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31 March, 2009

CIS roundup

1. Depression or Not, Immigration Continues Unabated

Excerpt: This just in: 1.1 million people got green cards last year through the federal immigration program.

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2. But Let's Make Sure We Keep Those 97 Trucks Out

Excerpt: Hezbollah uses Mexican drug routes into U.S.

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3. As Takoma Park Goes, So Goes Maine

Excerpt: The Maine legislature is considering a bill to allow non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. Stanley Renshon, a CUNY political scientist and CIS Fellow, wrote last year on why this is a bad idea. (Takoma Park is the D.C. area's own little Berkeley/Madison/Cambridge, and allows non-citizen voting, as Renshon discusses.)

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4. The Shift in U.S. Leadership

CIS Video, March 26, 2009. Details: While there remains a `no comment' on much of the Bush administration work on secure documents and IDs, one thing is clear: we cannot understand where the US needs to be in the area of secure documents without looking at where we have been. In order to gain a better perspective on where we should go, I recently interviewed Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, Former DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker, and DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Kathy Kraninger.

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5. Stimulus Jobs for Illegals 2.0

Excerpt: In February we estimated that 300,000 construction jobs could go to illegal immigrants as a result of the stimulus bill. We stand by this number as a reasonable estimate of how many stimulus-related jobs could go to illegal aliens.

Some have taken the view that it is impossible to know how many stimulus-funded jobs might go to illegal immigrants. This way of thinking misses the point of how an estimate can inform public policy. We would never argue that our estimate is precise, but instead, as our press release stated, this is an 'estimate' of jobs that 'could' go to illegal immigrants. In fact, the headline of our press release is followed by a question mark to emphasize that the number is an estimate of what could happen.

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6. Paseo Del Norte, Part IV

Excerpt: Since sneaking over the physical border has become so difficult, those who seek illegitimate entry, whether motivated by crime or job opportunities, are more likely to try the official ports of entry. The main document Mexicans use to cross from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso is the border crossing card (BCC). The State Department has issued more than nine million BCCs in the last ten years. They account for nearly 100 million entries to the United States each year, easily dwarfing every other entry program. They supply customers for many El Paso merchants, but they also facilitate illegal employment and the smuggling of people and who knows what else across the border. Nothing in the Obama administration's brand-new Southwest Border Security Initiative addresses this vulnerability.

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7. Mexico Isn't a Failed State-Yet: But we need to protect ourselves now

Excerpt: Mexico is in trouble. The drug wars there have claimed more than 7,000 lives since President Calder¢n took office in late 2007. Police are being beheaded, politicians are being assassinated, and pundits are talking of Mexico's becoming a "failed state."

The potential consequences for the United States are very serious, much more serious than anything likely to happen in Afghanistan or Iraq. The violence has already started to spill over the border, and it is only a matter of time before an American police officer or Border Patrol agent or judge is beheaded. The even greater danger is massive refugee flows, inundating the Southwest with unprecedented numbers of Mexicans fleeing violence, few of whom would likely return, regardless of changed conditions at home.

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8. L.A. Times' Sam Quinones on Immigration Coverage, Drug Cartels

EXCERPT: Sam Quinones, the Los Angeles Times reporter whose combination of compassion, clear-eyed realism, and graceful prose has made him a penetrating observer of immigration and border issues, spoke proudly today of his newspaper's commitment to covering the issue even at a time of severe economic stress at the paper (and at nearly every other metro daily in the country). Appearing on C-SPAN's 'Washington Journal,' Quinones also described how Mexican drug cartels have insinuated themselves into immigrant communities in the U.S.

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9. Please Nominate This Woman!

EXCERPT: It seems that 'Jihad Jeannie' Butterfield will be leaving her longtime position as Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association at the end of June.

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10. Senior Research Fellow on FOX News

Details: Jerry Kammer, Senior Research Fellow here at the Center, was interviewed on his Backgrounder, 'The 2006 Swift Raids: Assessing the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Actions at Six Facilities.'

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11. Enforcement Pays

EXCERPT: With the widespread murderous violence between warring Mexican drug cartels spilling over the U.S. border and the continuing threat from radical Islamic terrorists domestic and foreign, the government has to spend its law enforcement dollars where they can do the most good. Yet Democratic leaders in Congress and the Obama administration appear ready to scale back one of the most successful and cost-effective immigration law enforcement programs ever launched.

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12. The Department of Man-Caused Disaster Risk Preparation?

EXCERPT: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has a new word for terrorism: 'man-caused disasters.' Not only that, but in her March 16, 2009, interview with German press, she states that her job is to help prepare for risks from man-caused disasters.

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13. Wages Will Go Even Lower

EXCERPT: The first thing to note about workers in low-wage jobs that require relatively little education is that the overwhelming majority are born in the United States. For example, the 2007 American Community Survey by the Census Bureau showed that 65 percent of meatpackers, 68 percent of construction laborers, 73 percent of dishwashers and 74 percent of janitors were U.S.-born. Of course, the immigrant share (legal and illegal) of any occupation varies enormously from city to city. But it's clear from this data that Americans are willing to do this work.

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14. Gutierrez Wants Focus on Families

EXCERPT: Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the Illinois Democrat who is touring the country to drum up support for 'comprehensive immigration reform,' is pressuring President Obama to join the effort. Gutierrez said on the weekly Spanish-language Univision television program 'Al Punto' that he's looking for Obama to signal his commitment to the effort by ordering a halt to worksite raids by immigration authorities.

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15. Voters Open to Militarizing the Border

EXCERPT: The Obama Administration's somewhat skittish approach to border security is unfounded. According to a new Rasmussen Reports survey, 79 percent of U.S. voters now say the military should be used along the U.S.-Mexico border to protect American citizens if drug-related violence continues to escalate in that area.

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16. The 2006 Swift Raids: Assessing the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Actions at Six Facilities

Excerpt: On December 12, 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel raided six meatpacking plants owned by Swift & Co. in the largest immigration enforcement action in U.S. history. The plants are located in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado, and Utah. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines the raids and their aftermath. It notes the historical context of an industry whose workers have seen a dramatic decline in wages over the past 30 years as well as the raids' economic effects. The report also discusses both positive and negative reactions in these six communities.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. Support the Center for Immigration Studies by donating online here



30 March, 2009

Delay in Immigration Raids May Signal new U.S. Policy

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at U.S. workplaces in recent weeks, asking agents in her department to apply more scrutiny to the selection and investigation of targets as well as the timing of raids, federal officials said. A senior department official said the delays signal a pending change in whom agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement choose to prosecute -- increasing the focus on businesses and executives instead of ordinary workers.

"ICE is now scrutinizing these cases more thoroughly to ensure that [targets] are being taken down when they should be taken down, and that the employer is being targeted and the surveillance and the investigation is being done how it should be done," said the official, discussing Napolitano's views about sensitive law enforcement matters on the condition of anonymity. "There will be a change in policy, but in the interim, you've got to scrutinize the cases coming up," the senior DHS official said, noting Napolitano's expectations as a former federal prosecutor and state attorney general.

Another DHS official said Napolitano plans to release protocols this week to ensure more consistent work-site investigations and less "haphazard" decision-making.

Napolitano's moves have led some to question President Obama's commitment to work-site raids, which were a signature of Bush administration efforts to combat illegal immigration. Napolitano has highlighted other priorities, such as combating Mexican drug cartels and catching dangerous criminals who are illegal immigrants.

Napolitano's moves foreshadow the difficult political decisions the Obama administration faces as it decides whether to continue mass arrests of illegal immigrant workers in sweeps of meatpackers, construction firms, defense contractors and other employers. Critics say workplace and neighborhood sweeps are harsh and indiscriminate, and they accuse the government of racial profiling, violating due process rights and committing other humanitarian abuses. The raids have enraged Latino community and religious leaders, immigrant advocates and civil liberties groups important to the Democratic base, who have stepped up pressure on Obama to stop them.

At a rally last week in Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, head of the archdiocese of Obama's home city, called on the government "to end immigration raids and the separation of families" and support an overhaul of immigration law. "Reform would be a clear sign this administration is truly about change," George said.

Also last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus made similar calls as the caucus met formally with Obama for the first time. "Raids that break up families in that way, just kick in the door in the middle of the night, taking [a] father, a parent away, that's just not the American way. It must stop," Pelosi added at a Capitol Hill conference on border issues sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But Obama also faces pressure from conservative lawmakers and many centrist Democrats, who say that workplace enforcement is needed to reduce the supply of jobs that attract illegal immigrants, and that any retreat in defending American jobs in a recession could ignite a populist backlash. When the White House announced plans last week to move more than 450 federal agents and equipment to the border to counter Mexico's drug cartels, lawmakers warned Napolitano against diverting money from workplace operations.

Rep. Lamar Smith (Tex.), ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the administration "appears to be using border violence as an excuse" to undercut immigration enforcement in the nation's interior. "It makes no sense to take funds from one priority (worksite enforcement) to address a new priority (the growth in border violence). This is just robbing Peter to pay Paul," Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee for homeland security, said in an e-mail.

Led by Byrd, Congress this year ordered ICE to spend $127 million on workplace operations, $34 million more than President George W. Bush had requested. Reducing those amounts, even in ICE's overall $5 billion budget, would provoke a fight, senior aides in both parties said.

Napolitano has sought to chart a middle course by ordering a review of which immigrants are targeted for arrest. While a policy is still under development, Napolitano has said she intends to focus more on prosecuting criminal cases of wrongdoing by companies. Analysts say they also think ICE may conduct fewer raids, focusing routine enforcement on civil infractions of worker eligibility verification rules.

Former Bush administration officials said their raids were also targeted against supervisors, but that it took time to build complicated white-collar cases. In the meantime, they said, depriving companies of their workforces and in some cases filing criminal charges against illegal immigrant workers sent a clear message of deterrence to both management and labor.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to reduce immigration, said Obama aides are trying to manage the issue until an economic turnaround permits an attempt to overhaul immigration laws. "I think their calculus is, how do they keep Hispanic groups happy enough without angering the broader public so much that they sabotage health care and their other priorities?" Krikorian said.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group, said that to the contrary, groups such as his support Obama's focus on going after bad employers and criminal illegal immigrants first -- or as he put it, prioritizing "drug smugglers, not window washers."

Within ICE, the front-office vetting of cases has led to some doubts. Last week, for example, ICE postponed plans to raid employers at a military-related facility in Chicago for which they had arranged to temporarily detain as many as 100 illegal immigrants, according to one official. A second official said Napolitano thought the investigative work was inadequate.

The raid would have been the second under the Obama administration. After the first, a Feb. 24 sweep of an engine-parts maker in Bellingham, Wash., that led to 28 arrests, Napolitano publicly expressed disappointment that ICE did not inform her beforehand and announced an investigation into agency communication practices. In response, Leigh H. Winchell, the ICE special agent in charge in Seattle, wrote an e-mail to his staff -- subsequently leaked to conservative bloggers -- saying they had acted correctly. He also copied a statement from House Republicans calling Napolitano's review "beyond backwards." "You did nothing wrong and you did everything right," Winchell wrote. "I cannot control the politics that take place with these types of situations, but I can remind you that you are great servants of this country and this agency."

SOURCE



Canada: Kenney's crossroads

Some call it intolerant, others like the Minister's muscular multiculturalism

Caught in a rare moment inside his Parliament Hill office, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney is finished his interview with Fox News to talk about U. S. military deserters seeking refuge in Canada. And an interview with a B. C. television station to discuss the case of a Chinese grandmother needing a special permit to visit Canada to tend to an injured grandson. And a TV reporter wanting to talk about Croatian visa policy. At the same time, his communications staff was fielding calls from reporters about the government's decision to ban British MP George Galloway from visiting Canada, as well as the latest turn in a public battle with the Canadian Arab Federation, and reports on abuses in Canada's refugee system -- after finally managing to put aside, for now, the media and political fallout from the Minister's comments days earlier about strengthening language proficiency requirements for new citizens.

For the past few weeks, and despite pressing matters in portfolios related to the economy, Mr. Kenney has arguably been the most public face of the federal Conservative government, daily stickhandling everything from tricky, politically charged issues, with accusations of racism and unethical political interference, to local-interest immigration sagas. It is, Mr. Kenney admits, an "emotionally draining ... tough position." But, for Mr. Kenney, a full-fledged Cabinet minister for not quite six months, the most challenging and politically perilous work planned for his portfolio -- reshaping Canada's approach to immigration and multiculturalism-- has scarcely begun.

The higher-profile matters -- the Galloway issue, the scuffle with Arab groups, the language abilities of immigrants -- form the early marks of a pattern of what is to come. Rejecting the CAF's support for Islamic terrorists and arguably anti-Semitic messages, Mr. Galloway for financially supporting Hamas, calling for newcomers to better integrate: These are of a piece with efforts to fortify what the Conservatives would call The Canadian Identity. It is, Mr. Kenney makes clear, a vision for a country that stands up for its pluralism, but also for its core liberal traditions of tolerance, democracy and secularism. "We can't afford to be complacent about the challenge of integration," he says. "We want to avoid the kind of ethnic enclaves or parallel communities that exist in some European countries. So far, we've been pretty successful at that, but I think it's going to require greater effort in the future to make sure that we have an approach to pluralism and immigration that leads to social cohesion rather than fracturing."

For a country with the highest average per capita immigration rate on the planet -- roughly 250,000 new residents arrive yearly from nearly every region and creed-- maintaining such philosophical hygiene will take great energy, audacity and support from within Canada's ethnic communities, where immigration reform is personal. It will take, also, someone able to absorb repeated accusations of racism or xenophobia, which are already flying Mr. Kenney's way. When he advocated to the Calgary Herald recently a limited federal role in promoting multiculturalism -- "I think it's really neat that a fifth-generation Ukrainian Canadian can speak Ukrainian -- but pay for it yourself," he said -- Liberal MP Borys Wrze snewskyj complained the Minister was jettisoning sacred tenets. "He's the minister in charge and he fundamentally disagrees with the intent of the [Multiculturalism Act] legislation that supports his portfolio," Mr. Wrzesnewskyj says. Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis this week called Mr. Kenney "intolerant" for raising the issue of enhanced language requirements. The Arab Federation has painted him a Zionist lackey.

But there are those, many of them within Canada's ethnic pockets, who support such a muscular approach. "What is different with him is, with previous [Conservative] immigration ministers, both have been pussycats; this guy is a tiger," says Tarek Fatah, an author, prominent Liberal supporter and founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. "He's standing up for Canadian values. I would like every politician to stand up for this country the way Jason Kenney has."

Before being elevated to Cabinet last fall, Mr. Kenney spent two years shuttling between community halls, temples and church basements, building support networks in Sikh, Hindu, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Jewish and Arab communities, as Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity. His mission: to break a near-lock his Liberal opponents have had on ethnic support since Trudeaumania.

Come last October's election, the payoff arrived: The Tories upset numerous Liberal strongholds surrounding Vancouver and Toronto by converting Asian, East Asian and Middle Eastern voters from red to blue. Mr. Kenney's predecessors, including Diane Finley and Monte Solberg, were ministers of immigration. When Mr. Kenney got the job in October, the Prime Minister added the "and multiculturalism."

Multicultural maven is a curious role for a pale, Reform party pioneer raised in Saskatchewan, educated by Jesuits, deeply socially conservative, who came to politics primarily with an agenda for fiscal restraint (Before becoming a Reform MP in 1997, he headed the Canadian Taxpayers Federation). But political opponents looking to brand him as too redneck for the sensitive immigration file find it hard to land a punch. In his diverse Calgary Southeast riding, families speak fondly of Mr. Kenney's efforts, long before he became the minister in charge, in helping them sort out immigration issues; his key staffers, including a Tibetan, a Muslim and an Armenian, resemble the dessert lineup at the UN cafeteria. He spearheaded the government's efforts to recognize the Ukrainian Holdomor, its apology to the East Indian community for the Komagata Maru incident, he has defended Chinese Uyghur Muslims and paid his respects at the Mumbai Jewish centre attacked by terrorists. On his office wall hang portraits of abolitionist heroes William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln.

A few years ago, Mr. Kenney boarded an entire family newly arrived from India in his Calgary home while they settled into Canadian life. "It gave me, for the first time, a real view of the immigration experience from the eyes of a family that's landed without any previous connections in Canada," he says. "I benefited from it as much or more than they did." Today, the kids call him Uncle Jason.

More HERE





29 March, 2009

Obama's amnesty on the sly

The Obama Administration not only is curtailing federal enforcement of immigration laws but may also clamp down against state and local enforcement efforts. If the federal government turns a blind eye and stifles others from acting, then illegal aliens can take and keep the jobs that many Americans now would like to have. It’s done bureaucratically, so we move quietly toward amnesty, without the public outcry that comes with open debate.

Local and state governments have inherent constitutional power to help enforce federal laws, as well as the ability to participate in coordinated efforts with federal agencies. Yet the newly-revamped Department of Justice (DoJ) is accused of trying to chill that enforcement by intimidating local law enforcement. Exhibit A is Justice’s official investigation of Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, for supposed civil rights violations in enforcing immigration laws.

The notice sent to Arpaio cites alleged discriminatory police practices, unconstitutional searches and seizures, national origin discrimination and failure to provide services to non-English speakers. The sheriff has been outspoken about his efforts to have his deputies root out people who are illegally in the country.

The DoJ investigation of Arpaio is chock-full of partisan overtones on both sides. An Arizona Republic column has already labeled the probe a witch hunt, noting that Arpaio’s deputies were trained to follow strict civil rights guidelines in enforcing immigration laws. As for their practice of locating illegals via legitimate traffic stops, it’s noted that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was apprehended on that very basis.

It’s undeniable that politics were involved in DoJ’s decision. Democrats, led by House Judiciary Chairman Rep. John Conyers (D, MI), publicly called for the investigation in a February letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. They wrote, “Arpaio has evinced a blatant disregard for the rights of Hispanic residents of the Phoenix area,” and complained about efforts “to search out undocumented immigrants.” They protested that persons arrested for immigration violations were moved about “in shackles” and housed in a “tent city” -- both common treatment for all persons doing time in Maricopa County. The Democrat letter concluded it was part of racial profiling.

The mayor of Phoenix, Democrat Phil Gordon, had previously asked for such a probe of Arpaio’s enforcement actions.

After the investigation was announced, Republicans countered with their own letter to A-G Holder. Led by Judiciary Ranking Member Rep. Lamar Smith (R, TX), the GOP letter warned that the Justice Department action “carries with it great potential to chill the actions” of state and local law enforcement across the country. They called on Holder to issue assurances that his actions are “not for the purposes of politicizing or chilling immigration enforcement.”

So far, Holder has not publicly done so.

The GOP letter also linked the Arpaio investigation with other efforts to limit worksite enforcement. It noted that Napolitano responded to a Feb. 25th federal worksite enforcement raid not with praise, but with an angry call to investigate her own people. As the letter noted, the two investigations create “legitimate concern that other law enforcement officials may well be intimidated into scaling back and otherwise deemphasizing their federal authorized and approved immigration-related law enforcement activities out of fear of being subjected to investigation by the Department.”

Arpaio, who bills himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” has not backed down. "I am not going to be intimidated by the politics and by the Justice Department," Arpaio said. "I want the people of Arizona to know this: I will continue to enforce all the immigration laws."

According to University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris, the Arpaio matter is the very first civil rights investigation stemming from immigration enforcement. The Arpaio matter is part of a pattern slowing down efforts to make sure that illegal aliens do not take jobs from Americans and do not impose extra burdens on U.S. taxpayers.

When Napolitano announced she is shifting more personnel to the border to deal with Mexico’s violent drug cartels, some questioned whether they would be transferred away from efforts to detect and deport illegal aliens. Both Rep. Lamar Smith and the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King (R, NY), raised that concern. As King said, “I support Secretary Napolitano’s decision to deploy additional personnel to the border. I would hope this will not in any way lessen interior enforcement. Should Secretary Napolitano need more border personnel, I would certainly support that request.”

Another signal from Napolitano is her testimony to Congress that she will focus on employers who “exploit” illegal workers rather than those who “employ” them. In other words, she will make sure that illegal workers are well-paid, rather than helping free up those jobs for Americans or for legal residents.

How else might the Obama undercut the popular state and local levels to enforce federal immigration laws? State and local officials have inherent constitutional authority to do this. The Department of Justice agreed in an April 3, 2002, internal policy memo, which concluded: “(1) State have inherent power, subject to federal preemption, to make arrests for violation of federal law. (2) . . . federal statutes should be presumed not to preempt this arrest authority. . . . (3) Section 1252c [authorizing state and local arrests] does not preempt state authority to arrest for federal violations.”

The 2002 Justice policy reversed a contrary 1996 memo. Might the Obama Administration now try to reverse the 2002 policy, with another memo they would use it to undercut state and local enforcement efforts? If so, it would fit a pattern of quietly promoting amnesty-like results via lack of enforcement. That strategy tries to avoid provoking loud public outrage, as in 2007 when amnesty was publicly promoted by many in Congress and the Bush Administration.

Last year, as a Presidential candidate, Obama made his amnesty intentions clear. This year, as President, his approach so far has been stealthier. It didn’t help his approach when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called workplace enforcement raids un-American and vowed that they must end.

On top of the other trillions in new federal spending, this quiet amnesty could add extra new burdens. The 2007 amnesty proposal would have cost taxpayers an extra $2.6-trillion, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector. What will Obama’s “quiet amnesty” cost us now? And, with his plans to impose a higher tax burden on an ever-shrinking pool of taxpayers, who can afford it?

Chances for a public debate -- rather than behind-the-scenes bureaucratic changes -- may depend on the irrepressible eagerness of the Hispanic Caucus in Congress. One proponent of aggressive action, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D, CA), says a “green light” has been given to those wanting to pass an amnesty bill in the next few months. A raid makes headlines; absence of raids doesn’t.

SOURCE



Norway Anti-Immigration Opposition Party Wins Support

Amid the economic crisis, lots of Norwegians are so disturbed by what they see of Muslims and the way their Leftist government panders to Muslims that immigration is their no. 1 concern rather than the economy

Support for Norway’s Progress Party rose this month, with one pollster ranking it the country’s biggest political group, as voters backed its anti-immigration stance less than six months before parliamentary elections.

While governments in other parts of Europe lose support as voters condemn their handling of the financial crisis, Norway’s Labor government is struggling in polls after it tried to push through laws banning blasphemy [actually banning free speech about Muslims] and allowing police women to wear the hijab. The laws were withdrawn after a public outcry. Justice Minister Knut Storberget, whose ministry issued the proposals, has since gone on sick leave.

“People are losing their jobs, the economy seems to be going into recession but people are focusing on these issues instead,” said Torkel Brekke, professor of culture studies and oriental languages at the University of Oslo. “It tells you how important issues of identity are to small European countries and how people feel insecure about immigration.”

The Progress Party has support from 27.9 percent of voters in a Norstat poll published in the Vaart Land newspaper today, compared with 22.1 percent in the 2005 election. Backing for the ruling Labor Party fell to 31.7 percent from 32.8 percent in 2005. The poll, which had a margin of error of 2-3 points, was conducted March 17-22 and based on interviews with 1,000 people.

A survey by Opinion, published by news Web site Hegnar on March 18, gave the Progress Party a backing of 30.9 percent after gaining 6.4 percent in March, making it the country’s largest party.

‘Radical Islam’

The government of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg in February had to retract a proposal to restrict verbal and written attacks on individuals based on their religious or spiritual beliefs. The law would have “done the bidding of radical Islamic states” such as Iran, Progress Party Chairman Siv Jensen has said. Jensen has warned Norway is in danger of “sneak-Islamization.”

Muslims account for 1.8 percent of Norway’s population of 4.8 million, where citizens enjoy the world’s second-highest gross domestic product per capita, according to the Central Intelligence Agency World Fact Book. That compares with 3.7 percent in Germany and as many as 10 percent in France, the CIA estimates.

Norway’s Red Cross said there had been a 26 percent increase last year to 581 phone calls received from men and women subjected to forced marriages, broadcaster NRK reported on Feb. 4.

No Such Threat

The ruling Labor Party’s response has been mixed. Party Secretary Martin Kolberg this month vowed to combat the threat of radical Islam in Norway. That drew criticism from fellow party member and president of parliament Thorbjoern Jagland, who said no such threat existed. The Progress Party’s popularity rose because it’s “had the clearest stance on these policies and has credibility in this regard,” Jensen said in an interview. “The government has been marked by so much mess and chaos recently. Kolberg’s comments have revealed the disagreements within the Labor Party.”

A poll conducted by InFact for Verdens Gang this month showed that 51 percent of Norwegians believed radical Islam to be a problem in Norway, with 26 percent saying it constituted a significant terror threat.

‘Completely Off Track’

“I vote for the Progress Party because of their policies on transport, elderly care and not least immigration, as the current policy has veered completely off track,” said Anita Marie Dahl Solheim, a port document controller from Sandefjord southern Norway. Immigrants “generally do whatever they want and nobody ever puts their foot down.”

Norway’s Muslims warn the debates on the hijab and radical Islamists may lead to a long-term rift between local and Islamic communities. “The debates have had an unfortunate effect and many Muslims feel shut out from the Norwegian community,” said Shoaib Sultan, general secretary of Norway’s Islamic Council. “This is regrettable for any society in the long-run.”

While the party’s surge forward in the polls is mainly due to its stance on immigration, Jensen says the financial crisis has also helped them gain popularity. The economy of the world’s fifth-biggest oil exporter will contract 1.7 percent this year sending unemployment up to 4.7 percent by 2010, compared with a jobless rate of 1.5 percent in the middle of last year, according to the government statistics agency. “I certainly do believe discontent is spreading,” she said. Norway is scheduled to hold general elections on Sept. 14.

SOURCE





28 March, 2009

Stupid Leftist brainstorm

Only someone living in a Leftist cocoon would think that this would overcome the objections that derailed the last attempt at immigration law reform

With their prospects in Congress sinking along with the economy, liberal advocates of giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship are launching a risky strategy to push lawmakers and the White House to take up their cause. They are devising a proposal in which millions of undocumented workers would be legalized now, while the number of foreign workers allowed to enter the country would be examined by a new independent commission, and probably reduced. [What a laugh!]

It is a calculation designed to win a new and powerful ally, organized labor, which favors a limit on foreign worker visas. [It also favors keeping illegals out -- so how does the new plan address that?] But it risks alienating businesses that rely on temporary workers and could turn off key Republicans such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who in the past has crafted his own compromise plan for legalization.

With unemployment on the rise, the immigration debate has moved to the back burner as lawmakers fear enacting a law that could be portrayed as beneficial for immigrants at the expense of struggling American workers.

Advocates believe that winning support from the AFL-CIO, which opposed previous legalization plans, will help get the issue back on track. "Last time the coalition was not quite as solid as we would have hoped," said Ali Noorani, director of the National Immigration Forum, one of the advocacy groups negotiating with labor leaders over the new strategy.

Ana Avendano, the AFL-CIO's point person on the issue, said the labor federation believes the Democrats' enhanced power in Washington represents a "sea change" in which liberal groups can forge ahead without working with Republican-leaning business lobbyists. "The reality is that we no longer have corporations controlling public policy in the White House and on the Hill," she said.

President Obama reiterated his support for legalization last week during a stop in Southern California, and he told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he would deliver a public statement of support this spring. But advocates are growing anxious that he might prefer to delay what would no doubt be a politically charged fight. Immigration advocates have already raised concerns that the administration has not called off workplace raids that are splitting immigrant families.

More HERE



Australian government now letting in illegals under false pretences

The man described below was clearly not a refugee. Even if he was endangered in Afghanistan, he was clearly safe once he arrived in Pakistan. He ceased to be somebody in need of asylum at that point. There are millions of Afghans in Pakistan. But because he arrived in Australia illegally, apparently that made him a real asylum seeker. The fact that he is a Communist no doubt also helped to endear him to Australia's Leftist government. Clearly, he is an economic migrant only and many more like him can now be expected

FOUR asylum seekers who were rescued by the Tampa in 2001, but sent back to Afghanistan during one of the most controversial chapters in Australia's political history, have been found to be genuine refugees.

One of the men, Asmatullah Mohammadi, told The Age he was so desperate to escape the Taliban he risked his life in a second boat journey with people smugglers, despite fearing he would again be rejected by Australia.

He said 11 other Tampa survivors — who had failed to win refugee status after months on Nauru — were killed by the Taliban when they returned to Afghanistan.

The revelations have prompted calls for an inquiry into the Howard government's "Pacific Solution", introduced after the Tampa crisis, under which asylum seekers intercepted before they reached Australia were processed on Nauru or Manus Island.

Immigration lawyer David Manne said an inquiry should seek to remedy injustice and harm that flowed from the Pacific Solution, which excluded asylum seekers from access to Australian law, rights and protection. "People were placed under enormous pressure that amounted to constructive coercion to return to situations that were extremely unsafe," he said.

Migration agent Marion Le, who at the time raised doubts about the quality of the Immigration Department assessments of those who had been rejected, said it was reprehensible that people had been told Afghanistan was safe and sent back.

The four Afghans are the first asylum seekers on board the Tampa who were told by the former government they were not owed protection. They were re-assessed after a second attempt to reach Australian shores. Immigration Minister Chris Evans said: "These people arrived unlawfully and were taken to Christmas Island, where they were assessed as being owed our protection and therefore had the bar lifted to allow them to apply for a protection visa."

They were among 73 Middle Eastern boat people who were quietly resettled in Australia this month after the Immigration Department found they had genuine fears for their safety if returned to their homeland.

An Immigration Department spokesman said the decision was made taking into account current information.

Mr Mohammadi, who was a member of a communist party, said he fled Afghanistan because he was threatened by the extremist Muslim mujahideen. But on August 24, 2001, he found himself caught up in a political storm when the distressed wooden fishing vessel carrying 433 asylum seekers was rescued by the Tampa, on the eve of a federal election.

Mr Mohammadi said that after 17 months on Nauru he was sent back to Afghanistan with about $1000. "When they sent me back to Afghanistan, I was upset and very stressed," he said through a Dari interpreter.

He said he obtained work as a builder for a foreign company in Lashkar Gah in southern Afghanistan, but fled to Iran after two of his colleagues were killed by the Taliban because they were perceived to be working for "foreign criminals".

He was expelled to Pakistan after Iranian authorities discovered he had no documents, and from there travelled to Australia via Malaysia. "I knew it was a big danger to come by boat to Australia — it wasn't my first time — but I was that desperate."

Mr Mohammadi said he wanted to thank all Australians and the Government for "letting me in". "I am relieved and I feel now I am alive, I am not dead," he said. He wanted to find work as a builder and hoped that his wife and six children could eventually join him from Iran.

Ms Le said she had reviewed more than 200 rejected Nauru files and discovered errors, including merged cases and untested "dob-in" material, such as unsubstantiated allegations that a person did not come from Afghanistan.

"Departmental people who were on Nauru were told these people were not refugees," she said. "This came about because of the reprehensible policy of the Howard government. Everyone can stick the knife into the Immigration Department but … public servants were just doing what they were told."

Pamela Curr, from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the refugee determination process had been deeply political. "We need to have a royal commission to open our eyes to what was done in our name so it can never be repeated."

Of the 433 asylum seekers rescued by the Tampa, 131 were immediately resettled in New Zealand. The remaining 302 were processed on Nauru. Of these, 101 were found to be refugees, 14 were resettled as non-refugees, one died and 186 returned home after failing to win refugee status.

More HERE





27 March, 2009

Gurkhas win 'legal first' against law-defying British Government

Gurkha veterans who have fought for Britain will be given the right to stay in this country following a "legal first" in which the High Court had to enforce its own ruling against the Government.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, has now been forced to abide by a High Court order that will give the previously excluded former soldiers from Nepal who served in the British Army the right to apply to settle in Britain. She is expected to make the announcement to Parliament in three weeks, the court heard.

The news came as the Gurkhas returned to court to enforce a legal victory they won last September, when a High Court judge ruled that the Government's existing immigration policy excluding them was unlawful. Campaigners, including the actress Joanna Lumley, whose father fought with the Gurkhas in Burma during the Second World War, said the Government had "delayed and delayed" since the court decision. Ms Lumley has previously called the Government's position a "stain on our national character".

The court heard that in the hiatus since the September ruling a number of veterans had died waiting for resolution of the case. The most recent was Rifleman Prem Bahadur Pun, who died on Sunday, March 15. A statement seen by the judge said: "It appears that his death - as well as being deprived of cheap modern drugs to bring him comfort in his final months - is linked to the Secretary of State's failure to comply with her assurances to publish the policy and complete the reconsideration of over 1,000 stayed cases by December 30 2008."

Gurkha campaigners described today's return to the courts as "a legal first" in which a litigant had to return court to enforce a judgment against a Secretary of State. Surrounded by Gurkha veterans, David Enright, a solicitor representing the veterans, said: "The Government has delayed month upon sorry month, allowing your fathers to die while their sons served in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The Government has had to be shamed, kicking and screaming, back to court again."

In September's ruling, the judge said Government immigration policy in the case of the Gurkhas "irrationally excluded material and potentially decisive considerations" or "was so ambiguous" as to mislead applicants, entry clearance officers (ECOs) and immigration judges alike.

Six claimants brought the case to challenge the lawfulness of the Government policy that Gurkhas who retired prior to July 1997 - the date that the Brigade of Gurkhas moved its base from Hong Kong to Britain - did not have the necessary "strong ties" to be allowed entry.

A Home Office spokesman said: "The revised guidance is currently under consideration and will be published by 24 April. "Since 2004, over 6,000 former Gurkhas and family members have been granted settlement in the UK under immigration rules."

SOURCE



New Videos: Outgoing DHS Officials Discuss Secure IDs

The current administration has begun work on re-shaping the way the Department of Homeland Security will carry out its mission. Various programs, such as REAL ID, E-Verify, and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, will be affected by the decisions made by President Obama and Secretary Napolitano. Whatever direction they set for these programs will inevitably build on the foundations laid by the previous administration.

Janice Kephart, the Center for Immigration Studies’ Director of National Security Policy, looks at these foundations in a new blog posting, “The Shift in U.S. Leadership.” It includes video interviews with former top DHS officials offering insights and predictions on secure IDs. Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, Former DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker, and DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Kathy Kraninger explain how their department safeguarded the nation through various ID programs.

To view the blog, visit here.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. For more information, Contact: Bryan Griffith, (202) 466-8185, press@cis.org





26 March, 2009

US judge strikes down discriminatory policy on religious visas

A federal judge has struck down a long-standing government policy that made it tougher for religious workers from other countries to remain in the United States. Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik wrote in an order issued Tuesday that the policy was at odds with the intent of Congress.

Under the Department of Homeland Security's policy, religious workers who came to the U.S. on a typical five-year temporary visa were not allowed to file for permanent residency - their green card - until a separate visa petition by their employer had been approved. The problem was that it frequently took a long time for the government to approve those visa petitions - and by the time it did, the religious workers had left the country because their temporary visas had expired. "They had to return home, leaving behind their religious work and congregations," said Seattle attorney Robert Gibbs, who represents the workers in the class-action case.

Workers in other categories, such as aerospace and technology, are allowed to file for permanent residency before, not after, their employer's visa petition is approved, and can remain in the country while their application is pending. That amounted to discrimination against religious workers, Gibbs argued.

Religious organizations bring foreign workers into the U.S. for a variety of reasons. Native speakers are sometimes needed to communicate with immigrant populations, and expertise in certain traditions can be hard to find in the United States. The Roman Catholic Church has brought in many priests from other countries to replenish its U.S. ranks.

In court documents, Rodger Pitcairn, an adjudications officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said religious workers were singled out by the policy because of the "historically high incidence of fraudulent petitions" filed by religious workers. Gibbs called that laughable. "They're saying priests, nuns and rabbis are more likely to be fraudsters than everyone else, which is absurd when you think about it," he said.

Religious workers from many faiths - Catholic, Ukrainian orthodox, evangelical Christian, Buddhist and Hindu, among others - filed affidavits with the court last year saying they feared they would have to return to their home countries unless the policy was changed. Lasnik told lawyers on both sides to try to agree on a new policy consistent with his order within 20 days

SOURCE



Detention of immigrants in the USA

The report below is of interest but it must be noted that the days when the Amnesty organization was non-political are long gone. They are just another Leftist outfit these days and, as such, are regularly hostile to efforts at immigration control. Much exaggeration is therefore to be expected in the article below. Nonetheless, the jailing of innocent people is always of major concern and there is no doubt that the hamfisted American immigration bureaucracy is often guilty of that. That bureaucracies are in general hamfisted is no excuse. Where the wrongful imprisonment of people is a risk, strong safeguards should be put in place to prevent it. A large expansion of the judiciary dealing with immigration cases would be an obvious first step

Tens of thousands of people languish in U.S. immigration detention facilities every year -- including a number of U.S. citizens -- without receiving a hearing to determine whether their detention is warranted, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) said in a report released today. The report, Jailed Without Justice: Immigration Detention in the USA, shows that, in just over a decade, the number of immigrants in detention each day has tripled from 10,000 in 1996 to more than 30,000 in 2008. Numbers are likely to increase in 2009. A majority of the detainees have extreme difficulty retaining a lawyer or help navigating the complex legal process. In some cases, individuals become so desperate that they agree to deportation even if their circumstances don't warrant it.

The people detained include lawful permanent residents, undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers and survivors of torture and human trafficking. For some people, an immigration official is the final and only decision maker on detention -- others receive no detention review at all. In the current system, rife with errors and lacking meaningful oversight, being detained in and of itself can virtually seal an immigrant's fate.

"America should be outraged by the scale of human rights abuses occurring within its own borders," said Larry Cox, executive director of AIUSA. "Officials are locking up thousands of human beings without due process and holding them in a system that is impossible to navigate without the legal equivalent of GPS. The United States has long been a country of immigrants, and whether they have been here five years or five generations, their human rights are to be respected. The U.S. government must ensure that every person in immigration detention has a hearing to determine whether that detention is necessary."

The AIUSA report shows that the average cost of locking up an immigrant is $95 per person, per day, or approximately $2,850 per month -- which amounts to hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars per year. Effective alternatives to detention are available and cheaper -- costing as little as $12 per day. A study of one alternative program documented a 91-percent appearance rate before immigration courts.

According to international law and standards, detention should only be used in exceptional circumstances, must be justified in each individual case and must be subject to judicial review.

For many immigrants, release from detention is out of reach because bonds are set impossibly high. And although immigration judges have the authority in some cases to release immigrants on their own recognizance or with a minimum bond of $1,500, reports indicate that the judges are now less likely to do so. According to the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), in 2006, immigration judges in the United States declined to set bond in 14,750 cases. In 2007, the number increased to 22,254, and in the first five months of 2008, immigration judges had already refused to set bond in 21,842 cases.

Moreover, lawful permanent residents can be placed in "mandatory detention" with no right to a bond hearing before an immigration judge or judicial body. The categories of crimes that trigger mandatory detention are broad and difficult to define. In one case, a 37-year-old lawful permanent resident was deported to Haiti for possession of stolen bus pass transfers. The court found that these convictions constituted two "crimes of moral turpitude" warranting mandatory detention and deportation.

Even more astounding, in 2007 alone, legal service providers identified 322 individuals in detention who may have been able to claim U.S. citizenship. For instance, Mr. W, born in Minnesota, was placed in immigration detention in Florence, AZ. Because he was detained, he could not access his birth certificate. He was finally released after a month of working for a dollar a day in the prison kitchen to earn the $30 necessary to order a copy of his birth certificate.

Immigrants are often put in excessive restraints, including handcuffs, belly chains and leg restraints, and are detained alongside individuals incarcerated for criminal offenses. Immigrant detainees also find it difficult to get medical attention; at least 74 immigrants have died in detention during the last five years.

SOURCE





25 March, 2009

U.S. takes step to deport suspected Nazi guard

The Germans want to re-try a man who has already been found not guilty by the Israeli High Court?? Talk about double jeopardy!! This is just a cheap attempt by Germany to appear righteous when they are not. How about prosecuting their own policemen who tear down Israeli flags and turn a blind eye to Muslim antisemitism? And how about revoking all Nazi laws -- such as the one that forbids home-schooling?

The U.S. government said on Tuesday it has sought travel documents to deport 88-year-old U.S. resident John Demjanjuk to Germany to face charges he helped murder at least 29,000 Jews as a Nazi death camp guard. The travel documents are one of the last steps required to deport the ailing Demjanjuk, who lives with his wife in a Cleveland, Ohio, suburb. Germany issued an arrest warrant for the retired auto worker two weeks ago, the culmination of years of legal proceedings that have attempted to link Demjanjuk with World War Two atrocities.

"Following an order by a U.S. immigration judge to deport John Demjanjuk and receipt of a warrant to arrest Demjanjuk, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contacted the government of Germany to secure travel documents to effectuate his removal," Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Khaalid Walls said in a statement.

Prosecutors in Munich have accused Demjanjuk of being an accessory in the killings of Jews between March and September 1943 at the Sobibor death camp, now in Poland.

Born in Ukraine, Demjanjuk denies any involvement in war crimes. He has said he was in the Soviet army and a prisoner of war in 1942. He later went to the United States.

Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said his father remained at his home near Cleveland, suffering from a bone disease, kidney failure and other ailments, and would likely die before the case is resolved. "He was treated in the emergency room just last week for kidney-related issues. He is not likely to survive another trial," John Demjanjuk Jr. said.

Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship after he was accused in the 1970s of being "Ivan the Terrible," a notoriously sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp. Demjanjuk was first extradited to Israel in 1986. He was sentenced to death in 1988 after Holocaust survivors identified him as a guard at Treblinka. But the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction when new evidence showed another man was probably "Ivan."

Demjanjuk returned to his home near Cleveland in 1993 and U.S. courts restored his citizenship in 1998. The U.S. Justice Department refiled its case against him in 1999, arguing he had worked for the Nazis as a guard at three other death camps and hid these facts when he immigrated. His U.S. citizenship was stripped for a second time in 2002, but authorities did not deport him because no country would take him.

Last year, Germany's chief Nazi war crimes investigator, Kurt Schrimm, asked prosecutors in Munich, where Demjanjuk lived before he emigrated to the United States, to charge him with involvement in the murder of 29,000 Jews. Schrimm said his office had evidence Demjanjuk had been a guard at the Sobibor death camp and personally led Jews to the gas chambers there.

But Demjanjuk's son said the case leads nowhere. "He has never assisted in one murder, let alone thousands," he said. "Given the history of Germany wounding, capturing and then removing my father from his homeland Ukraine in World War Two, it seems inconceivable that they would now seek to have him removed from his home again more than 60 years later," his son said in an e-mailed statement.

SOURCE

Update:

See here for an example of German police in action tearing down an Israeli flag etc. Report of the action in German here.



A politician can find illegals where law enforcement cannot??

There seems to be an epidemic of blind eyes in New York

Seven homeless men remained in the Putnam County jail on trespass charges yesterday, three days after a state assemblyman led a tour of their wooded encampment and used the event to promote his proposals to fight illegal immigration.

The men were taken into custody by the Putnam County Sheriff's Office on Friday morning, shortly after the tour involving Assemblyman Greg Ball and Southeast town officials. The men, six from Guatemala and one from Ecuador, were arraigned later Friday and were being held on $100 bail, police said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement questioned them about their immigration status and has placed a hold, or detainer, on the men pending the local proceedings.

In a press release, Ball, R-Patterson, decried the exploitation of day laborers and announced what he said were "legislative remedies." They include bills that would deny SUNY admission to undocumented students, set aside $1 million to train police in immigration enforcement, and delay bail hearings for those suspected of being illegal immigrants. Other bills would bar state contractors that hire illegal workers and target the misclassification of laborers as "independent contractors."

The encampment tour was joined by Southeast Supervisor Michael Rights and Councilman Dwight Yee, whose campaigns claimed that illegal immigration had brought crime to the area.

Two deaths from exposure, as well as a homicide by drowning, have been reported near the encampments, which have been discovered around town in recent years. Tents have been found before on the same 17-acre parcel off Argonne and Starr Ridge roads.

Ball said his position on immigration has been misunderstood. Now exploring a run for Congress, he struck a different chord in discussing the national issues, saying he favored a comprehensive overhaul that would include legalization for undocumented residents.

"We absolutely need to secure the border, but we can contemporaneously open our doors to legal immigrants while cracking down on the black-market economy and inviting those illegal aliens who are currently within our borders to become American citizens, pay taxes and learn the language," he said. "All that can and should be done as a national priority, immediately."

He said he did not support the two comprehensive bills that were considered by Congress because they did not go far enough to secure the northern and southern borders. He was critical of backlogs in the immigration system and post-Sept. 11, 2001, policies that kept out foreign students.

"In order to renew and reclaim our promise to immigrants, to make a currently patently unfair immigration policy fair, we have to embrace a comprehensive solution that includes securing the border," he said.

More here





24 March, 2009

Immigration furore in Malta

Boatloads of Africans arriving uninvited and unannounced in tiny Malta are very unpopular with most Maltese. Malta is an island in the Mediterranean which is part of the EU and many illegals see it as a staging post on the way to the larger countries of Europe

Azzjoni Nazzjonali [National Action] leader Josie Muscat said today that his party was pleased that the PL [Labor party] had adopted seven of its 10 proposals on illegal migration. Speaking at a press conference in reaction to last week's debate in Parliament, Dr Muscat said AN was the only party which was consistent on illegal immigration.

He said that up to the last election the PL was holding back from admitting the severity of the problem to the point, he said, of admonishing its own MPs who dared to speak the truth on illegal immigration.

Dr Muscat said that while it was true that not all illegal immigrants were responsible for an increase in crime or health risks, the fact remained that they posed a disproportionate risk and featured in a disproportionate manner.

He said that some proposals made by PL leader Joseph Muscat last week served to dilute the action that needed to be taken to solve the problem.

"Policies that include building further reception centres and refurbishing those that have been repeatedly destroyed, not only send out the wrong message but also raise the serious doubt of whether the PL was acting out of political convenience rather than conviction."

He said that last week's debate demonstrated that neither the PL and nor to a larger extent, the PN, understood the fact that for the problem to be solved – Malta needed to send an unequivocal message to the prospective illegal immigrants, the EU and the international community that Malta was full up and that it did not pay to get here.

He also harshly criticized Medecins sans frontieres – and said that their behaviour was proof that many of these NGOs are not apolitical organizations but rather unrepresentative bodies with a political agenda. Their press conference announcing that they were pulling out was timed to cause maximum damage.

Dr. Muscat insisted that the maximum sentence for human trafficking of five years was an insult to justice and exactly the wrong message to send. He said AN has proposing the automatic penalty of lifetime imprisonment and the confiscation of assets for those who choose to deal in this despicable business.

SOURCE



Fraudulent immigration "cut" in Australia

Leftists love immigration because it will upset the "complacency" (read "comfort") of ordinary folk. Anything that upsets the status quo is good. Being happy with how things are is forbidden. So Australia's Leftist government has fostered a big rise in immigration -- despite the fact that its unionist backers are very dubious about it

CONGRATULATIONS to Immigration Minister Chris Evans for the best spin since Shane Warne was at his peak, but I suspect the minister might be surprised at how easy it has been to befuddle most of Australia's media. The "leaking" of the "14 per cent cut" in skilled migration on Sunday worked a treat, capturing the headlines on Monday and getting a second run with the official announcement that night on the box and in Tuesday's fish wrappers.

Most of it, as Evans well knows, was misleading nonsense, just throwing the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union a bone to protect a few construction and building tradies, being seen to be doing something about rising unemployment, while actually having no meaningful impact on this year's record migration surge.

Yes, Evans did announce a cut of 18,500 in the skilled permanent migrant category, "slashing" the intake by 14 per cent to 115,000. He might not have mentioned this still meant a 12 per cent increase on the previous year's intake and represented a bare 5 per cent impact on total migration this year, that's close to 350,000. Make that 332,000 now, still a record high.

The industry and union response was in tune with the Government's intention of being perceived to be active in the hitherto missing policy area while not really rocking the boat or reducing the demand created by new migrants. There are uncomfortable truths about the mix of labour and migration policies in this recession, starting with the reality that the labour market is weakening from a strong base.

If you accept that the Australia of 4 per cent unemployment effectively had "full" employment, then our present 5.2 per cent nominal jobless rate really means 1.2 per cent. There were already doubts in the first half of last year about the sustainability of sub-5 per cent unemployment, if inflation was to be contained.

Less media coverage was given to total employment remaining flat. Admittedly, this was due to a surge in part-time jobs making up for the fall in full-time jobs, but in harder times, a job is a job. Even when unemployment reaches the 7 per cent forecast by the Government and major banks, it won't be much above the level before Australia's last recession.

As Evans admits, there are still areas where Australia lacks skills and must import the end-product of other countries' investment in education and training. Some people are losing jobs and more will, but in any historical context, we're a long way from being in the crisis the politicians and headlines suggest.

The Government has caught itself in a trap by convincing the electorate before the last election that working families were doing it tough, when they really never had it so good. From such heights, any fall can seem steep.

Our real immigration numbers are much higher than the official immigration program generally reported. May's budget boosted the "official" program places by 20 per cent to 190,300 - just to put this week's cut of 18,500 in perspective - but there are another 160,000 not officially referred to as migrants. Kiwis, 457 visas and a few others are not part of the official migration policy.

It is not unreasonable to expect the number of dipthong stranglers [New Zealanders have a distinctive accent] from across the ditch will at least be maintained, some of them economic refugees, maybe finding work here in construction. Last financial year, 34,491 Kiwis settled. There were another 1428 people in an unspecified "other non-program" category.

And there are the subsection 457 guest workers who are the first to feel the chill winds of labour protectionism. It seems 457 visas are down about 20 per cent in January and February, or about 100,000 people this year. I'd argue that the way 457s hold up is a better indicator of the real strength of the Australian labour market and our skills shortages and mismatches than what comes out of ABS labour surveys.

SOURCE





23 March, 2009

Obama cautious on immigration

US President Barack Obama on Wednesday urged a "comprehensive approach" to immigration reform, admitting it was a controversial issue in a country that harbors some 12 million mostly Hispanic undocumented workers.

"It only works, though, if you do all the pieces," Obama told a "town hall" meeting in Costa Mesa, California. "I think the American people -- they appreciate and believe in immigration ... (but) you can't have a situation where you have people pouring over the border without anything to control it. "They have become our neighbors. They've been our friends. They may have children who have become US citizens. That's the kind of comprehensive approach we have to take," he said, reminding his audience of his upcoming visit to Mexico next month.

Obama said that in addition to securing the border against illegal immigration, "we have to combine that with cracking down on employers who are exploiting undocumented workers."

Earlier Wednesday, Obama held a meeting at the White House with Hispanic lawmakers to voice his commitment to present an immigration reform bill later this year. Two immigration reform bills were defeated in Congress in 2006 and 2007.

In Costa Mesa, Obama said there would be no "instant amnesty" for the millions of undocumented workers currently living in the United States. "You've got to say to the undocumented workers... 'Look, you've broken the law. You didn't come here the way you were supposed to. So this is not going to be a free ride ... What's going to happen is you're going to pay a significant fine.' "'You are going to learn English. You are going to... go to the back of the line so you don't get ahead of somebody who was in Mexico City applying legally.'"

"'But after you've done these things over a certain period of time, you can earn your citizenship. So that it's not -- it's not something that is guaranteed or automatic. You've got to earn it.' But over time, you get people an opportunity."

As a US senator from Illinois, Obama in 2007 voted in favor of immigration reform and made it one of his top campaign issues, winning the key support of 66 percent of some 10 million registered Hispanic voters in the November 4 presidential election.

SOURCE



Farewell Pauline

It would seem that Australia's most famous political outsider is finished. I voted for her three times because her policy on Aborigines seemed to me to make her the least racist candidate. Her platform had two major planks: A drastic cutback in immigration and an end to special treatment of Aborigines. For that she was branded racist despite her message being in fact what was contained in the name of her party: One Nation. She wanted immigrants to assimilate and everybody to be treated the same by governments. Assimilation is in fact the opposite of racism. It says that being Australian is cultural and you can become an Australian regardless of your race. Note that the last representative of her party was married to a man of Chinese descent -- hardly racist. Despite Pauline's various defeats, her concerns about lax immigration controls resonated strongly with the people and underlay the swingeing and effective crackdown on illegals put into place by John Howard

Saturday rammed home the final nail in the coffin for One Nation, with the defeat of its sole MP and the failure of Pauline Hanson in her seventh attempt to be elected to parliament.

One Nation became a significant political force when it won 11 seats when it first contested the Queensland election in 1998. But Rosa Lee Long, who had been the One Nation MP for Tablelands since 2001, looks to have failed in her bid to win the new seat of Dalrymple in north Queensland. Counting was close on Saturday night and Ms Lee Long was yesterday not conceding, saying she would fight to the last vote.

With Ms Lee Long's apparent defeat, the only connection One Nation has with elected politicians is that one of its MPs elected in 1998, Dorothy Pratt, still sits in the Queensland parliament as the independent member for Nanango. Ms Pratt left One Nation during her first term.

Ms Hanson's candidacy in Beaudesert, south of Brisbane, attracted national media attention but not enough voters. She secured 22 per cent of the vote to run third behind Labor and the Liberal National Party winner Aiden McLindon.

Ms Hanson has sought election to the Senate three times and once to the NSW parliament, since she won the federal seat of Oxley in 1996 and failed to win the new seat of Blair in 1998. On Saturday night, she would not rule out another tilt at politics, despite having said when she nominated this would be her last run at politics. She'd wait and see how she felt after a good night's sleep. "I think I've got a great result to get the vote that I have," she said. Ms Hanson said the vote confirmed for her so far was an indication people were not satisfied with the major parties.

The One Nation founder blamed the media for her loss, referring to the publication of raunchy photographs of a young woman erroneously claimed to be her in the mid-1970s by News Limited Sunday newspapers. "I seem to get this huge media hype every time I run," Ms Hanson said. "I feel I am being hounded by the media. I have had to deal with issues that no other candidate has had to deal with."

SOURCE





22 March, 2009

Immigrants to Canada should be able to speak English or French

Immigration minister Jason Kenney says immigrants should be able to speak either English or French before seeking Canadian citizenship. The immigration minister’s calls for stricter language requirements come as the federal government is looking for ways to improve its programs. “Someone who has been here 15 years and can’t speak English or French is basically locking themselves out of the vast majority of jobs and is isolating themselves socially. That’s a tragedy,” Kenney said after speaking at an immigration conference in Calgary on Friday. “I think we should look at ways where we can increase the requirements for linguistic competencies for immigrants and citizens.”

Kenney said there are too many cases of people becoming Canadian citizens who can’t speak either French or English — despite rules in place requiring competence in either official language.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the premiers are working on a framework that could create a “straightforward pathway” to foreign-credential recognition, Kenney said.

The government is also shifting its focus away from promoting diversity to encouraging more integration of new Canadians. “What we need is to be relaxed about our diversity, see it as a great strength, but also focus on the things that unite us as Canadians,” Kenney said.

While many immigration groups are pleased work is being done to help foreign-trained workers have their credentials recognized, some expressed concern about Kenney’s musing on additional language rules. “I would like to know what he defines as a working knowledge of the language,” said Isabel Gibbins, dean of English-as-a-second-language programs at Bow Valley College in Calgary. “You can have a working knowledge that enables you to go shopping and talk to a doctor, but if you want to be an engineer or a doctor yourself you need to have a much higher level of language training,” she said. With countries competing for skilled workers, Gibbins fears imposing more language requirements on immigrants will make Canada a less attractive destination.

Kenney noted the government already provides free language training to those who want it.

The cost of an English class isn’t the only barrier many immigrants — especially women — face to language training, said New Democratic immigration critic Olivia Chow. “A big part of it is when they get into the country, we no longer provide language classes with child care and transportation and a bit of income support. Women are often stuck in the house. Someone has to take care of the kids,” Chow said. Any comprehensive language-training program must provide other types of support such as income, childcare or transportation to be effective, Chow said.

SOURCE



Australia's population rises dramatically

The increased immigration was explicitly sought and encouraged by Australia's new Leftist government

The population of Australia experienced its biggest increase last year as the birth rate soared and migrants flooded in. The population rose by 390,000 - the equivalent of a city the size of Canberra - to reach 21.5 million people. Until two years ago, the annual population growth had never exceeded 300,000.

The growth rate of 1.84 per cent was the highest since 1970, after which advances in birth control and lower migration sent population growth plunging, dropping below 1 per cent for most of the following 30 years.

Although both birth and immigration rates can decline with a recession, the rapid population growth of recent years is expected to soften the impact of the global downturn. "The faster rate of population growth means that the economy can grow at a faster pace," Commsec chief economist Craig James said. "More people in Australia means greater demands for houses, roads, schools, hospitals and a raft of retail goods, and as such is providing much needed stimulus in trying times for the global economy."

Nationally, the birth rate is almost [1.84 is "almost" 2.1??] up to replacement rate, having risen from 1.72 births per woman in 2003 to a rate of 1.84, the highest in 21 years.

KPMG demographer Bernard Salt said the growth figures reflected the boom, which did not end until late last year and that it was no accident women had started having more than two children each in the resource states of Queensland and Western Australia. Tasmania has been above that level for three years.

NSW has the lowest birth rate of 1.79, while the rate is about 1.95 in Victoria and South Australia.

Australian National University demographer Peter McDonald said the recession might bring only a small fall of 10,000 to 20,000 in the number of births, which reached 295,000 in the 12months to September. Professor McDonald said it was hard to tell how long the trend would last, but the long decline from the 1970s, marked by women postponing their first child, appeared to have reversed. The change in the birth rate had been most marked among women aged between 28 and 40 years, he said.

Family benefits and other supports for women in the workforce appeared to explain the change, he said. Advanced nations with low birth rates of about 1.2 all lacked effective family policies.

Perth mother Justine Giles already had three children when she gave birth to twins Bryn and Tassia in November. "It was a bit of a shock, but we're delighted now," she said. Ms Giles, 38, said many of her friends had stopped at two for financial reasons, but she and her husband had always wanted more. "I grew up in a family of five and I had a large extended family and I've always really enjoyed the company of my extended family," she said. The baby bonus was not a factor because "$5000 doesn't go very far in raising a child".

The ABS said 60 per cent of the population growth came from migration, with people who were here for at least a year reaching 235,800. This is 33.5 per cent more than a year earlier, and more than double the immigration rate of four years ago.

Although there were reports that the applications for 457 temporary work visas had fallen sharply, there were still strong flows of students and working holidaymakers, Professor McDonald said. "If you add up the categories, I don't think you'll see much fall in migration as a result of the Government's cuts," he said, referring to the decision to reduce the intake of skilled workers by 14,000 a year.

SOURCE





21 March, 2009

Two nations: those who work, those who won't

Blaming immigrants for British unemployment levels misses the point: the problem is people who are bone idle

Alice Thomson

Michael's alarm still goes at 5am every morning, by 7am he has cleaned his Notting Hill house, at 8am the children have a three-course breakfast and by 9 he has walked them to school and is sitting at his desk sending out his CV. Six weeks after he lost his job at Goldman Sachs, he still works a 14-hour day. He now waits tables at his favourite restaurant, sweeps the leaves from the communal garden tennis court and helps the neighbours' Filipina housekeeper to clear the drains.

Paul Bright, a factory manager for a paper doily factory in Essex who has also been made redundant, has the same drive. At 60, he could retire. “All I want to do is work again,” he says. “I am like a smoker who doesn't know what to do with his hands once he's quit. I need to feel useful.”

The Chawners wouldn't understand. Mr and Mrs Chawner and their two daughters insist that they are “too fat to work” because they have a combined weight of 83 stone - so they watch television all day living off their 22,000 pounds of benefits. In the past 11 years, only the youngest daughter, Emma, has attended a job interview and that was on The X Factor, where she was kicked out in the first round. Mr Chawner explains: “Often I'm so tired from watching TV I have to have a nap. I certainly couldn't work. I deserve more.”

These are Britain's two nations. Not those born abroad and those born here, not black or white, rich or poor, men or women, North or South, public or private sector. But those who belong to the world of work and those who are alienated from it, living off the taxes from other people's earnings.

In the past ten years a chasm has opened up between the workaholics and the quaintly named “work-shy”. Labour still isn't working, claims a revised version of the classic Tory poster, as unemployment passes two million.

In fact, nearly eight million people of working age in Britain have been “economically inactive” for the past few years. More than 2.5 million of them are on incapacity benefit - of these 2,130 people are too “fat” to work; 1,100 can't work because they have trouble getting to sleep; 4,000 get headaches; 380 are confined to the sofa by haemorrhoids; 3,000 are kept at home by gout; and half a million are too depressed to get a job. According to Dame Carol Black, the National Director of Health and Work, one child in five now comes from a family where neither parent works, yet at the end of last year there were half a million job vacancies.

The BNP's message over the past decade has been loud and clear - your job is being stolen by the Somali next door. But it's just not true. The Somali and the Romanian, Chinese and Ukrainian are doing jobs that many British won't now contemplate. The majority of migrants to Britain - more than 80 per cent - are earning less than 25,000 a year in industries that have become unpopular for British people to work in.

That is why immigration in Britain rose by 2.5 million in the past decade and why English is now a second language for one in seven pupils in primary school. Immigrants have kept Britain working. It is also why the Tories couldn't turn immigration into a vote-winner in the past two elections. People recognised that we needed the Chinese to pick our strawberries, the Czechs to blow our children's noses, the Pakistanis to sweep our hospitals, the Afghans to drive our minicabs, the Australians to pull our pints and the Poles to put up the scaffolding.

Only last year 13 million pounds of British fruit and vegetables went unpicked because farmers couldn't find enough British labour to harvest their crops, forcing the Government to raise the quota for migrants under the seasonal agricultural workers' scheme. As one man outside a Jobcentre Plus in Peterborough explained: “I'd prefer to sign on than do that. I don't want to work in no cornfield for 25,000 a year.”

Now, however, everything has changed. The new unemployed aren't those who don't want to work, they are the committed, driven employees who are horrified at the thought of no longer being able to commute into the office. They are the 3,000 people who are prepared to queue for 150 part-time jobs at Twycross Zoo in the Midlands and who bitterly resent having to sign on.

These are the unemployed who keep Gordon Brown awake at night. The millions of British citizens who are already economically inactive will be eternally grateful to the former Chancellor for having provided them with such generous pocket money, but those now joining the unemployment statistics won't be bought off so easily.

They are the newly unemployed dry cleaners in Didcot and Devon, the estate agents in Christchurch and Cornwall, the factory-floor managers in Swindon and Staffordshire and building contractors in Brighton and Bedfordshire - people who won't vote Labour again if they can no longer pay their mortgages and don't appreciate being forced to watch flat-screen TVs all day.

The Government's response has been to blame the immigrants who helped Britain for so long. Only this week Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, brought up Sangatte again. Yesterday, as the unemployment figures were released, Hazel Blears, the Secretary of State for Communities, suddenly announced a new migrant tax of 50 pounds on overseas workers coming from outside the EU to pay for their public services.

But the answer doesn't lie in supertaxing the migrants, cordoning off the white cliffs of Dover or forcing Ethiopians on to planes at gunpoint. Like drugs, immigrants will find a way into this country if the demand exists. They may be putting a strain on the NHS but many services wouldn't exist without them. In 2008, 14.7 per cent of health and social care workers were migrants.

Attacking immigrants and talking about British jobs for British workers won't help anyone but the BNP. What is required now is the courage to push ahead with welfare reform despite the recession, and close the only gap that matters - between the active and the idle. Michael and Paul will find a job in the end, it's part of their DNA. Tackling the Chawners is the real challenge.

SOURCE



The Latino Voting Trickle: Hispanics didn't elect Barack Obama.

The day after the 2004 presidential election, columnist Dick Morris proclaimed that George W. Bush owed his victory to Hispanics-a startling conclusion that Morris based on reports that 45 percent of Hispanics had voted for the president and that their vote constituted a whopping 12 percent of the electorate. Given that 1996 Republican nominee Bob Dole had won just 21 percent of the Hispanic vote, the more than doubling of support over eight years was sufficient, in Morris's eyes, to appear decisive.

The only problem with this thesis was that few of its facts were correct. Exit polls, recall, were wildly inaccurate that year. Subsequent academic analysis of the polls concluded that only about 37 percent of Hispanics had pulled the lever for Bush-about the same percentage as had voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984, and hardly a historic shift. Moreover, a Census Bureau analysis estimated that Hispanics accounted for 6 to 8 percent of the 2004 electorate, not 12 percent. Nevertheless, the idea that Hispanics had given unprecedented support to a Republican presidential candidate became a compelling media story line, especially during the immigration debates of 2007, when commentators wondered whether a Hispanic backlash against the GOP's tough position on illegal immigration would sink Republicans at the polls.

Then, in the wake of Barack Obama's 2008 election victory, commentators dredged up the old, discredited 2004 numbers and used them as evidence that Hispanics had shifted impressively toward the Democratic Party and had even been instrumental in the outcome. USA Today argued that Obama had "reversed" gains made among Hispanics by Bush, who, the paper erroneously said, had carried 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004. The paper also noted that Hispanics were the country's fastest-growing ethnic group-a misleading statistic in this context, because Hispanics don't vote at anywhere near the rate that their numbers would suggest. But USA Today wasn't alone. The New York Times claimed that Obama had garnered 13 percentage points more of the Hispanic vote than John Kerry did four years ago (he did only a few points better) and implied, again, that Bush had won somewhere in the mid-40 percent range of the Hispanic vote.

The numbers actually show something quite different: Hispanics shifted away from Republican candidate John McCain at virtually the same rate that the entire electorate did. McCain earned 5 percentage points fewer of the total vote than Bush did in 2004, and similarly got 4 to 5 percentage points fewer than Bush's share of Hispanic voters. This was in line with how other constituencies voted, too: Obama peeled off several percentage points of support from McCain among vastly dissimilar voting blocs, from Christian evangelicals to women voters, from those making $200,000 or more in annual income to voters lacking a high school education. None of this is surprising. According to a Pew Hispanic Center poll, the issues that mattered most to Hispanic voters were education, the cost of living, jobs, and health care-at the top of the list for almost every voting group.

Pew also found no sharp increase in Hispanics' voting rates in 2008, estimating that they made up about 8 percent of the electorate, roughly the same percentage as in 2006 and just slightly more than in 2004. What some pundits have referred to as the Latino voting tsunami is more like ripples in a stream.

What the 2008 election really demonstrates is that Hispanic voting patterns remain pretty much where they've been for the past 30 years. The most successful Republican candidates-Reagan in the 1980s and Bush in 2004-garner somewhere in the high 30 percent range, and the Hispanic vote deviates from that figure depending on the quality of the Republican candidate.

Why has the GOP been unable to make more headway among Hispanics? One answer has to do with income. As political scientist Andrew Gelman notes in his new book, Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State, lower-income voters continue to vote disproportionately Democratic, despite a popular notion among pundits that many of them have shifted to the GOP for cultural reasons. That fact suggests that Hispanics-nearly half of whom live in households whose earnings fall in the country's bottom two income quintiles-would naturally trend Democratic. And in fact, in the McCain-Obama contest, 83 percent of Hispanic voters with annual incomes of $15,000 or less voted for Obama, as did 71 percent of those earning between $15,000 and $30,000. By contrast, 51 percent of those with household incomes between $150,000 and $200,000 voted for McCain.

McCain hardly ran a campaign that appealed to voters worried about the country's economic woes. Those voters, especially in lower-income households, went strongly for Obama. That, more than anything else, explains much of the "shift" in Hispanic voting last November.

SOURCE





20 March, 2009

Immigration Enforcement in Meatpacking

New report now released: Finds wage and employment growth for legal workers after Swift plant raids

On December 12, 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel raided six meatpacking plants owned by Swift & Co. in the largest immigration enforcement action in U.S. history. The plants are located in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado, and Utah. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines the raids and their aftermath. It notes the historical context of an industry whose workers have seen a dramatic decline in wages over the past 30 years as well as the raids' economic effects. The report also discusses both positive and negative reactions in these six communities.

The report, entitled, "The 2006 Swift Raids: Assessing the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Actions at Six Facilities," is authored by Jerry Kammer, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. Before joining CIS, Kammer was a reporter with Copley New Service, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. In 1990 he received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for his reporting on conditions of maquiladora factory workers in Mexico.

The report is available online here. Some of the findings include:

* As is the case in the entire industry, work at the six Swift plants is characterized by difficult and dangerous conditions.

* Like the rest of the industry, workers at these facilities have seen a steady decline in their standard of living. Government data show that the average wages of meatpackers in 2007 were 45 percent lower than in 1980, adjusted for inflation.

* We estimate that 23 percent of Swift's production workers were illegal immigrants.

* All facilities resumed production on the same day as the raids. All returned to full production within five months. This is an indication that the plants could operate at full capacity without the presence of illegal workers.

* There is good evidence that after the raids the number of native-born workers increased significantly. But Swift would not provide information on how its workforce has changed. Swift also has recruited a large number of refugees who are legal immigrants.

* At the four facilities for which we were able to obtain information, wages and bonuses rose on average 8 percent with the departure of illegal immigrants.

* There is a widespread perception among union officials, workers, and others in these communities that if pay and working conditions were improved, it would be dramatically easier to recruit legal workers (immigrant and native).

* Worker pay has a small impact on consumer prices. Research by the USDA and others indicates that wages and benefits for production workers account for only 7 to 9 percent of retail meat prices. This means that if wages and benefits were increased by one-third, consumer prices would rise by 3 percent at most.

* Research by the United Food and Commercial Workers union indicates that pay to production workers accounts for only about 4 percent of consumer costs. If that is correct, a 50 percent increase in wages would cause only a 2 percent increase in consumer prices.

* Turnover is high at all Swift plants, ranging from 40 to 70 percent per year. Swift accepts high turnover as a cost of pursuing a business model that emphasizes high-volume production. It spends heavily to replace workers rather than seeking to retain workers by slowing production.

* High turnover imposes severe stress on local communities and social service agencies. It makes transience and upheaval a constant problem for the communities. Many residents resent the price their community pays to have the Swift plant as a large part of their local economy.

* Swift has tried to reduce the employment of illegal immigrants with more rigorous checks of documents presented by new workers. Several months before the raids, the company contracted with the Tucson-based Border Management Strategies for advice on hiring practices.

* In addition to pay increases, Swift introduced a number of methods to attract workers after the raids. The company paid bonuses to new employees, and to current employees who recruited others. It also advertised heavily, paid relocation expenses, and provided daily transportation from distant population centers.

* Reaction to the raids varied widely within these communities. Many members of the communities were enthusiastically supportive of the enforcement action, while others were sharply critical.

* The Swift plants in Marshalltown, Iowa, and Hyrum, Utah, illustrate the immigration connections that were established during the 1942-1964 era of the braceros and extended through the 1986 amnesty. Many relatives and neighbors of former braceros now work at Swift plants.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. For more information, Contact: Jerry Kammer, (202) 466-8185, gjk@cis.org



More than three-quarters of Britons want to see jobless immigrants forced to leave UK

The Government has failed to 'get control' of the issue of immigration, ministers admitted today. Phill Woolas, the Immigration Minister, said he was not surprised by findings of a poll which showed that nearly eight out of ten people believe all unemployed foreign migrants should be asked to leave the UK. Mr Woolas said the the British people would never be comfortable with immigration until they believe ministers have a firm grip on the nation's borders. Mr Woolas said: 'The poll figures are not a surprise. They are a concern, and in significant part they are because the public don't believe that the government has got control.' He added: 'The central goal of my immigration policy is to provide the assurance to the public that we know who's here and who's not here.'

The minister claimed opposition to foreign workers was 'based on the belief that the immigrant has no legitimate right to be here,' adding: 'We will only get a country that is comfortable with immigration when we can show the Government has it under control.'

Mr Woolas's admission highlights the Labour Government's defensiveness over immigration - following years of increasingly tough rhetoric and repeated efforts to tighten controls. More than half of those surveyed in the poll for the Financial Times opposed giving other EU citizens the right to live and work in Britain - one of the cornerstone principles of the European Union. It questioned thousands of people across the UK, Europe and the United States regarding immigration and the economy. Among the British public it highlights widespread ill-feeling towards foreign workers at a time when unemployment is nearing the two million mark. In the UK a huge majority - 78 per cent - believed immigrants should be asked to leave the country if they do not have a job, with only 14 per cent disagreeing and eight per cent undecided. A similar number held the same view in Italy along with sizeable majorities in Spain, Germany and the U.S. and around half of those questioned in France.

Just over half of British adults opposed the right of all EU citizens to settle and work in Britain. A narrow majority of Germans agreed, while there was slightly more support for the right of free movement and access to Labour markets among French, Italians and Spaniards.

An estimated one million foreign workers flocked to the UK after eight eastern European states joined the union in 2004. Most other member states exercised a treaty right to bar eastern Europeans from their own job markets, but Britain allowed a free-for-all and the huge numbers arriving massively exceeded the Government's expectations.

Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green said: 'What this poll represents is the combination of that policy failure with the obvious pressures on the job market because of the recession.' Phil Woolas suffered a further setback yesterday when watchdogs rejected his criticism of the Office for National Statistics over its release of immigrant population figures last month. The ONS brought forward the published of the startling figures - showing that one in nine UK residents was born overseas - because of officials judged that the material was topical and important to the immigration debate. But Phil Woolas, who faced embarrassment over the figures, unleashed a ferocious attack on the independent statisticians accusing them of straying into 'the most inflamed debate in British politics' and claiming the release was 'at best naive, or, at worst, sinister.'

Today the UK Statistics Authority gave its strong backing to the ONS, concluding that the publication was 'consistent' with the rules and the timing was 'influenced by the level of public interest in the topic.' The ONS's press release was 'factually accurate' and 'neutral and impartial' in tone, the watchdog added, whereas failing to publish the figures could have led to a misinformed debate based on flawed figures - although it said the ONS should have made a formal announcement explaining why it was bringing the publication forward, and included more supporting information.

SOURCE





19 March, 2009

More US agents to fight border chaos

The Obama administration plans to send reinforcements to the border with Mexico to help contain the rampant violence of the drug cartel wars. Thirty-seven agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are being deployed to the region. An official familiar with the plan said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency is considering reassignment of at least 90 officers to the border. The official requested anonymity because the plan has not yet been announced.

The deployments are part of President Barack Obama's first moves to boost federal security sources on the U.S. side of the border. The additional immigration agents would double the size of a task force that has been working with other federal agencies to fight criminal organizations contributing to the border violence. The ATF agents will be added to anti-gunrunning teams in McAllen, Texas, El Centro, Calif., and Las Cruces, N.M., as well as to U.S. consulates in Juarez and Tijuana. Some of the reinforcement costs will be covered with economic recovery money recently approved by Congress.

The U.S.-Mexico border has been a different problem for Obama than it was for his predecessor, George W. Bush. While Bush sent National Guard troops to stem the flow of illegal immigrants, Obama's first moves are designed more to keep violence from spilling across the border.

Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said the governor's office has "not received official word from Washington but we are hopeful we'll get the help we need from Washington to secure the border."

Mexican officials say the violence spawned by warring drug cartels killed 6,290 people last year and more than 1,000 so far this year, mostly south of the border. Over the weekend hundreds of Mexican army troops arrived in Juarez, a border city across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas. Police in Juarez have been swamped by drug violence. The move brought the total number of soldiers patrolling the city to around 7,000.

Warring drug cartels are blamed for more than 560 kidnappings in Phoenix in 2007 and the first half of 2008, as well as killings in Atlanta, Birmingham, Alabama, and Vancouver, British Columbia.

SOURCE



British plan to halt migrants at Calais (That's news to us, say French immigration chiefs)

A joint Anglo-French detention centre is to be built outside Calais to deal with thousands of migrants trying to reach Britain, the immigration minister has claimed. In a surprise move, Phil Woolas revealed that he has held talks with his French counterparts over a secure camp. He says he is trying to persuade them that it would be the solution to dealing with would-be asylum seekers trying to get into the UK.

Describing his plans for the centre, Mr Woolas emphasised that it would not be like the infamous Sangatte. He said the new facility would house migrants before they are sent home. Britain is willing to help pay for and run the camp, Mr Woolas said, and to share the costs of flights with the French authorities to deport illegal immigrants back to their homes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere before they can reach the UK.

However, Mr Woolas's unscheduled announcement took his Whitehall officials by surprise. The Home Office was unable to provide details of how the proposed detention centre would work. But more embarrassingly for Mr Woolas, his claims even caused bemusement in Paris, where a spokesman for the French immigration ministry said he too had 'no information' about plans for the detention centre.

Meanwhile, a source at Calais town council said there were 'certainly no plans for the building of a new prison structure'. Mr Woolas, who has developed a reputation for putting his foot in his mouth, told reporters he was anxious to agree a deal with the French by the beginning of May, in time for a formal announcement at an Anglo-French summit later that month.

Proposals for a new secure detention camp appear to run contrary to French government's current approach to the problems at Calais, where immigration minister Eric Besson last week confirmed that new 'light building' facilities are to be built offering food, showers and legal advice to illegal immigrants trying to reach the UK. The centres have already been dubbed 'mini-Sangattes' after the notorious camp which was closed down in 2002.

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett persuaded the French to bulldoze the site, but only on condition that Britain accepted hundreds of migrants living there. Pressure on the French government has grown in recent months to deal with the growing numbers of rough-sleepers.

Referring to Sangatte, Mr Woolas said: 'Last time the pressure was on the French to let people through the Channel Tunnel. Now the pressure on them is humanitarian.' Charity workers believe as many as 2,000 are living in a series of squalid shanty towns in areas of woodland known as 'the jungle'.

Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green dismissed the plans as a 'waste of money' which would not tackle the real problem of weak borders and crowds of determined illegal immigrants. He added that they 'will only be deterred by proper protection of our borders, which is why Conservatives propose to set up a specialist Border Police Force'.

SOURCE





18 March, 2009

Sheriff Arpaio Has `No Intention' of Testifying Before Conyers Committee on Alleged Immigration Enforcement Abuses

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) told CNSNews.com he is going to invite Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio to testify in his committee about alleged abuses by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in its enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. But a spokeswoman for Arpaio told CNSNews.com that the sheriff -- who has not yet received an official invitation to testify -- currently has "no intention" of appearing before Conyers' committee. The spokeswoman said, however, that Arpaio "welcomes" a Justice Department investigation into the way his sheriff's office has handled enforcement of federal immigration laws.

As CNSNews.com reported last week, Acting Assistant Atty. Gen. Loretta King sent a letter to Sheriff Arpaio on March 10 informing him that the Justice Department was initiating an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO).

The investigation, King wrote, will "focus on alleged patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures conducted by the MCSO, and on allegations of national origin discrimination, including failure to provide meaningful access to MCSO services for limited English proficient (LEP) individuals."

The announcement of the Justice Department investigation followed a Feb. 12 letter that Conyers sent to Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano requesting an investigation of Arpaio and the MCSO. Conyers was joined in signing that letter by three other members of the House Judiciary Committee: Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Immigration; Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights; and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. "Specifically, we would like to know what actions your Department will take to ensure that Hispanic residents of Maricopa County are not subjected to racial profiling, unequal treatment at the hands of Sheriff's Department personnel, or violations of generally accepted standards of confinement," the congressmen said in their letter to Holder and Napolitano.

CNSNews.com spoke with Conyers after a Capitol Hill press conference last Wednesday, where he had been joined by representatives of ACORN, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and other activists groups. The press conference had been called so the groups could present a petition carrying 35,000 signatures that called on the Justice Department and Homeland Security to investigate Sheriff Arpaio for alleged civil rights abuses.

When asked if he had been briefed on specific evidence of racial profiling by MCSO, Conyers said: "No, no I haven't been briefed on it. We are getting ready to hold a hearing on it." When asked if he specifically knows whether Arpaio has done racial profiling, Conyers said, "Look, we are going to invite him to be a witness so we can clear up all the ambiguities in the world, and we'd like you to be there too."

The director of media relations for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Lisa Allen, told CNSNews.com that Sheriff Arpaio has "no intention" of testifying in Conyers' committee. "He has no intention of going to Washington at this point," said Allen, when asked by CNSNews.com about Conyers' desire to have Arpaio testify. "We are not surprised by the initiation of hearings and so forth," said Allen. "We knew when the administration in Washington changed, the likelihood of getting a much more sympathetic ear to a lot of these open-border activists would probably occur. We are not at all concerned about the hearings or about the Department of Justice investigation. We are confident that we are not racially profiling. We have trained and are cognizant of that type of criticism being levied against us all the time," she said.

"We guard against any type of racial profiling either in the jails or on patrol in our human smuggling operations," she said. "So, Mr. Conyers, we believe, is politically motivated by some of his Democratic, left-wing constituents, to kind of go after Sheriff Arpaio who is kind of the poster boy for the tough illegal immigration fight." "We don't believe Mr. Conyers is particularly well-informed," said Allen.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he is worried that Conyers' intended hearing is an attempt to discourage enforcement of the immigration law. "Some Democrats seem to have forgotten that in America, you're innocent until proven guilty," Smith told CNSNews.com in a statement. "I'm concerned that this hearing is an attempt to intimidate other law enforcement officials and discourage immigration enforcement. Democrats need to stop trying people in the court of public opinion--where there is no evidence--and let the Justice Department do its job without political interference."

When asked if there's anything wrong with Sheriff Arpaio enforcing the immigration laws under authority provided by the federal government, Rep. Nadler said: "Well, I'm not sure there's anything wrong with enforcing the law under federal authority, but there's a lot wrong with--in the name of enforcing the law--engaging in racial profiling, grabbing people without due process, without warrants and mistreating them." "I mean it's exactly what the law prohibits. Section 1983 of the federal law prohibits anyone acting under color of law, depriving people of civil rights, and this guy seems to be doing that also," said Nadler.

When Conyers was asked whether there was anything wrong with a local sheriff enforcing immigration laws under federal authority, he said: "Well, racial profiling is not legal even from a sheriff. We have laws against racial profiling. That's the problem. You can't harass people because you want to use race or language or appearance as a basis for enforcing the law, in my mind."

In her letter to Sheriff Arpaio, Acting Assistant Att. Gen, King said: "We have not reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation. We believe that you and other Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) officials want to operate the MCSO consistent with the requirements of the Constitutional and Federal Law." "During the course of the investigation," she said, "we will consider all relevant information, particularly the efforts the MCSO has undertaken to ensure compliance with federal law."

The media relations office for the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee declined to comment on this story.

SOURCE



CIS update

1. MALDEF Won't Be Running Civil Rights After All

I'd alluded earlier to reports that Thomas Saenz, MALDEF's former top attorney, had been tapped to head the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. Apparently, that was true, and he'd accepted the job, but then the White House threw him under the bus (it's getting crowded down there) 'because of Tom's work on immigration rights,' in the words of LA County supervisor Gloria Molina. Another good sign! Instead, the administration has nominated Maryland labor secretary Tom Perez, who had earlier been rumored to be the pick for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. While the White House may have figured Perez will be easier to confirm, he doesn't actually seem any better on immigration; after all, he's former president of the board of Casa de Maryland, the state's premier pro-illegal-immigration advocacy group.

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2. Even Symbolic H-1B Curbs Provoke Employer Outcry

EXCERPT: The latest chapter in the Alice in Wonderland story of the H-1B visa program for cheap foreign labor surrounds provisions applied to employers receiving money from the Troubled Assets Recovery Program ('TARP').

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3. CIS Fellow Featured on CNBC

Details: John Miano, a Center fellow, participated in a CNBC debate. The debate topic, which can be viewed in the video below, covered the issue of Silicon Valley employers firing native-born employees while holding onto foreign employees on H-1B visas.

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4. Paseo del Norte, Part III

EXCERPT: State and local governments (and their constituents!) have long been saddled with the economic and public safety consequences of inadequate federal efforts to control the border. In Texas in 2006, the situation was getting out of hand - Mexican organized crime organizations were smuggling drugs and people into and through the state with near impunity, leading to violence and other public safety problems there and elsewhere in the country. Gov. Rick Perry decided he'd seen enough, and launched a series of state-led operations to "take back the border." In partnership with the Border Patrol and other federal agencies, they have largely succeeded. But the Mexican organized crime groups have not gone away; if anything, they are more determined, and this state effort deserves federal funding for expansion and possible replication elsewhere.

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5. Aerial Reconnaissance over the Prairie

EXCERPT: Canadians have long been proud of the 'longest undefended border in the world' between their country and the United States, 8,891 kilometers across the entire continent from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean. Those days, however, are over, say some Canadians, for the United States is beefing up its surveillance along a 370 kilometer stretch of the border between Manitoba and North Dakota using unmanned aircraft equipped with infrastructure cameras and optical sensors.

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6. E-Verify Use Projected to Grow 442% 2007-2009

EXCERPT: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data from the first seven weeks of 2009 suggest that by the end of this year, E-Verify use will have grown 442 percent since 2007.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. For more information, contact center@cis.org





17 March, 2009

Britons vie with immigrants for low-paid jobs

I can't say that I am terribly sympathetic about the woes reported below. From my Australian point of view, I would hire immigrants rather than "whingeing Poms" too

Because of rising unemployment, British-born workers are having to seek low-paid and low-status jobs that have become the preserve of immigrant workers, a report says today. With unemployment expected to top two million this week, competition for jobs is expected to become fiercer because there is little evidence that East Europeans are returning home because of the economic downturn.

The report will fuel the row over Gordon Brown's promise of "British jobs for British workers", because it found evidence of recruitment agencies in one city operating a immigrants-only policy - effectively freezing local people out of the chance to work in factories. It says that employers prefer East Europeans because they are better motivated, more reliable, punctual and have low levels of absenteeism.

Dermot Finch, director of the research institute Centre for Cities, which published the report, said: "Workers from Eastern Europe have filled skills shortages and helped businesses grow. But the recession is now starting to change the dynamic between the East European migrants and local labour markets."

The report looked at the impact of Eastern European immigrants on Hull and Bristol. Mr Finch said: "In cities like Hull and Bristol unemployment is rising and vacancies are falling but we are not yet seeing a mass exodus of migrant workers. Migrants and the recently unemployed are now competing for fewer jobs, and previously `hard to fill jobs' are now in demand."

In January there were 22 people on jobseeker's allowance for every job vacancy in Hull and five on the allowance for every vacancy in Bristol. An analysis by the Trade Union Congress suggests that on average there are ten job seekers for every vacancy advertised - but in an area of the South East, that rate rises to 60 job seekers for every vacancy. "These shocking figures blow out of the water the Government's claim that there are plenty of jobs available for people who are prepared to look," said Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC.

To cope with demand at Jobcentres, the Government has drafted in civil servants who were working on child maintenance and disability claims.

The Centre for Cities report says that there has been no exodus of migrants in Hull and Bristol since the start of the economic downturn. It suggests that Britain will remain attractive to immigrants because of the differential in wage rates, standard of living and opportunities between Britain and the East European states. "Migrants perceived their flexibility to work in any job meant they were less likely to be unemployed relative to the local workforce," the report says.

Employers in Bristol reported a rise in the number of local people applying for jobs traditionally filled by immigrants. The report also suggests workers in Hull were unable to compete for jobs in the food-processing industry because recruitment agencies "unofficially" dealt with immigrants only. "Many were unofficially Polish only. Unless you were Eastern European, recruitment agencies were unlikely to put you on their books."

Home Office figures show that in the final three months of last year there were 29,000 applications to work in Britain by immigrants from Poland, the Czech Republic and the other six former communist states, a fall of 53,000 over the same period in 2007 and a drop of 63,000 on 2006. Although the numbers registering have fallen there are no figures on how many East Europeans are going home, as the UK does not count the number of people leaving the country.

SOURCE



Immigration Enforcement in Meatpacking

New report finds wage and employment growth for legal workers after Swift plant raids

On December 12, 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel raided six meatpacking plants owned by Swift & Co. in the largest immigration enforcement action in U.S. history. The plants are located in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado, and Utah. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines the raids and their aftermath. It notes the historical context of an industry whose workers have seen a dramatic decline in wages over the past 30 years as well as the raids' economic effects. The report also discusses both positive and negative reactions in these six communities.

The report, entitled, "The 2006 Swift Raids: Assessing the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Actions at Six Facilities," is embargoed until Wednesday, March 18, at 11:59 p.m. when it will be available online at www.cis.org. Advance copies are available to the media.

The report is authored by Jerry Kammer, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. Before joining CIS, Kammer was a reporter with Copley New Service, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. In 1990 he received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for his reporting on conditions of maquiladora factory workers in Mexico.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. For more information, contact Jerry Kammer at (202) 466-8185 or gjk@cis.org.





16 March, 2009

Difficult to educate the children of Hispanic immigrants

In the last decade, record numbers of immigrants, both legal and illegal, have fueled the greatest growth in public schools since the baby boom. The influx has strained many districts' budgets and resources and put classrooms on the front lines of America's battles over whether and how to assimilate the newcomers and their children. Inside schools, which are required to enroll students regardless of their immigration status and are prohibited from even asking about it, the debate has turned to how best to educate them.

Hylton High, where a reporter for The New York Times spent much of the past year, is a vivid laboratory. Like thousands of other schools across the country, it has responded to the surge of immigrants by channeling them into a school within a school. It is, in effect, a contemporary form of segregation that provides students learning English intensive support to meet rising academic standards - and it also helps keep the peace. In a nation where most students learning English lag behind other groups by almost every measure, Hylton's program stands out for its students' high test scores and graduation rates. However, at this ordinary American high school, in an ordinary American suburb at a time of extraordinary upheaval, those achievements come with considerable costs.

The calm in the hallways belies resentments simmering among students who barely know one another. They readily label one another "stupid" or "racist." The tensions have at times erupted into walkouts and cafeteria fights, including one in which immigrant students tore an American flag off the wall and black students responded by shouting, "Go back to your own country!"

Hylton's faculty has been torn over how to educate its immigrant population. Some say the students are unfairly coddled and should be forced more quickly into the mainstream. And even those who support segregating students admit to soul-searching over whether the program serves the school's needs at the expense of immigrant students, who are relentlessly drilled and tutored on material that appears on state tests but get rare exposure to the kinds of courses, demands or experiences that might better prepare them to move up in American society. "This is hard for us," said Carolyn Custard, Hylton's principal. "I'm not completely convinced we're right. I don't want them to be separated, but at the same time, I want them to succeed."

Education officials classify some 5.1 million students in the United States - 1 in 10 of all those enrolled in public schools - as English language learners, a 60 percent increase from 1995 to 2005. Researchers give many causes for the gaps between them and other groups. Perhaps most paradoxical, they say, is that a nation that prides itself on being a melting pot has yet to reach agreement on the best way to teach immigrant students.

In recent years, students learning English have flooded into small towns and suburban school districts that have little experience with international diversity. Meanwhile, teachers and administrators have come under increasing pressure to meet the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which links every school's financing and its teachers' jobs to student performance on standardized tests. The challenges have only intensified with a souring economy and deepening anger over illegal immigration, provoking many Americans to question whether those living here unlawfully should be educated at all.

Across the country, politics is never far from the schoolhouse door. Arizona, California and Massachusetts adopted English-only education policies that limited bilingual services. By contrast, school districts in Georgia and Utah have recruited teachers from Mexico to work with their swelling Latin American populations.

Near Washington, officials in Frederick County, Md., floated the idea of challenging federal law by requiring students to disclose whether they are in the country legally, an idea also proposed by the authorities in Culpeper County, Va.

Then there is Hylton High School's home county, Prince William. What was once a mostly white, middle-class suburb 35 miles southwest of the nation's capital has been transformed by a construction boom into a traffic-choked sprawl of townhouses and strip malls where Latinos are the fastest-growing group.

Neighborhood disputes led the county to enact laws intended to drive illegal immigrants away. White and black families with the means to buy their way out of the turmoil escaped to more affluent areas. Hispanic families, feeling threatened or just plain unwelcome, were torn between those who had legal status and those who did not. Many fled. By last March, educators reported that at least 759 immigrant students had dropped out of county schools. Hylton, whose 2,200 student population is almost equal parts white, black and Latino and comes from working-class apartment complexes and upscale housing developments, was one of the hardest hit.

The school's program for English learners - a predominantly Latino group that includes students from 32 countries who speak 25 languages - is directed by Ginette Cain, 61, who says she was inspired to teach immigrant students because she was once one herself. Petite with a shock of red hair, the daughter of a lumberjack and a cook, Ms. Cain was the first in her French-Canadian family to master English when they arrived in Vermont in the 1950s. She served as a bridge between her parents and their new homeland, helping them in meetings with landlords, teachers, doctors and bill collectors.

The hostilities that today's immigrants face, Ms. Cain said, have shaken her faith in bridges. "I used to tell my students that they had to stay in school," Ms. Cain said, "because eventually the laws would change, they would become citizens of this country, and they needed their diplomas so they could make something of themselves as Americans." "I don't tell them that anymore," she continued. "Now I tell them they need to get their diplomas because an education will help them no matter what side of the border they're on."

It was crunch time at Hylton High: 10 minutes until the bell, two weeks before state standardized tests, and a classroom full of blank stares suggesting that Ms. Cain still had a lot of history to cover to get her students ready. The question hanging in the air: "What is the name for a time of paranoia in the United States that was sparked by the Bolshevik Revolution?" "What's that?" Delmy Gomez, a junior from El Salvador, said with a grimace that caused his classmates to burst into laughter. The question might have stumped plenty of high school students. But for Ms. Cain's pupils, it might as well have been nuclear physics.

Few of these students had heard of the Pilgrims, much less the history of Thanksgiving. Idioms like "easy as pie" and "melting pot" were lost on them. They knew little of the American Revolution, much less the Bolshevik. "American students come to school with a lot of cultural knowledge that other teachers assume they don't have to explain because their kids get it from growing up in this country, watching television or surfing the Internet," Ms. Cain said. "I can't assume any of that."

The immigrant students are given less homework and rarely get failing grades if they demonstrate good-faith efforts. They are given more credit for showing what they know in class participation than on written assignments. And on state standardized tests, they are offered accommodations unavailable to other students. Teachers, for example, are allowed to read test questions to them. In some cases, the students are permitted to respond orally while teachers record their answers.

In Ms. Cain's 90-minute history review classes, which can touch on topics from the reign of Marie Antoinette to the Iraq war, getting ready for tests often seems the sole objective. Ms. Cain routinely interrupts discussions to emphasize potential questions. "Write this down," she told a class one day. "There's always a question about Huguenots." Significant historical episodes are often reduced to little more than sound bites. "You don't really need to know anything more about the Battle of Britain, except that it was an air strike," Ms. Cain told one class. "If you see a question about the Battle of Britain on the test, look for an answer that refers to air strikes."

Like so many other suburban communities transformed by immigration, Prince William County was overwhelmed as much by the pace of the change as by its scale. In a blink of history's eye, this commuter community became one of the 12 fastest-growing counties in the country, with a Hispanic population that surged to 19 percent from 2 percent, far outpacing growth by any other group since 1980. The enrollment of children with limited proficiency in English grew 219 percent. The county, the scene of some of the first skirmishes of the Civil War, became a battleground again.

Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the all-white, predominantly Republican Board of Supervisors, led the cause of those who argued that illegal immigrants - an estimated 30 percent of all those moving into the county - were an undue burden on taxpayers. It cost Prince William $40.2 million, about 5 percent of the school budget, to provide additional services to students with limited English last year, for example. Mr. Stewart ordered his staff to identify services the county could deny to illegal immigrants. And he was a co-author of an ordinance that would have allowed the county police to check the immigration status of anyone they stopped whom they also suspected of living in the country illegally. (The authorities later backed off, limiting the police to checking the status of anyone arrested.). "We didn't set out to pass a law addressing immigration," Mr. Stewart said in an interview. "We wanted to address issues involving problems in housing, in hospitals, in schools and with crime. And we found that when we looked at all those areas, illegal immigration was driving a lot of the problems."

In neighborhoods, however, many people did not make distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants. Some residents complained of a "foreign invasion." Constructive dialogue was often drowned out by hate-filled blogs, headlines and protests. And school boundaries were bitterly contested, with some families moving their children into schools with lower populations of immigrants, and others flexing their political influence to try to keep the immigrants out. Many parents worried that the Latino influx strained schools' resources, eroding the quality of their children's education.

"I have no problem with immigrants," said Lori Bauckman-Moore, a mother of five who said her mother came through Ellis Island. "But so many of these kids don't speak English. I'm talking fourth, fifth and sixth grades, where half of the kids don't understand what their teachers are telling them. How can my child learn when teachers have to spend most of their time focused on the kids who cannot keep up with the curriculum?"

Some students, of course, successfully climb into the middle class and beyond, as generations of immigrants before them have. But Hispanic college graduation rates - 16 percent of 25- to 29-year-old Hispanics born in the United States hold a college degree, compared with 34 percent of whites and 62 percent of Asian-Americans - suggest that many recent immigrants and their children are not going to college. Ms. Cain's anecdotal evidence bears that out. A handful of her students go on to four-year colleges, while others enroll in community colleges or join the armed services. The majority, however, eventually move into the same low-skilled jobs as their parents.

More here



Australia to reduce immigration intake

Cuts to the nation's skilled migration intake will help protect local jobs, Immigration Minister Chris Evans says. The federal government will slash the skilled migration program by 14 per cent, or 18,500 jobs, over the next three years. The cuts will be coupled with deletions to the critical skills list, which specifies which jobs are open to migrants. All building and manufacturing trades will be removed, forcing companies to find bricklayers, plumbers, welders and carpenters domestically. Employers can bring in foreign workers only if they cannot source the labour locally.

Mr Evans says the government wants to ensure migrant workers are not competing with Australians for jobs during the economic downturn. "That's (building and manufacturing) where we are seeing a drop off in demand, some major redundancies, we don't want people coming in who are going to compete with Australians," Mr Evans told ABC radio.

It is unlikely further cuts will be made to the critical skills shortage list including health, engineering and information technology jobs, he said. "I doubt they're going to be making any changes in that regard, we are down to a fairly short (critical skills shortage) list now."

The Master Builders Association says the cuts are warranted. Chief executive Wilhelm Harnisch says unemployment in the building and construction sector is rising. "We're projecting at least a loss of 50,000 jobs in this industry over the next 12 months," Mr Harnisch told ABC radio.

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said the government should be prepared to reduce further Australia's migrant intake as the economy slows. Mr Turnbull said the government has "finally recognised" the gravity of the threat migration poses to jobs in Australia. "They should be prepared to reduce the immigration intake in light of the economic circumstances," he told ABC Radio, when asked whether the government should go further than the latest announcement. "We're disappointed they have failed to do so in recent months."

But the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) says there will be trade skill shortages despite the economic downturn. "You don't want migration policy to move in high peaks and low troughs, because that does create dislocations through the economy," chief executive Peter Anderson told ABC radio. "It is far better to allow the labour market to operate in a more natural way."

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce says there is still a need for overseas workers in the Australian workforce. Abattoirs was one example where employers were struggling to fill vacancies with local labour, he said. Senator Joyce, in cautiously welcoming the announcement, said the government still needed to be careful about cutting worker immigration, especially for the meat-processing sector where operators struggled to maintain full production. "If we take away 30 per cent of the production line, you end up closing the whole production line down," he told reporters in Canberra.....

Nationals MP Mark Coulton has described as "ironic" the decision to cut the intake, saying sending jobs offshore would be a consequence of an emissions trading scheme (ETS). He said a 14 per cent cut to the skilled labour intake was not a huge amount when compared to the numbers of jobs that could be lost to the ETS and the government's planned changes to workplace laws.

Liberal backbencher Dennis Jensen says the government must ensure cuts to skilled migration are made to appropriate industries. "Doing a willy-nilly reduction in skilled migration is problematic," he told reporters. "You need to ensure that the intakes that you do reduce are in areas where, in fact, there is going to be a reduction (of local jobs)."

Dr Jensen warned that a rushed implementation of an emissions trading scheme - scheduled to begin in July 2010 - would also cost local jobs. "It's (the ETS) going to be introduced next year... (and) next year is going to be particularly bad economically." Liberal MP Stuart Robert said the ETS would export jobs overseas. "If Prime Minister (Kevin) Rudd is going to look at immigration... he needs to look at the ETS at the same time," he told reporters.

Senior Liberal senator Eric Abetz says the announced cut is appropriate, but warned that border protection measures are being weakened. The government's immigration policy was in "tatters", highlighted by the latest arrival of boatpeople at the weekend, he said. "We seem to be getting more uninvited migrants to this country and they are busily cutting the number of skilled migrants," he told reporters...

More here





15 March, 2009

Texas, Utah Continue Push for Tougher Enforcement Legislation

On Thursday, February 26, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a legal opinion that concluded that a proposed state law that would suspend the business license of any employer that hires illegal aliens would be constitutional under federal law. The AG found that the legislation proposed in Texas - which closely mirrors an Arizona law - does not conflict with the federal government's constitutional role in immigration matters. (Office of the Attorney General of Texas, February 26, 2009; The Dallas Morning News, February 27, 2009).

The legislation is currently pending in the Texas state legislature and, if passed, would provide the state with additional enforcement measures to ensure employers are not hiring illegal aliens, but instead hire only workers who are authorized to work in the United States.

Meanwhile, on Monday, March 2, Utah lawmakers rejected a last-minute attempt by supporters of illegal immigration to delay implementation of legislation which strengthened in-state enforcement measures and barred illegal immigrants from receiving state benefits. Senate Bill 81, which is set to go into effect on July 1, 2009, includes provisions that: (1) require that public employers and state contractors use a "Status Verification System" to confirm that newly hired employees are eligible to work in the United States; (2) make it illegal for an employer to discharge U.S. citizen workers and replace them with illegal workers; (3) mandate applicants for public benefits demonstrate legal presence in the United States; and (4) empower local law enforcement to inquire about the citizenship and immigration status of arrestees. (Utah State Bar, July 16, 2008). The attempt to postpone implementation of the new law until July 1, 2010 died when the committee lacked enough votes to send the bill to the Senate floor. (The Salt Lake Tribune, March 3, 2009).

Also on March 2, the Utah House of Representatives passed House Bill 64 by the overwhelming margin of 69-5. If passed in its present form, House Bill 64 would create a state Attorney General-run Fraudulent Documents Identification Unit, the primary goal of which would be to pursue and prosecute immigration-related fraudulent document cases. This bill is currently being considered by the Utah Senate. (Utah House of Representatives, H.B. 64 Substitute Bill Tracking, March 4, 2009; KCPW Radio, March 4, 2009; The Salt Lake Tribune, March 5, 2009). Utah's legislative session ends on Thursday, March 12.

SOURCE



Illegals' opponents - on the left

Prediction: Illegal immigration, an issue that has slipped from the headlines, is about to get more visible again. Surprisingly, it's not because conservative Republicans are raising Cain. No, liberals might be the catalyst that revives this topic, restoring its importance in the American political debate.

Because angry conservatives and their red-faced attacks on illegal immigrants have dominated the news since 2006, it's easy to forget that the first organized warnings against massive illegal and legal immigration came from the left. In particular, green groups oppose the population growth that immigration brings, contributing to sprawl and traffic congestion. A growing immigrant population also depletes natural resources, the greenies say, using water that we'll need someday, particularly in view of apocalyptic predictions of drought stemming from global warming.

Organized labor, too, has always harbored back-channel angst about illegals. While the unions may see some immigrant laborers as their membership base in the future, in the short run they worry that immigrant workers could displace union workers and disrupt labor markets.

Lately, it's big-government liberals who might be worried about the secondary consequences of illegal immigration. As the economy weakens, illegal workers and their families are some of the first victims, forcing many into the social-services safety net. Who pays for these services? State governments on ever-tighter budgets are being handed the bill. And when illegal immigrants turn to crime because they can no longer support themselves through traditional means, where do they go? State and local correctional facilities are asked to house more costly inmates.

Given this background, it's not surprising that FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an immigration opponent, released a poll in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D) Nevada recently. The survey found strong support for a FAIR report's notion that illegal immigration is wrecking the state's finances. FAIR's report claims that illegal immigration costs the state $630 million annually. The poll found that almost 77 percent of Nevadans feel illegal immigration hurts their state's budget.

FAIR's report deftly plays to the right, reporting that the state is spending $515 million a year to educate the children of illegal aliens, $85 million a year on unreimbursed healthcare for illegal aliens and $31 million a year to incarcerate criminal illegal aliens. But those same numbers can be spun to create stronger opposition among liberals. School and healthcare bureaucracies are prized pinnacles of liberalism, so if illegal immigration threatens those institutions, something must be done.

Further evidence of the coming Democrat initiative on illegals is the rhetoric of incoming Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Bolstered by data from a Greenburg Quinlan Posner poll taken in 2008, Napolitano is harping on the "rule of law," "resolute enforcement" and related themes that once were uttered only by the hardest of right-wing Republicans.

The Democrats are going for the trifecta: winning the right on security and fiscal impacts; winning the left on environmental and humanitarian grounds; and then winning the immigrants themselves with a legalization policy. Democrats are mulling a solution that might well keep many conservatives in the game. Instead of extolling paths to full citizenship, otherwise known as amnesty, don't be surprised to see Democrats stop at legal-worker registration. They'll ask illegal workers who have been here for a long time to pay a fine and perhaps throw in an English-only stipulation to placate most on the right.

The Democrats are risking a lot by taking on these issues, but Republicans are risking more through their passivity. By using their majority status to solve a problem that virtually all Americans know needs addressing, Democrats shame Republicans who squandered numerous opportunities to lead on this issue.

SOURCE





14 March, 2009

All Talk, No Action on Mexican Border

Mexican drug violence is decentralized, discombobulated and dangerous. Unfortunately, the recent U.S. response to Mexican drug violence can be characterized in exactly the same way.

On Wednesday, President Obama announced that he would consider deploying the U.S. National Guard if violence escalates, and House Republicans called for the expansion of Operation Jump Start, a program that put the Guard in Texas from 2006-2008. Thursday, the House held two hearings and will hold another next week to discuss the Mexican threat. In February, Texas Governor Rick Perry asked for more troops to defend his state's southern border.

Yet Perry has come out against a border fence and has a reputation for being lax on immigration. House Republicans were partially responsible for the de-funding of another Mexican security initiative, Operation Meridia, last year, taking $100 million away from the $500 million originally allocated for the program. They have not addressed why they think the Jump Start program will be more effective in reducing hostilities. And the House committee hearings are unlikely to result in any action items.

Obama has not only appointed a no-name "drug czar," Gil Kerlikowske, to combat drug violence, but actually demoted Kerlikowske before he even started, by removing his post at the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy from the official Presidential cabinet. White House officials insisted that the removal had nothing to do with the decreased authority of the post. But combined with Kerlikowske's lackluster background - Seattle Police Chief - it certainly looks like the President is ramping down the importance of the point man on drug issues.

More importantly, the effectiveness of any potential military action is uncertain. Ray Walser, Senior Latin American Policy Analyst at The Heritage Foundation, says putting National Guard troops in Texas via the Jump Start initiative may be putting a band-aid on what is a much more deep-seated situation. "What would their capability be? They can't do law enforcement," said Walser. "The way to do this is to get more law enforcement assets for the challenge -- to investigate arms shipments and the like. And to continue to work with the Mexican officials who are pursuing this."

Walser said the Meridia initiative was probably the best route, given its collaborative approach with local Mexican law enforcement, instead of Jump Start's detached patrols. But Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said that the type of action did not matter, given the demand for drugs in the U.S. "The arrests and killings of numerous top drug lords in both Colombia and Mexico over the years have not had a meaningful impact on the quantity of drugs entering the United States. Cutting off one head of the drug-smuggling Hydra merely results in more heads taking its place," he said in a February policy paper.

The oft-cited figure of 7000 drug-related deaths last year consists almost entirely of Mexican citizens, with no reliable resource to track American deaths as a result of the Mexican violence. Still, American deaths do occur, and many fear they may increase as the conflicts escalate.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, (D-Calif), chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism, said that she had seen an influx of violence into the United States. "Well, it certainly has always been a problem at the border, but in the last couple of decades, it's gotten even worse. Now we see some spillover, just a little bit, coming into the United States," she told CNN's "American Morning

SOURCE



Migrants queue up in France to reach 'Promised Land' UK

In bitter cold, they queue patiently for the free sandwich and soup that could be the difference between life and death. Men, women and, tragically, even three children, wait near the Calais waterfront for a chance to slip illegally across the 22 miles of Channel to England. The numbers are huge: charity workers think 1,500 migrants are massing in France's northern ports hoping for a new life in Britain.

With unemployment rising and black market jobs vanishing, illegals are steadily being pushed out of Italy, Spain, Belgium and Germany toward what they call the 'Promised Land'. Aissa Zaibet, a charity worker in Calais, said: 'It is the same story throughout the whole of Europe. 'Each government pushes them further down the road, and at the end of that road is the United Kingdom.'

The situation has grown so critical in Calais that France has announced a plan to help the migrants survive. Nearly 1,000 refugees from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and across Africa are sleeping rough in town-centre squats and woodland shanty camps. Immigration minister Eric Besson said yesterday that a network of 'light buildings' will be erected in the town to provide them with food and showers. Controversially, they will also receive information on how to claim asylum once they get to Britain. It is an astonishing U-turn.

In 2002, the French - at the request of the UK - closed the Red Cross centre housing refugees and economic migrants in Sangatte, a village on the hillside overlooking Calais. The centre, from where the White Cliffs of Dover could be seen on a clear day, was believed to act as a magnet for illegal migrants from all over the world. The new centres, dubbed 'mini-Sangattes', will be welcomed by the migrants themselves. 'We live here for weeks and months in the cold and the dirt,' Hemat, a 25-year-old Afghan, told the Mail yesterday. 'We need the strength to make the journey to England. Of course, it is a good thing. How could it not be?'

Yet the new plan is bound to enrage the British Government, which is fighting a losing battle on illegal migration. The numbers getting to Dover have doubled in the past year, according to figures released in the House of Commons earlier this month.

Mr Besson, a former socialist who joined President Nicolas Sarkozy's government in January, said: 'With charity workers and elected officials, we are moving toward the setting up of light structures to help the migrant population around Calais.' He explained that foreigners would get advice on 'their rights' as well as 'sanitary facilities and food points'. It's a far cry from Mr Besson's message a few months ago. Then he promised: 'We did not shut down the original Sangatte, only to open it in another form, even a watered-down one. 'This would only help the immigrants that are there already to remain there, or cross illegally to Britain. And it would become a powerful incentive for more to come there, causing an extra humanitarian problem'. With a final flourish, he said the British authorities must step up checks at the ports 'in the interests of their country and our own'.

The hardliner's change-of-heart apparently comes after he watched a controversial film which opened in France this week. Welcome tells the moving story of a teenage Kurdish refugee who attempts to swim across the Channel to Kent. The film graphically depicts the squalid conditions for migrants in Calais, Dunkirk and Cherbourg. When it opened in Calais this week, an audience of locals sat in stunned silence during the two-hour screening.

A two-acre site for a covered centre, including a health clinic, shower block and legal advice centrehas already been earmarked for the first 'mini-Sangatte' in the town of Grande Synthe, near Calais. News of the U-turn came as French officials in Paris blamed the 2012 Olympics for fuelling a massive increase in migrants hoping to get to Britain. They said that word had got out among the illegals that foreigners are being hired in their hundreds at the huge site in East London.

Whatever the truth of this, yesterday I watched as a group of young Iraqis spent eight hours hiding on the corner of a road junction waiting for the chance to climb on a lorry heading for the UK. They threw stones at journalists and TV crews who tried to photograph them. 'Go away, you must not see this,' said one of them in poor English as he ran toward our car with a brick in his left hand.

At a petrol station nearby, Piotr, a trucker from Poland, said: 'They are trying to climb aboard every hour from six in the morning until two the next night. Of course, some of our drivers need the money and will take a payment to hide them in the back. 'Not every lorry is stopped and searched by the British. They want to try their luck, because some get through.' The going rate for a ride to England is 450 pounds in cash. The migrants have also found ways to avoid being seen by carbon dioxide detection machines established at the port by the authorities. The machines can detect a human's presence in a lorry's cargo by the Co2 they breathe out.

'We put a plastic bag over our heads,' explained one 22-year-old Somalian waiting in the evening food queue back in Calais. 'It means we may die of suffocation, but it is worth the risk. 'The other day my friend, he got to your country. He had a carrier bag tied over his face for the few minutes it took for the lorry to drive past the machine. 'He has sent me a text from Maidstone in Kent saying he is safe and is claiming asylum.'

Half a mile away, in what the migrants call the 'jungle' - a patch of woodland nudging the Calais suburbs - the smell of human excrement and acrid smoke is overwhelming. Here there are 20 small makeshift camps, made of pieces cardboard, plastic sheeting and scrap metal. Last year, a woman journalist who lived in Britain was raped in the jungle by a migrant, who is facing charges of sexual assault in the Calais courts.

In a tough policy, barely one in eight migrants who claim asylum in France is granted his wish. The illegal migrants know that Britain is more sympathetic. When the Sangatte centre was up and running, more than 60,000 of them got across the Channel.

Last night a spokesman for the UK Border Agency, which has scores of officials in Calais trying to halt the diaspora of the desperate, said: 'The British have repeated their opposition to any sort of centre which might act as a magnet for illegal immigrants and the people smugglers who help them. Our border security must start overseas.'

Hungary last night issued an official warning to its citizens not to move to Britain because the economic crisis meant the chances of finding a job were 'down to zero'. Would-be economic migrants were told Britain was 'more sensitive to the effects of the economic crisis' than other EU states. 'The number of jobs is falling drastically and the unemployment rate is twice the EU average,' the foreign ministry said, with some exaggeration.

SOURCE





13 March, 2009

President may send Guard to Mexican border

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he is considering new border security measures, including the possibility of National Guard deployments, to combat the spillover of violence by Mexican drug cartels. In an interview with reporters, the president also defended his economic and budget proposals while dismissing Republican opposition in Congress with the observation that "it is easy to say no.''

Commenting on the border security issue, Mr. Obama noted that Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had met recently with his Mexican counterparts to assess the degree of the threat from the aggressive gangs. While saying that he wanted to avoid "militarizing'' the nation's long southern border, Mr. Obama said: "We're going to examine whether, and if, National Guard deployments would make sense and in what circumstances they would make sense as part of this overall review of our border situation. "I haven't drawn any conclusions yet. I don't have a particular tipping point in mind," he added."I think it's unacceptable if you've got drug gangs crossing our borders and killing our citizens."

Turning to his budget, Mr. Obama rejected GOP assertions that it represented some drastic lurch to the left. "For them to success that this was some radical assault on the rich makes no sense whatsoever," he said. He noted that, most of the tax increases in the budget -- the rescinding of Bush administration tax cuts for more affluent taxpayers -- had, as a matter of law, already been anticipated in Bush administration budgets although Republican then and now argued that they should be made permanent.

Asked whether he had expected the unity and discipline of GOP attacks on his economic program he said, "I'm not surprised because opposition is always easy, saying not to something is easy; saying yes to something and figuring out how to govern and solve problems is hard."

SOURCE



Joe Arpaio under investigation by Obama's Justice Department

Given the popularity of Sheriff Joe, this is going to put Obama offside with a lot of Americans. Another one-term President coming up, I think

Civil rights leaders and immigration reform advocates met in Washington yesterday to applaud the announcement that Joe Arpaio, the publicity-seeking sheriff whose immigration sweeps and harsh treatment of prisoners in Arizona's Maricopa County have raised eyebrows at both ends of the political spectrum, is now the subject of a Department of Justice investigation.

Arpaio received a letter earlier this week from the office of the U.S. attorney general informing him that his department, which polices a broad area including Phoenix and its suburbs, was being investigated for suspected civil rights violations, including "discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures ... [as well as] allegations of national origin discrimination."

According to civil rights experts, the investigation, one of the few times the government has ever conducted a civil rights investigation into a local police agency's immigration enforcement practices, could be a sign of things to come, as the Obama administration moves toward more comprehensive immigration reform. "It's hard to imagine this happening in the previous administration. In fact, it seemed to me that the Bush administration encouraged the Sheriff Arpaios of the nation to do what they're doing," says Kevin Johnson, dean of the University of California-Davis School of Law. "It is a signal the Obama administration is going to look a lot more carefully at the proper role for local government in immigration enforcement."

In a press conference yesterday on Capitol Hill, several powerful House Democrats-including John Conyers, chairman of the Judiciary Committee-announced that they will be holding a joint hearing to investigate Arpaio's methods. Conyers sent a letter last month urging Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona, to open an investigation of Arpaio.

"We have been living under a reign of terror in Maricopa County," Mary Rose Wilcox, the county's supervisor, who has become one of Arpaio's fiercest critics, told reporters yesterday. "When we saw that the Justice Department is taking action, we were elated."

More than 2,700 lawsuits have been filed against Arpaio since he was first elected sheriff in 1993, many of them for alleged civil rights violations, but for much of his tenure, Arpaio has embraced his reputation as a political lightning rod. Calling himself "America's toughest sheriff" and campaigning as a scourge of illegal immigrants, he has been re-elected five times, with voters largely applauding his zealous pursuit of lawbreakers. He has gained attention, in particular, for forcing prison inmates to wear pink underwear and live in outdoor "tent cities" in the Arizona desert. Arpaio has even starred in his own reality show, Smile ... You ' re Under Arrest! , in which people with outstanding warrants are lured in front of hidden cameras and arrested.

Most of the controversy surrounding Arpaio, though, has centered around his much-publicized immigration sweeps, in which his deputies raid neighborhoods and businesses-and, in one recent sweep, even a Phoenix suburb's city hall-to enforce the state's strict employer-sanctions and antismuggling laws.

Critics say the sweeps amount to little more than dozens of heavily armed deputies moving through Latino neighborhoods arresting everyone in sight. But Arpaio insists that, in the absence of a more distinct federal policy on immigration enforcement, state and local officials are authorized to fashion their own approaches to enforce immigration law. "We have nothing to hide," Arpaio said this week, denying that his deputies are illegally profiling suspects. "I am not going to be intimidated by the politics and by the Justice Department. I want the people of Arizona to know this: I will continue to enforce all the immigration laws."

Even if the Justice Department ultimately determines that Arpaio's tactics are legal, many crime experts in Arizona-on both ends of the political spectrum-have questioned whether they are effective. Immigration rights groups have condemned the sweeps as counterproductive, saying they serve only to frighten Latinos and reduce the likelihood that they will cooperate with police in the future. In December, the politically conservative Goldwater Institute also joined the growing chorus of critics concerned by Arpaio's methods. "There is no question that Sheriff Arpaio [is] 'tough' on people arrested for or convicted of crimes-and that a large majority of Maricopa County voters applaud that toughness," wrote Clint Bolick, the institute's director, in a paper analyzing the sheriff's track record. "But toughness is only one ingredient for a successful sheriff's department, and by itself is far from sufficient."

SOURCE





12 March, 2009

Colorado Police Laud New Immigration Technology

Federal officials will deploy a new system in Colorado designed to accelerate the deportation of illegal immigrants who commit crimes. Colorado police chiefs and sheriffs on Tuesday welcomed the system, which will give them near-instant access to federal immigration records. But pro-immigrant advocates warned that the system could be exploited to harass.

The system gives local arresting officers rapid access, via fingerprints, to federal records as detailed as remarks an immigrant might have made to a visa officer at an embassy abroad. This "accelerates the whole removal process. Our goal is to remove individuals as quickly as possible without sacrificing any of the due process that is afforded to them," said David Venturella, director of the "secure communities" initiative of the Department of Homeland "Our old model was to catch people while they were incarcerated or coming out of prisons. (Now) we will catch them at the earliest point in the process so we can save resources - not only law enforcement resources but judge time."

Venturella revealed the timing for deploying the system in an interview before a closed meeting Tuesday with about 40 sheriffs, police chiefs, state Attorney General John Suthers, prosecutors and staffers for Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter. Colorado is one of just a handful of states that will get the system next month. Deportations of immigrants - criminal and noncriminal - already have doubled since 2005. While authorities say they are targeting immigrants convicted of crimes, the latest federal data show the share of deportees with criminal convictions has decreased.

The new system reflects congressional efforts to enlist local police as helpers. Not everyone is a fan. "The problem is that if everybody the police encounter gets finger-printed, then immigrants are going to avoid the police - and we have all the problems that come with that," said Crystal Williams, a program director for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The new system will be useful for targeting criminals, but local police also will have the ability to arrest immigrants "selectively because of how they look," said Doris Meissner, former chief of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute think tank. "The most important thing with local law enforcement where immigration is concerned is that they are arresting people on suspicion of having committed a crime and then finding out who the person is, rather than the other way around," Meissner said.

Federal agents initially will focus solely on deporting immigrants convicted of serious crimes, Venturella said. Homeland Security calculates that 350,000 to 400,000 immigrants a year are convicted of crimes and that 10,000 of those are violent felonies. Local police are encouraged to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement for help deporting those "level 1" criminals first. Plans call for an eventual expansion to target immigrants convicted of lesser crimes, including auto theft and burglary. And federal authorities are promising to make available 750 new ICE agents nationwide, and bedspace in detention centers, to support an expected surge in deportation activity.

Police around Colorado increasingly notify federal agents when they detect illegal immigrants. Some find ICE agents overwhelmed and unresponsive. The promised increase in ICE manpower would be helpful, said Randy Ford, town marshal of Green Mountain Falls, a town on the northwestern edge of Colorado Springs. But the new identity-checking capability for arresting officers won't help police patrolling streets, Ford said. "We can't detain (immigrants) long enough to determine if they are illegal or not," he said. "Every little bit helps. But it still doesn't come back and fix the basic problem we are having with contact with people on the street. I'm all for being able to further investigate them once they are transported to the jail. But it doesn't fix the problem. We've got no teeth."

SOURCE



British immigration crackdown cuts migrant workers by just 6,000, Home Office says

A much-heralded crackdown on illegal immigration will cut highly skilled migrant workers by as little as 6,000, the Government said. Critics said the impact of any changes on immigration levels would be "a drop in the ocean". The new curbs on highly-skilled migrants coming to Britain are aimed at making sure Britons are given a "fair crack of the whip" before jobs are offered abroad. Workers from outside the European Union will need better qualifications and guarantees of better paid jobs before they are given work permits.

A detailed analysis of the impact of the changes showed they were likely to reduce the number of successful applications by between 6,000 and 24,000. The cost of the changes - in part due to lost income to the UK Border Agency from visa fees - could be as high as 15 million pounds.

New rules to prevent abuse of the immigration system by people pretending to be students were also announced. Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, said the changes would limit the amount of time people could spend on "low level" courses and set stricter limits on courses which include work placements.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said that compared with "net immigration of nearly 240,000, [the figure] is a drop in the ocean. "If we want to avoid our population hitting 70 million we have to get immigration down to 50,000 a year." Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, added: "The Government is floundering around to claim it has immigration under better control. "It is now reduced to discouraging the sort of highly-educated people that are most likely to contribute to Britain's future wealth."

A Home Office spokesman said: "The important thing is that numbers start to go down rather than up in a recession. "Those migrants who do come [must] either have a high level of skill and therefore bring the most economic contribution or have a specific job to come to which no resident worker can fill."

Meanwhile, Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, called for the Office for National Statistics to stick to "predictable deadlines". Sir Gus was speaking after Mr Woolas accused the organisation of trying to "grab headlines" over the "sinister" timing of figures showing one in nine British residents was born abroad. Sir Gus insisted that figures should be released on "clear, predictable deadlines". Speaking at a civil service conference, Sir Gus said: "I want (the ONS) to be boring, to put out the plain facts, and nothing but the facts, and on clear, predictable deadlines." It would then be for politicians and Government press officers to interpret the figures, he said. [How nice!]

SOURCE





11 March, 2009

If Majority Leader Reid Supports E-Verify, Why Does the Senate Block Its Long-Term Reauthorization?

For the second time in as many months, the United States Senate had an opportunity to reauthorize the highly effective E-Verify system and chose not to. By rejecting an amendment to the Omnibus Appropriations bill offered by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to extend E-Verify through 2014, the Senate leadership belied their contention that they support this program that protects U.S. workers from losing jobs to illegal aliens.

E-Verify is a federal program that allows employers to voluntarily determine whether workers are legally authorized to work in the U.S. by electronically verifying their Social Security numbers. According to the Department of Homeland Security, E-Verify has a 99.6 percent accuracy rate.

In a letter to his Nevada constituents, Majority Leader Harry Reid states, "I strongly support programs like E-Verify that are designed to ensure that employers only hire those who are legally authorized to work in the United States , and believe we need to strengthen enforcement against employers who knowingly hire individuals who are not authorized to work." In fact, in 2006 and 2007, Senator Reid supported not only reauthorizing E-Verify, but making it mandatory for all employers nationwide. Now, Sen. Reid and the Democratic leadership are singing a different tune:

* In February, Sen. Reid blocked inclusion of amendments to the economic stimulus bill that would have reauthorized E-Verify for five years, and required that employers who receive stimulus money use E-Verify to ensure they hire only legal U.S. workers. These provisions were included in the House bill.

* During the House-Senate conference committee finalizing the economic stimulus package, Sen. Reid, together with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, stripped the E-Verify provisions from the bill sent to President Obama.

* Today, Sen. Reid and the Democratic majority voted down Sen. Sessions' five year reauthorization of E-Verify.

Because of these actions, the vital protections that E-Verify offers to American workers at a time when unemployment is rising rapidly are on tenuous life support only until September 30. They also confirm that Senate leadership's primary interest in E-Verify is to use it as a bargaining chip in an effort to gain amnesty for illegal aliens.

"If the Senate leadership were truly interested in protecting American jobs from being filled by illegal aliens, E-Verify would have been reauthorized for five years and steps would have been taken to make its use mandatory by all employers," said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

"The fact that E-Verify will only receive a six-month reauthorization, and the fact that employers receiving taxpayer stimulus money are not required to verify that workers are legal U.S. residents is not an oversight. It is a deliberate decision of the Senate leaders who place the interests of low wage employers and illegal aliens over the interests of millions of unemployed American workers who desperately need jobs.

"The defeat of the Sessions amendment demonstrates conclusively that the Senate leadership, contrary to what they say, is unwilling to protect the jobs of American workers," Stein concluded.

The above is a Press release from Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), 25 Massachusetts Avenue - Suite 330 Washington DC, 20001. Contact Bob Dane on 202-328-7004 or Ira Mehlman on 206-420-7733.



Number of illegal immigrants in Britain 'may be nearing 1 million'

As many as 947,000 illegal immigrants could be living in Britain, more than double a previous Home Office estimate. A study by the London School of Economics found evidence of a massive surge in the illegal population since 2001. Their estimate includes hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers, visa overstayers and children born to illegal immigrant parents. The report puts the total living here illegally at between 524,000 and 947,000, with a 'central estimate' of 725,000. An equivalent study commissioned by the Home Office in 2005 put the figure at just 430,000.

The LSE study was commissioned by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. Mr Johnson has used the findings to argue in favour of an amnesty for illegal immigrants. He said it would be 'morally right' for those who have been in Britain for several years to be allowed to live here legally, so that they contributed to tax revenues. Both the Government and the Conservatives strongly oppose such a move, claiming it would make Britain even more attractive for illegal migrants.

Mr Johnson commissioned the LSE last November to 'explore the implications' of an amnesty for London. Its draft findings were made public yesterday. At current deportation rates, it would take 34 years to clear a backlog of 725,000 illegal immigrants. An amnesty based on five years of residency would cover almost two-thirds of all illegal immigrants, or around 450,000. Mr Johnson told BBC1's Panorama: 'If people are going to be here and we've chronically failed to kick them out, it's morally right that they should contribute in their taxes to the rest of society.' He added that the amnesty would not be open to those with a criminal record, or those who could not support themselves.

Opponents of amnesties insist they encourage further illegal immigration. In Italy an amnesty in 1988 allowed 119,000 foreigners to settle. But when the exercise was repeated in 2002 the figure soared to 700,000. In Spain, the figure rose from 44,000 in 1985 to 700,000 in 2005.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said: 'What unfortunately would happen is that people traffickers and others would see that as a pull factor to get people to the UK illegally and we would end up with a bigger problem. 'The proposal for an amnesty starts with a conversation in London with the best of intentions and it ends up with dead bodies in the back of lorries in northern France.'

Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green said: 'The problem with amnesties is that they store up trouble for the future as people will always expect another one. 'The long-term effect of an amnesty is therefore to encourage more illegal immigration.'

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch, said: 'We have the biggest recession in memory, two million unemployed, heading up for three million. 'Is it really suggested that British jobs should go to illegal workers? It just makes no sense at all.'

SOURCE





10 March, 2009

E-Verify Growing Rapidly

Program to Screen Illegal Workers Up 442% from 2007; 1 in 8 New Hires Checked Last Year

The E-Verify program will shut down thus week, unless it is reauthorized by Congress. The free, online system run by the Department of Homeland Security enables employers to check that new hires are indeed eligible to work in the United States, rather than relying only on easily forged paper documents.

To help inform the debate over this program, the Center for Immigration Studies has released new data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (online at http://cis.org/node/1087 ) that shows online employer queries of the system are already approaching 3 million so far this year, nearly half the 6.6 million queries for all of 2008, which was itself more than double the use of the system in 2007. If the usage for 2009 continues at the same rate, the number of employer queries for this year will be 442% greater than in 2007.

In 2008, about one in eight new hires nationwide was checked through E-Verify, and if the projected growth rate continues, perhaps one-quarter or one-third of all new hires will be verified by the system, putting it well on the way to becoming a standard hiring practice for all legitimate employers.

In addition, new passport data now available from the State Department is streamlining work authorization for foreign-born U.S. citizens. Increased employer satisfaction with E-Verify - demonstrated by the steady increases in employer sign-ups and queries with E-Verify - indicates that E-Verify is one of the most successful programs in government.

Janice Kephart, Director of National Security Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, has released this data as a follow-up to her September 2008 Backgrounder, ''If It's Fixed, Don't Break It: Moving Forward with E-Verify,'' online here . Contact: Janice Kephart (202) 466-8185, jlk@cis.org



UK migrant total is 'three times the world average'

The proportion of people living in Britain who were born overseas is more than three times the international average, it emerged last night. Eleven per cent of British residents were born abroad, against the global figure of 3 per cent.

The campaign group Migrationwatch UK said the findings dispelled the Government's 'misleading' claims that very high levels of immigration to Britain had been consistent with world trends. It said Labour had been using the claims as a 'smokescreen' to disguise policy failures, such as its inability to get a grip on the asylum system. Chairman Sir Andrew Green said: 'The Government seems to make a habit of blaming current ills on "global forces", but our analysis shows this problem is almost entirely home grown. It could, and should, have been more competently managed, so preventing the rising tide of resentment among the public.'

A report by the group shows the percentage of the world population who are international migrants rose from 2.5 per cent in 1960 to 3 per cent in 2005 - the most recent global figure. In Britain, it went from 4.5 per cent in 1961 to 9.3 per cent in 2005. According to the Office for National Statistics, it now stands at 11 per cent - one in nine of the population and the equivalent of 6.49million people born overseas living here.

Sir Andrew said the Government was to blame for outofcontrol migration for a number of reasons. These included the policy, adopted by Labour in 1997, of trebling the number of work permits handed out every year to a record of 150,000 last year. Overall, net migration - or the number of people arriving compared to those leaving each year - has trebled from 107,000 to 317,000 in that time.

He highlighted the loss of embarkation controls, which count migrants in and out of the country, and Labour's decision in 1997 to axe the Primary Purpose Rule - a requirement for people seeking to enter by getting wed to show that the marriage was not a ruse to get into the country. Immigration by spouses has increased by more than 50 per cent since then.

Sir Andrew also said control of the asylum system was lost for several years, 'so contributing considerably to net immigration', and that the Government had failed to predict the influx from Eastern Europe. Ministers did not impose any restrictions on citizens of the Eastern Bloc states, unlike most of our EU neighbours.

Sir Andrew added: 'The Government has held public opinion in contempt for years. 'Despite having dismantled border controls, they deliberately encouraged immigration, partly to make the economic growth figures look better.'

A UK Border Agency spokesman said: 'We've always said that we would run our immigration system for the benefit of the UK. 'We have put in place the biggest shake-up of immigration in over a generation, including the introduction of the points-based system. 'This means only foreign workers we need - and no more - can come here. 'The number of Eastern Europeans coming here to work is falling and research suggests many have gone home.'

SOURCE





9 March, 2009

Even Japan is now coming to terms with immigration

The Japanese cabinet has approved legislation that would create a new identification card for foreign residents. Supporters say the bill would make life easier for legal residents, The Asahi Shimbun reported. The maximum length of visas would be extended from three years to five, and legal residents who leave Japan for less than a year would not be required to get a re-entry permit.

They say the new card would make it easier to prevent those not legally allowed to work from doing so and to catch those who overstay their visa. The new cards would include information on residents' work status.

The law would set up a separate system for aliens living permanently in Japan, a group that includes 420,000 Koreans. Immigrants brought to Japan for the Industrial Training and Technical Internship Program would get a visa covering their entire three-year stay and would be protected by Japanese labor laws as soon as they begin work.

Officials said they hope the law will be passed during the current parliamentary session.

SOURCE



Crime by foreigners in Britain doubles in five years

Crime committed in the UK by foreign nationals has doubled in just five years, police figures have revealed. Records disclosed by 10 police forces reveal a 120 per cent rise in the number of non-Britons arrested, charged or convicted of offences between 2003 and 2008. And figures from 20 forces, covering more than half the population of England and Wales, show that foreigners committed or were accused of more than 70,000 offences last year - pointing to a nationwide total of well over 100,000 offences if all 43 forces had provided figures.

The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, will renew public debate over immigration, border controls and the deportation of convicted foreign criminals at the end of their jail sentences, the issue which cost Charles Clarke his job as Home Secretary.

The steep rise in crime committed by foreigners comes despite an overall fall in the number of crimes recorded by police during the five-year period. However, the rise has coincided with a sharp increase in the number of migrants coming to live in the UK since the European Union expanded in 2004 to take in eight former Eastern Bloc countries including Poland.

In London, the Metropolitan Police recorded a rise in the number of foreigners accused of crimes from 21,000 in 2003 to 47,000 last year, an increase of 123 per cent. In Cambridgeshire, a county which has seen high levels of eastern European immigration, arrests of foreign nationals leapt from 762 to 3,350 in the same period. In both areas, around one in five of all crimes is now carried out by a foreigner, the figures suggest. In the West Midlands, the number of foreign nationals accused of crimes jumped from 3,700 to 8,000 in five years. Last year 3,199 crimes were carried out by foreign nationals in Northumbria, 1,253 in Merseyside and 1,223 in Surrey.

Only 10 forces - including the Met, Britain's biggest - were able to provide comparative figures across the five-year period. Among the forces which did not provide data, 12, including Greater Manchester, Thames Valley and Essex, claimed not to record the nationality of criminals, while 11 failed to respond.

Among the 15 police forces which were able to give a breakdown by type of offence, there were 120 murders last year for which a foreign national was the prime suspect, and 426 rapes or attempted rapes. Notorious foreign killers include Nigerian-born Chester Dauda, who stabbed to death a 17-year-old student at a New Year's Eve party in Barking, east London, in 2007. Sentencing Dauda last July to a minimum of 14 years' imprisonment, Judge Martin Stephens QC described the incident as a "deliberate act of outrageous violence".

Last week two Lithuanians, Vitas Plytnykas, 41, and Aleksandras Skirda, 20, were handed life sentences for torturing and killing a fellow Lithuanian, Jolanta Bledaite, before cutting up her body and dumping it in the sea at Arbroath, Scotland.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, called the findings "truly shocking". He said: "We simply cannot become a soft option for criminals from overseas. It's time we had a proper border police force to stop criminals entering the country, and took tougher action against those who have come here to commit offences." David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, said: "It is important to say that not all foreign nationals are criminals, but these are worrying statistics. "It should be made completely clear to people that if they are fortunate enough to be allowed into this country they should obey the rules. If they do not, the smallest transgression should lead to swift deportation."

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: "These statistics are partial but they confirm a great deal of anecdotal evidence. I have lost count of the number of magistrates who have told me privately of their concerns about the high proportion of cases coming before them which involve immigrants."

In London, foreign nationals were arrested last year over 13,500 drugs offences, 1,210 burglaries, 930 rapes or other sexual offences, and 13,748 violent crimes including 78 murders. In the West Midlands, foreigners were accused of just under 1,500 offences of violence against the person and robbery last year, up from 401 in 2002. Other foreign murderers have included:

* Roberto Malasi, an 18-year-old Angolan asylum-seeker who stormed into a christening party in Peckham, south-east London, in 2005 and shot dead a 33-year-old woman as she cradled her baby niece, and while on the run stabbed to death an 18-year-old pastor's daughter;

* Yusuf Jama, a Somali asylum-seeker, who was in the gang that shot dead Pc Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford in 2005;

* Michal Pech, a Slovak army deserter, who shot dead his former lover Clare Bernal at Harvey Nichols department store in London in 2005, before shooting himself;

* David Bieber, an American bouncer wanted for murder in his homeland, who shot dead Pc Ian Broadhurst in Leeds in 2003.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "The vast majority of people who come to the UK willingly abide by our laws. However, we will not tolerate those that abuse our hospitality by becoming involved in crime. "We now automatically consider for deportation all foreign nationals who commit a serious crime in the UK. Indeed, last year we deported a record 5,000 foreign criminals and we intend to beat that record this year."

SOURCE





8 March, 2009

Nervous employers turn to ID check for workers

A federal system that lets employers check the legal status of their workers is soaring in popularity across the country, growing by 1,000 companies a week, fueled by anxiety over workplace raids and uncertainty over the future of the nation's illegal immigrants. Leading the trend are Arizona and Mississippi, which have made the system mandatory for all employers, and 10 other states that require it for state agencies and contractors. But the system is also ballooning in states where it is optional, such as California, Texas, and Massachusetts.

In Massachusetts, enrollment quadrupled to 1,712 businesses over the past three years, from Boston's exclusive Algonquin Club to the Papa Gino's restaurant chain to the law firm Ropes & Gray, according to a list provided by the federal government. Individual employers and private households may also use the system: Ann Romney, wife of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, signed up last year after a Globe investigation found that the family had twice hired a landscaping company that used unauthorized workers.

Known as E-Verify, the system is up for renewal in Congress and igniting debate across the United States. Federal officials are waging a publicity campaign to turn the once-obscure service into a household name, while advocates for immigrants say it contains erroneous information that could lead to some workers being unfairly denied jobs. But employers, rattled as business owners are going to jail and paying million-dollar fines for hiring illegal workers, say the system offers peace of mind. "God knows we check everything," said Lassaad Riahi, general manager of the Algonquin Club, which signed up for E-Verify more than a year ago. "We don't want to hire anybody that doesn't have the proper identification or the proper IDs or the proper number or the proper something."

Nationally the number of businesses in the system has risen 10-fold since 2006, to more than 113,000 this week, with checks on 6.6 million workers last fiscal year, double the year before. Congress established E-Verify, a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration, in 1996 as a pilot program for a handful of states. But the system expanded significantly in 2007, amid national debate over illegal immigration, and government officials predict that it will become even more widespread if Congress legalizes the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

All federal agencies began using E-Verify in 2007, including the office of Barack Obama when he was a US senator, and it will be required of all federal contractors starting in May. E-Verify works like this: Companies and individual employers must first enroll in the free system, pass a tutorial, and sign a memorandum of understanding with the government. Then they enter all new employees' Social Security numbers and other information into an Internet program to verify their identities. The system searches federal databases and typically confirms the worker within seconds.

More here



Justice wins by a whisker in minority-loving Canada

Though the short sentence for killing someone is amazing

More than eight years after her sister was killed by a street racer, Surrey resident Nina Rivet was informed that the second of two drivers responsible will be deported after all. A Supreme Court of Canada decision issued Friday means Sukhvir Singh Khosa will be sent back to his native India. Khosa was 18 years old when he lost control of his car while going 120 km/h in a 50 km/h zone in Vancouver and hit the 51-year-old Thorpe, who was taking her customary evening stroll. Both Khosa and the other driver involved in the race, Bahadur Singh Bhalru, were ordered deported to their native India once they finished serving two-year terms of house arrest for criminal negligence causing death.

Bhalru returned to India in 2005, but Khosa has waged a legal battle to stay in Canada. He managed to convince the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn the deportation order by arguing the decision by the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) of the Immigration and Refugee Board was unreasonable because it didn't accept that he was unlikely to re-offend. Khosa's lawyer also appealed on compassionate grounds, arguing his client has married and fathered two children and would have trouble adjusting to life in India after growing up in Canada, where he has lived since he was 14.

In the ruling, a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada judges threw out the federal appeal court ruling and reinstated the deportation order. The judges said the courts should show "a measure of deference" to the tribunal which issued the order. The IAD ruled that Khosa had failed to show remorse, citing his continued denial that he was street racing despite all the evidence to the contrary.

SOURCE





7 March, 2009

Migrants 'vital to recovery' in Australia

Do-gooder BS. Make dumb assumptions and you get dumb conclusions. He thinks he can predict what will happen in 20 years' time

The Rudd Government has been told to resist pressure to slash Australia's permanent immigration intake in the face of lengthening dole queues, or risk stifling the nation's eventual economic recovery. Leading demographer Peter McDonald has warned against short-sighted immigration decisions, saying overseas migrants will be the key drivers of economic growth over the next 40 years as millions of baby boomers move into retirement.

"At present, Australian labour force policy tends to be more a matter of reaction than of long-term planning," Professor McDonald wrote in a report presented to the Immigration Department this week. "Labour shortages emerge, and attempts are made to plug them through training or immigration. This approach often leads to short cycles of under- and over-supply, as has been evident in the IT industry in recent years. "In the short to medium term (the next 20 years), immigration is the only means available to meet large aggregate labour demand in Australia."

Professor McDonald, director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, said immigration levels tended to move behind the economic cycle: highest when peak economic activity tips over into recession, and savagely cut just at the time more workers were needed to help rebuild the economy. When the 1974 recession hit, net overseas migration was 87,000. The following year it was cut to 13,500 and only returned to 1974 levels in 1980. In the 1982-83 recession, net migration fell from 123,000 in 1981 and 103,000 in 1982 to 55,000 in 1983, only returning to 1981 levels six years later.

"Immigration has a long lag-time," Professor McDonald said. "Targets are set well in advance, visa grants often take a long time, and then the immigrant has many months to actually take up the grant. We shouldn't let the numbers drop off as dramatically as they have in past recessions. We should be evening out the peaks and troughs." Record numbers of migrants came to Australia last year and more than 200,000 are expected in 2008-09.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans has flagged cuts to the number of foreign workers allowed into the country in the wake of the global financial crisis, saying the Rudd Government is committed to protecting Australian jobs.

Professor McDonald said no immigration strategy could prevent a fall in labour supply in the 2020s as the population aged. His modelling found the optimum number of migrants to maintain a growing economy in coming decades in response to the changes in age structure was about 180,000 a year. "Migrants do provide their own economic stimulus," Professor McDonald said. "They come into the country with money, they spend it to buy houses and set themselves up."

But immigrants create pressure on existing infrastructure, and housing supply is already a problem in the capital cities, particularly Sydney. "A plan relating to Australia's future levels of immigration must be co-ordinated with policy for urban infrastructure, especially housing, transport, water and appropriate energy supply," Professor McDonald said.

SOURCE



Recent articles from CIS

1. Contra Nadler 2.0: On immigration, conservatives advocate attrition through enforcement, not mass deportation.

EXCERPT: It's one thing to criticize some on our side of the aisle for intemperate and strident rhetoric; the need to avoid such rhetoric is a caution that should always be before us, whether debating immigration, abortion, gay marriage, or anything else. Americans don't - and shouldn't - dislike immigrants (or pregnant teenagers or homosexuals) as people, and Republicans need to make clear that they don't. But Nadler is offering something very different. Lacking an appreciation for how intensely actual Republican voters feel about illegal immigration, he's asking the Republican party to tear itself to pieces. "Dissolve the base and elect a new one," to paraphrase Brecht - hardly a wise strategy.

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2. Plenary Power: Should Judges Control U.S. Immigration Policy?

EXCERPT: Federal policy on immigration has been founded on the "plenary power doctrine," which holds that the political branches - the legislative and the executive - have sole power to regulate all aspects of immigration as a basic attribute of sovereignty. But despite the fact that the courts have affirmed the plenary power doctrine countless times since the 19th century, there is a movement underway to erode political-branch control over immigration in favor of a judge-administered system based on the implicit idea that foreigners have a "right" to immigrate. This Backgrounder examines the history of the doctrine, the challenges to it launched by supporters of mass immigration, and some possible responses.

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3. Unemployment for Immigrants and the US-Born: Picture Bleak for Less-Educated Black & Hispanic Americans

EXCERPT: The Center for Immigration Studies has prepared a detailed employment breakdown for immigrants and native-born Americans based on December 2008 data, the latest publicly available. (The Department of Labor generally does not separate out unemployment statistics for immigrants and the native-born.) Among US-born blacks and Hispanics without a high school degree, unemployment is 24.7 percent and 16.2 percent respectively - two to three times the national rate.

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4. Contra Nadler: Yes, reach out to immigrants-but not by admitting more of them.

EXCERPT: Richard Nadler utterly misses the point in his NR piece on immigration. He argues that Republicans should accept amnesty and increased immigration in exchange for promises of future enforcement ("comprehensive immigration reform"). He claims that such a move could win the votes of Hispanics, and that "every hour we postpone a border reform that respects the interests of employers and Hispanics, our entire agenda suffers."

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5. Free Speech is Good, But...The open-borders lobby's attempts to silence its critics.

EXCERPT: The multiculturalist war on free speech takes different forms in different places. In Europe the goal is to squelch the expression of the idea that newcomers should be held to the same standards of behavior as the native-born, and the movement has occasionally expressed itself in violence. Here, the goal is to silence supporters of immigration-law enforcement, and the movement has remained non-violent, but it's nonetheless a challenge to the idea of a free society. In both forms, multiculturalism stifles any dissent from the idea that outsiders must be permitted to immigrate on their own terms, not ours. This is no longer about immigration. It's about freedom.

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6. Senate Stimulus: 300,000 Jobs for Illegals?

1 in 7 New Construction Jobs Could Go to Illegal Immigrants

EXCERPT: The Senate Stimulus bill currently being considered contains about $104 billion in new government funding for construction projects with the goal of creating jobs for millions of unemployed Americans. Unlike the House version, there is no provision in the bill to bar illegal immigrants from getting these taxpayer-funded jobs. This could result in several hundred thousand illegal immigrants receiving jobs.

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7. Latino Voting in the 2008 Election: Part of a Broader Electoral Movement

EXCERPT: Considering the entrenched Democratic Party loyalties of Latino registrants, the legions of Latinos who are noncitizens, and those who are citizens but remain unregistered and do not vote, surprisingly few Latinos are persuadable targets of campaign outreach. This is why no reasonable amount of party effort will turn them in any short amount of time.

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8. Border Basics: Why We Need Secure Driver Licenses

Center for Immigration Studies Video, January 2009

Part I: here

Part II: here

DETAILS: With the disconnect between the significant progress of states in securing their ID issuance processes and the on-the-record concerns of the President-Elect, the Center for Immigration Studies has produced a two-part educational video series narrated by the Centers Director of National Security Policy, Janice Kephart. These videos are the first in a series on national security-related border policy.

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9. GOP Needs a Rethink on Immigration: Shift the Tone

EXCERPT: With Republicans shut out of power, now is the time to take a new look at their approach to immigration, to develop a new and distinctive alternative to the majority party. In other areas, such as health care or the environment, such a reassessment might conceivably yield different policies than in the past. But on immigration, what is needed is not so much a reversal in specifics but a different framework within which to fit the specifics.

Articles by Center for Immigration Studies, 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org





6 March, 2009

British Leftists hate the immigration facts

It's "shoot the messenger" rather than face the problems, apparently

It is meant to be an independent body charged with publishing number sets and statistical analyses of trends. But the Office for National Statistics has found itself accused of "playing politics". The Government said yesterday the ONS was "at best na‹ve or at worst sinister" after it released figures about foreign nationals living in Britain. The Immigration minister Phil Woolas said the ONS had brought forward the release of figures showing the number of British-born workers had fallen while the number of foreign-born staff had grown. He said departing from the scheduled publication date because the information was topical meant the ONS had used "political" reasoning.

The UK Statistics Authority, which oversees the ONS, said it would not be "pilloried" for releasing figures. Opposition MPs said the Government was more concerned with ensuring that figures told a good story rather than addressing problems with immigration.

The row is the latest spat between the Government and the newly-independent ONS, which released the figures in question during the "foreign jobs for foreign workers" dispute last month. On 11 February, the ONS decided to bring forward the release of statistics showing employment of British-born workers had fallen by 278,000 last year while the employment of foreign-born staff had risen by 214,000.

Ministers were said to be "fizzing" with anger at the release, which came at the height of wildcat strikes at oil refineries in protest at the employment of foreigners. Then last week, the ONS published routine population statistics which included the fact that one in nine British residents was born overseas.

Mr Woolas told the BBC: "The ONS said they released the figures because they said they were topical. They have got to be very careful, in my view, that they don't enter what is the most inflamed debate in British politics. Releasing figures outside of the schedule because of the topicality may be interpreted as influencing the political debate. "This is not a black and white area, the idea that there are figures that won't be used and abused by people is naive and I think the ONS should not release figures because they are topical. They should release them on the schedule."

The UK Statistics Authority defended the early release and a spokesman said last month's population statistics were issued on schedule and did not mention the one-in-nine figure. Sir Michael Scholar, the authority's chairman, said the National Statistician, Karen Dunnell, had judged that it was in the public interest to bring forward the release date of the "neutral and objective" employment figures. "Whether you call it naivety or openness, statisticians must be encouraged to publish independent and objective statistics, not pilloried for doing so," he said. "The Statistics Authority will not only defend them in doing this, it will continue to require it of them."

SOURCE



Hispanic enrollment in schools, colleges rising

Roughly one-fourth of the nation's kindergartners are Hispanic, evidence of an accelerating trend that now will see minority children become the majority by 2023. Census data released Thursday also showed that Hispanics make up about one-fifth of all K-12 students. Hispanics' growth and changes in the youth population are certain to influence political debate, from jobs and immigration to the No Child Left Behind education, for years.

The ethnic shifts in school enrollment are most evident in the West. States such as Arizona, California and Nevada are seeing an influx of Hispanics due to immigration and higher birth rates. Minority students in that region exceed non-Hispanic whites at the pre-college grade levels, with about 37 percent of the students Hispanic. Hispanics make up 54 percent of the students in New Mexico, 47 percent in California, 44 percent in Texas and 40 percent in Arizona.

In 2007, more than 40 percent of all students in K-12 were minorities - Hispanics, blacks, Asian-Americans and others. That's double the percentage of three decades ago. In colleges, Hispanics made up 12 percent of full-time undergraduate and graduate students, 2 percent more than in 2006. Still, that is short of Hispanics' 15 percent representation in the total U.S. population. "The future of our education system depends on how we can advance Hispanics through the ranks," [Really??] said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "In many cases it's going to be a challenge, because they are the children of immigrants, and their English is not as strong. Many have parents without a high school or college education."

Minorities are projected to become the majority of the overall U.S. population by 2042. For minority kids, that shift is seen coming in 2023, seven years earlier than the previous estimate, from 2004. The accelerated timetable is due to immigration among Hispanics and Asians, and declining birth rates among non-Hispanic whites. Hispanics account for more than 23 percent of kindergartners in private and public schools, according to 2007 data. That is more than triple Hispanics' percentage in the 1970s, the height of white baby boom enrollment in elementary and high school. More Hispanic kindergartners in 2007 were U.S.-born than foreign-born, assuring them of citizenship that will make them eligible to vote by 2020.

The changing demographics offer opportunity and political risks for Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American president, and emerging Republicans such as 37-year-old Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the first Indian-American elected to statewide office.

Obama, who took two-thirds of the Hispanic vote, is channeling billions of federal dollars to improve schools, reduce the dropout rate and make college more affordable by increasing the maximum Pell Grant for low-income students to $5,550. Yet his administration has been sketchy when it comes to improving classroom performance and overhauling the No Child Left Behind Act. It sets goals for schools so every student can read and do math on grade level by 2014. The education law has major implications for both black and Hispanic students, including those who speak English as a second language, because they tend to lag whites in reading and math scores.

Obama has been largely quiet on immigration reform, which could pave the way for citizenship for nearly 12 million illegal immigrants. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she was not notified when federal agents conducted an immigration raid in Bellingham, Wash.

Richard Fry, a senior researcher at the Pew Hispanic Center, said Hispanic growth cannot be ignored in policy debates for too long. While in recent elections Hispanics have only cast 6 percent of the total ballots, "Latinos' electoral power and participation levels clearly are going to grow," he said.

Other findings from the data:

* About 58 percent of children enrolled in grades K-12 are non-Hispanic whites, a group that represents 66 percent of the U.S. population. After Hispanics, blacks were the second-largest minority group enrolled in K-12 (15 percent), followed by Asians (4 percent).

* Fifty-three percent of Hispanic 4-year-olds were enrolled in nursery school, compared with 43 percent in 1997 and 21 percent in 1987.

The census data was based on the Current Population Survey. Data on U.S. regions and states came from the 2007 American Community Survey, the government's annual survey of about 3 million households.

SOURCE





5 March, 2009

What a surprise!

The writer below starts out with a scare and the expected "blame America" explanation but he blows it in his second-last paragraph so has to end up on a very weak note

For many, the emotional political immigration debate has long centered around keeping the illegal ones out and deporting the ones who're already here. But new research has raised another potentially political question with rippling impacts on the American economy. How can we keep legal skilled immigrants from leaving? Packing up their much-needed talents and ambitions and going back home? An increasing number of highly-skilled immigrants from China and India are departing the U.S. to return to their native countries, according to a two-year study by the Kauffman Foundation.

Despite immigrants making up only 12% of the population, they are the top technologists or chief executives of more than half of Silicon Valley start-ups. Immigrants have flourished and even co-founded such multi-billion dollar companies as Google and Intel. The latter company was named in an op-ed article by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman in Tuesday's Washington Post as a shining example of a start-up that began in a period of economic downturn (kind of like the one we have now). But now more of our most valuable human imports are hopping on flights to distant lands, which could prove to be an obstacle for Hoffman's proposal to "Let our start-ups bail us out."

For years, politicians and the media have been relentless in its onslaughts, rallying for reform of the questionable immigration "crisis," and Congress has recently begun investigations into the misuse of immigration law by local police to the ends of racial profiling. So, some ask, is it any wonder many of the brightest immigrants are exiting in droves?

Critics would argue that the new generation of immigrants, unlike waves of families in the 19th and early 20th centuries that came lock-stock-and-barrel, never intended to stay, that they left their families back home while they lived and worked here temporarily to make better money in the U.S. and export it back home.

Surprisingly, respondents in the Kauffman study said anti-immigrant policies aren't to blame for the departures. Many of those decamping say they're simply finding a better quality of life, better jobs and the added benefit of being close to their families back in their home countries.

The U.S.can't really do much about the latter without some disputed immigration reforms, but a stronger economy could certainly help the first two.

SOURCE



Wow! Some local agencies enforce the law. How awful!

Apparently entering the country illegally is not enough to trigger law enforcement, nor is it enough if you commit a crime. It has to be a SERIOUS crime to trigger enforcement

A federal program that deputized dozens of state and local police agencies to enforce immigration law is coming under new scrutiny in Washington, where government investigators say the Department of Homeland Security has failed to properly supervise its local partners or make clear that they are to go after serious criminals, not people stopped for speeding or public urination.

The House Homeland Security Committee has scheduled a hearing on the program for Wednesday afternoon. Last summer, the committee requested a Government Accountability Office investigation of the program, known as 287(g), and now it's expecting to hear about those findings.

Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said he was concerned about accusations that the policing program has led to racial profiling, the Associated Press reported.

The GAO report found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had not clearly explained to their local partners that the program was supposed to target drug smugglers and other serious offenders. Instead, state and local law enforcement agencies have been stopping people for minor infractions and turning them over to ICE, according to the AP, which obtained an advance copy of the report.

The 287(g) arrangement gained particular notoriety from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has paraded alleged illegal immigrants in chains and striped suits through downtown Phoenix. His actions recently led four members of Congress to call for an investigation.

Last week, Justice Strategies, a research and advocacy group, released its own scathing analysis, saying the immigration partnership takes local police away from their crime fighting mission. That assessment was echoed by the liberal Immigration Policy Center. The restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, by contrast, has celebrated the program as a way to crack down on immigrant gangs.

Meanwhile Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has called for her agency to review 287(g) among other ICE programs. The debate is sure to heat up as the findings unfold.

SOURCE





4 March, 2009

Fast-track deportation program

Federal authorities are increasingly deporting illegal immigrants through a fast-track program that bypasses court hearings, an effort by the federal government to save money, reduce backlogs and clear detention beds. The number of detainees in California and across the nation who agreed to be deported without first seeing a judge jumped fivefold between 2004 and 2007, from 5,481 to nearly 31,554. In the first half of 2008, 17,445 speedy deportation orders were signed. Nearly half of all such orders since 1999 were issued in three locations -- Lancaster; Los Fresnos, Texas, and Eloy, Ariz., according to federal data provided to the Stanford Law School Immigrants' Rights Clinic as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.

Attorneys, advocates and judges have raised concerns about the dramatic rise in fast-track deportations, saying they have resulted in many immigrants being deported without knowing their rights or understanding the consequences. "That is everyone's underlying concern -- is there due process here?" said Gilbert T. Gembacz, a retired immigration judge in Los Angeles. "Are people getting a full explanation? Are they getting a case-by-case review of all their options? I don't think they are. I think they are being told, 'Hi. You're here illegally, and we are going to send you back.' "

Jayashri Srikantiah, the director of the Stanford clinic, which has sued the federal government to get more information, said some detainees are pressured to sign the deportation forms even though they may have defenses against deportation or be eligible for asylum or green cards. About 95% of the people who agreed to the speedy deportations since 1999 are not represented by attorneys, she said. "We have people mostly who are in detention in remote locations, without lawyers, who are non-English speakers, and they are being asked to sign away their rights," Srikantiah said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities in Los Angeles counter that the program is voluntary and that deportation officers clearly explain to detainees their options, including the choice to see a judge. They said the program, known as "stipulated removal," saves the government money and prevents immigrants from having to stay in detention when they would probably be deported by a judge anyway. If they agree to stipulated removal, they often can be returned to their native country within a few days or weeks. Challenging their deportation, however, could take months.

Among the recent detainees deported to Mexico with stipulated removal were two men, one who served time for robbery and another who spent years behind bars for assault and lewd and lascivious acts, immigration authorities said. "It allows those who have no form of relief to return to their home country as quickly as possible," said Brian DeMore, the agency's Los Angeles field office director of detention and removal. "It is a very economical way for us to do business because people don't spend a lot of time in detention."

Even though the fast-track deportations have been available for more than a decade, they were not widely used until 2004. Julie Myers, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency wanted to speed up deportations and started looking at all the tools that Congress had made available. "This was one that we believed had been underutilized," she said. Myers said she was concerned, however, that the procedures for using stipulated removals differed from region to region and urged the government to make the process uniform across the nation.

In the Los Angeles area, immigration officials started using the process in large numbers after a large-scale protest at Mira Loma in 2005, when 950 federal detainees upset over delays in deportation proceedings refused to return to their barracks. Officers at the Mira Loma detention center in Lancaster deport about 130 foreign nationals each month through stipulated removal, or about one-third of the total deportations from the facility. The vast majority of the local detainees who agree to stipulated removals, DeMore said, are criminals and are not eligible to stay in the United States.

At Lancaster, the detainees sign a form, in both English and Spanish, saying they understand they are giving up their right to a court hearing and that they may be prevented from legally returning to the U.S. for at least 10 years. That form is reviewed by a government attorney and then given to the judge, along with any other information available on the detainee, authorities said.

Because fast-track deportation doesn't require detainees to appear in court, judges can devote more time to cases of immigrants who want to fight to stay in the United States, said Susan Eastwood, spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the courts.

More here



A new judicial absurdity

Under this ruling, most of the Nazis tried for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg might have been exonerated. How do you determine a person's motivation for being a thug? All of the Nazi officers said they acted as they did because "Befehl ist Befehl" (Orders are orders) and they certainly would have been killed if they had disobeyed. That defence was unsuccessful at Nuremberg but has in effect just been allowed by SCOTUS -- creating new law in the process

If an asylum-seeking refugee persecuted someone overseas, U.S. government officials deciding their fate can consider whether the refugee was coerced to participate, the Supreme Court rule on Tuesday. The justices overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that the issues of coercion, motivation and intent were irrelevant in considering an asylum request.

The high court's decision was a victory for Daniel Negusie, who had been denied asylum in the United States because he had served as a guard in an Eritrean military prison where inmates were tortured and killed. Negusie argued that he had been forced under threat of death to act as a prison guard and that he never personally beat or killed anyone, although he did witness torture and had been ordered to mistreat prisoners. Negusie eventually escaped from the prison and came to the United States, where he sought asylum.

Under U.S. law, asylum must be denied for anyone who participated or assisted in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, ethnicity or political opinion. Supported by human rights groups, Negusie's attorneys argued that the law should apply to only those who voluntarily participate in persecution.

The Supreme Court ordered the federal government's Board of Immigration Appeals to consider a new standard that takes into account whether the participation in the persecution was voluntary. Previously, a refugee's motivation or intent were deemed irrelevant factors.

The court's majority opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined in whole or in part by seven other justices. Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. He said the law applied whether or not the participation in the persecution was voluntary.

SOURCE





3 March, 2009

What Is Terrorist Travel?

Latest Installment in Video Series

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's refusal to even use the word "terrorism" in remarks prepared for a congressional hearing last week underlines the fact that she has yet to commit to upholding the laws that derive from the 9/11 Commission's recommendations on border security.

To highlight the importance of these measures, Janice Kephart has prepared the latest installment in her "Border Basics" educational video series, this one entitled "What Is Terrorist Travel?" Kephart, the Director of National Security Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies and former counsel to the 9/11 Commission, concludes that securing against terrorist travel is essential to eliminate the fraud that enables people to enter, stay, and work in this country for illegal purposes.

Among the laws based on 9/11 Commission recommendations which Napolitano is now responsible for are:

* The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, requiring Americans and all others to present a passport or biometric equivalent at the border.

* US VISIT, requiring certain non-American applicants for admission at ports of entry to take biometric fingerprint and photos.

* Security guidelines for countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program that enable the United States to conduct preliminary vetting of individuals before they arrive.

* REAL ID, requiring identity verification and legal presence in order for a state-issued driver license or ID to be acceptable for federal purposes like boarding airplanes.

* E-Verify, a highly successful program shown to be 99.5 percent accurate that helps employers comply with federal law by verifying the identity and work authorization of new hires.

Verifying identity, authenticating travel documents, and assuring legal status to live and work in the United States have all proven their worth in improving security. Since terrorists exploit many of the same border vulnerabilities as identity thieves, drug runners, alien smugglers, and illegal aliens to enter and stay in the United States illicitly, it is imperative that the lessons learned and reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission remain on the front burner of policy development. And yet solid programs that work to expose, deter, and arrest fraud are at risk of stagnating or even being rolled back.

View all the videos in the "Border Basics" series. All of our videos can also be viewed on our YouTube and Facebook pages.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. Contact: Janice Kephart, jlk@cis.org, (202) 466-8185



New immigration surge into Western Europe?

Eastern European countries gave an apocalyptic warning yesterday of hordes of unemployed workers heading west as a new Iron Curtain divides rich from poor inside Europe. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Western leaders were told yesterday that five million jobs could be lost in the "new" European Union countries of the East unless radical action were taken to bail them out.

The spectacular collapse of some of the post-communist tiger economies led to demands at an EU summit in Brussels for a rescue fund of E190 billion to stop social collapse in the Eastern nations spilling over into the rest of Europe. The plea, led by Hungary, was rejected in a bad-tempered meeting of the 27 European leaders, dominated by fears that Western EU countries would rather prop up their own large industries and jobs at the expense of the East.

Instead Gordon Brown renewed his call for a huge injection of funds into the International Monetary Fund, which has already doled out large sums to Hungary and Latvia and is soon to receive a begging letter from Romania. The Prime Minister refused, however, to say where the fresh money for the IMF would come from. As he prepared to fly off for talks with President Obama today, Mr Brown left behind an EU increasingly split between its old and new economies and lacking the unity that he hoped to present in Washington and at the G20 summit in London next month.

Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Hungarian leader, openly raised the spectre of collapse in Eastern Europe and the creation of a new Iron Curtain. "Central Europe's refinancing needs in 2009 could total E300 billion, 30 per cent of the region's GDP," he said in a paper calling for a fund of E160 billion to E190 billion to be set up by the richer EU members. "A significant crisis in Eastern Europe would trigger political tensions and immigration pressures. With a Central and Eastern European population of 350 million, of which 100 million are in the EU, a 10 per cent increase in unemployment would lead to at least five million unemployed people within the EU."

SOURCE





2 March, 2009

What if America opened its borders to unlimited immigration?

By Frosty Wooldridge

What if the U.S. opened its borders to unlimited immigration? What would it mean to inject 10 to 20 or 30 million people into America annually in order to save those millions from starvation and misery around the planet? Since they flood our country for a better life, what would it mean in the long run? How would our cities, states, environment, language and culture survive? In other words, how many equal too many and how much more can we tolerate without a total collapse of our environment, economy, medical systems, schools, infrastructure and civilization. Today, we absorb more immigrants annually than all other nations combined. How many each year? A steady stream of 1.0 to 1.2 million legally and 1.1 to 1.2 million illegal migrants make America their home annually.

They arrive from overloaded nations that grow by 77 million per year. They arrive as economic refugees, political victims, war and environmental survivors. They arrive from a line that grows more desperate every year as humanity races toward an added three billion more people in the next 40 years. Since humans suffer in such horrific numbers, what if America opened up its floodgates and allows countless millions of immigrants?

First of all, California, at one point, housed a mere five million. Today, that state features 37.5 million on its way to 70 million. At one point, citizens did not suffer gridlocked traffic, water shortages or air pollution. The same goes for all cities of the United States.

But, at some point, beginning in 1965, with Teddy Kennedy's Immigration Reform Act, population growth raced out of control across this great land. At this moment, 150 million Americans living in overcrowded cities feel the pinch, the unease of their predicament and the symptoms of their dilemma. They'll feel it more when gas hits $9.00 a gallon as in Europe.

Since we invite 1.2 million immigrants annually and tolerate another 1.1 million illegal migrants moving into this country annually-what's the big deal about allowing five or 10 million annually? If you study international demographics, you know that 77--82 million people add themselves, net gain to the planet, every year. (Source: www.populationmedia.org and www.worldpopulationbalance.org and www.balance.org ) To put things into perspective, one-third of the 6.7 billion on the planet today cannot find a clean glass of drinking water daily. Out of that 77--82 million, 18 million starve to death or die of starvation related diseases annually. (Source: World Health Organization) At least two billion humans live on less than $3.00 a day for food.

Thus, if we opened our borders to save humanity from its horrible fate, an immediate 18 million starving souls could find food and shelter in the USA annually. However, after a mere five years, that equals 90 million added to our country. In 10 years, that equals 180 million people and in 20 years.well, you get the picture. If you think California, Arizona, Colorado and Georgia suffer water shortages, air pollution and gridlock today, you ain't seen nothin' yet!

William N. Ryerson, director of www.populationmedia.org, said, "I have read with interest the various perspectives presented in the debate on U.S. immigration policy. I pose the following question to anyone who thinks "border control" efforts will not accomplish anything: If the U.S. had no border control what would happen to the number of good people entering this country from the far corners of the world? "There is no doubt that if there were absolutely no barriers or restrictions at our borders, this great nation would be flooded -- overwhelmed -- inundated -- by MILLIONS of well-meaning, hard-working, honest "tired and poor" people within a matter of months.

"It's hard to know the number who would move to the U.S. if our borders were opened, but surveys in many countries show significant numbers who would like to live in the U.S. If the borders were opened, perhaps 3 billion people would find their way here in a short period of time - ten times the current population of the U.S. The infrastructure would collapse, our water supply (and food supply) would be exhausted, people would be sleeping in the streets, energy would be at a premium, in short, chaos would be the new norm.

"At current rates of growth, in just 15 years the U.S. population will grow by the equivalent of a new Los Angeles, plus New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Francisco, Indianapolis, San Jose, Memphis, Washington, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Boston, Columbus, New Orleans, Cleveland, Denver, Seattle, and El Paso. All of these to be added in just 15 years! We have heard a lot about the cost of rebuilding New Orleans. The cost of developing all the new infrastructure that will be required in the next 15 years will be huge - and perhaps not achievable. If we opened our borders, the reality would be much worse."

Therefore, as you sit idly by watching both presidential candidates dodge the immigration issue, I have a question for you: if YOU enjoyed the power of the U.S. presidency or controlled the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, what would you do? Open our borders to unlimited immigration-knowing your children could not survive in the long term? Or, would you be smarter, more logical and take actions in order to build a sustainable, long term, viable civilization?

Within 30 years, we expect 100 million added to this country at our current level of legal and illegal immigration. Do you want that result for your children? What will they tell you in 30 years if that 100 million comes to pass? What will you do about it now?

The late Garrett Hardin said, "In a less than a perfect world, the allocation of rights based on territory must be defended if a ruinous breeding race is to be avoided. It is unlikely that civilization and dignity can survive everywhere. Fortunate minorities (of rational thinking citizens) act as the trustees of a civilization that is threatened by uninformed good intentions."

SOURCE



Immigration reform: A California view

No federal policy shift under President Obama will be more important to California than what he does on illegal immigration. This will have more long-term significance to the nation's biggest state than even the now-taken-for-granted reversal of George W. Bush's refusal to allow enforcement of California's landmark greenhouse gas emission limits on cars and trucks.

So what does Obama plan on illegal immigration, which some Californians blame for the state's budget mess and many of its other ills? For a clue, it helps to look at the Web site his staff put on the Internet almost instantaneously after he took the oath of office in January. The immigration agenda outlined there bears an ironically strong resemblance to bills co-sponsored in the past by Obama's 2008 election rival, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The statement accompanying his loosely-outlined proposals also echoes McCain.

"For too long, politicians in Washington have exploited the immigration issue to divide the nation rather than find real solutions," Obama says. "Our broken immigration system can only be fixed by putting politics aside and offering a complete solution that secures our border, enforces our laws and reaffirms our heritage as a national of immigrants."

Nothing there about assuring farmers and other employers of an adequate army of ultra-cheap laborers, but that is implicit, just as it was in the immigration reform bills that failed in Congress last year and in 2007. For nothing is more important to the industries that hire illegals than keeping their workers here. In the case of farms, especially in California's Central Valley, when the number of illegal immigrant workers begins to dwindle, the amount of fruits left hanging on trees and vines skyrockets, not to mention cotton and other crops left to rot in fields. That's not a problem this year, with recession making surplus labor available, but it will be again whenever the overall job market recovers.

So the key part of the Obama proposal is his call to "bring people out of the shadows." He says he will "support a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens." In short, amnesty. Illegals already in this country would be allowed to stay, with legal standing allowing their employers to escape any sanctions.

At the same time, the Obama stance offers some satisfaction to the get-tough-on-illegals faction. He would, his Web site says, "support additional personnel, infrastructure and technology on the border and at our ports of entry." That means the almost-completed "wall" along the Mexican border will not be coming down soon, even though Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano didn't care for it when she was governor of Arizona. The Obama statement also implies more electronics will be added to intercept illegal crossings along the most rural stretches of the border. And it means even more Border Patrol officers to supplement the almost 5,000 added under Bush.

Plus, Obama advocates a tougher crackdown on employers of newly arrived illegals in an effort to eliminate incentives for undocumented border crossings. To further lessen incentives, he proposes working with Mexico to beef up that country's economy, now in an even worse recession than America's.

Put these stances together and they could add up to a compromise immigration bill with a real chance for congressional passage. With a 58-seat Democratic majority that may soon become 59 (if Democrat Al Franken's current narrow lead over Republican Norm Coleman in Minnesota ends up becoming official) and several Republicans, including McCain, having long backgrounds in support of similar compromises, it's hard to see how this could be killed by a filibuster, the way similar bills previously were.

Even before any such bill comes near a vote, there will be another battle over reauthorization of the current E-verify system, which Bush required all businesses with federal contracts to use in order to confirm their new employees have legal standing. The system matches photos of legal workers to legitimate Social Security numbers, aiming to prevent job applicants from using fake identification. E-verify should get a boost from unemployment numbers, which are at a 25-year peak and might rise further if E-verify disappears and it again becomes easier to hire illegals.

At the same time, several Hispanic voter groups that backed Obama strongly are now urging him to move quickly to end raids where immigrants not named in warrants are questioned by federal agents and to end a federal program encouraging local police to perform immigration checks.

Every one of these items has large meaning for California, where a compromise immigration bill combining amnesty and enforcement with a strictly managed guest worker program would likely cause the least economic disruption and come closest to making all sides at least somewhat happy.

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1 March, 2009

The illegal immigration contribution to California's budget woes

By Joe Guzzardi

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, his political career in tatters, will not be remembered of as Hollywood's greatest action hero. Instead, historians will look back at him as the governor who presided over California biggest financial crisis that may mark the Golden State's official end. As quickly as Schwarzenegger's political star rose, it plunged just as fast.

In 2003, angry, disgusted Californians collected enough signatures to force a special election to recall then-governor Gray Davis. The election put the popular Schwarzenegger in Sacramento because movie fans loved him and disenchanted voters believed his empty promise to once and for all reform the state's dysfunctional government.

Five years ago, I was one of 125 ballot recall candidates who opposed Davis and Schwarzenegger. As I look back on it, I can say without fear of contradiction that I could easily have managed the state more effectively than Schwarzenegger. Stated more modestly, no one could have done worse. I ran on a straightforward platform: end illegal immigration, reduce legal immigration significantly and thereby lessen California's financial obligation to provide education, medical care and sundry other financial services to the world, especially Mexico. Even though many considered my quixotic campaign controversial, I received a surprising amount of positive print media coverage, over Internet blogs as well as on talk radio and television. And in the end, I finished in the middle of the pack-not bad given my limited pocketbook. Most Californians spend more on their home entertainment system than I did running for governor.

Although Schwarzenegger comfortably won the election, patriots remained cautiously optimistic that the Austrian-born, legal immigrant would bring a common sense perspective about immigration with him to Sacramento. Sadly, our hopes were quickly dashed. During the first years of his administration, Schwarzenegger proved an immigration waffler. By endorsing the Minutemen, saying they did a "wonderful job," Schwarzenegger started out well enough. And he vetoed Gil Cedillo's omnipresent bill to provide illegal aliens driver's licenses.

But ultimately, Schwarzenegger caved into California's Hispanic Caucus and reverted to Davis' immigrant pandering, insisting against all logic that illegal aliens who live in California don't have a negative impact on the states' financial condition. Before long, Schwarzenegger presided over a $40 billion budget deficit, increased spending to levels 40 percent above the notorious spending- crazed Davis, watched California's unemployment rate climb steadily to 10.1 percent to become the nation's fourth-highest while watching the state's bonds' rating sink to an all-time low.

But on immigration, Schwarzenegger completely miscalculated the ultimate price tag. In 2004, I wrote here that California budget problems, many fueled by unchecked immigration, were a "smoldering volcano." But the volcano's force exceeded my wildest dreams. According to the California's non-partisan fiscal policy advisor, the Legislative Analyst's Office, here's a rough conservative hard dollar estimate of what Californians pay to foot Schwarzenegger's passive attitude toward illegal immigration.

* Roughly 20,000 illegal immigrants are doing stretches in state prisons, representing 11 percent of all inmates. California absorbs about $1 billion in direct expenses while receiving about $120 million federal funds thus leaving an $880 million net cost to the state.

* Although Illegal immigrants aren't entitled to welfare, called CalWORKs, their citizen children are. Roughly 190,000 kids receive welfare checks that pass through their parents. The Legislative Analyst's Office put the tab conservatively at $500 million.

* California spends $775 million on Medi-Cal healthcare for illegal immigrants, according to the Legislative Analyst. Of that, $642 million goes into direct benefits. Practically all the rest is paid to counties to administer the program. The federal government generally matches the state dollar-for-dollar on mandatory programs.

* So-called emergency services are another huge cost: $536 million. Prenatal care alone is $59 million. Omitted from the overall total expense is baby delivery-well over $100 million-because the newborns are, technically, American citizens, not illegal immigrants.

* California also pays $47 million for programs not mandated by the federal government including non-emergency care (breast and cervical cancer treatment), $25 million; long-term nursing home care, $19 million; abortions, $3 million.

* Educating illegal aliens is the single biggest California taxpayer burden. Last week, I calculated that of California's 1.5 million non-English speakers attending K-12 schools, about 500,000 are illegal aliens and another 500,000 anchor babies. Depending on how you interpret anchor babies, the state's education tab for aliens is either $3.5 billion or $7 billion.

Of course, Californians underwrite scores of other alien-related expenses especially those paid out through local governments. But you get the multi-billion- dollar picture, I'm sure, without my providing you with more details.

Some immigration enthusiasts argue that taxes paid by illegal aliens compensate for their costs. But this nonsensical claim is to laugh out loud. Sure, when aliens work, they pay state taxes. Yet illegal aliens are, by virtue of their income, modest spenders. Their biggest contribution to the state's revenue stream is sales tax. But food and prescription drugs-the two biggest ticket items-are tax-exempt.[Illegal Immigrants Are A Factor in California's Budget Math, by George Skelton, Los Angeles Times, February 2, 2009]

If only Schwarzenegger could have summoned up the guts to tackle the illegal immigration crisis! While it is true that for the most part, immigration is a federal issue, think of the impact Schwarzenegger could have had if he had taken a bold-and defensible- position on behalf of his constituents by calling for dramatically reduced immigration levels. A California governor, particularly a high visibility figure like Schwarzenegger, has political clout-doubly so within the celebrity-loving Capitol Hill crowd. Imagine this could-have-been headline: "California's Immigrant Governor Demands Less Immigration!"

Who knows? Maybe Schwarzenegger's none-too-coy interest (with a little help from a Constitutional amendment) in becoming the first foreign-born president may have gathered momentum. But now Schwarzenegger's political career is dead as a doornail.

As for my own political aspirations, I've moved away from California to Pennsylvania and have no active plans to get back into the arena. But I must note that Pennsylvania has inviting targets like Senators and Robert Casey and Arlen Specter, "D+" and "F" respectively, are up for re-election in 2010 and 2012. With immigration much more prominent on the nation's radar screen today than it was in 2003-even in Pennsylvania-it's up to some courageous but as yet unidentified candidate to knock Casey and Specter out of office.

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E-verify should be high on Obama's priority list

Our president has lofty goals. Under his tutelage, we will cure cancer, end our dependence on foreign oil, reform health care and guarantee higher education to everyone who wants it.

I would like to focus on something that the president has not addressed: illegal immigration and its impact on unemployment, job creation and our failing educational system. Until he is willing to acknowledge the obvious, our best efforts are doomed to fail. Over the next two years, his job-creation plan promises to save or create 3.5 million jobs. Meanwhile, there are an estimated 6 to 7 million illegal immigrants working in low-wage, low-skill positions that could be filled with U.S- born workers with high school educations or less.

A detailed breakdown of U.S. Census unemployment data released by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals startling levels of unemployment for U.S.-born blacks and Hispanics without a high school education. Blacks had a 24.7 percent unemployment rate and Hispanics were at 16.2 percent. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for legal and illegal immigrants without a high school education was 10.6 percent.

The president can act now to ensure that all American jobs go to people authorized to work in the United States. Instead of expanding and protecting American jobs, the president allowed Senate Democrats to strip two E-Verify provisions from the stimulus bill. E-Verify is a highly effective voluntary program run by the Department of Homeland Security, which allows employers to check Social Security numbers against a national database. In 2007, it had a 99.6 percent accuracy rate and could yield results in less than three minutes. The program is scheduled to expire unless Senate Democrats reauthorize the program by March 6.

Not only should the program be reauthorized, it should be made mandatory for all employers. We can aggressively tackle unemployment by taking simple steps to ensure that American workers are protected from illegal competition from those unauthorized to work in this country.

Unemployment is only one of many problems. Many of the president's new programs lack any mechanism for verifying that the recipients are in the country legally. Such a failure to tackle the obvious does not bode well for the future. Our rising health-care costs and educational burdens are all impacted by the presence of large numbers of undocumented and unauthorized residents who make it more difficult for hard-working Americans to enjoy some of the benefits of living in a nation that used to be one of the greatest in the world.

The program is scheduled to expire unless Senate Democrats reauthorize the program by March 6. Not only should the program be reauthorized, it should be made mandatory for all employers. We can aggressively tackle unemployment by taking simple steps to ensure that American workers are protected from illegal competition from those unauthorized to work in this country.

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