Britain in response to The Sunday Telegraph's End The Human Rights Farce campaign. They came into force last week and have yet to be tested by the courts, but do not apply to previous cases.

The spokesman said the new rules would reduce the number of successful appeals to stay, and also the number of uncontested cases.

In addition to the 250 criminals allowed to stay last year, other figures have previously disclosed there were a further 409 who won their cases in the courts after bringing appeals.

Politicians expressed concern at the ease with which the criminals had stayed.

Chris Bryant, the Labour shadow immigration minister, said: “Theresa May has been trying to blame the Human Rights Act for not being able to deport foreign national offenders, but it’s becoming clearer every day that the real problem is her inability to get a grip of her department.”

Mrs May or Mr Green would have been informed of the decision to allow the most serious offenders to remain, sources said.

A UK Border Agency source said ministers would have been asked to approve the decision in the most serious cases.

And a former senior figure in the Home Office said: “Any remotely serious case will have been referred up to Minister of State level and, in all likelihood, to the Home Secretary.

“This action would have been taken by officials even if they thought they had copper-bottomed legal advice, ­especially since the foreign national prisoners affair in 2006 which cost Charles Clarke [the former home secretary] his job.”

However, the Home Office refused to say whether ministers knew that serious criminals stay in Britain unchallenged — or approved that decision. A spokesman said: “We don’t comment on internal processes.”

One of the cases where deportation was dropped is of an illegal immigrant convicted of organising Britain’s biggest sham marriage racket.

Vladimir Buchak, a 34-year-old Ukrainian, was released from jail a year ago but has not been sent home because he has two children in Britain.

Buchak paid eastern Europeans with the right to live in Britain up to £3,000 to marry Africans. European rules therefore allowed the Africans to stay. The Rev Alex Brown, his co-defendant, was also jailed for four years for carrying more than 360 bogus weddings at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

The Home Office confirmed that Buchak’s deportation is on hold while the UKBA reviews “recent case law in respect of the rights of Mr Buchak’s children”.

The Home Office’s decision not to fight the cases in the court is brought further into question by cases it has won.

In May, it won a case against deportation by a suspected Afghan war criminal. Abdul Rahim Nassery, 44, a former mujahideen commander, spent five years fighting the case partly on human rights grounds, but lost.

In January, a Turk accused of assaults and other crimes claimed he should not be deported because of his right to family life. But the Home Office defended the case and Deniz Kavak, 36, was told he had to leave the country.

According to the Home Office, 1,888 overseas offenders lodged appeals under Human Rights Act legislation last year. Of these, 409 were allowed to stay — 185 because the criminal had a right to a “family life” in Britain under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

SOURCE






Commonwealth soldiers face deportation

Commonwealth soldiers who have risked their lives for Britain are facing deportation and destitution under new rules which deny them British citizenship

Commonwealth recruits to the British forces can claim citizenship after four years’ service.

But a Sunday Telegraph investigation has found that a growing number are being refused it. Unable to work or claim benefits, they and their families rely on charity handouts to survive.

Veterans’ groups say they are seeing dozens of new cases every month as the rule changes bite.

“This is turning into a major problem for us, and for the people involved it can be a total disaster,” said Hugh Milroy, chief executive of Veterans’ Aid.  “As a nation, we should hang our heads in shame at what is being done to these people.”

Lance-Corporal Bale Balewai, a Fijian, served for 13 years in the Army, including operational tours to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Northern Ireland, winning four medals, exemplary reports from his commanding officers and even being used in recruitment adverts.

He has a British wife and children. But he has been refused citizenship, banned from working, and faces imminent removal – because he once accepted a commanding officer’s punishment after getting into a fight with another soldier.

The punishment was imposed at a military summary hearing in the CO’s office lasting ten minutes. L/Cpl Balewai had no legal representation.

No witnesses were called and he was not told that five other soldiers were prepared to testify that he had acted in self-defence.

However, for immigration purposes, a military summary punishment counts the same as a criminal conviction in a civilian court, disqualifying the applicant from citizenship.

Under the old rules, discretion was allowed and would almost certainly have been granted for such a minor, non-criminal offence.

However, since April last year all discretion has been removed and anyone with any offence whatever must be refused.

Dozens have fallen victim, including a gunner from 12 Regiment, Royal Artillery, who wanted to plead not guilty to a charge of careless driving but was sent to Afghanistan and convicted in his absence.

“It is grossly unfair that despite their service to the country, soldiers are actually worse hit by this than anything else,” said Dr Milroy.

“Military offences include huge numbers of things which are not offences in civilian life. We fully expect to see good and loyal Commonwealth soldiers refused citizenship for failing to salute, or not having their boots shined.”

In other cases, Commonwealth soldiers are not told about a rule that they must apply for citizenship within 28 days of leaving the Army. MoD guidance on its website states the rule.

Anyone who misses the limit is treated as an “overstayer” subject to removal and banned from working.

Though immigration rules are supposed to allow soldiers two years, “overstayers” must return home and apply from there. Kaedon White, from Jamaica, who taught Prince Harry to drive an armoured reconnaissance vehicle, missed the deadline. Unable to work or claim benefits, he relied on support from Veterans’ Aid until winning temporary leave to remain this year.

In further cases, even ex-soldiers who apply on time are kept waiting in poverty, unable to work or get welfare, until their applications are decided – a process which can take years.

More than 7,000 foreign and Commonwealth soldiers serve in the Army, which has actively sought them and could not manage without them. At least 45 have been killed on active service since 2003, including seven so far this year alone.

Dr Milroy said Veterans’ Aid had seen 100 Commonwealth soldiers, including a number who the charity was having to put up in hostels because they were homeless and destitute.

L/Cpl Balewai, 32, said: “I feel really betrayed and angry at the fact that after 13 years of service I am just a number to the Home Office, in the queue behind Abu Hamza and his cronies”

SOURCE



22 July, 2012

Flight training for illegals?  No problem!

After 9/11 you would think it would have been made impossible -- not so.  Quite the reverse under Obama

When it comes to soldiers, breast-feeding moms, toddlers and grannies, the Transportation Security Administration is not just hands-on, it's hands-all-over. But when it comes to illegal alien pilot trainees, our homeland security bureaucracy's policy is still stuck in pre-9/11 mode: Hands off, blinders on.

This week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on the airline security agency's "process for ensuring (that) foreign flight students do not pose a security risk." In short, there isn't much of a "process" at all when it comes to checking the immigration status of flight school students. While the GAO report may be new, the documented lapses are part of the same old, same old refusal to profile foreign flight risks for fear of offending and inconveniencing politically correct special interests.

In November 2010, my column spotlighted a shady flight school outside Boston that had provided single-engine pilot lessons to more than two dozen illegal immigrants from Brazil. Clear counter-terror rules banned illegal aliens from enrolling in U.S. flight schools. Clear counter-terror regulations required TSA to run foreign flight students' names against a plethora of terrorism, criminal and immigration databases. Yet dozens of these illegal alien students eluded our homeland security radar screen.

What's changed since that illegal alien flight school first came to light? The new GAO audit, first reported on by CNSNews.com on Wednesday, disclosed fresh details about the Boston area flight school racket:

-- "Eight of the 25 foreign nationals who received approval by TSA to begin flight training were in 'entry without inspection' status, meaning they had entered the country illegally. Three of these had obtained FAA airman certificates: Two held FAA private pilot certificates, and one held an FAA commercial pilot certificate."

-- "Seventeen of the 25 foreign nationals who received approval by the TSA to begin flight training were in 'overstay' status, meaning they had overstayed their authorized period of admission into the United States."

-- "In addition, the flight school owner held two FAA airman certificates. Specifically, he was a certified Airline Transport Pilot (cargo pilot) and a Certified Flight Instructor. However, he had never received a TSA security threat assessment or been approved by TSA to obtain flight training."

The GAO report pointed out that over the past two years, TSA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security have supposedly been working on a pilot program to vet names of foreign students against immigration databases -- "but have not specified desired outcomes and time frames, or assigned individuals with responsibility for fully instituting the program."

The Obama administration promises to have a "plan" in place by December 2012 to "assess" the legal status of foreign pilot trainees. Meantime, election-year amnesty and intransigent apathy reign.

SOURCE





ACLU says  Emails Show Racial Bias in Arizona Immigration Law

You might think from the heading above that the ACLU was referring to emails sent BY the legislator.  They were in fact emails sent TO him -- which he archived in another one of his own accounts

Opponents of Arizona's hardline immigration enforcement law contend that emails sent, received and forwarded by a former legislator who championed the law support allegations it was racially motivated.

Dozens of emails are cited in a new legal effort by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups to block police from enforcing the Arizona law's so-called "show me your papers" provision recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The groups said the emails and other material reveal that ex-Sen. Russell Pearce and other supporters of the law known as SB1070 embraced discriminatory views and bent the truth about immigration-related matters, setting the stage for enactment of a law that the groups contend will lead to racial profiling if enforced.

Russell is the architect of Arizona's immigration law.

The use of the emails in the court filing later Tuesday was reported Friday by The Arizona Republic ( http://bit.ly/OzRYIx ).

Pearce on Friday denied discriminatory intent in championing the law, telling The Associated Press that the civil rights groups falsely portray him as a racist and that the law includes protections against racial profiling.

"Nobody wants to talk about that," he said. "I've been attacked for years. I don't expect it to stop."

The motion cited dozens of emails that were sent, received or forwarded by Pearce. Many of the emails asserted costs and troubles associated with illegal immigration, including crime and increased demand for public services such as education and health care.

Pearce has made countless public statements to that effect in recent years, while repeatedly saying he just wants federal and state officials to enforce laws against illegal immigration.

In one article forwarded by Pearce from one of his email accounts to another in 2006, a commentator spoke of the United States "facing an overwhelming illegal alien invasion" in which Hispanic illegal immigrants were "arrogantly corrupting our unifying national language while actively disrespecting our culture, society and country."

A 2007 email sent from Pearce's legislative email account to a personal Pearce account said illegal immigration of Spanish-speakers puts the country's status as an English-speaking country at risk.

"It's like importing leper colonies and hope we don't catch leprosy," the email stated. "It's like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American dream."

The five-page email contained multiple references to conditions in Arizona, but Pearce said the leprosy reference was from material written by a man in Colorado.

"I forward a lot of his stuff. Much of it is right on," Pearce said.

More HERE



21 July, 2012

Sabbath



20 July, 2012

Arizona Sheriff Goes to Trial Over Immigration Crackdown

Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, went on trial today over allegations his office racially profiled Latinos and arbitrarily stopped them as part of a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow in Phoenix will hear evidence that Arpaio’s so-called saturation patrols, which started in 2007 and have included hundreds of volunteer posse members, used pretextual traffic stops to arrest Latinos who they suspected were illegal immigrants and who weren’t suspected of having committed a crime.

Stanley Young, a lawyer for the five individuals who sued Arpaio, said in his opening statement he intended to demonstrate “denigration of Hispanics and lack of supervision to prevent racial profiling.”

“It is our view the problem starts from the top,” Young told Snow, who will decide the case without a jury. “We hope the court will compel the MCSO to honor the constitution and put into practice procedures used by other law enforcement agencies to prevent racial discrimination.”

Saturation Patrols

Timothy Casey, a lawyer for the sheriff’s office, said in his opening statement that, “evidence shows that race and ethnicity had nothing to do with traffic stops.”

“Arpaio does not select sites for saturation patrols and has never suggested a site based on a citizen letter,” Casey said. The patrols were planned “based upon an area’s crime history -- ethnicity of the constituency played no role.”

The class-action lawsuit was brought on behalf of all Latinos who, since January 2007, have been stopped, detained, questioned or searched by the sheriff office’s agents in Maricopa County. The judge in December ordered the office not to detain people based only on reasonable belief or knowledge they are illegal aliens.

“While MCSO officers can, of course, continue to investigate federal and state criminal law, including immigration-related criminal law, to stop people pursuant to such law, officers must have reasonable suspicion that the person is violating that law,” Snow said in his Dec. 23 decision.

Being in the U.S. without proper authorization is a civil violation and isn’t in itself a crime, the judge said.

U.S. Citizens

Of the five named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, four are U.S. citizens and one had a valid visa when he was stopped.

They seek a court order that their constitutional rights were violated, including their right to equal protection under the law and their right not to be subject to unreasonable searches and seizures. They want the judge to order changes in the sheriff’s office and to appoint a monitor to oversee compliance.

Lawyers for the sheriff’s office said in court filings that the plaintiffs were stopped by deputies because they were violating state traffic laws, not because they were Latino. The deputies at the time of traffic stops were certified by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce both criminal and civil federal immigration law, according to a June 2011 filing.

“The illegal immigrants identified in the county are generally not from China, the Caribbean, North Africa, Eastern Europe, or the Indian subcontinent,” the sheriff’s lawyers said. “The fact that most illegal immigrants discovered in Maricopa County are from Mexico, and thus Latino by definition, is neither shocking nor indicative of racial animus against Latinos.”

‘Crime Suppression’

Arpaio’s department covers Arizona’s biggest county by population, with 3.8 million residents. His methods, including the saturation patrols or “crime suppression” sweeps in predominantly Latino areas in and around Phoenix, the state’s largest city, have made him a hero to groups seeking a crackdown on illegal entrants to the U.S. and a target of advocates for immigrants’ rights.

The case, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, involves allegations similar to those made by the U.S. Justice Department in a civil lawsuit filed in May against Maricopa County and Arpaio.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit accuses the sheriff of “intentionally and systematically” discriminating against Latinos. Arpaio, who has been elected five times and served 20 years in office, said in response to the U.S. lawsuit that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, is going after him to court Latino voters.

Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down much of Arizona’s first-of-its-kind state law against illegal immigrants, ruling that states must defer to the federal government on immigration policy, an election-year victory for Obama.

The high court invalidated criminal restrictions that would have barred those in the U.S. illegally from seeking work or being in Arizona without proper documentation. The court didn’t block a requirement that local police check the immigration status of people they suspect are in the country illegally, while leaving open the possibility of later challenges.

The Supreme Court’s decision may undercut similar laws in other states and will have repercussions for the November presidential election as Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney vie for Hispanic votes.

Supporters of Arizona’s law said the federal government isn’t doing enough to crack down on an estimated 11.5 million people in the country illegally.

SOURCE




UK Immigration Officials Threaten Strike Action During Olympics

One hopes they do  strike.  It might force the government to drop its insane staff cutbacks.  The staffing is not sufficient to get people through immigration promptly already.  Cutting frontline staff instead of bureaucrats is just plain incompetent

U.K. immigration officers will decide Thursday whether to hold strikes during the Olympic Games, a move that could cause chaos at Britain's borders as hundreds of thousands of extra tourists arrive for the event meant to showcase London and the rest of the country to the world.

The Public and Commercial Services Union said Wednesday 57.2% of members who voted were in favor of striking to protest job cuts, pay and conditions, while 75.8% supported other forms of industrial action.

The country's largest civil service trade union said ballots were sent to the 15,700 union members who work for the Home Office, and 20% responded. The PCS represents around 5,000 Border Agency staff.

Thursday's meeting of union leaders will decide on whether to mount a protest, and if so, specify the nature of industrial action and date, a union spokesman said in a statement.

"Ministers have known about these issues for a very long time but have chosen not to act," General Secretary Mark Serwotka said. "We believe they have acted recklessly and irresponsibly in cutting so many jobs and, in the case of U.K. Border Agency, they have simply tried to paper over the cracks by deploying severely undertrained staff at our borders."

Immigration Minister Damian Green urged the union not to take protest action, saying a strike would be "irresponsible."

"Any action that disrupts the Olympics will be completely unacceptable and the public will not support it," he said in a statement. "Only about one in 10 PCS members voted for strike action."

Mr. Green said if industrial action goes ahead, the government will use its "trained pool of contingency staff" to minimize any disruptions.

In May, the government was forced to draft extra immigration officers to man border controls at Heathrow Airport, the world's busiest international passenger airport, after passengers were caught in huge queues for passport checks. The government has vowed that immigration desks will be fully staffed during the Olympics, for which the U.K. expects to greet an estimated 600,000 overseas visitors more than would normally arrive during that period.

In the past week the government has had to deploy thousands of additional army and police officers to provide security for the games after G4S Plc said it would have problems delivering the number of guards contracted.

The PCS union said government spending cut are affecting the Border Agency's ability to function and are "completely unsustainable."

The government is reducing the budget of the agency, responsible for passport control at all ports of entry, 20% by 2015 as part of a GBP79 billion ($124 billion) spending cut aimed at narrowing the country's deficit.

The union says the agency has already cut 5,300 of 7,000 jobs it plans to eliminate by 2015.

SOURCE



19 July, 2012

UK immigration laws spark Pakistan wedding boom

New British immigration laws have unleashed a stampede to wed and a frenzy of English lessons for Pakistanis desperate to migrate as new restrictions come into effect.

The boom was particularly marked in Mirpur, where Islamabad estimates 200,000 of Britain's 1.2 million Pakistanis have their family origins.

Almost all the town's 403,000 residents have relatives in the former colonial power, after a huge surge of migration from the area in the 1960s when a major dam was built, costing thousands of farmers their livelihoods.

At the time Britain needed more workers for its factories in the industrial cities of central and northern England, and granted immigration permits to many of them and their families.

Now with immigration an increasingly controversial issue in Britain, Mirpuris rushed to secure residency rights before the door was pushed tighter.

Wedding planners were rushed off their feet, English teachers overwhelmed and immigration consultants buried under mounds of paperwork as brides and grooms queued to file immigration papers by July 6, the last working day before the deadline.

Faisal Mehmood, a self-styled immigration consultant, said business was several times higher than the six to eight cases he normally processes a week.

"I consulted on and helped fill in immigration papers for 53 couples in the first week of July," he told AFP in his office in Mirpur, the wealthiest town in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, 83 kilometres (50 miles) east of Islamabad.

From July 9, new restrictions made it impossible for anyone who earns less than £18,600 ($29,000) a year to move a foreign spouse to Britain, or less than £22,400 if that spouse has a child.

To acquire British nationality, foreign spouses now have to wait five rather than two years to test whether a relationship is genuine, must be proficient in English and once in Britain, pass a Life in the UK test.

For Britons of Pakistani descent, April is by tradition the peak month for holidays and weddings in their parents' homeland, before the summer heat becomes unbearable for those accustomed to northern climes.

But wedding planners say they saw record business from Britons in June and the first week of July, with nuptials up 20 percent in Mirpur so far this year.

Arshad Hussein Shah, the manager of eight marriage halls, said his company organised weddings for 15 Britons from June 1 to July 6.

"There was a sudden surge because the UK government changed the immigration laws for spouses and everybody rushed to marry and file papers before the deadline," he said.

In Islamabad, the British High Commission said there had been a "significant increase" in the number of applications to join a spouse and live permanently in Britain ahead of the new rules coming into force.

The surge has caused delays in processing applications, the commission said, with some taking up to six months to be resolved.

SOURCE




   

Israel to deport illegal foreigners from West Bank

Israel's immigration police have been granted the power to remove foreigners without permits from the occupied West Bank, Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

According to the report, the head of the Israeli army's Central Command has granted the interior ministry's enforcement arm the power to arrest foreigners who have outstayed their visa in a bid rein in foreign pro-Palestinian activists.  The order was signed on July 6, the paper said.

Until now, Israel has struggled to find a way to apprehend activists in the West Bank.  "Many illegal residents within Israel choose to come to the Judaea and Samaria area to work," an army statement said in response, using the biblical term for the West Bank.

"In the past, the (interior ministry's Population and Migration Authority) had no enforcement power over these workers.

"According to the new order, inspectors will be authorised to transfer the illegal residents into the boundaries of the State of Israel, where the regular enforcement procedures will proceed, as per Israeli law," it said.

"The status of these illegal residents will be identical to the status of illegal residents found during routine enforcement in Israel."

The army noted that the inspectors "will not be allowed to enter a (Palestinian) place of residence without the appropriate warrant signed by a military judge admitted to a committee on the matter of exclusion from the Judaea and Samaria region."

Last month, the immigration police began a nationwide crackdown on the estimated 60,000 illegal African migrants living in Israel.

Foreign activists and Palestinians dressed as clowns gesture in front of Israeli policemen during a protest in the southern West Bank village of Susia, June 2012. Israel's immigration police have been granted the power to remove foreigners without permits from the occupied West Bank.

SOURCE



18 July, 2012

Record levels of immigration lead to jam-packed England: As the population rockets to 56million, England is now offcially the most crowded major country in Europe

The number of people living in England and Wales rose by a record 3.7million over the past decade.

The results of last year’s census indicate that the population is swelling at its fastest rate for 100 years, largely due to high immigration, and has now reached 56.1million.

With the exception of tiny Malta, England is now the most crowded country in Europe, with 407 people for every square kilometre. Ten years ago Holland held second place behind Malta.

The rise is almost equal to the population of Bristol arriving every year for ten years, and marks the biggest jump since the ten-yearly census was introduced more than 200 years ago, beating the baby booms of the Fifties and Sixties.

The results suggest the population will reach 70million – considered by many to be too high for the country’s resources – far sooner than the present estimate of 2027.

Around 55 cent of the population increase was a result of immigration, the Office for National Statistics said. The overall effect is likely to be far higher, as immigration has also contributed to the rising birth rate. Census estimates on this area are expected later this year.

Yesterday’s figures prompted more calls for reductions, following a decade in which hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans were allowed to settle in the UK after the expansion of the EU. Immigration minister Damian Green said: ‘These figures are firm evidence that Labour let immigration run out of control.’

The first published results of the £500million census, carried out last March, included about 200,000 people thought to have been missed out in the disastrous 2001 headcount, and 270,000 uncounted immigrants.

At a time of deepening controversy over pensions and the cost of caring for the elderly, they revealed a rapid increase in the number of people aged over 65, while some 430,000 are now over 90. Immigration and increasing birthrates have also boosted the other end of the population, with 400,000 more under-fives compared with the last census.

The results debunked the claim – often made by Whitehall – that households are shrinking. For years, officials have predicted that thanks to family breakdown there will be more single people needing homes, but the census results published yesterday showed that an average home still contains 2.4 people – meaning the statistic has been unchanged for 20 years.

The census figures estimate the population of England and Wales to be 56.1million, within a margin of error of 85,000. About 3million of these live in Wales.

The Northern Ireland population is 1.8million, up 100,000 since 2001 and Scotland will publish its figures later in the year. The final UK population estimate is thought likely to be around 63million.

The England and Wales figure compares with the 52.4million estimate of 2001 – an increase of 3.7million, or 7 per cent.

It is the largest jump in numbers since the first national census was carried out in 1801. The rate of growth of the population was higher in 1911, which saw a rise of just under 11 per cent.
How we're bursting at the seams

Census director Glen Watson said: ‘In 2011, growth of 3.7million stands out as being the largest growth in any ten-year period in the last 210 years. The population has been growing throughout the decade since 2001. These latest 2011 population estimates are 1 per cent higher than we previously thought – just under half a million higher.’

The news comes at a time when the Coalition has promised to bring net migration – the number of people added to the population each year by immigration – down to the tens of thousands. So far no dent has been made in the net migration level of around 250,000 a year left by Labour.

Sir Andrew Green, of the Migrationwatch UK think-tank, said: ‘This census confirms the impact of mass immigration on our population. We now find that even the official numbers previously understated the scale of net migration by 14 per cent and even this does not account for the illegal immigrant population who would not complete the census form. Nobody wants to see the population grow at this rate.'

There were 56.1 million people living in England and Wales on the day of Census 2011, 3.7 million more than in 2001 when there were 52.4 million people. This represents an increase of seven per cent.

The population of England was 53 million while Wales was 3.06 million. Northern Ireland's population also rose to 1.8 million, an increase from around 1.7 million in 2001.

The total population figure was about half a million larger than estimates had shown a year earlier, when it was expected it would have risen to 55.6 million.

The results show that every region in England and Wales had a larger population in 2011 than 10 years earlier.

The largest increase in population was in London, which grew by 12 per cent, gaining more than 850,000 inhabitants and taking its total population to more than eight million.

The figures show how people in England and Wales are increasingly living for longer, with a rise of 16.4 per cent of people aged 65 and over. This means that one in six people in England and Wales was aged 65 and over in 2011.

Of these, 430,000 people were aged 90 and over, compared with only 13,000 when the census was carried out 100 years earlier in 1911. The number of women over 90 was 315,000, nearly three times higher than the 114,000 men recorded as being over that age.

In 11 local authorities more than a quarter of the population was aged 65 or over, with the highest being Christchurch in Dorset with 30 per cent.

It shows the median age of the population has increased to 39 in 2011, up from 35 in 2001 and 25 in 1911.

But there was also an increase in the number of under-fives, with 405,700 more in 2011 compared when the survey was conducted a decade before. This was explained by a rise in the number of women of childbearing age because of inward migration. The local authority with the largest proportion of children under five was the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, at 10 per cent.

On average 105 males are born for every 100 females, however, in 2011 females consistently outnumbered males for every year from 35 upwards.

The average household size of 2.4 people has remained unchanged from 2001. The number of households has risen by eight per cent compared to a decade ago, with 23.4 million households in England and Wales in 2011 compared to 21.7 in 2001.

SOURCE



    
Congressman expects immigration lawsuit against Obama in ‘weeks’

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King says he expects that the immigration lawsuit he is spearheading against President Obama will be filed in a court within weeks.

"I think we're talking weeks rather than months," King told The Daily Caller in an interview Friday about the planned legal action against Obama.

King's lawsuit is in response to the Obama administration's divisive announcement last month that the government would stop deporting certain illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children.

The congressman said a meeting was held last Tuesday with potential co-plaintiffs interested in signing on to the lawsuit to prevent the Obama administration from going through with its plan.

King, who would likely be the lead plaintiff, would not specifically name who else attended, but he said one U.S. senator, four state executive offices and five non-governmental organizations were represented at the meeting.

"It was a very impressive group of people from my perspective," he said.

The congressman said the challenge is to meet the requirement for standing, but said the consensus of those at the meeting was that, "If the case is heard on the merits, we're in an excellent position to succeed."

He said there are at least four possible legal components to the lawsuit, including seeking a writ of mandamus, which would direct Obama to enforce the law.

SOURCE



17 July, 2012

Feds expanding state access to immigration database for purpose of voter roll cleansing

The federal government is expanding access to an immigration database so that several states can use it to cleanse voter rolls, officials said Monday.

Homeland Security Department representatives first notified Florida officials last week that they could check to see if registered voters are actually noncitizens who should not be eligible to cast a ballot. State officials said Monday that the department is now offering similar access to other states who had been requesting the information.

“I’m pleased that DHS has agreed to work with states to verify the citizenship of people on the voter rolls and help reduce our vulnerability,” said Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who had renewed his request for the data last week, writing a letter with the support of several other states.

Elections leaders in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio and Utah had signed onto Gessler’s request. Five of the states — Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico and Ohio — are expected to be competitive in the 2012 presidential race. Each of the election chiefs in those states is Republican.

The data work is supposed to help states identify people who may be legal residents but not citizens. Since states can’t monitor whether someone has become a citizen, the federal database will allow them to check the immigration status of those people.

Colorado has identified some 5,000 people that it wants to check.

The Obama administration had denied Florida’s request for database access amid an escalating legal battle with Florida about how it was handling its voter list. A U.S. judge blocked federal attempts to stop Florida’s voter review, and the federal government then relented on the database question.

Washington state has been requesting the data since back to the Bush administration. Shane Hamlin, the co-director of elections in Washington, said state officials aren’t getting full access to the database that they had sought but that they were pleased with the development.

To check against the database, states will have to provide a “unique identifier,” such as an “alien number,” for each person in question. Alien numbers generally are assigned to foreigners living in the country legally, often with visas or other permits such as green cards.

The database isn’t likely to catch illegal immigrants who may have managed to get on the voter rolls, since those individuals likely wouldn’t have an alien number.

Voting groups are concerned that the erroneous voter purges right now could make it difficult to correct mistakes in time for the election.

SOURCE




 Recent posts at CIS  below

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

Blogs

1. Border Patrol Training Videos Say to 'Hide', 'Run Away' in Active Shooter Situations

2. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (7): The Grand Bargains That Weren't

3. Agitprop in Chi-Town

4. Making Sure the Indian Tribes Are on OUR Side in the War Against al-Qaeda

5. House Judiciary Chairman Has 32 Questions for John Morton About the DREAM Decree

6. IT Employers' Coded Ads: 'No Americans Need Apply'

7. Sheriffs Skeptical of 'Chilling Effect' from Secure Communities

8. Good Intentions and the Road to Perdition

9. Obama Spreads Misinformation at Naturalization Ceremony

10. Work-Load Data Revealed for Secretive USCIS Agency

11. Congress Pushes for More Foreign STEM Students Despite Surplus

12. False Prophets of Open Borders



16 July, 2012

Judge who let Taliban soldier remain in Britain now allows refugee who raped girl, 12, stay in UK

A Sudanese asylum seeker who raped a 12-year-old girl has been allowed to remain in Britain – after a judge ruled it would breach his human rights to deport him.

Sani Adil Ali was jailed for raping the girl just months after he was given refugee status.

When he was sentenced, another judge described him as ‘a potential danger to young girls’ and put him on the Sex Offenders’ Register for the rest of his life.

But after serving a three-year sentence, an immigration tribunal ruled Ali could stay in Britain on the grounds that he could be in danger if he returned to Sudan.

Senior immigration judge Jonathan Perkins allowed the 28-year-old to remain in Britain, even though the rapist’s probation officers found that he presented some risk to young people.

In his ruling, Judge Perkins said: ‘We find that the appellant is still entitled to the protection of the Refugee Convention and the Qualification Directive.

'In any event, removing him would be contrary to the United Kingdom’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.’

It is not the first time that Judge Perkins has made a controversial decision. Last month, The Mail on Sunday reported how he allowed an Afghan Muslim, who claimed he killed people while fighting for the Taliban, to remain in Britain.

It has also been reported that Judge Perkins has often allowed foreign criminals to remain in Britain because of their ‘right to a family life’ under the Human Rights Act.

His latest decision is another setback for Home Secretary Theresa May, whose plans to crack down on the way foreign criminals use human rights to avoid being deported appear to be repeatedly undermined by the courts.

Charlie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover & Deal, who has tabled a Bill to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, said: ‘Britain will always be there to provide refuge to those in need. But people who commit crimes here should be sent back immediately.

‘Right-thinking people in Britain will be appalled that this person will be allowed to stay here. It sums up what is wrong with the European human rights laws.

‘We should have zero tolerance of refugees who commit crimes. Cases like this are why I have tabled a British Bill of Rights so we can control our borders and ensure that foreign criminals and terrorists are deported immediately.’

Ali, who is from the Darfur region, arrived in Britain in October 2003 and was awarded refugee status in February 2005.

But two months later he was arrested at his address in Middlesbrough over the rape of a 12-year-old  Hungarian girl.

Ali had attacked her while staying with her family during a five-day trip to Sheffield. The victim’s family had offered to put him up while he visited his friend, Kamel Ahmed, then 22, also from Darfur.

Ali and Ahmed knew each other and the girl’s family from refugee camps in Italy and France.

Ali, who pleaded guilty to one count of child rape, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment at Sheffield Crown Court. Ahmed was convicted of three counts of child rape and jailed for ten years.

Judge Michael Murphy QC, said: ‘I regard each of you as a potential danger to young girls and so each of you will be banned for the rest of your life from ever taking up a job which involves working with children under 16.’

When Ali was released from Doncaster jail in 2008, the Home Office ordered that he return to Sudan and he was locked up in an immigration removal centre.

Ali appealed to the immigration court and when a judge rejected his bid, he mounted a fresh appeal to the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber.

At the Sheffield hearing, Judge Perkins ruled that removing Ali, who comes from the Zaghawa tribe, would breach his rights under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture or inhumane punishment.

Judge Perkins referred to a 2009 ruling which stated that non-Arab tribes such as the Zaghawa are ‘at risk of persecution in Darfur and cannot reasonably be expected to relocate elsewhere in Sudan’.

The judge also said Ali could not be deported because he was not a danger to the public, and therefore could not have his refugee status taken away from him.

He said that even though his probation officers found he ‘presented some risk to young people’, Ali had ‘faced up to his responsibilities and indicated an intention to behave himself in the future’.

It is believed Ali was allowed to leave the immigration removal centre around 2009 and then moved to Newcastle, and still lives in the North East. It is not known if he received legal aid to fund his immigration fight.

Last night the Government admitted it was powerless in the face of the tribunal’s decision, with an aide to Mrs May stressing there was nothing the Home Secretary could do. ‘We are at the mercy of the courts,’ they said.

The UK Border Agency said: ‘We do not believe this individual needs or deserves refuge in this country.’

SOURCE






American Samoa: Lawsuit seeks US citizenship

A group of five people have filed a federal lawsuit arguing they should be U.S. citizens by virtue of being born in American Samoa, the only U.S. territory that doesn't grant that birthright.

The lawsuit filed this week in Washington, D.C., challenges the constitutionality of federal laws that make those born in American Samoa U.S. nationals but not citizens like those born in other territories.

In Puerto Rico, territorial status grants residents U.S. citizenship, but they pay no federal income taxes and cannot vote in presidential elections. Their congressional representative also cannot vote in Congress.

Those born in American Samoa are considered nationals, who also don't pay federal income taxes and can't vote for president. Nationals must follow the same procedures for naturalization as those who are permanent legal residents, which includes taking tests on English proficiency and American civics, even though English is widely spoken in American Samoa and public schools teach U.S. history.

"If we are American Samoans, then why not citizens? I believe American Samoans deserve the same right and benefits as all other Americans," said lead plaintiff Leneuoti Tuaua.

Tuaua wanted to pursue a law enforcement career in California but couldn't because of his status as a U.S. national, according to the complaint. He and fellow plaintiffs Fanuatanu Mamea and Emy Afalava live in the territory. Plaintiff Vaaleama Fosi lives in Honolulu, while Taffy-Lei Maene lives in Seattle.

Statutes have been passed in other territories defining them as part of the United States and entitling people born there to U.S. citizenship. But not everyone in American Samoa wants that, explained Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney in Alaska who often handles cases involving American Samoa nationals.

Being a citizen at birth would mean all of the U.S. Constitution applies, which would prevent certain communal land ownership rules unique to American Samoa, such as favoring those with Samoan blood, Stock said.

"This has been a big debate in American Samoa for a long time," she said.

Home to 56,000 people, American Samoa is also a place that holds tight to its culture and heritage.

The territory's nonvoting delegate in Congress, Eni Faleomavaega, said Thursday he doesn't think citizenship should be forced on those born in American Samoa.

"The future of our territory is being threatened by outside forces, and we must unite in our opposition to this lawsuit," he said. "I firmly believe the future of American Samoa should be decided by the people living in the territory, not by a court 7,000 miles away," he said.

For those who do want citizenship, he introduced a bill earlier this year to make it easier for those living in the territory to do so. The bill, which is pending, would allow applying for naturalization directly from American Samoa.

Currently, people born in American Samoa must leave the territory and live in a state for at least three months to apply for naturalization. Many say the hassle and expense of the process prevents them from pursuing citizenship.

Citizenship should be determined by the flag under which someone is born, said Charles Alailima, one of the attorneys representing the group. "The plaintiffs here should not have to ask to be United States citizens."

A U.S. passport issued to those born in American Samoa notes the bearer is a national and not a citizen.

"Among other things, many federal, state and municipal laws require that a person be a U.S. citizen in order to enjoy certain civil, political and economic liberties, such as the right to vote, serve on a jury, bear arms and hold certain forms of public sector employment," the lawsuit argues.

"Recognition by the United States that all persons born in American Samoa are U.S. citizens would significantly advance the Samoan Federation's efforts to increase the political voice of the Samoan community," by allowing them to vote for president, said the Carson, Calif., nonprofit group, which is also named as a plaintiff.

SOURCE



15 July, 2012

DHS TELLS BORDER AGENTS TO RUN & HIDE

Military and Law Enforcement Officials understand that desertion of your post is a serious and severely punishable offense.  Yet new FEMA and DHS are officially sanctioning desertion and dereliction of duty by instructing agents to run and hide from danger.

The DHS' new mandatory class, "Active Shooter" for Customs and Border patrol agents, instructs it's on and off duty personnel to literally "run away" and "hide" and only engage dangerous suspects if all attempts to "Run and Hide" have been exhausted.

From the mandatory FEMA-administered computer course, entitled "IS-907- Active Shooter: What You Can Do,"

* Evacuate: If there is an accessible escape path, attempt to evacuate the premises.

* Hide out: If evacuation is not possible, find a place to hide where the active shooter is less likely to find you.

* Take action: As a last resort, and only when your life is in imminent danger, attempt to disrupt and/or incapacitate the active shooter

Customs agents themselves are disgusted with new Federal instruction.  Brandon Judd, leader of Arizona's Customs & Border Patrol Union # 2544 wrote "We are now taught in an `Active Shooter' course that if we encounter a shooter in a public place we are to `run away' and `hide' If we are cornered by such a shooter we are to (only as a last resort) become `aggressive' and `throw things' at him or her. We are then advised to `call law enforcement' and wait for their arrival (presumably, while more innocent victims are slaughtered)."

CBP Agents know they are obligated to protect the whether they are on duty or not. Given the new instructions, some are worried they will be punished should they do their job and take down a gunman as in the cases of Ft. Hood or Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. 

Another post by a CBP agent on the local Union #2544 website goes on to say "It is always comforting to know that for those of us who carry a weapon when we are off-duty, if we should encounter such a situation, stop a shooter and save countless lives, we can look forward to being disciplined or fired by the Border Patrol because we should have run away to hide and then maybe thrown objects at the deranged killer instead of taking action and stopping him with a firearm,".

THIS IS THE AMERICAN BORDER and the force that keeps the bad guys out.  Yet now our own Department of Homeland Security, ostensibly charged with keeping America safe, is telling enforcement officers to "run away".

This isn't the first time DHS has issued boneheaded and downright dangerous policies. In fact, the night Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed, his team of BORTAC agents was following DHS policy when they fired bean bag warning shots at AK-47 armed Mexican bandits.  Not surprisingly, the bandits fired back with live ammunition and Agent Brian Terry was killed. 

Right here, right now, we have armed Gangs, Drug runners, illegal Aliens and even Muslim terrorists coming across our borders.  Apparently DHS would just as soon let the bad guys in than do anything to stop them.

This sort of insanity MUST STOP.  Our borders need to be protected, running and hiding or throwing bean bags won't cut it.  We need an active, engaged policy to protect America and her people!

Received by email from Ameripac





British border desks still not manned despite peak hour promise

Passengers have faced huge delays at Heathrow because the Border Force has failed to deliver ministerial promises to man all immigration desks at peak times over the summer, it can be disclosed.  At some of the busiest times, just over half the desks were in operation.

This is despite a promise earlier this year by Damian Green, the immigration minister, that desks at key ports would be fully manned at peak times “over the summer".

A series of internal BAA documents documents seen by The Daily Telegraph have revealed how the chaotic deployment of staff in recent weeks has heaped more misery on the travelling public.

Even last month’s maximum queuing time of just over two hours recorded by Heathrow’s operator, BAA, is an underestimate after it emerged that the figures do not take into account people waiting in the corridors outside the arrivals hall.

Additional staff are due to be deployed at ports from this weekend to avoid the run up to the Olympics being overshadowed by the chaos which has engulfed Heathrow in particular, with MPs describing some of the queues faced by passengers as “appalling”.

But the hit squads of additional immigration officers already sent in by the Home Office are proving ineffective .

The longest queue at the airport last month was just over two hours at Terminal 4 at 7.30pm on June 18, But only 12 desks were manned.  During quieter times, when the queues for non EU passengers were only 15 minutes, all 20 were covered.

A similar pattern emerged at Terminal 3 on June 29, which handles a large number of long haul international flights during the morning peak between 7 and 8.30am.

On at least one busy day last month more than half the desks were unmanned at this time, but then staffing levels increased later in the morning at the same time as the number of flights dwindled.

This is understood to have been commonplace during the month reflecting, according to the Immigration Service Union, the way in which the mobile teams drafted in to provide reinforcements have been deployed.“Most contingency staff are not sent to the desks until around 10am,” said Lucy Moreton, the union’s deputy general secretary.

The Daily Telegraph has learned that members of these hit squads spend much of their time drinking tea, sitting in offices waiting to be sent to terminals and being transported from arrivals hall to another

On one occasion last month a team was unable to provide reinforcements for more than an hour because of a delay in finding the yellow high visibility jackets they needed to move across the airport.

Home Office ministers and the Border Force have repeatedly disputed reports that passengers were frequently spending more than two hours to get into the country.

However such reports were given added credibility with BAA saying there were occasions when it was unable to count everybody in the queue.  “We measure from the last person in the queue, even if the queue stretches out of the immigration hall. On some occasions the queue has stretched to the point where non-EEA and EEA passengers become mixed,” a spokesman said.

“On these occasions we measure from the point at which the queues are separated into EEA and non-EEA passengers. We acknowledge that this means there may be occasions on which passengers wait longer than the measured time.”

Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, rounded on the Government. "These latest figures confirm what passengers already know – the immigration minister doesn't even know what is happening at our airports and the borders fiasco continues,” she said.

Damian Green promised everyone in April he was going to sort the queues and staff all the immigration desks at peak times in the summer.

“Despite the weather summer is here, the Olympics are days away and yet the Home Secretary and Immigration Minister still haven't sorted this out.

"Theresa May is in danger of turning the Borders Force into a borders farce. First the Home Secretary cut over 900 border officers then the Home Office re-employ them in a panic or put undertrained new recruits onto the front line wasting extra taxpayers money too.”

However this was disputed by a Home Office spokesman.

“This is simply not true. The Immigration Minister said we would provide extra staff for busy periods this summer and ensure all desks are fully manned during the peak Olympic arrival period and during the Games. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”

SOURCE



14 July, 2012

Sabbath



13 July, 2012

Immigration from Central America Skyrockets

Deported from the United States after years working construction in New Jersey, Hector Augusto Lopez decided to rebuild his life in his hometown in eastern Honduras.

He found a steady job in a shoe store in Catacamas. Then, in March, he watched horrified as robbers shot three customers to death before his eyes. Soon after, he decided to make the hard and dangerous journey north again.

"In Honduras there is a lot of violence, a lot of robberies and a lot of poverty," Lopez, 28, said as he waited to jump a cargo train just outside Mexico City on a recent afternoon. "There is no future there."

Half a block away, dozens more U.S.-bound Central American migrants waited outside an overflowing one-story, crammed shelter, napping on pieces of cardboard, wrapping themselves in garbage bags against the cold and trading stories about their journeys north.

While the number of Mexicans heading to the U.S. has dropped dramatically, a surge of Central American migrants is making the 1,000-mile northbound journey this year, fueled in large part by the rising violence brought by the spread of Mexican drug cartels. Other factors, experts say, are an easing in migration enforcement by Mexican authorities, and a false perception that Mexican criminal gangs are not preying on migrants as much as they had been.

Central American migration remains small compared to the numbers of Mexicans still headed north, but their steeply rising numbers speak starkly to the violence and poverty at home. The perils of the journey have pushed smuggling fees as high as $7,000, as much as double the earlier rates, for a trip that takes weeks, or even months for those delayed by robberies, health problems or difficulties finding transportation.

Honduras, with a population of 7 million, had the world's highest homicide rate in 2010, with 6,200 killings, or 82.1 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. That's up from 57 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2008. Neighboring El Salvador had 66 homicides per 100,000 in 2010. The U.S., by comparison, saw about 5 homicides per 100,000 people.

"The reality is that a lot of Mexicans have sort of given up looking for work in the U.S. and have started to return home but for Central Americans the conditions may be even more desperate that the ones we're seeing in Mexico," said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

About 56,637 non-Mexican migrants, most of them Central Americans, were detained by the U.S. Border Patrol along the border with Mexico between October and May. That's more than double the 27,561 detained in the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, the number of Mexican migrants caught at the U.S. southern border decreased 7 percent this fiscal year, to 188,467.

More HERE





Attorneys warn Obama's deferred prosecution program could backfire on illegal immigrants

Arizonans who apply for the president’s deferred prosecution program for some illegal immigrants could end up having the information they provide later used to deport them, some attorneys warned Thursday.

The lawyers, all specialists in immigration law, announced they would be providing free legal help through community organizations around the state to those who would qualify to be allowed to remain in this country for the time being. That generally includes those who were brought here before turning 16 and are not yet 30.
But each attorney who spoke at a Phoenix press conference said he or she will not specifically advise anyone who seeks help to apply.

“There is absolutely a risk,” said Regina Jefferies — the biggest of which is that Barack Obama will lose the election in November and Mitt Romney will rescind the directive that created the program.

And Jefferies said it is the job of lawyers to explain that risk, along with possible benefits, allowing those affected to make their own decisions.

But Jose Penalosa said he thinks it’s a risk worth taking.
Penalosa said he doubts that Romney would immediately repeal the program. And even if a new president did, Penalosa said the sheer number of people involved would make deportation proceedings unlikely.

And Daniel Rodriguez, who admitted to having been brought to this country illegally as a 7-year-old, said he intends to apply despite the danger.  “Every day I take a risk,” he said. “I take a risk going to school, I take a risk hanging out with my friends, I take a risk in everything that I do because anything can eventually lead to me being deported. So this is not necessarily a new or greater risk for me.”

The Obama administration announced last month the government will be using its discretion not to pursue those who are under 30, arrived in this country before turning 16, have no felony record or serious misdemeanors, have resided here continuously for at least five years as of the date of the announcement, and are currently in school, have graduated from high school or obtained an equivalency diploma, or are honorably discharged veterans.

Those eligible can seek what amounts to a two-year deferment of any prosecution for being in this country illegally, a deferment that is infinitely renewable. They also will be given permission to work legally in the United States.

Homeland Security officials pegged the number eligible at about 800,000. But the Migration Policy Institute, working with the guidelines as announced by the administration, figures the number at closer to 1.4 million, with 50,000 presumed to be in Arizona.

The move falls short of the DREAM Act — short for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act — which Congress has so far failed to approve. That measure actually would provide a path to citizenship for those brought to this country as children if they meet other qualifications.

More HERE



12 July, 2012

Border control offices being "deactivated"

The U.S. Border Patrol office in Riverside will be shut down in six months in what federal officials say is part of a wider effort to "more effectively" utilize resources -- a claim that a citizens' advocacy group today called a cover for the Obama administration's real motive to avoid enforcing immigration laws.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, around year's end, the Riverside CBP station -- in operation since 1967 -- will be "deactivated" and its nine agents likely transferred to nearby offices.

The Riverside office was among nine CBP stations placed on a closure list released last week. The others are Abilene, Texas; Amarillo, Texas; Billings, Mont.; Dallas; Lubbock, Texas; San Angelo, Texas; San Antonio; and Twin Falls, Idaho.

The CBP's Southwest Border media affairs chief, Bill Brooks, released a statement saying the closures are part of a plan to "better align operations."

"In order to accomplish its mission more efficiently and to use its personnel more effectively, Customs and Border Protection has increasingly concentrated its resources in the immediate border areas," Brooks said. "These deactivations are consistent with the strategic goal of securing America's borders, and our objective of increasing and sustaining the certainty of arrest of those trying to enter our country illegally.

"By re-deploying and reallocating resources at or near the border, CBP will maximize the effectiveness of its enforcement mandate and align our investments with our mission," he continued. "Though agents would no longer be located in these areas, the Border Patrol intends to maintain strong and meaningful law enforcement partnerships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement agencies in these areas through continuing to actively share intelligence and information."

The Riverside office is one of four in the CBP's El Centro sector, which encompasses all of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, as well as portions of Imperial, Los Angeles and San Diego counties.

CBP Supervising Agent Armando Garcia told City News Service that in the fiscal year ending September 2011, the El Centro sector made roughly 31,000 apprehensions, nabbing suspected illegal aliens, drug smugglers and other lawbreakers.

Garcia declined to comment on what impact "deactivating" the Riverside office might have on enforcement operations in the region.

Ira Mehlman, with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told CNS that the decision to close the CBP office in Riverside tracks with the Obama administration's "overall policy of non-enforcement of our nation's immigration laws."

"For the last three-plus years, the administration has taken a position that says: 'If you come here illegally, it's no big deal; just don't come here and commit a serious crime.' They have dismantled any kind of meaningful enforcement. The country's immigration policy should be to protect the interests of the American people."

Mehlman compared the CBP's closures to "eliminating a second line of defense."

"These stations have agents who are stopping illegal aliens, drug smugglers and others on their way to the interior of the country," he said. "You can't stop everybody at the border. Think of it like football. Would you put all of your offense or defense at the line of scrimmage?"

Mehlman said the closures, the president's signing of an executive order last month suspending deportations of some undocumented immigrants who are under 30 years old and legal challenges to state laws cracking down on illegal immigration send the wrong message.

"They're saying if a person can get past the first line of defense at the border, they're home free and can stay here as long as they don't commit a serious crime," he said.

In the past several years, the Department of Homeland Security has initiated multiple nationwide sweeps to catch criminal undocumented aliens, netting thousands of arrests. Mehlman applauded the actions but said they fail to address the core problem of preventing illegal entry to the United States.

The Riverside CBP office has come under fire in the past for what pro- immigrants' rights groups criticized as overzealous enforcement practices. In 2009, the Justice for Immigrants Coalition held protests outside the station, displaying videos of raids in which agents made random detentions and chased people into homes and markets to arrest them.

The group alleged the Riverside-based agents were trying to meet monthly arrest quotas, which the CBP adamantly denied.

SOURCE





Fight Gangs by Enforcing Immigration rules

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announces that Chicago police will not in most cases assist federal authorities in the enforcement of immigration laws.

Behind the disputes in Illinois is a federal program called Secure Communities, under which local police and jail authorities share fingerprints with federal immigration agents of everyone they book. The Obama administration has rapidly expanded the program across the country, with Illinois being one of only two states — the other is Alabama — where it has not been put into effect.

Many immigrant organizations have bitterly resisted the program, saying it erodes trust between their communities and the local police. A coalition of groups on Tuesday announced a national campaign to try to persuade more localities to ban or restrict the program.

Mr. Emanuel did not pose his initiative as a challenge to Mr. Obama. Rather he laid blame on Congress for inaction on immigration. The City Council will consider the ordinance this month.

Mr. Emanuel and police officials have been under fire for a gang problem in Chicago, withhomicides up 39 percent from a year ago. The mayor said the proposed ordinance would encourage some immigrants to help the police without fear of being deported. “If you’re a good citizen, immigration status is not a pause button for you to call the police department,” he said.

But wait.

We're talking here about arrested illegals. These are not "good citizens" (or even, hem, good non-citizens). They have come within the ambit of law enforcement by violating some law: drunk driving for example. It's then and only then that police run the check to see whether the arrested person might have violated other laws too. It's a lot more efficient way to proceed than waiting until after the arrested person has macheted somebody to death. As the Center for Immigration Studies points out:

Immigrant gang members rarely make a living as gangsters. They typically work by day in construction, auto repair, farming, landscaping and other low-skill occupations, often using false documents.

As with New York City's gun checks at traffic stops in the 1990s, immigration status checks upon arrest enable law enforcement to change the environment that supports widespread criminality. CIS again:

A very large share of immigrant gang members are illegal aliens and removable aliens. Federal sources estimate that 60 to 90 percent of the members of MS-13, the most notorious immigrant gang, are illegal aliens. In one jurisdiction studied, Northern Virginia, 30 to 40 percent of the gang task force case load were removable aliens.

It's not rocket science.

Stricter enforcement = fewer illegals.

Fewer illegals = less gang violence.

SOURCE



11 July, 2012

Frustrated Greeks fed up with illegal influx

 A leading human rights organization is urging Greece's new government to take "urgent action" to curb an "alarming" increase in attacks against Asian and African immigrants, including brutal assaults by gangs on teenage boys and pregnant women.

In a 100-page report issued Tuesday, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said xenophobic attacks, including stabbings and serious beatings, in the capital Athens have increased over the past two years, leaving dozens of confirmed victims and possibly many more.

It called on the government to create a national strategy to combat race-related crime, including obligatory training for police officers, and surveillance methods used to fight terrorism.

"It is very shocking to see that scale of violence, of that frequency and that brutality in a European country ... People face certainly the risk of an attack on a daily basis," Judith Sunderland, the lead researcher and author of the report told The Associated Press.

"We spoke with 79 migrants and asylum seekers and out of those 59 had experienced some kind of an attack. And 51 had experienced an attack that caused actual harm. We are convinced this is the tip of the iceberg. Most people don't report the violence ... Undocumented migrants fear they will be arrested and deported," she said.

Greece, suffering a fifth year of recession, is the European Union's busiest transit point for illegal immigration. In Athens, many immigrants live crammed in small apartments in squalid conditions, in central neighborhoods that have seen a sharp rise in crime since the financial crisis began in late 2009.

Afghan immigrant Razia Sharife, a single mother of three, said her basement apartment had been attacked four times in January.

"They wear black clothes and hoods," she was quoted as saying in the report, describing one attack. "At first they threw bottles and then they broke the glass with stones and threw stones inside and then they started kicking the door."

Human Rights Watch issued the report titled "Hate on the Streets – Xenophobic Violence in Greece" following six months of research in Athens and other Greek cities.

Sunderland said a Somali man who acted as an interpreter for the rights group was himself the victim of a racist attack last month, when he was chased and beaten by five men who broke his hand.

"I can't find another word besides shocking – it really took me aback ... One woman attacked was six months pregnant and holding her infant daughter. Another woman's hand was ripped open after being hit by men on a motorcycle, by a bat with nails in it," she said, noting that several of the victims interviewed were school-age boys.

Racially-motivated attacks, including raids on immigrants' homes and stores as well as streets assaults, have surged in the past two years, and often follow public outcry over a violent crime blamed on immigrants, the report said. Attacks most frequently occurred in or near Athens and the western city of Patras.

"Xenophobic violence has reached alarming proportions in Greece," the report said. "The Greek authorities must take urgent action to crack down on this alarming phenomenon."

In recent general elections, the far-right Golden Dawn party – which uses aggressive rhetoric against immigrants, and has been described by political opponents as neo-Nazi – won 18 seats in the 300-member parliament.

Golden Dawn spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, during a weekend debate in parliament, described the country's immigration problem as part of a plan by Greece's enemies to it turn into a "wretched protectorate inhabited by sub-humans with no conscience, country or culture."  He called for land-mines to be laid along the country's borders.

Golden Dawn has denied frequent allegations by the victims' of attacks that it has any involvement in the violence.

Sunderland, who is meeting this week with Greece's top prosecutor and senior government law enforcement and justice officials, said Human Rights Watch was concerned that extremist rhetoric was entering mainstream politics.

She called for stronger public condemnation of hate crimes, the use of domestic intelligence services to track violent ultra-right groups, and financial support from the E.U. to help Greece deal with the problem.

"The state should not be allowing gangs of thugs to mete out vigilante violence in its city streets," she said.  "We certainly think all of Europe has to pay attention to what's happening in Greece.

SOURCE





 Recent posts at CIS  below

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

CIS Publication

1. How Employers Cheat America’s Aging By Hiring Foreign Workers (Memorandum)

Television Appearance

2. Jon Feere Discusses SB1070 Supreme Court Ruling (Video)

Blogs

3. Amnesties Are Forever: A New Jersey Case History (Blog)

4. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (6): The Consequences of Stalemated Wars of Attrition (Blog)

5. Illegal Alien Youths at Risk, Redux (Blog)

6. WTHR Continues Report on Illegal Alien Tax Loophole (Blog)

7. Within DHS, ICE Pressies Ignore USCIS Accomplishment (Blog)

8. States Can Address the Negative Impacts of Illegal Immigration Using Tools They Already Have (Blog)

9. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (5): The Supreme Court Speaks … but in Tongues (Blog)

10. The Forgotten Americans (Blog)

11. USCIS Quietly and Slowly Closed a Small Loophole in the Immigration System (Blog)

12. Here's a Switch – Marriage Fraud in Which the Alien is the Victim (Blog)

13. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (4): Court of Last Resort? (Blog)



10 July, 2012

Now it's a U-turn on student visas: British PM wants to relax rules preventing university migrants

David Cameron is preparing to make a U-turn over foreign students after pressure from Liberal Democrat MPs.

Currently, non-EU students – arriving at a rate of 225,000 a year – are included in immigration statistics to reflect the way they add hugely to the population.

Ministers, who have pledged to reduce net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’, have been working on plans to slash dramatically the number of student visas given out.  Research shows that up to a quarter of them are not ‘genuine’ students.

But Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable, supported by universities and some figures at No 10, instead wants students to be removed from the immigration figures altogether.

This would mean there was no longer pressure on the Government to get a grip on non-EU student visas, which have been subject to rampant abuse in recent years.

The Home Office has been resisting the idea, which immigration minister Damian Green called ‘absurd’.

But in a move which will enrage Tory backbenchers, it emerged last night that Mr Cameron is considering siding with Mr Cable, who says foreign students are worth billions to the economy.

There is a powerful faction inside Downing Street, understood to include Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, urging the Prime Minister to head in this direction.

A source at No. 10 reportedly said Mr Cameron ‘understands’ their arguments and is ‘definitely considering a change of policy’.

The move, which follows U-turns on the Budget and others including petrol tax and public sector pay, would provoke a fierce response from campaign groups and backbench MPs.

The Migrationwatch think-tank says removing student visas from the calculation would ‘destroy public confidence in the Government’s immigration policy’.

Instead of bringing immigration under control, all ministers would be doing is reclassifying what constitutes a migrant.

The row comes after Home Office research showed that as many as one in four foreign students allowed into Britain may not be genuine.

Interviews with non-EU applicants revealed more than 25 per cent were not credible, but immigration officials were forced to let them in regardless.

The highest number of bogus entrants come from the Indian sub-continent, Burma, the Philippines and Nigeria.

Staff were left hamstrung three years ago when Labour stripped them of powers to block suspected bogus students.  Home Secretary Theresa May will today restore that discretion amid fears the move has created a huge loophole in border controls.

A Migrationwatch report found that foreign students are adding 75,000 to the population every year by not going home at the end of their courses. Some 25,000 of these remain here illegally.

The remainder either take jobs or are given permission to settle down with a partner or undertake further studies.

Last night, a Border Force spokesman said: ‘We are clear that overseas students should remain part of the net migration figures.’

SOURCE  






Tax Benefits for Hiring Foreign Workers Add to Shortages in Trust Funds for Elderly

Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Funds Lose Over $1.5 Billion

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) provides the first published estimates of shortfalls to government trust funds for senior citizens resulting from the hiring of certain categories of foreign workers. In the Center's recent study, How Employers Cheat America's Aging by Hiring Foreign Workers, CIS fellow David North examines how American employers and over half a million alien workers avoid paying payroll taxes to the detriment of American retirees and disabled workers.

The report is online here.

By hiring certain classes of aliens, American employers and their foreign workers can avoid paying taxes to the Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) trust funds. Employers save at least 8.45 percent of the total payroll, undermining the incentive to hire American citizens or legal residents. While employers are just playing by the rules outlined in legislation, it is clear that the legislation is written to benefit the non-citizen workers and their employers.

'We have in these programs a double whammy: a government program that subsidizes employers to hire alien workers, rather than resident ones, on one hand, and, on the other hand, the routine siphoning of moneys that should be going to the trust funds for the aging, moneys that instead wind up in the pockets of the foreign workers and their employers,' North comments.

'Although some may contend that foreign workers who won't remain in the country long enough to benefit from these trust funds shouldn't be required to contribute, there's no rationale for the employer benefiting,' said Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. 'These trust funds are losing over $1.5 billion a year as a direct result of these foreign-worker programs. This is obviously a small part of the shortfall faced by these programs, but there is no excuse for retaining these loopholes carved out by Congress and special interests.'

Mr. North's research provides calculations on trust fund losses for each of the relevant foreign worker programs, including Summer Work Travel, foreign students working off campus, cultural workers, and foreign college graduates working on OPT permits. The latter category permits foreign workers to stay for as long as two years and five months after graduation.

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



9 July, 2012

Immigration ruling nixes state sovereignty

Americans have no recourse when president disregards the law

The Supreme Court twice last week abandoned the Constitution to give new powers to the federal government and the Obama administration. The question for conservatives and patriots is: What can be done about it?

In Monday’s Arizona ruling, the majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, creates a totally novel and illogical doctrine of federal pre-emption. In Thursday’s Obamacare ruling, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. goes through unprecedented contortions to effectively rewrite the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as a taxation measure, not an unconstitutional expansion of the commerce clause.

It will strike many Americans as especially noxious and foolhardy to give Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and his Justice Department lawyers such broad discretionary powers of law enforcement when Congress is moving toward removing him from office.

There also is a weird irony and alarming disconnect at play when the Supreme Court says the executive branch may defer to the feelings and interests of foreign governments in enforcing our immigration laws at the same time the Justice Department is under investigation for running an arms-smuggling operation in flagrant violation of Mexico’s sovereignty.

The Arizona ruling is overshadowed by the more far-reaching Obamacare ruling, but it has implications far beyond immigration law. That ruling looks into the constitutional history of pre-emption doctrine and discovers new territory never mapped before. States are forbidden not only to enact laws that go againstfederal law in the realm of immigration, but to enact laws that are totally consistent with federal law and, in fact, support and enhance federal enforcement.

According to the Supreme Court’s ruling, the federal government is justified in not enforcing a law - and forbidding a state government from such enforcement as well - if its enforcement might trespass on the federal government’s foreign-policy interests. This doctrine opens up a huge can of worms for law enforcement generally, and not just immigration law enforcement.

Mexico and other nations in the people-export business are objecting to enforcement of U.S. immigration law because it adversely affects Mexican nationals living unlawfully in our country. The Supreme Court says this is a legitimate concern of the federal government and therefore a legitimate reason to not enforce laws. To have this idea codified in a Supreme Court ruling, to borrow a phrase from Justice Antonin Scalia, truly boggles the mind.

There are legitimate and well-understood grounds for federal pre-emption when a state legislates in an area which either the Constitution or Congress has claimed for exclusive federal jurisdiction. States cannot establish their own currency or undertake diplomatic relations with foreign nations. But in many areas, Congress has legislated without claiming exclusive jurisdiction, and even when it is claimed, state laws that merely supplement federal law always have been deemed constitutional. Thus, Justice Kennedy had to resort to a tortured reading of congressional intent to reach his decision in the Arizona case.

An example is Justice Kennedy’s analysis of the federal law requiring aliens to register with the federal immigration agency and always carry their alien-registration document. He says that because Congress has legislated on alien registration, states cannot make laws in that area.

But Arizona’s S.B. 1070 in no way contradicts the federal law on alien registration. Arizona has not attempted to set up a different or conflicting alien-registration system. Arizona merely said it is a violation of state law not to have those documents in your possession and police officers have a right to ask to see those documents. The court said only the federal government can enforce that law, not state governments. This prohibition goes far beyond the language found in the law.

The court’s Arizona ruling gives not only the Obama administration but any future president the discretion to disregard any federal law. Gone is the section of the president’s oath of office to faithfully enforce the laws to the best of his ability, “so help me God.”

As Justice Scalia said in his scathing dissent, which he read aloud from the bench on Monday morning, this ruling effectively puts a nail in the coffin of state sovereignty. It also empowers and emboldens every nation on earth to expand its export of people to our shores and across our borders.

SOURCE   (See the original for links)




Dutch populists suffer, economy displaces immigration

 As the Netherlands heads for a general election, barely a day passes without a mention of "Henk and Ingrid", or Mr and Mrs Average, in a political debate that has revolved around the economy and the euro zone debt crisis.

The invention of populist politician Geert Wilders - who heads the anti-immigration, anti-euro Freedom Party - this mythical couple attracted a different kind of notoriety after a real Dutch Henk, with a wife called Ingrid, killed a Turkish immigrant, prompting commentators to warn that populism can backfire.

Until now, voters have been receptive to homespun stories about the imaginary hardworking couple who, Wilders says, are fed up with Muslim immigration, and lately with the cost to Dutch taxpayers of bailouts resulting from the euro zone debt crisis.

Wilders' anti-immigration, anti-Muslim rhetoric propelled his party into third place in the 2010 election and gave him real power and influence as the minority government's ally in parliament. It was Wilders who brought that government down in April when he refused to support budget cuts to reduce the deficit to meet EU targets.

"The cultural issues that dominated from 2006 are off the agenda since the economic crisis really hit us hard in Europe," said Andre Krouwel, a political scientist at VU University Amsterdam.

Krouwel says the tragic story of Henk and Ingrid highlights the limits to the kind of opportunistic populism that he said had passed its high tide in the country.

Henk was implicated in the apparent racist killing of a Turkish immigrant in the poor, post-industrial town of Almelo.

According to the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, a long-running conflict between Henk, 61, his wife Ingrid, 59, and the family of a Turkish immigrant named Aziz Kara, 64, came to a head last Saturday. During an argument, Henk threw Kara to the ground. Kara went into a coma and later died.

The sad irony of an apparent racist killing being committed by two people sharing the names of Wilders' mythical populist couple has been widely noted, furnishing material for comedians in an Amsterdam club on Friday night.

Henk and Ingrid used to refer to Kara's family as "the mafia," putting on Dutch music to drown out their Turkish music, and complaining that the Turkish family, popular in the neighborhood, was "spying on" them, the newspaper reported.

"This is the risk of a strategy that's based on imagery and issue-ownership. They connect with the personal lives of people, but you run the great risk of someone turning up with exactly the name and the position," said Krouwel, who compared Wilders' misfortune to that which befell John McCain when he took up the cause of "Joe the Plumber" in the 2008 U.S. presidential elections.

"It's a cynical thing when you take up someone like Joe the Plumber, and then he turns out to be a racist idiot."

The latest opinion polls show the Freedom Party would win only 20 seats in the 150-seat parliament, down from 24 in the 2010 election. This week in a new round of defections, two more lawmakers resigned from Wilders' party, accusing him of running it like a North Korean-style "politburo", and leaving it with just 21 members of parliament.

A survey published on Sunday by the pollster Maurice de Hond also suggests cultural populism may have had its day. Only a fifth of respondents supported Wilders' call to exclude Turkey from NATO, but more than half supported his proposals for cutting value-added tax and fuel duty.

SOURCE



8 July, 2012

California Senate passes the TRUST Act

The California State Senate passed Assembly Bill 1081 Thursday, a piece of legislation that limits local law enforcement to act on the immigration status of an individual.

Under the new legislation, local police officers would be limited to refer only those individuals convicted of serious felonies, to immigration agencies; and would no longer have authority to detain lower-level offenders on their undocumented status.

The initiative also known as the TRUST Act was written following the logic that requiring local law enforcement to check the immigration status of an arrestee results in a misuse of resources and in an erosion of trust.

The author of AB1081, San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano said that the state’s Senate vote shows "that California cannot afford to be another Arizona."

Originally, AB1081 -which passed the state Assembly by a 47-26 vote and the Senate with a 21-13 party line vote- was intended to counter "Secure Communities," a federal program that shares with immigration officials, the fingerprints of people arrested by local police agencies.

“The vote recognizes that S-Communities is sabotaging our public safety,” Ammiano said. “The TRUST Act is the solution we need to begin rebuilding the confidence that our local law enforcement worked so hard to build, but that ICE has shattered."

Critics of the TRUST Act say California will turn into a ‘sanctuary’ state, a non-legal term used as an adjective for locations that serve as refuge for, and that protect illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, supporters of AB1081 hope to make it a national model and expect Governor Jerry Brown to sign it in the following days.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ratified a provision of controversial Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, which requires police officers to check the status of people they stop for an unrelated cause, if there is reasonable suspicion the person is illegally in the country.

AB1081l is being called the "anti-Arizona" law, a reference to SB1070, also known as Arizona anti-illegal immigration law.

SOURCE





'Illegal immigrant' is the uncomfortable truth

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.

What's in a name? For my friends and simpaticos in the immigration reform community, enough to go ballistic at the mere mention of the phrase: "illegal immigrant."

First, there's enough to be afraid of in this world -- from big government to monsters under the bed. We shouldn't be afraid of words. And when it comes time to declare a word or phrase offensive, we should be careful to do so judiciously and not go overboard.

That's my advice to my very good friend and business partner, Charles Garcia, for whom I have great affection and tremendous respect. He's my brother from another mother. That's true even on the rare occasion when he's wrong. And that's the case this week now that Charlie has written, in a thought-provoking column for CNN.com, that the phrase "illegal immigrant" is "biased" and "racially offensive." He also implied that it's a "slur" and -- borrowing language from George Orwell -- a "worn-out and useless phrase."

Actually, it's none of the above. The phrase is accurate. It's the shoe that fits. It's reality. And, as is often the case with reality, it's hard for some people to accept.

Apparently, that includes people like Justice Sonia Sotomayor who, in her first opinion on the Supreme Court -- in a 2009 case called Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter, which involved a business accused of employing illegal immigrants -- used the term "undocumented immigrant." According to The New York Times, this was the first time that a Supreme Court justice had used that phrase. Other justices had previously gone with "illegal immigrant."

Undocumented immigrant? Really? That's politically correct, but it's also absurd. Most of these people have plenty of documents. A woman who makes a living cleaning homes in my neighborhood once explained to me that she had a drawer full of fake green cards and IDs saying she was -- pick one -- a native-born U.S. citizen, legal resident or exchange student. Many illegal immigrants have Matricula ID cards issued by Mexican consulates, foreign passports, drivers licenses in some states and phony Social Security cards where all nine digits are "0's."

This isn't about documents. It has been my experience that many of those who have trouble with the phrase "illegal immigrant" are really troubled by something deeper -- the fact that, at the end of the day, by supporting a pathway to earned legal status, they're defending a group of people who engaged in unlawful activity. For some folks, this is messy business. So they try to sanitize it by changing the language.

As a columnist, I don't mind messy. I have never used "illegal aliens," and I never will. And I don't use "illegal" as a noun. But, like many other journalists, including those at CNN, I do use "illegal immigrant." And I refuse to accept that doing so is tantamount to a hate crime. I don't want to demean anyone. But, as someone who makes his living with words, I'd also prefer not to degrade the English language.

Besides, in more than 20 years of writing about illegal immigrants -- oops, there, I said it again -- I've been accused of defending lawbreakers thousands of times. I plead guilty as charged. I don't condone illegal immigration, but I do often defend illegal immigrants who are unfairly exploited, picked on and blamed for everything from crime to pollution to the quality of public schools.

As Charlie correctly points out in the part of the column with which I agree, a lot of that nonsense comes from the Republican Party and shameful politicians who think that raising our blood pressure over illegal immigration is a shortcut to helping them raise their poll numbers and raise funds from contributors. I've spanked many of these officials before, and I look forward to the next opportunity.

For the record, I'm not against high blood pressure. I've been known to raise it myself. I think that, if people are upset that our immigration system is broken, they have a right to be angry. But I also think they should direct their anger at government and politicians, and not at the immigrants themselves.

I also think that illegal immigrants are more of a positive than a negative. They make a contribution to the U.S. economy, do jobs Americans won't do, replenish the American spirit with hope and optimism and often raise good kids with a work ethic and strong traditional values that put the native-born to shame. They're not a liability. They're an asset.

But, c'mon. These people are not saints. With the exception of DREAM Act kids involuntarily brought here by their parents, these people did something wrong. Illegal immigrants either overstayed a visa or crossed a border without authorization. That was wrong. Then many of them doubled down on the misdeed by using fake documents to procure employment or not paying income taxes on money earned, even though the federal government has set up an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number that allows illegal immigrants to pay taxes.

If that sounds harsh, blame my upbringing. I'm the grandson of a Mexican immigrant who came to the United States legally during the Mexican Revolution and my father spent 36 years as a cop. It's in my DNA to not make excuses for wrongdoing.

My friends in the immigration reform community need to get over their uneasiness and stop sugar coating who these people are and what they've done to get here. We can't fix the problem of illegal immigration until we deal with it honesty and candidly.

As Charlie mentioned, Justice Anthony Kennedy has an interesting take on illegal immigration, which he incorporated into the majority opinion in the recent Supreme Court decision striking down most of the Arizona immigration law. Kennedy wrote: "As a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain present in the United States."

True. But "present" doesn't just happen. The estimated 10 million illegal immigrants who are unlawfully in the United States didn't just appear one day like the genie out of Aladdin's lamp. Like the old saying goes: "If you see a turtle resting on a fence post, you can be sure someone put it there. It didn't get there by itself."

At some point in time, again with the exception of DREAM'ers, someone did something bad. That doesn't make them bad people. But they broke the law. We're not talking about criminal law, and so they're not "criminals." Immigration law is based in civil law, and that's why those who break it get deported and not imprisoned. But these people are still lawbreakers, and -- by definition -- illegal immigrants.

SOURCE



7 July, 2012

Sabbath



6 July, 2012

Obama above the law  -- and Arizona must not obey it either

By Charles Krauthammer

 Though overshadowed by the shocking Supreme Court decision on health care, the court's Arizona immigration decision, issued three days earlier, remains far more significant than appreciated. It was generally viewed as mixed or ambiguous because the Justice Department succeeded in striking down three of the law's provisions. However, regarding the law's central and most controversial element -- requiring officers to inquire into the immigration status of anyone picked up for some other violation -- the ruling was definitive, indeed unanimous.

No liberal-conservative divide here. Not a single justice found merit in the administration's claim that this "show me your papers" provision constituted an impermissible pre-emption of federal authority.

On what grounds unconstitutional? Presumably because state officials would be asking about the immigration status of all, rather than adhering to the federal enforcement priorities regarding which illegal aliens would not be subject to deportation.

For example, under the Obama administration's newly promulgated regulations, there'll be no more deportation of young people brought here illegally as children (and meeting certain chronological criteria). Presumably, therefore, the Arizona law is invalid because an officer might be looking into the status of a young person the feds now classify as here legally.

Beyond being logically ridiculous, this argument is "an astounding assertion of federal executive power," wrote Justice Samuel Alito in a concurrence. The Obama Justice Department is suggesting that "a state law may be pre-empted, not because it conflicts with a federal statute or regulation, but because it is inconsistent with a federal agency's current enforcement priorities. Those priorities, however, are not law. They are nothing more than agency policy."

And there's the rub: the Obama administration's inability to distinguish policy from law. This becomes particularly perverse regarding immigration when, as Justice Antonin Scalia points out, what the administration delicately calls its priorities is quite simply a determination not to enforce the law as passed.

This is what makes so egregious the Obama claim that Arizona is impermissibly undermining federal law. "To say, as the court does," writes Scalia regarding those parts of the law struck down by the majority, "that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the president declines to enforce boggles the mind."

Consider this breathtaking cascade: An administration violates its constitutional duty to execute the law by deliberately refusing to enforce it. It then characterizes its nonenforcement as simply establishing priorities. It then tries to strike down a state law on immigration on the grounds that it contradicts federal law -- by actually trying to enforce it!

The logic is circular, oxymoronic and the very definition of executive overreach. During the Bush-43 years, we were repeatedly treated to garment-rending about the imperial presidency, to major hyperventilation about the "unitary executive." Yet the current administration's imperiousness has earned little comparable attention.

Obama adopts a policy of major nonenforcement of the immigration law -- a variant of the very Dream Act he could not get through even a Democratic Congress -- and promulgates it unilaterally, while his Justice Department claims the right to invalidate state laws that might in some way impinge on that very nonenforcement.

The Republican presidential campaign centers on the ineffectiveness of this administration: failure at home, passivity abroad. A fine electoral strategy. But as citizens we should be grateful. Given the administration's extravagant ambitions, incompetence is its saving grace.

SOURCE






Border shambles lets 150,000 migrants overstay their British visas as officials have no idea if they are still living here illegally

A new backlog of more than 150,000 immigration cases has been uncovered by inspectors in the latest border shambles.

The total – which is about the same as the population of Oxford – is increasing by nearly 100 every day.

It is made up of migrants whose visas allowing them to stay in Britain have expired and who have been refused permission to stay on.

But border officials have no idea if they have actually left the country or are still living here illegally.

And inspectors found the beleaguered UK Border Agency has no plan for finding out how many remain, or taking action to remove those who are still here.

In 40 per cent of cases examined by inspectors, the migrants had not even been sent a letter telling them they must quit Britain.

The 'significant' new backlog emerged in a report by John Vine, the chief inspector of the UK Border Agency.

The report, published today, revealed that in mid-December, the total number of cases in the Migration Refusal Pool across the UK stood at 159,313.  In the preceding two months, it had increased by 5,492 – or nearly 100 cases a day.

Cases put in the pool were foreign students or workers here legally who applied for their visas to be extended but were refused, and told they must leave within 28 days.

Mr Vine said urgent action was needed to tackle it because, currently, tracking down and removing such illegal migrants was not seen as a priority.'

'The agency does not know how many of these individuals have left the country or who are waiting to be removed,' he said. 'I also saw no evidence that there is a clear plan in place for the agency to deal with this stream of work to ensure this does not become another backlog.'

Home Office officials last night refused to say what the total is now, saying they would not provide a 'running commentary'.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the think-tank MigrationWatch, said: 'It is vital to the credibility of the whole immigration system that people who have no right to be in Britain should be removed.   'There clearly needs to be a much greater focus on this. It is absurd, for example, that people who overstay should not even be contacted to be told to go.'

'I am astonished that the UKBA has no idea where 159,000 individuals – the size of a city like Oxford – have gone since their application was rejected.'

The report looked specifically at immigration officials in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, where immigration officials massively underestimated the number of such cases in their area.

They put the total at between 400 to 600 but the real total was 1,893, more than three times higher.  A detailed examination of a sample of cases revealed barely half were recorded as having left the country, and only one had been forcibly removed.  Others had launched new appeals or could not be removed because of human rights or legal barriers.

In 40 per cent of cases migrants were not even sent the legal letters telling them they must leave the country.

The report said: 'The issue is a national problem. We believe the agency needs to be much more pro-active in providing a clear strategic direction for its staff to follow. This should stop the already significant backlog from increasing and ensure steps are taken to reduce it.'

Immigration Minister Damian Green said: 'Under the last government there was no effective strategy in place to ensure migrants left at the end of their time in the UK.

'The UK Border Agency is now working through a group of potential over-stayers to identify those who have not left. We are also working closely with other government departments to create a hostile environment which makes it much harder for migrants to live in the UK illegally.'

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, said: 'I am astonished that the UKBA has no idea where 159,000 individuals – the size of a city like Oxford – have gone since their application was rejected. This is yet another group of cases we did not know about.'

SOURCE



5 July, 2012

No sex please.  We're Canadians

Canadian employers will be blocked from hiring temporary foreign workers in sex trade-related jobs under new rules announced by the Harper government Wednesday.

The changes are intended to prevent temporary foreign workers from taking employment as exotic dancers, with erotic massage parlours or escort services, or in any other field deemed "degrading" by the government.

While anti-human trafficking groups praised the move, the government also was criticized for going after an easy target and stoking societal stigmas about exotic dancers, rather than making policy based on empirical evidence.

"If you want to stop the exploitation, you bring the industry out of the shadows . . . This is creating more of an illicit market," said Chris Bruckert, a sex industry management researcher at the University of Ottawa.

"Closing the legal door is just going to make the (illegal) door more attractive."

The association representing licensed strip clubs nationwide said Wednesday it was looking at all options, including legal action, to reverse what it sees as a policy aimed at shutting down clubs.

"This is nothing more than political brownie points for their western, ultraconservative base," said Tim Lambrinos, executive director of the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada. "We're going to be challenging this in some way."

Effective immediately, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada will issue negative Labour Market Opinions, or LMOs, on all temporary foreign worker applications submitted from businesses linked to the sex industry, or "other businesses where the workplace presents a risk of sexual exploitation or degrading work."

The move will prevent those businesses from hiring temporary foreign workers.

"Businesses outside of these categories may also be included if there is reason to believe that temporary foreign workers are at risk of exploitation and abuse," Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said in Toronto.

The rules will get even tougher on July 14, when Citizenship and Immigration Canada will no longer process new work permit applications for temporary foreign workers linked to sex-trade related employment.

"We are relieved to learn the Conservatives have barred strip clubs and other adult services from using temporary foreign workers. We must continue to set up the necessary road blocks to prevent Canada from being on the trafficking circuit," said Bridget Perrier of the anti-trafficking group Sextrade 101 in a statement.

Right now, about 40 per cent of strip clubs in Canada hire temporary foreign workers, according to Lambrinos, a figure based on internal polling the association conducts with its members.

The association argues it needs foreign workers because there aren't enough Canadians willing take jobs as exotic dancers.

And strip club managers are more interested in hiring exotic dancers in Canada legally to avoid run-ins with the law, Bruckert said.

The number of exotic dancers entering Canada under the temporary foreign workers program has steadily fallen under the Harper government. Between 2006 and 2011, Citizenship and Immigration Canada issued 496 visas to exotic dancers, down from the 1,713 visas the Liberals issued between 2001 and 2005, according to government figures.

"The government cannot in good conscience continue to admit temporary foreign workers to work in businesses in sectors where there are reasonable grounds to suspect a risk of sexual exploitation," Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said in Calgary.

HRSDC figures show almost all exotic dancer applicants received extensions between 2007 and 2011, while new work permits have been given to eight per cent of applicants over the same period.

Kenney also said that as of July 28, open work permits issued to foreign workers that normally would allow them to work for any Canadian employer will see a new condition on the permit forbidding them from working in the sex industry.

SOURCE




Romney Won't Be 'Flip-Flopper' On Immigration, He Tells Murdoch

Mitt Romney will not modify the hard-line immigration stance he established during the Republican presidential primaries, the presumptive Republican nominee told supporters at a private meeting.

Politico reports that people at the meeting pushed Romney to counter President Barack Obama more aggressively on the issue. Obama recently bolstered his standing among Latinos, a demographic that overwhelmingly favors him over Romney, by announcing a new policy that will shield thousands of young immigrants from deportation and allow them to work legally.

"You have to take the fight to Obama on this," NewsCorp CEO Rupert Murdoch reportedly told Romney.

Romney noted that he has enlisted the campaign trail help of Marco Rubio, an ascendant young Cuban-American senator from Florida, but added that "I am not going to be a flip-flopper" on immigration even if some of the positions he took during the primaries hurt him.

As Romney sought to rebuff criticism that he was too moderate to be the Republican standardbearer, he aligned himself with the strict pro-enforcement elements of the party. He took on Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the architect of the controversial Arizona immigration law, as an informal adviser; advocated a policy of encouraging "self-deportation" and denounced several reform measures, from the DREAM Act to offering in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants, as "amnesty."

That appeared to serve him well in primaries dominated by more conservative voters, but his harsh rhetoric risks alienating moderates, not to speak of Latinos, in the general election. Romney has tread carefully, refusing to explicitly say he would repeal Obama's new policy and saying he would instead pursue comprehensive reform.

The contours of that reform emerged somewhat in a speech Romney delivered recently to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Romney offered some ideas to streamline immigrant worker programs, offer more green cards to foreign students who get advanced degrees, and ease limits on green cards for immigrants' spouses and minor children of permanent residents.

Romney also stressed enforcing immigration laws, promising to fortify border security, tighten workplace enforcement and focus on measures to "make legal immigration more attractive than illegal immigration." But he did not address what to do with the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

"I will address the problem of illegal immigration in a civil but resolute manner," Romney said. "We may not always agree, but when I make a promise to you, I will keep it."

SOURCE



4 July, 2012

Prosecutorial Indiscretion

On June 15, 2012, hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals living illegally in the United States turned on their television sets to hear that they had become eligible for (1) a renewable two-year deferral of removal from the country and (2) a work permit.

While this may seem like a big change for those immigrants, the focus here will not be on what it might do for them, but how it was done, and why.

How do you think it was done? Choose one of the following: (a) Congress passed a new law and the president signed it, (b) the Supreme Court struck down an existing law, (c) the president issued an executive order, or (d) none of the above.

If you chose (c), it would be understandable, as it was President Obama who announced this change in front of the cameras outside the White House. There was, however, no executive order. An executive order cannot be used to overturn an existing law. On September 28, 2011, President Obama told a group of Hispanic journalists that “this notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is not true. The fact of the matter is there are laws on the books I have to enforce.” The rest of the transcript is here

The correct answer is (d), none of the above, which leaves the question, “Then how?”

On June 15, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, sent a memo to three of her underlings directing them to “exercise prosecutorial discretion” in the cases of certain “low priority” illegal aliens, “effective immediately.” (Yes, she ordered them to exercise discretion.) The memo enumerates the criteria to be used to determine which illegal immigrants will get the deferrals and work permits. The memo is here

That’s right; it was done by interoffice memo.

It seems odd, doesn’t it? When I hear of prosecutorial discretion, I think of cases in which discrepancies in the chain of custody of a bag of pot lead the prosecutor not to bring charges or perhaps to drop charges, that sort of thing. But in this case, according to the June 15 New York Times, “more than 800,000 young people” are now eligible for deferrals and work permits because an unelected bureaucrat fired off a memo. Upon reading that, I had three thoughts: first, “That’s quite a few people.” Then, “That’s a pretty sweeping change.” And finally, “That’s some discretion.”

Much more HERE (The author argues that the USA is a scofflaw society generally)





Feds Begin Granting Legal Status to Illegal Immigrants under Obama’s Amnesty Edict

Federal immigration authorities have begun granting tentative legal status to illegal immigrants under President Obama's deportation halt - and in some cases are even ignoring the administration's eligibility rules to stop deportations for those who shouldn't qualify, according to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, said he's learned some illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. less than five years have had their deportations canceled, even though Mr. Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano had listed the five-year mark as one of their criteria.

Mr. Smith also obtained documents laying out how U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) officers should actively search for illegal immigrants who are "apparently eligible" to have their cases dropped. Those illegal immigrants then would be granted tentative status.

"President Obama is granting amnesty to illegal immigrants behind Americans' backs," Mr. Smith said. "Although administration officials told congressional offices that it would take 60 days to implement the president's amnesty plan, internal ICE documents show that illegal immigrants have already benefited from it, even though there are no standards in place."

Paper trail

The Washington Times reviewed the documents, which also include a memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that will judge most of these cases, and which said it's not taking applications until Aug. 15.

The agency didn't return a call seeking comment, but ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said the policy was always intended to apply immediately to illegal immigrants already in the deportation system - which are the ones ICE deals with.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will eventually put in place a more formal process for illegal immigrants to come forward and proactively head off deportation.

Ms. Christensen said ICE will end up with a relatively small share of the eventual cases, and their review is easier because the agency already had begun using broad prosecutorial discretion last year.

"ICE is only reviewing cases for deferred action of individuals that are currently in removal proceedings or who were/are part of the agency's larger prosecutorial discretion review," she wrote in an email.

Obama's new orders

Last month, Mr. Obama and Ms. Napolitano said they would unilaterally halt deportations for illegal immigrants who would have qualified for the Dream Act - legislation that never passed Congress but would have granted a path to citizenship to many illegal immigrants age 30 and younger.

To avoid deportation under the new rules, illegal immigrants would had to have been brought to the U.S. by age 16; graduated high school or earned an equivalency degree; not been convicted of major crimes; and been in the U.S. for at least five years.

Those granted a stay of deportation are given permission to work in the U.S. - which could lead to hundreds of thousands of new, legal workers entering the economy.

The program has come under fire from both sides. Some immigrant-rights activists have said they'd be reluctant to recommend illegal immigrants come forward, saying the program doesn't yet have the kinds of assurances they need.

Critics on the other side, meanwhile, say it's drawn too broadly. They also wonder what proof ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers will ask for. The ICE guidance Mr. Smith obtained doesn't lay out any standards for those documents, and he said that's an invitation to fraud.

He also said he has learned ICE has halted deportations for illegal immigrants the agency knows have been in the U.S. for less than five years.

"Amnesty has been granted to those who have been here for a shorter or even unknown period of time," Mr. Smith said.

Ms. Christensen, the ICE spokeswoman, said the agency has broad authority to halt deportations on a case-by-case basis, even when illegal immigrants fall short of the new standards, especially in "humanitarian" cases in which the people in question were brought to the U.S. as children.

"As part of ICE's overall effort to focus the immigration system on public safety threats, border security and public safety, and in keeping with the spirit of the secretary's memorandum, deferred action has been granted on a case-by-case basis to some individuals whose cases may differ from the specific criteria set forth in the memorandum," Ms. Christensen said.

As for documents, she said ICE officers are already trained in what documents to ask for and how to evaluate them as part of their jobs. Acceptable documents they can request include passports, visas, school or medical records, and leases, she said.

SOURCE



3 July, 2012

Australia: Green light for boats is the worst of both worlds


The long-nosed female in the toon is a caricature of Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia.  She is blaming the conservatives for the results of her own policies -- outlined on the signs

Am I naive to be waiting for a minister in the federal government, a government which now has so much blood on its hands, to take responsibility for the policy failure and resign?

During the past 19 months at least 363 people are known to have drowned while trying to make their way to Australia on fishing vessels.

Fifty people died off Christmas Island in heavy seas on December 15, 2010. On November 1, 2011, eight drowned off Indonesia. Several weeks later, on December 17, about 200 people drowned in Indonesian waters while on their way to Australia. On February 1 this year, 11 people drowned off the coast of Malaysia on their way to Australia. On June 21, 90 people drowned en route to Australia. About another 120 were pulled from the water. Last Wednesday, four more people drowned and 130 escaped death only because two commercial vessels were passing nearby. Many were women and children.

All the deaths at sea are directly linked to policies introduced by the Rudd Labor government and implemented by the Gillard government, when the effective border security arrangements inherited from the Howard government were dismantled. This re-created a problem that had ceased to exist.

Ten years ago, the Howard government used a variety of policies to bring the hammer down on the asylum-seeker traffic. The flow of boats abruptly fell to a trickle. During the six years from 2002 to 2008, just 301 people arrived on 18 boats, an average of three boats and 50 people a year.

The role of Julia Gillard in this is instructive. Almost exactly 10 years ago, on August 26, 2002, she told the Parliament that in the five years between the election of the Howard government in 1996 and the Tampa controversy in 2001, ''We know that in respect of those boats - some 213 boats carrying 11,513 people - the Howard government did nothing …

''In the face of these unauthorised arrivals, the Howard government did nothing except maintain Labor's policy of mandatory detention … The so-called Pacific solution … is really no more than the processing of people offshore in third countries. It is a policy that Labor does not support, because it achieves nothing and costs so much in so many ways … And we know that it delivers absolutely no outcomes … ''

Such irony. The ''Pacific solution'' proved so effective that Gillard, as Prime Minister, has been seeking to send asylum seekers to Malaysia to help staunch the billion-dollars-a-year black hole in her government's credibility on border security.

Clearly, Labor gave a green light to the people-smuggling industry and has sought to deflect blame for the results. It has created the worst of both worlds: a system that is punitive but ineffective, and wildly expensive.

To justify this failure, the government has resorted to lying. Both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, along with relevant ministers, have all parroted the line that under the Howard government, the ''Pacific solution'' - the processing of asylum seekers in Nauru and Papua New Guinea - was no more than a very costly posture because nearly all these asylum seekers ended up getting residency in Australia.

This is simply not true. Nauru and Manus Island housed 1637 people, of which 1153 were found to be refugees. But only 705 were settled here, while 448 were resettled in other countries.

Now contrast the current success rate of those who arrive after destroying their documents and bypassing immigration. About 90 per cent are being given residency and welfare payments. Yet those who seek to enter the country as skilled migrants are subject to an arduous and protracted vetting process, which just got harder.

As of yesterday, those seeking to arrive as skilled migrants can now be placed in limbo for years under new regulations. Perhaps the government does not even realise what messages it may be sending to prospective skilled immigrants, who are expected to make up 125,000 of the immigration intake this year, or 68 per cent.

The government may not fully understand the possible impact of its new regulations because the Department of Immigration and Citizenship communicates in classic bureaucratese. Here, in the language of the department's website, is the thrust of the changes which became law yesterday: ''From 1 July, 2012, the Migration Regulations 1994 are amended to … support the new skilled migrant selection model, known as 'Skill Select', by harmonising skill requirements across skilled visa subclasses and introducing an invitation requirement for some key visas.''

I am advised by an immigration lawyer that what this means, in plain English, is that it is has just become harder to get a skilled migrant visa. The ''invitation requirement'' raises the barrier to entry.

What it means, the immigration lawyer advises, is this: ''If you are applying in the skilled migrant group, you will no longer be able to make an application to migrate to Australia. Instead, you will file an 'expression of interest' and stay in the system for two years until an employer or a state government sponsors you.''

I am also advised that the new regulations make it harder to get into Australia as a business migrant.

We thus have the disconnect at the heart of Labor's immigration and refugee regimes that the people who are the least forthcoming, the least qualified, the least vetted, and who have done everything to bypass the vetting system, enjoy the greatest prospects of gaining permanent residency.

The green light for people smuggling is still on. Expect more boats, more deaths, more blame-shifting, and more cost. Just don't expect anyone in this government to accept responsibility for the failure and resign when the next boat sinks. That would require a code of honour, when all that exists is a code of survival.

SOURCE





 Recent posts at CIS  below

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

CIS Publication

1. Administrative Amnesty and the Job Market: Employment Among Natives Likely to Be in Competition with Amnesty Recipients (Memorandum)

Journal Article

2. The Perpetual Border Battle

Commentary

3. SCOTUS Ruling on Arizona S.B. 1070 Affirms States Have a Role to Play on Immigration

4. The Supreme Court Prolongs the Immigration Mess

5. SCOTUS Decision Will Help States Chart Course on Immigration

Blogs

6. Una Poca de Gracia — A Little Grace — for the Immigration Debate

7. Quinnipiac: Public Responds to S.B. 1070 and Dream Decree

8. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (3): State Wars of Attrition

9. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (2): Federal Wars of Attrition

10. USCIS Holds Pep Rally in a Glorious Building

11. C-SPAN Callers and Justice Kennedy's Call for 'Rational Civic Discourse'

12. It's STILL the Economy, Stupid

13. Supreme Court Gives Some Support to Arizona’s S.B. 1070

14. Senator Marco Rubio Takes on Jorge Ramos, and Wins



2 July, 2012

Romney says immigration law has become a ‘muddle’

Mitt Romney on Monday said the Supreme Court should have given states "more latitude" to deal with immigration than the justices allowed when they struck down key parts of Arizona's tough immigration enforcement law.

The likely Republican nominee declined to address the specifics of the court's decision to uphold the Arizona law's "show me your papers" requirement but prohibit police officers from arresting people on minor immigration charges, taking the teeth out of the law's enforcement.

"I would have preferred to see the Supreme Court give more latitude to states, not less. And the states, now under this decision, have less authority, less latitude, to enforce immigration law," Romney told donors at a fundraiser in Scottsdale, a wealthy enclave outside Phoenix. The event raised $2 million, the campaign said.

Romney instead used Monday's ruling as an opportunity to criticize President Barack Obama for what he termed inaction on immigration reform until recently. Romney called for a national immigration strategy and insisted he would tackle immigration during his first year in office.

America's immigration laws have "become a muddle," Romney said.

The court struck down three major provisions of Arizona's immigration enforcement law: requiring all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers; making it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job; and allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrants.

Romney campaign spokesman Rick Gorka told reporters that "the governor supports the states' rights to craft immigration laws when the federal government had failed to do so." He repeatedly declined to answer questions about whether Romney agreed with the ruling or whether the former Massachusetts governor would support the kind of laws the high court found mostly unconstitutional.

Romney has worked to soften his rhetoric on immigration policy since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for president. During the Republican primary, he never endorsed Arizona's immigration law.

Asked in February during a GOP primary debate in Arizona whether he supported tough immigration enforcement that includes arrests, Romney said: "I think you see a model in Arizona." He then mentioned the federal E-Verify program _ it requires businesses to check the legal status of their employees _ as one way to reduce the number of illegal immigrants in a particular state.

Romney then said: "So going back to the question that was asked, the right course for America is to drop these lawsuits against Arizona and other states that are trying to do the job Barack Obama isn't doing."

The Obama administration sued to block the Arizona law soon after its enactment two years ago.

SOURCE
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/jul/01/us-romney-immigration/




No one-size-fits-all approach to wooing Hispanics

In New Mexico, Tomasita Maestas says she will pick the presidential candidate who has the best plan to fix education and the economy.

In Arizona, Mexican immigrant Carlos Gomez backs Republican Mitt Romney because he's more conservative on social issues than his Democratic opponent.

In Miami, Colombia native Luna Lopez probably will vote for President Barack Obama now that he's decided to halt the deportation of many illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children.

The reasons that Hispanics give for choosing between Obama and Romney are just as diverse as the countries that they or their ancestors once called home, suggesting there's no one-size-fits-all approach to courting the nation's fastest-growing minority group.

The Latino vote isn't monolithic or, really, a voting bloc. It includes a range of people with varying opinions. Among them are Republican-leaning Cubans in Florida, new Mexican immigrants and longtime descendants of Spanish settlers in the Southwest, and Democratic-tilting Puerto Ricans in the East.

Immigration policy would seem to be the natural top issue for these voters, except that nearly two-thirds of Hispanics are born in the U.S. Their priorities are the same as the general population — jobs, the economy, education and health care.

"We need to see more jobs here, that's my No. 1 priority and what I want to hear about," says Stefan Gonzalez, an almost 18-year-old from Denver, whose heritage includes Spanish, Mexican and Native American roots. Gonzalez, who works in a suburban Denver pawn shop, says he plans to vote for Obama this fall.

In Albuquerque, Ernest Gurule, an 84-year-old whose ancestors settled New Mexico in 1580, says his main issue is the federal health care plan upheld by the Supreme Court last week, and that he'll back Obama in part because of it. Also, the Democrat, adds: "It's too expensive to change horses midstream."

Democrats and Republicans are in a fierce race to figure out how to best reach Hispanics.

In the short term, these voters could decide the outcome in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere. The long-term stakes are even bigger because Hispanics are projected to account for roughly 30 percent of the population by 2050, doubling in size and, potentially changing the national political landscape.

Like most minorities, Hispanics traditionally have leaned Democratic. But a recent Pew Research poll indicates that Hispanics also are the fastest-growing group of independent voters, with 46 percent now shunning a party label compared with 31 percent six years ago. Such results only underscore how diverse Hispanics are and the challenges for the political parties.

"It is going to be a very hard fight to win," says Jennifer Korn, the executive director of the Republican-based Hispanic Leadership Network, which was established to help bring more Hispanic voters to the GOP. "The more they assimilate, the more sophisticated they become and that's when they start dividing between parties."

For now at least, Obama and his Democrats have an advantage, with the latest polls showing 65 percent of Hispanics back Obama and 25 percent back Romney.

The Democrats' campaign has worked to keep that edge, helped by Obama's new immigration policy and the Supreme Court's decision to side with the administration on most of an Arizona law that many immigrants viewed as overly harsh.

His campaign has spent the past year setting up offices with grassroots outreach to Hispanic communities in the Southwest, as well as in important states such as Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Mindful of the diversity among Hispanics, Obama has custom-tailored his outreach, including tweaking Spanish dialect for different regions.

For instance, in Florida the campaign has two distinct outreach plans. One focuses on Cuban-Americans in Miami who tend to lean Republican and are less concerned about immigration; the other speaks to traditionally Democratic Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens from birth, as well as new immigrants from Central America.

Obama also has promoted the new health law, which can resonate in states such as New Mexico, which has one of the highest rates of uninsured in the country.

Romney has plenty of ground to make up after a bruising primary season filled with tough rhetoric that even Republicans acknowledge turned off many Hispanics. He recently established a Hispanic advisory group that includes top elected Republican Hispanics.

During the primaries, the former Massachusetts governor pledged to veto legislation, known as the DREAM Act, that would give a path to citizenship to young immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children but have since attended school or served in the military. He has since toned down his anti-immigration stance, which included self-deportation, telling a Hispanic leadership gathering in the Orlando area that he would address illegal immigration "in a civil but resolute manner."

Alexandra Franceschi, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee's Hispanic effort, made clear that the GOP outreach will focus broadly on the economy. "Hispanics are Americans and are facing the same issues as everyone else, chronically high unemployment, lower pay and rising health care costs," she said.

Republicans have noted that under Obama, the Hispanic unemployment rate is higher than the national average. And Hispanics' median household income fell 7 percent between 2000 and 2010, from $43,100 to $40,000, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

What drives Hispanics to vote depends on who's asked.

Lopez, a 20-year-old new citizen and college student from Colombia, cites Obama's policy shift on deportation as reason she's likely to pick him when she casts her first vote in the country.

"The issue didn't directly affect me, but I have many family members and friends who it did," she said.

In Arizona, Gomez, a 43-year-old priest who immigrated to Phoenix 15 years ago, backed Obama's policy change. But Gomez says immigration isn't his priority because "immigrants will continue coming across the border no matter what we do." He says he's voting for Romney because, like him, the Republican opposes gay marriage and abortion rights.

In Albuquerque, Maestas, a 37-year-old mother and office manager, is focused intently on pocketbook issues. Immigration, she says, is only important to "a certain point" because "If you can't take care of your own, how are you going to take care of others?"

SOURCE



1 July, 2012

Soft-touch Britain, the asylum seeker capital of Europe: We let in more than anyone else last year

Britain granted asylum to more people than any other European Union country last year, official figures revealed yesterday.

Some 14,360 immigrants were given asylum within the UK in 2011, compared with 13,045 in the second highest country, Germany, and 10,740 in third placed France.

The figure was the third successive rise in successful claims in the UK and an increase of 41 per cent since 2008.

Critics said the data confirmed that Britain is a soft touch when it comes to granting asylum.  Britain also approved more than a third of asylum applications last year, while France accepted fewer than one in seven claims and Germany around one in five.

Refugees fleeing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repressive regime in Iran made up the largest group granted asylum in the UK, with 1,985 given protection status in 2011.  Another 1,160 came from Sri Lanka and around 1,020 from Afghanistan, the figures from Eurostat, the statistical wing of the EU, revealed.

The number of people granted asylum in the UK has grown steadily in the last four years, from 10,200 in 2008 to 14,360 last year.   Together, the EU’s 27 member states granted asylum to 84,100 people in 2011, an increase of 8,300 on the previous year. Most came from Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the Migrationwatch think-tank, said: ‘These figures confirm that Britain is the softest touch in Europe when it comes to grants of asylum. No wonder asylum seekers are still queuing up in Calais.’

Gill Gillespie, UK director of the Iranian Refugees Action Network, said there had been a surge in refugees escaping the Middle Eastern country following Ahmadinejad’s crackdown on dissidents after his disputed re-election in 2009.  

She said: ‘There is hardly  anything that you cannot  be persecuted for in Iran – being Christian, gay, a  journalist doing his job or just asking for equal rights for women in a country where a woman’s life is valued as half that of a man.  ‘Torture, rape, public executions and floggings are common methods of repression against those who the regime dislikes.

‘Refugees from Iran are usually highly skilled and educated, especially in engineering and maths, and offer a great deal to the UK.  ‘They are desperate to contribute and do not want to be a burden on British taxpayers.’

Last year it was revealed that nearly 100,000 asylum seekers have been ‘lost’ by bungling immigration officials.

The 98,000 were the applicants that the UK Border Agency was unable to track down from among nearly half a million cases found abandoned in boxes at the Home Office in 2006. The discovery caused a huge political row.  Those cases have now been placed in a ‘controlled archive’ – effectively put on ice indefinitely – after officials could find no trace of their existence.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: ‘Asylum seekers come to the UK because we have long history of looking after people extremely well in this country.  ‘We also speak English, the second language most people are likely to learn whichever part of the world they originate from.

‘But the number of people granted asylum remain a very small percentage of the total number of immigrants coming to Britain.’

SOURCE




The Mr Big making a mockery out of the so-called immigration crackdown: Kurdish gangmaster will smuggle people into Britain for £2,000

Standing on a patch of grass 46 miles across the Channel from the White Cliffs of Dover, a man in a designer jacket emblazoned with the words ‘No Fear’ is making a laughing stock of our Government’s promises to stop illegal immigration into Britain.

He calls himself ‘Fahruddin’ and is the Mr Big of a multi-million-pound people-trafficking operation that every year smuggles 5,000 migrants from all over the world into Britain from northern France.

Ten days ago, three young Turks paid him a total of £9,500 to be put on a lorry and taken by ferry to Dover.

A few nights later, 21 migrants from Afghanistan and Iran made the same trip and earned Fahruddin nearly £50,000.

And then on Tuesday, he promised to smuggle a 29-year-old Turkish girl (along with two Chinese couples) from Dunkirk to Kent if her relatives deposited a large sum of cash with a fixer-colleague at a small supermarket in Wood Green, North London.....

So how do these illegal people-trafficking operations — of which there are many — work?

First, there was the cheaper Option A. This would involve her father sending relatives in England £2,000 in cash to hand to a middle-man contact of Fahruddin’s at a supermarket in Wood Green.

Once the cash was handed over, Fahruddin would be told via mobile phone and he would then proceed to put Rojda on a lorry. Under this option, the driver would be totally unaware of his illicit human cargo.

Alternatively there is the more expensive Option B which, he said, had a greater guarantee of success. Fahruddin explained that Rojda’s family would have to give £6,000 to the same Wood Green supermarket contact.

She would then be put in a lorry whose driver would be aware of the smuggling attempt since he would get a share of the money if the passage was successful.

Both options would mean Rojda would be taken from the camp in a car after midnight by one of Fahruddin’s lieutenants to a lorry park near the ferry ports where drivers sleep in their cabs or leave their vehicles unattended while on a meal-break.

Under Option A, a member of the gang would break into the trailer — cutting the security wire circling the outside — and check the labels on boxes and pallets to ascertain the lorry was heading for England.

Once sure, he would push Rojda in and seal the trailer’s wire with superglue so the break-in would not be detected by the driver.

Despite talk by politicians of beefed up border checks, X-ray equipment and increased security at ports, it was clear from talking to Fahruddin that these measures are no deterrent to the smugglers and thousands of foreigners are still getting through illegally.

In Dover, the gang’s English-based accomplices would be waiting for Rojda and would follow the lorry for miles by car until it stopped and the driver got out. Quickly, they would break in again, retrieve Rojda and drive her to her relatives in London.

Under Option B, the driver would stop at a safe, pre-arranged spot outside Dover, where he would be met by Fahruddin’s gang members and Rojda would be handed over.

During the discussions between Mr A, the girl and Fahruddin, she was told not to worry about the heat-seeking equipment used by border guards at ports to detect migrants hiding in lorries.

The smugglers have devised a simple trick to escape such checks. They wrap migrants in a cold, wet blanket or put ice cubes in their clothes so the warmth of the body is not detected by the equipment.

Having proved how easy it is to arrange to be smuggled illegally into Britain, Rojda and her uncle promised to ring Fahruddin after they had arranged his fee.

Although they never took up his offer, our investigation shows how simple it is for thousands of foreigners to slip illegally into the UK every year — and how plenty of criminals break the law and get rich by helping them to do so.

I tracked down, for example, the three Turks who paid Fahruddin £9,500 to get to England ten days ago. They had reached his camp after a 2,000-mile journey in a vegetable lorry from Gazientep, a Turkish city near the Syrian border.

They are now part of the rapidly growing Turkish community in Britain, which tops 500,000 in London alone.

The trio included a young husband and wife, aged 27 and 24, who are now settling in Hackney, East London.

The husband, a carpenter, has already started work on the black market at a relative’s supermarket while his wife, who speaks only Kurdish, is still recovering from the 40-day journey across Europe.

The third member of the trio — a 24-year-old woman — is a friend of the couple. She is now living in a relative’s flat in North London with her husband, who was smuggled into Britain on a lorry from Calais several years ago.

They told Mr A how they got to Britain. The money was provided by a relative called Ibrahim, who deposited the money to pay Fahruddin with another North London supermarket contact.

The three then waited at the Teteghem camp for ten days for Fahruddin to have proof of the payment and then give the go-ahead.

At midnight, they were driven to the first petrol station across the Belgian border, where a waiting lorry was parked.

The driver was part of the scam. Wearing a black cap, he got out of his cab and pushed the three into the lorry trailer, which was full of textiles destined for a clothes factory in Britain. He then drove to Dunkirk and boarded a 2am ferry for England.

A few hours later, as dawn was breaking, they stepped out onto British soil to start a new life — just like the hundreds of thousands before them and, if wealthy criminal gang masters such as Fahruddin get their way, thousands more in the future.

More HERE






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.