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31 May, 2010
Obama’s Dangerous Immigration EndgameBy Ken Klukowski
This week Republican senators—including John McCain—told President Obama that there would be no talk about amnesty or a guest-worker program for illegals until his administration secures the border and enforces the law. But despite saying he’ll send 1,200 troops to the border, Obama doesn’t want to secure it, because his blueprint calls for keeping illegals here, and for fighting Arizona’s new law.
In the wake of Mexican President Calderon condemning Arizona’s new law—enthusiastically joined by American President Obama—many on the left are saying that Arizona’s new so-called “immigration law” will be struck down as unconstitutional.
It shouldn’t be struck down, because it’s not an “immigration” law. If any of them bothered to read the 16-page law, they’d understand that.
In April, the state of Arizona enacted a law making it a crime for illegal aliens to be in the state of Arizona. Immediately pundits across the left flooded the airwaves to object. And predictably, people who never went to law school suddenly because constitutional scholars, waxing eloquent to proclaim this law dead on arrival, filling your TV screen to share their collective lack of understanding with you.
They’re wrong.
First, the lawsuits that have already been filed should be dismissed. For starters, the plaintiffs lack standing in federal court, because none of them have suffered any concrete personal injury that’s different from an “injury” of indignation suffered by the public at large.
Besides that, these cases are not ripe for judicial review. “Ripeness” requires the facts to be fully-developed before a court will consider a case. These plaintiffs allege that police officers will use racial profiling to stop suspected illegals and demand to see papers. Since the law expressly forbids such police actions, these lawsuits are not ripe until the law goes into effect, and then someone alleges that they were subject to abuse.
But once enforcement begins, Arizona should still win on the merits any constitutional challenge.
It’s true that the Constitution vests immigration policy exclusively in the federal government. Article I gives Congress complete control over who can enter this country, stay in this country, or become an American citizen. This power is not shared with the states.If this Arizona law were an immigration law, then it might be unconstitutional. But it’s not an immigration law. It’s a police-power law, and that’s why Arizona should win.
As I explain in my new book, “The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency,” the Supreme Court has made clear that states wield police power, and that the Constitution denies police power to the federal government. Police power is the power to make laws for public safety, public health, general public welfare, and social morality.
Arizona’s new law recognizes that foreigners in this country illegally pose a public safety, social morality, and general welfare concern when they enter the state. It violates Arizona labor and employment laws to be working for a business in Arizona if you are here illegally. Such work also involves identify theft and document fraud, which are crimes. And many illegals without gainful employment are instead engaged in drug-dealing or other crimes, or are incarcerated at state expense, or are even living off of welfare programs.
All these issues trigger Arizona’s police power, enabling Arizona to make it a crime to be in that state illegally. It would be unconstitutional for Arizona to try to deport someone, but it’s perfectly constitutional for Arizona to uphold the rule of law within its own borders.
If this law targeted someone based on national origin or race, then it would be subject to “strict scrutiny,” under which the law would be struck down unless a court finds it narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling public interest.
The Arizona law tries to cover its bases in that regard, referring to Arizona’s “compelling” public interests. That very smart legal drafting isn’t surprising, given that Kris Kobach—a brilliant law professor who’s a rising star in the Republican Party, who happens to be running for secretary of state in Kansas—helped write the law.
But this law doesn’t target those protected classes of race or nationality, because it only concerns whether you’re in this country legally, regardless of whether you are a citizen, where you were born, or your skin color. As such, it’s subject to “rational-basis review,” under which the law is upheld if it’s related to advancing any legitimate public interest. All the police-power matters cited above are legitimate interests.
Like most laws, there are ways that this law could be abused that would violate people’s rights, and if so then those who suffer such abuse could hold those responsible to account. But the law, especially the amended version as it is now written, can be fully implemented in ways that don’t violate anyone’s rights.
It’s unfortunate that Arizona had to be forced into this situation by the federal government’s failure to address this problem. But whether it’s good policy is irrelevant. Arizona’s actions are permitted by the Constitution.
But the Obama administration’s actions are not permitted by the Constitution. The president is responsible under Article II for taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. As Ann Coulter has pointed out, the state of Arizona can sue to try obtaining a federal court order compelling the director of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), John Morton, to process referrals of illegals from Arizona, since Morton has said he’s inclined not to do so in retaliation for Arizona’s law. The Obama administration cannot refuse to enforce U.S. law.
However, as explained in The Blueprint, there’s a reason President Obama refuses to secure the borders, and insists that the only way to stop illegals from entering this country is to give them all amnesty. (Which makes no sense at all.) He ultimately wants to create 12 million new voting citizens who lack the language or skill set to thrive in this country. Why? So that he and his party can create a massive new voting bloc of lower-class or impoverished citizens beholden to him, who will vote for every handout imaginable, paid for by taxes on the middle class and business owners.
It’s a cynical form of pandering. It’s politics at its worst. But President Obama needs those votes to help survive the political backlash coming from the voters, and his blueprint calls for doing whatever it takes to get them.
Arizona’s immigration law may survive(Comment from the Left)
Opponents of Arizona’s draconian immigration enforcement law are hoping that federal courts will rule the measure unconstitutional, heading off a spate of “copycat” legislation elsewhere.
If only it were so simple. In fact, a growing number of state immigration laws are being upheld by federal courts – and as improbable as it sounds – Arizona’s dangerous new law could survive also.
What makes opponents so confident that laws like Arizona’s are unconstitutional? It can all be summed up in a single word: “pre-emption”. That’s the legal principle that appears to reserve sole authority for immigration policy to the federal government, and that “pre-empts” state laws that run counter to that authority.
But therein lies the rub. Many states, including Arizona, aren’t claiming to exercise an “inherent” state authority on immigration policy. Instead, they’re claiming to be upholding existing federal law. And they’re even citing past supreme court precedents – like the famous De Canas decision of 1976 – to suggest that their law-making is expressly permitted by the constitution.
In fact, Arizona passed an immigration enforcement law in 2007 that most legal observers at the time assumed would be overturned – but it wasn’t. Despite legal challenges, federal courts twice upheld that law, and it remains on the books today.
What happened in 2008 is instructive. Current employer sanctions law, passed as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, penalises businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants with monetary fines. But many states are dissatisfied with the law, because the fines are nominal and because employers are not really required to verify that a worker is in the country legally.
So Arizona decided to write a law that would penalise Arizona’s businesses that hired illegal workers with something far more severe – a suspension of their business licence. It also required that employers use a voluntary federal programme known as “E-Verify” to determine whether prospective workers were in the country legally.
Critics howled that Arizona had no right to pass its own employer sanctions law because the feds had “pre-empted” states from doing so. Moreover, since E-Verify was still in development, and not yet officially the law of the land, Arizona was exceeding its authority to mandate that E-Verify be used in Arizona.
But two federal courts, including the 9th circuit court of appeals, ruled that Arizona did have that right. According to the court, the 1986 IRCA law, while specifically pre-empting state laws that would fine businesses, had not extended that same authority to licensing, since, as the court noted, states, not the federal government, typically have responsibility for this area.
The 9th circuit court also defended Arizona’s use of E-Verify, noting that while Congress hadn’t mandated its use, “that does not, in and of itself, indicate that Congress intended to prevent states from making participation mandatory”. In other words, unless Congress explicitly pre-empted it, Arizona could tailor E-Verify to suit its own needs.
The 9th circuit court precedent is not the only cause for concern. There’s also a little-noticed Bush administration legal finding from 2002 that overturns past executive branch policy on the question of a state’s “inherent authority” to make immigration policy. The Bush-era finding is not the law of the land, and many legal observers consider it tendentious, and indeed, at odds with the constitution.
But it could have a major impact on whether the Obama administration actually moves forward with its threat to challenge Arizona’s new enforcement law in court. Presidents are notoriously reluctant to do that if there is a current legal finding that would not support such action. Obama, in effect, would have to issue a new legal finding first, which in the current pre-election climate is considered highly unlikely.
In any event, Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law, like its employer sanctions law, is based, in part, on current federal law. Arizona already has an agreement with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency under Section 287 of the Immigration and Nationality Act which allows it to arrest illegal immigrants and hold them in local jails until ICE can pick them up, and process them for deportation. It’s supposed to be applied primarily to “criminal” aliens – hard core felony offenders – but in practice it has swept up aliens suspected of even minor offences, including traffic infractions.
Which raises the same problem seen earlier with employer sanctions: if Arizona’s role in routine immigration law enforcement is already federally mandated, how could the feds move to pre-empt that role now?
Arizona will argue they can’t. However, those suing the state will say that Arizona is exceeding federal authority by defining an illegal alien’s “unlawful presence” as a state crime – trespassing. Under current federal law, unlawful presence is a civil violation, not a crime – federal or otherwise. Civil violations are not punishable with criminal sanctions, such as jail time. Those caught are simply deported. But in theory, those Arizona detains under its new enforcement law would be subject to uniquely state criminal penalties – a legal first.
But does that mean Arizona’s law is unconstitutional? Not necessarily. Federal law may define “unlawful presence” as a civil violation, but paradoxically, it also defines the prior act of “illegal entry” as a crime, not a civil violation. Arizona might end up claiming that the dividing line between the two is meaningless. Moreover, the feds have never expressly forbidden states from imposing their own criminal sanctions on aliens.
And what of the much ballyhooed issue of “racial profiling”? It turns out it’s not a slam dunk, either. Arizona’s law not only expressly prohibits racial profiling, but it’s likely to be implemented in a way that insulates police from charges of profiling. The simplest way? The police simply ask anyone they pull over for proof that they have a legal right to be in the United States – white conservative-looking Anglos and brown-skinned Spanish-speakers alike. Sound preposterous? It’s worked before.
In the end, if Arizona can convince the courts that its state law is consistent with federal intent – albeit tailored to Arizona’s special concern, as a border state, with rampant illegal entry – its controversial new enforcement law could well survive.
30 May, 2010
British citizenship for foreigners hits record highA British passport is being handed to a foreigner every three minutes after figures hit a record high
A total of 203,790 people were granted citizenship last year following a 58 per cent jump on the previous 12 months. It was the highest level since records began in 1962 and will be partly due to a rush in applications before tough new rules on earning a British passport come in to effect next year.
The Home Office figures mean more than 1.5 million foreign migrants became Britons under Labour fuelling concerns over the effect on the population of the last Government’s open door on immigration.
Separate projections by the Office for National Statistics yesterday showed some parts of the country will see population levels rise by up to a fifth in the next eight years, driven mainly by immigration.
However, more Eastern European migrants are now returning home than arriving in the UK – the first time that has happened since the EU was expanded to the former Eastern Bloc nations, such as Poland, in 2004.
It is the first time citizenship approvals has passed the 200,000 mark and dwarfs the previous high of 164,635 in 2007. It is also more than five times the 37,010 approvals in 1997 when Labour took power.
A new regime of “probationary citizenship” comes into effect next year when migrants will have to have been in the country for up to eight years before being granted a passport, instead of the current five years. There will also be a points-based system that will require immigrants to demonstrate that they are of benefit to the community.
There is also little sign of any slowing down in the rush for citizenship before the new rules come in to effect. There were 5,320 applications in the first three months of this year, the highest since 2007.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: “Grants of citizenship, the main measure of long term immigration from outside the EU, are up by 58 per cent in a year.
“This is the legacy of the mass immigration encouraged by the previous government. It underlines the need for the new government to get a grip of immigration without delay.”
The figures were part of a series of immigration and population statistics released by the ONS and Home Office.
Overall, the number of immigrants arriving in the UK and looking to stay for more than a year fell by nine per cent last year but still stood at 503,000 – the equivalent of more than 1,300 a day – while emigration levels also fell to 361,000.
It meant net migration – the difference between those arriving and leaving – stood at 142,000, which was an 11 per cent drop on the previous year but is still well above the “tens of thousands” figure the Conservatives have pledged to bring levels down to.
The flow of migrants from Eastern Europe also went in to reverse for the first time after 45,000 arrived last year – a drop of 5 per cent – but 57,000 left.
The new Government has committed itself to introducing a cap on non-EU immigration, although the level has yet to be set.
Damian Green, the immigration minister said: “These figures illustrate the scale of the immigration challenge facing the new Government. “It is now our duty to control immigration for the benefit of the UK and that is what I am determined to do. “I believe that immigration has been far too high in recent years which is why we will reduce net migration back down to the levels of the 1990s – to tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands.
“Over the coming weeks and months the public will see us tackle this issue head on by introducing a wide range of new measures to ensure that immigration is properly controlled, including a limit on work permits, actions on marriage and an effective system of regulating the students who come here.”
Resentment of immigrant flood in SpainMost of whom arrived illegally. And with 20% unemployment, Spain does have a real problem
The food bank in Vic, 40 miles north of Barcelona, occupies an old bakery in a side street. Each day hundreds of unemployed stream in to collect handouts of bread, milk, pasta and other necessities. The overwhelming majority are immigrants, predominantly Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans who flocked to Vic in the past few years to work on building sites or in the huge pig farms and meat factories that surround the town and give it its distinctive smell.
At least 10,000 came, swelling Vic’s population by a quarter. They did the hard, dirty work and were welcomed. Not any more. Half lost their jobs when Spain’s construction bubble burst in 2008 and brought the good times to an abrupt end.
A deeply unpopular €15 billion (£12.7 billion) austerity package rushed through parliament yesterday will make life even harder. On top of that, the immigrants are now the target of Platform for Catalonia, Spain’s equivalent of the BNP, which is based in Vic. “Control immigration — stop the crisis,” its leaflets proclaim.
“They insult us. They say maybe we’re the cause of the crisis, that we take their jobs. It’s not fair and it’s not nice,” said Mercy Omoroagbon, 30, as she collected her handout. She arrived from Nigeria in 2002, lost both her cleaning jobs last year and now lives off the charity of friends.
“They say the Spanish can’t work because of the immigrants. It’s not true. We did the work the Spanish didn’t want or wouldn’t do,” said Joy Ekechukwu, 33, another Nigerian who came to Spain 11 years ago, lost her factory job and now struggles to support her two young children.
Our previous stop was Bergamo, in the foothills of the Italian Alps. An early-morning flight from Milan took us to Vic, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, but the similarities end there. Bergamo is a rich city waiting for the hard times to begin. Vic is already in deep distress.
Unemployment is 16 per cent, which is better than the national average of 20 per cent because meat is Vic’s biggest industry and people have to eat. Property prices have slumped 30 to 40 per cent, 500 homes have been repossessed and new houses and apartments stand empty.
“The economy here is pretty dreadful,” said Xavier Troy, a bar manager.
The new austerity measures will cut the pay of Vic’s 400 civil servants, stop the council taking out bank loans for building projects and freeze state pensions. The town’s revenues fell 10 per cent in 2009 and were set to fall another five points this year even before this latest belt tightening.
Locally and nationally, trade unions are planning strikes and demonstrations, saying that Spain must reduce its 11 per cent budget deficit, but that the rich should bear the burden.
“It’s class war here. Those who earn more should pay more in taxes,” said Miguel Sánchez, leader of the Workers Commission in Vic.
More ominously, the Platform is using the crisis to foment hostility towards immigrants, threatening Spain’s reputation for tolerance.
“We call it an invasion,” says Josep Anglada, 50, the Platform’s president, a snappily dressed former property salesman who is one of his party’s four councillors in Vic and one of nineteen across Catalonia.
He does not mince his words. Sitting outside a bar in Vic’s elegant old Plaza Mayor, he blames immigrants for rising crime, drug trafficking and delinquency, and for all manner of antisocial behaviour because “they are used to living in the jungle.
“Immigrants bring nothing positive. They receive much more than they contribute to the State,” he says. All illegal immigrants should be expelled and the long-term unemployed repatriated.
Spain has had little time for hard-right parties since General Franco’s dictatorship ended in 1975 but the Platform’s foes admit that it is gaining strength. They will stage an anti-racism demonstration in the Plaza Mayor tomorrow.
“There’s been a rise in tension and there’s potential for xenophobic confrontation,” said Antoni Iborra, a lawyer working with Vic’s immigrants who says they have been barred from some bars and discos.
Josep Burgaya i Riera, Vic’s deputy mayor, said: “They’re using the crisis to try to whip up anti-immigrant feeling. They throw petrol on the fire. There’s no violence on the streets but there’s a sense of bad feeling.”
The economic crisis is acute. The unions are mutinous. Racial tensions are rising. In every sense Vic, like Spain, faces a long hot summer.
29 May, 2010
Troops won’t be used to stop illegal immigrationUS National Guard troops being sent to the Mexican border will be used to stem the flow of guns and drugs across the frontier and not to enforce US immigration laws, the State Department said Wednesday.
The clarification came after the Mexican government urged Washington not to use the additional troops to go after illegal immigrants.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday authorized the deployment of up to 1,200 additional troops to border areas but State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters, “It’s not about immigration.”
He said the move was “fully consistent with our efforts to do our part to stem, you know, violence, to interdict the flow of dangerous people and dangerous goods — drugs, guns, people.”
He said the extra troops would be used to free up civilians engaged in support functions so that law enforcement personnel can be increased along the 2,000-mile-long (3,200 kilometer) border.
Nearly 13 million Mexicans live in the United States, more than half of them illegally.
“We have explained the president’s announcement to the government of Mexico, and they fully understand the rationale behind it,” Crowley said.
Obama’s announcement came less than a week after a state visit to Washington by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who asked for greater US backing for a bloody three-year-old war on drug cartels.
Drug violence has claimed the lives of nearly 23,000 people over the past three years.
Tough immigration policy will play well for the conservatives in Australia’s forthcoming electionEven the Left-leaning writer below can see that
TONY Abbott’s embrace of the Pacific Solution to deter boat arrivals will be popular but it affirms the deeper story about the Coalition: it is smart on politics but weak on governing credentials.
Its new hard line on boat people is a “trust us” declaration that invokes the John Howard brand. This is a case of Abbott being Howard, hence his remark that “my values are very, very similar to those of John Howard”. Because this statement is true, Abbott’s pledge that his policy “is about stopping the boats” will resonate deeply.
Liberal Party research shows boat arrivals remain a red-hot issue. Much of the sentiment is ugly, hostile and deep-seated. As usual, Abbott has taken an absolutist stance: facing a complex challenge he offers populist purism. “We’ve done it before, we will do it again,” he said. “Stop the boats, we must. Stop the boats, we will.” The message: Kevin Rudd is weak on boat arrivals and Abbott is strong. That’s it. Roger, over and out.
It is a variation of his stance on the resource super-profits tax. “This great big new tax has already put all investment decisions on hold,” Abbott said in his budget reply. “The Coalition will oppose the mining tax in opposition and we will rescind it in government.” No debate, no qualifications. No concession that taxing profits is the superior principle in a resource tax regime. Abbott’s stance is policy must not hinder politics. Indeed, he told 2GB’s Alan Jones this week that miners “are paying more than their fair share of tax”, a claim much of the industry doesn’t even make in its self-defence.
Such absolutism gives Abbott a cut-through quality that maximises his mobilisation of anti-Labor sentiment. People know what he stands for. But it raises another question: is running Australia this simple? Julia Gillard said yesterday that on boat people Abbott had “a slogan, not a solution”. The day before Rudd dismissed Abbott for having no resources tax policy whatsoever despite his campaign.
The opening Labor seeks is obvious: Abbott can coin a slogan but you wouldn’t want him running the country. In a sense the more progress Abbott makes the more Rudd depicts him as motor-mouth but not a viable prime minister. During a campaign Rudd’s capacity to mount a disciplined argument that he is better able to manage the challenges of office should not be discounted.
Beneath Abbott’s populism lies his obsession with values. Policy is hard; values are easy. Policy is about balancing competing interests; values are about taking stands. Such tensions are accentuated in the asylum-seeker debate; this is difficult policy but lends itself to populist hyperbole.
Rudd is susceptible because he tried to find a compromise (protecting the borders but softening Howard’s repression of asylum-seekers) only to face a resurgence of boats.
So far in 2009-10 there have been 104 boats carrying 4893 people, the highest number on record.
This triggers an iron law of Australian politics: any prime minister is vulnerable if unable to halt the flow of boats. Put another way, every PM needs to show credibility as a border protectionist. Much of the media either cannot grasp or cannot accept this logic but it has complex and legitimate roots in our political culture.
In a tactic to intensify the heat, Abbott and his immigration spokesman Scott Morrison have unveiled a revised policy resting on three principles: where possible the Coalition will turn back the boats; all unauthorised arrivals will be processed offshore and this means negotiating “to establish an offshore processing detention centre in another country” to supplement Christmas Island because it is now at capacity; and restoration of temporary protection visas for unauthorised arrivals, with such people having no family reunion rights and no right to re-enter the country if they depart, thereby allowing the Coalition to lift Labor’s discriminatory treatment of Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum-seekers.
How such pledges would work in practice is highly speculative. Abbott and Morrison know their policy is riddled with uncertainty. Turning back the boats requires another nation’s co-operation, usually Indonesia. Immigration Minister Chris Evans says under Howard only seven boats were returned and none after 2003. As former foreign minister Alexander Downer said, Jakarta was prepared to allow some tow-backs after the Tampa crisis but this was kept as quiet as possible. Scope to revive this technique seems most improbable with Indonesia hardly a willing conscript. Morrison concedes prospects rest entirely on regional relations.
The Coalition’s position on offshore processing duplicates Howard’s Pacific Solution. This arose in 2001 because Howard refused to have the Tampa people processed in Australia and his government intimidated and bribed agreements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea for detention and processing facilities.
Morrison refuses to nominate which country an Abbott government would favour for such a deal. Obviously, it could only be revealed in office. The policy says “processing in another country provides the necessary deterrent to discourage illegal boat arrivals”. It means intercepted boats would be “taken to non-Australian territory”. This equates to a tactic of permanent boat diversion.
Could an Abbott government strike such an arrangement? The Coalition wants the International Organisation for Migration to operate the facility with support from other regional nations.
In this sense it would be an expensive regional solution difficult to negotiate. Coalition policy says Australia would accept some refugees from such offshore processing but “we will not take blanket responsibility for all those transferred to this facility”.
Abbott has drawn a fresh line in the sand. “At the moment the Rudd government is bringing illegal arrivals onshore,” he said. “That must not happen.” Delivering this declaration relies on truly heroic assumptions: that a willing nation can be found and other parties will agree to Australia’s conditions. Abbott’s claim he sees no reason why negotiations would not succeed is blind optimism.
How smart is the Coalition to revive the Pacific Solution? It faced no compulsion to do this. While the public wants the boats stopped, the Pacific Solution is hardly calculated to win mass applause. The political lesson, however, is that once the boats flow the winner is the leader taking the toughest stand. This is the essence of Abbott’s tactic. Rudd cannot out-tough Abbott on this. For Labor, Howard’s Pacific Solution was the most detested of all his border protection measures, so its revival maximises the differences between Coalition and Labor.
A similar argument applies to the Coalition’s commitment to temporary protection visas. The evidence under Howard is they had a poor record as deterrents or as workable policy instruments. Yet they put more product discrimination between Labor and Coalition over boat people.
This week’s events will shape the election campaign. The Coalition plans an intense and researched assault in the campaign proper around asylum-seekers, surely with paid advertising as Abbott matches Howard’s border protection message. If a series of boats arrive in the week before the vote, the effect will be inflammatory and unpredictable.
This policy release sets the scene. Morrison said: “We have had 60 boats arrive this year. They are arriving at a rate of more than three per week where in the last six years of the Coalition government they were arriving at a rate of three per year.”
While last Thursday’s Coalition policy must have been released with an eye to the weekend Newspoll, its long-run purpose is more important. The lesson is that Abbott will wipe the floor with Rudd as a populist. Labor needs to grasp this and act on it. Its strategy must be to present itself as the more capable, responsible and disciplined team for government.
28 May, 2010
Strange academic study of attitudes to immigrationI don’t have access to the full article behind the abstract below but it seems rather brainless. Unless it is a very bad abstract, it would appear that no distinction was made between legal and illegal immigration. Since most critics of illegal immigration have no problem with legal immigration, the study perpetrates a total confusion of two different things.
So what the heck do their results mean? Very difficult to say. Nothing, probably. But their weaselly conclusion that their findings are “consistent with” opposition to immigration being caused by “ethnocentrism” is demonstrably wrong.
Why? Because “ethocentrism” is a theory masquerading as a concept and the theory is demonstrably not true. Liking for one’s own group has NOTHING to do with dislike of other groups. Surprising to the simple minds of Left-leaning academics though that might be, that is what the research has repeatedly shown See e.g. here. Awareness of the existing psychological literature on the subject would not seem to be a strong point of the authors below.
Attitudes toward Highly Skilled and Low-skilled Immigration: Evidence from a Survey Experiment
By JENS HAINMUELLER and MICHAEL J. HISCOX
Abstract
Past research has emphasized two critical economic concerns that appear to generate anti-immigrant sentiment among native citizens: concerns about labor market competition and concerns about the fiscal burden on public services. We provide direct tests of both models of attitude formation using an original survey experiment embedded in a nationwide U.S. survey. The labor market competition model predicts that natives will be most opposed to immigrants who have skill levels similar to their own. We find instead that both low-skilled and highly skilled natives strongly prefer highly skilled immigrants over low-skilled immigrants, and this preference is not decreasing in natives’ skill levels. The fiscal burden model anticipates that rich natives oppose low-skilled immigration more than poor natives, and that this gap is larger in states with greater fiscal exposure (in terms of immigrant access to public services). We find instead that rich and poor natives are equally opposed to low-skilled immigration in general. In states with high fiscal exposure, poor (rich) natives are more (less) opposed to low-skilled immigration than they are elsewhere. This indicates that concerns among poor natives about constraints on welfare benefits as a result of immigration are more relevant than concerns among the rich about increased taxes. Overall the results suggest that economic self-interest, at least as currently theorized, does not explain voter attitudes toward immigration. The results are consistent with alternative arguments emphasizing noneconomic concerns associated with ethnocentrism or sociotropic considerations about how the local economy as a whole may be affected by immigration.
Australia: Conservative coalition insists refugees work for their keepREFUGEES would be forced to work for their welfare benefits and may only be permitted to stay in Australia for as little as six months under a tough new border security policy to be announced by the Coalition today.
In an attempt to capitalise on rising community anger at the continued flow of boats that have brought 2805 asylum-seekers to Australia so far this year, the Coalition will unveil a suite of measures designed to harden its border security credentials.
At the heart of those measures is a new, tougher class of temporary protection visa to be issued to all unauthorised asylum-seekers.
In echoes of the Howard government’s Pacific Solution, the Coalition is expected to announce new measures to process asylum-seekers offshore.
The Coalition will also flag its intention to dump the suspension of new refugee claims for Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum-seekers, which was unveiled by the Federal Government in April. The suspension freezes new Sri Lankan asylum claims for three months and new Afghan claims for six months.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison told The Australian that abolishing the suspension would restore the non-discriminatory tenets of Australian asylum-seeker policy. “We have tough policies but they are applied equally to everyone,” Mr Morrison said.
“We have a clear view that people who arrive illegally will get different treatment to those who arrive legally. “We don’t seek to hide the fact what we are trying to do is ensure there is a different outcome for those who come illegally and those who don’t.”
The new announcements are designed to silence Coalition critics who for months have accused the opposition of failing to provide convincing alternative policies to stop the rising number of boats.
They are also an attempt to capitalise on growing disquiet in marginal electorates in the months leading up to this year’s Federal Election.
Mr Morrison yesterday defended the proposed temporary protection visa, saying it was a fairer, more versatile method of providing protection. “Refugee status is not a permanent condition and you need a policy to reflect that,” he said.
27 May, 2010
‘Homeland Security USA’ Producer Wins Immigration AwardArnold Shapiro, Executive Producer of the ABC television program ‘Homeland Security USA,’ is this year’s winner of the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration. The award, presented each year by the Center for Immigration Studies, is intended to recognize those who go beyond the usual clichés in examining immigration and whose work informs deliberations in this important policy area. Video and a transcript of the award ceremony are now available.
Shapiro is the Oscar- and Emmy-winning producer of ‘Scared Straight,’ ‘Rescue 911,’ ‘Big Brother,’ and dozens of other documentaries and TV series. ‘Homeland Security USA’ was a 2009 series of 13 one-hour, behind-the-scenes explorations of the work of the various agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.
While Shapiro himself is the first to admit the documentary series is not, as he told the Hollywood Reporter, ‘investigative journalism,’ it is, in a sense, explanatory journalism. His series helped familiarize viewers with the actual work of DHS employees – patrolling the Arizona border with unmanned Predator aircraft, interrogating suspected child-smugglers at JFK Airport, checking trucks at the Laredo border crossing, rescuing a boatload of illegal aliens in the Mona Passage, and so on. Seeing close up the daily challenges of protecting the nation’s frontiers is an essential prerequisite to informed policymaking.
Maria Luisa O’Connell, Assistant Commission for Public Affairs at DHS’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, commended Shapiro’s work at the award ceremony, calling him ‘a pioneer within the department’ for helping CBP answer the question ‘How can we communicate better?’ and present a more balanced view of the agency’s work. She said the experience of working with Shapiro ‘opened the door’ for other such efforts, such as National Geographic’s ‘Border Wars’ series.
This award is named in memory of Eugene Katz, who started his career as a reporter for the Daily Oklahoman. In 1928, he joined the family business, working as an advertising salesman for the Katz Agency, and in 1952 became president of Katz Communications, a half-billion-dollar firm which not only dealt in radio and television advertising but also owned and managed a number of radio stations. Mr. Katz was a member of the Center for Immigration Studies board until shortly after his 90th birthday in 1997. He passed away in 2000.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Bryan Griffith, press@cis.org, (202) 466-8185. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Activists blast Mexico’s immigration lawArizona’s new law forcing local police to take a greater role in enforcing immigration law has caused a lot of criticism from Mexico, the largest single source of illegal immigrants in the United States.
But in Mexico, illegal immigrants receive terrible treatment from corrupt Mexican authorities, say people involved in the system.
And Mexico has a law that is no different from Arizona’s that empowers local police to check the immigration documents of people suspected of not being in the country legally.
“There (in the United States), they’ll deport you,” Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. “In Mexico they’ll probably let you go, but they’ll beat you up and steal everything you’ve got first.”
Mexican authorities have harshly criticized Arizona’s SB1070, a law that requires local police to check the status of persons suspected of being illegal immigrants. The law provides that a check be done in connection with another law enforcement event, such as a traffic stop, and also permits Arizona citizens to file lawsuits against local authorities for not fully enforcing immigration laws.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the law “violates inalienable human rights” and Democrats in Congress applauded Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s criticisms of the law in a speech he gave on Capitol Hill last week.
Yet Mexico’s Arizona-style law requires local police to check IDs. And Mexican police freely engage in racial profiling and routinely harass Central American migrants, say immigration activists.
“The Mexican government should probably clean up its own house before looking at someone else’s,” said Melissa Vertíz, spokeswoman for the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, Mexico.
In one six-month period from September 2008 through February 2009, at least 9,758 migrants were kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico — 91 of them with the direct participation of Mexican police, a report by the National Human Rights Commission said. Other migrants are routinely stopped and shaken down for bribes, it said.
A separate survey conducted during one month in 2008 at 10 migrant shelters showed Mexican authorities were behind migrant attacks in 35 of 240 cases, or 15%.
Most migrants in Mexico are Central Americans who are simply passing through on their way to the United States, human rights groups say. Others are Guatemalans who live and work along Mexico’s southern border, mainly as farm workers, as maids, or in bars and restaurants.
The Central American migrants headed to the United States travel mainly on freight trains, stopping to rest and beg for food at rail crossings like the one in Tultitlán, an industrial suburb of Mexico City.
On a recent afternoon, Victor Manuel Beltrán Rodríguez of Managua, Nicaragua, trudged between the cars at a stop light, his hand outstretched.
“Can you give me a peso? I’m from Nicaragua,” he said. Every 10 cars or so, a motorist would roll down the window and hand him a few coins. In a half-hour he had collected 10 pesos, about 80 U.S. cents, enough for a taco.
Beltrán Rodríguez had arrived in Mexico with 950 pesos, about $76, enough to last him to the U.S. border. But near Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, he says municipal police had detained him, driven him to a deserted road and taken his money. He had been surviving since then by begging.
Abuses by Mexican authorities have persisted even as Mexico has relaxed its rules against illegal immigrants in recent years, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
In 2008, Mexico softened the punishment for illegal immigrants, from a maximum 10 years in prison to a maximum fine of $461. Most detainees are taken to detention centers and put on buses for home.
Mexican law calls for six to 12 years of prison and up to $46,000 in fines for anyone who shelters or transports illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the law applies only to people who do it for money.
For years, the Mexican government has allowed charity groups to openly operate migrant shelters, where travelers can rest for a few days on their journey north. The government also has a special unit of immigration agents, known as Grupo Beta, who patrol the countryside in orange pickups, helping immigrants who are in trouble.
At the same time, Article 67 of Mexico’s immigration law requires that all authorities “whether federal, local or municipal” demand to see visas if approached by a foreigner and to hand over migrants to immigration authorities.
“In effect, this means that migrants who suffer crimes, including kidnapping, prefer not to report them to avoid … being detained by immigration authorities and returned to their country,” the National Human Rights Commission said in a report last year.
As a result, the clause has strengthened gangs who abuse migrants, rights activists say.
“That Article 67 is an obstacle that urgently has to be removed,” said Alberto Herrera, executive director of Amnesty International Mexico. “It has worsened this vicious cycle of abuse and impunity, and the same thing could happen (in Arizona).”
A bill passed by the Mexican Senate on Oct. 6 would eliminate the ID requirement in Article 67 and replace it with language saying “No attention in matters of human rights or the provision of justice shall be denied or restricted on any level (of government) to foreigners who require it, regardless of their migration status.”
The Mexican House of Representatives approved a similar measure on March 16, but added a clause requiring the government to set aside funds to take care of foreigners during times of disaster. The revised bill has been stuck in the Senate’s Population and Development Committee since then.
To discourage migrants from speaking out about abuse, Mexican authorities often tell detainees they will have to stay longer in detention centers if they file a complaint, Vertíz said.
A March 2007 order allows Mexican immigration agents to give “humanitarian visas” to migrants who have suffered crimes in Mexico. But the amnesty is not automatic, and most migrants don’t know to ask for it, the commission said.
26 May, 2010
Obama tokenism: 1200 Troops to Mexico borderWho does he think that is going to impress? He would actually have to close the border to get the GOP onside
President Obama ordered 1,200 National Guard troops to the Mexico border in an effort to reach out to Republicans. He’ll need their support to move forward on immigration reform.
Under pressure to help secure the US border with Mexico, President Obama Tuesday ordered 1,200 National Guard troops to the US Southwest and said he would ask Congress to approve an additional $500 million to pay for law-enforcement activities in the region.
In part, these moves are a response to rising crime. An Arizona rancher was shot near the border in March – a murder police believe related to human smuggling activity. Kidnappings linked to Mexican drug cartel activity have increased in many Southwest cities. In Phoenix, for instance, kidnapping has gone up 30 percent over the last three years.
Senate Republicans were planning to attempt to force a vote this week on just such an action. Arizona has already enacted a state immigration law the administration has criticized as draconian. If Obama is to have any chance of passing comprehensive immigration reform, he needs to do something himself about the deteriorating border situation.
In a prelude to the coming debate on the issue, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona on the Senate floor Tuesday judged Obama’s actions insufficient. “I appreciate the additional 1,200 [troops] being sent … as well as an additional $500 million, but it’s simply not enough,” Senator McCain said.
Administration officials announced Obama’s reinforcement of the border shortly after the president met with Senate Republicans, who pressed him on immigration and border problems, as well as other issues.
The newly deployed National Guard troops won’t themselves be riding along the US-Mexican border to help stop illegal immigration. Instead, they will work on intelligence and surveillance support issues, as well as provide training for local law enforcement, administration officials said.
By doing such work they will free up Border Patrol agents for front-line duty. They’ll serve as a supplement to existing forces until more Border Patrol workers can be hired and trained. President George W. Bush ordered a similar deployment in 2006.
The Department of Defense dislikes using such troops to guard against illegal immigrants and drug and human smugglers. Pentagon officials do not want to be criticized for a perceived militarization of the border.
But the administration has been under increasing pressure to do something – and that pressure can be bipartisan. Earlier this month a Senate caucus on international drug trafficking held a hearing on the implications for the US of Mexican cartel violence.
Along with cross-border kidnappings, home invasions are on the rise in the Southwest, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California, a co-chair of the caucus. Since 2006, a special Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms effort to interdict smuggled firearms has seized some 6,700 guns and 780,000 rounds of ammunition, she said.
In addition, Border Patrol strength has been doubled over recent years, from 10,000 to 20,000 agents. “Now all of this amounts to substantial progress, and yet the continuing reports of criminal activity and the escalation of that activity causes us great concern,” said Senator Feinstein.
Poll: Most Still Support Arizona Immigration Law
Most Americans see illegal immigration as a very serious problem, a new CBS News poll shows – a figure that has held steady over the past four years.
Now, 56 percent of Americans say it is a very serious problem, according to the poll, conducted May 20 – 24. An additional 28 percent called it a somewhat serious problem. Only 14 percent said it was not too serious of a problem or not a problem.
Last month, when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a controversial immigration bill into law, the percentage of Americans calling immigration a very serious problem increased to 65 percent.
But by comparison, 56 percent also called illegal immigration a very serious problem in December, 2007, while 54 percent said the same in October, 2006.
The new Arizona law gives police the power to question someone they have already stopped, detained or arrested about their legal status in the country, and requires people to produce documents verifying their status if asked. About half of Americans (52 percent) see the new Arizona law as about right, the poll shows. Twenty-eight percent think it goes too far, and 17 percent think it does not go far enough.
25 May, 2010
The British Labour party ‘tried to stifle debate on immigration’ — says senior Labour party manAndy Burnham yesterday became the latest candidate in the Labour leadership battle to admit that his party had ignored voters’ concerns about immigration.
The former health secretary said their worries over the influx of migrants had, for him, been the biggest issue at the General Election.
During the campaign, Labour ministers tried to silence the immigration debate. The party made little mention of it in its manifesto and Gordon Brown denounced Labour supporting grandmother Gillian Duffy as a ‘bigot’ when she mentioned her concerns.
Former home secretary David Blunkett yesterday endorsed Mr Burnham in the race to succeed Mr Brown.
Mr Burnham said: ‘I think our problem on immigration – and it was for me anyway clearly the biggest issue at the election – was the sense that we weren’t talking about it, so that some people felt we were either in denial or just didn’t want to talk about it.’
He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that there were some parts of the country that had changed very rapidly. Labour should have been addressing those concerns ‘other-wise we leave a vacuum and those with more sinister intentions come in and whip up fear and hatred’.
Fellow contenders Ed Balls and Ed Miliband have both raised immigration during their opening salvoes of the leadership battle.
But they were rebuked for their comments by another contender, Diane Abbott. The veteran Left-winger said she did not like the way that the other candidates were discussing immigration, adding that it did not lose Labour the election. ‘The black and white working class are moaning about Eastern European immigrants,’ she told Sky News Sunday Live. ‘It’s a proxy for a lack of security on jobs and housing… It’s very dangerous to scapegoat immigrants in a recession.’
She suggested reviving the Lib Dems’ plans to give an amnesty to illegal immigrants who had lived in Britain for a decade or more. Miss Abbott played down speculation that she had no chance of winning, pointing to a YouGov poll which had her as the second most popular leadership candidate.
The survey for The Sunday Times showed David Miliband has 23 per cent support among voters, Miss Abbott 9 per cent, Ed Miliband 8 per cent, Mr Balls 6 per cent, Mr Burnham 4 per cent, and John McDonnell 2 per cent.
Labour’s new leader will be announced at the party’s conference in the autumn.
New from the Center for Immigration Studies1. Charging More for Immigration: Closing Financial Loopholes in the U.S. Migration Process
Excerpt: The U.S. Government, fighting two wars and one huge recession, badly needs additional revenues to move toward a balanced budget.
Meanwhile, migration to (and, to a lesser extent, visitation of) the United States offers remarkable financial benefits to the individuals involved and these visitors are not currently paying their fair share to the U.S. Treasury. The following package of revenue-raising proposals would close many of the existing financial loopholes that silently hurt all of us.
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2. A Drought of Summer Jobs: Immigration and the Long-Term Decline in Employment Among U.S.-Born Teenagers
By Steven Camarota
CIS Research, May 2010********
3. Illegal Aliens, Nonimmigrants Rip Off IRS by $6 Billion a Year
Excerpt: My headline, above, should have been used as the title of the Government Accountability Office’s recent tax compliance report. I calculate, based on the GAO report, that those two groups are routinely depriving the U.S. Treasury of an estimated $6 billion a year in income taxes.
GAO, as usual, wrote the report in its trademark, color-me-gray prose, but, unusually, missed a gold mine of government statistics that would have shown the dramatic size of the problem.
For the record, the report, published last month, carried the title: ‘IRS May Be Able to Improve Compliance for Nonresident Aliens and Updating Requirements Could Reduce Their Compliance Burden,’ report number GAO-10-429.
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4. President Felipe Calderón’s State Visit and the Double Standard Mexico Enjoys
Excerpt: Just imagine if President Barrack Obama paid a state visit to Mexico, which included a welcome highlighted by pomp and circumstances when his helicopter arrived on the South Lawn of the White House, an elaborate luncheon hosted by top officials at the State Department, and a State Dinner at Los Pinos.
Then suppose that Obama addressed the Mexican Congress and sharply scolded them for domestic problems that irritated him and complicated bilateral relations.
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Excerpt: As President Obama, for the umpteenth time, trashes the common-sense Arizona immigration enforcement law, it’s useful to consider once more the utter baselessness of such attacks.
Let’s start with the grammar-school basics. The U.S. Constitution is an agreement among the several states in this nation. That is, states existed before the U.S. government did. They created the federal government. States agreed to cede just a portion of their sovereignty to the federally constituted government. The Constitution stands up a limited, republican government to address certain delineated, joint interests such as national defense and uniform weights and measures. Everything else remains each state’s own prerogative.
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6. Don’t Hate Her Because She’s Beautiful
Excerpt: We tuned in for a beauty pageant and a debate about immigration broke out. After reading just a small sampling of the revolting attacks on Rima Fakih, the Lebanese immigrant who was crowned the new Miss USA on Sunday night, I feel compelled to comment on how misguided her critics are.
Fakih’s story should be a cautionary tale for Americans who believe the stereotype that all Muslim women are subjugated, repressed, and confined to their homes. No matter how you feel about beauty pageants, it takes courage for an Arab-American woman to compete in the Miss USA Pageant. You could argue that her story is the ultimate tale of assimilation. And yet, some on the right want to tarnish her achievement by claiming her win was nothing more than a case of affirmative action, while others, including blogger Debbie Schlussel, have accused her of supporting terrorists.
Comment by JR: All the above is reasonable and true but there were clearly other contestants who were better looking by conventional standards so crowning the Lebanese lady was asking for adverse reaction.
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7. Evangelical Goliath Backs Amnesty
Excerpt: A new push for mass amnesty involves the help of certain evangelicals. Democrats and the usual open-borders suspects have courted ‘leaders’ of the evangelical strain for a couple of years now. Their efforts are paying off. A smattering of those religious elites has signed onto an advertisement calling for ‘immigration reform.’ The ad recently appeared in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and is part of a broader lobbying campaign.
These religious ‘leaders’ are taking the same track their counterparts in theologically liberal circles took years ago. The more left-leaning clergy ignored the Apostle Paul’s warning and exchanged the truth of God for a lie, in their case trading in essentials of the Christian faith for left-wing politics.
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8. No Special Session to Gut Utah’s Child Identity Theft Bill
Excerpt: Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has canceled plans to call a special session of the Utah State Legislature in order to essentially gut SB251 which was passed by the 2010 legislative session.
SB251 requires all Utah employers with 15 or more employees to use an employment verification system for all new hires after July 1, 2010.
The bill protects American citizen children from an epidemic of illegal alien, job-related identity theft and should discourage at least some illegal aliens fleeing Arizona from coming to Utah. In addition, it prevents sexual predators, criminals trying to hide their identities, and even deadbeat parents from using the Social Security numbers of children to obtain jobs.
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9. DOL Better than USCIS on Migration-Related Labor Issues
Excerpt: Generalizations are risky, but it appears to me that Obama’s Labor Department is rather more careful about flooding labor markets with migratory labor than Obama’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), with the Department of State and other Department of Homeland Security agencies somewhere in between.
Interestingly all three departments, for the first time in history, are led by women, all of whom formerly held elective office in border states. The secretaries are Janet Napolitano (DHS), former governor of Arizona, Hillary Clinton (DOS), formerly senator from New York, and Hilda Solis (DOL), one-time member of Congress from southern California.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
24 May, 2010
A Population Portrait: Who illegal immigrants are, and what they bring with themBy Jason Richwine
The problem of illegal immigration is no longer confined to a handful of states and municipalities. Though California still hosts about one-quarter of the nation’s estimated 10.8 million illegal immigrants, many illegals are settling in non-traditional places. Georgia now hosts more than Arizona, with North Carolina not far behind. Even Minnesota has over 100,000 illegal immigrants.
If the Reid-Schumer-Menendez immigration-reform bill currently being floated in Congress passes, nearly all of America’s illegal immigrants could become legal immigrants in the coming years. The legal, ethical, and political ramifications of such a policy will be the subject of robust public debate in the near future. This debate should start with the facts about illegal immigrants themselves: How many are here (and how do we count them)? Where do they come from? How long have they been here? What skills do they bring with them? Answering these questions can help us decide whether today’s illegals would make good candidates for legal residency.
Advocates of legalization often refer to illegal immigrants as “undocumented.” Though the term is woefully insufficient, it is at least accurate — the federal government has no official records of illegal immigrants. So how do we know how many are here? By comparing records of legal immigration with the results of demographic surveys. The Department of Homeland Security knows how many foreign-born people enter the country legally each year. In nationally representative datasets, however, many more people say they are foreign-born than one would expect from the DHS data. These “residual” immigrants are in most cases illegal.
But do all illegal immigrants really respond (let alone respond truthfully) to government surveys? Could we be drastically undercounting them? No one knows for sure, but researchers do statistically adjust the illegal-immigrant count on the assumption that a certain percentage will give misinformation or avoid the surveys altogether.
The DHS estimate of 10.8 million illegal immigrants for 2009 is down from its peak of 11.8 million just two years earlier, and the trend is likely not a statistical anomaly. A poor economy and stepped-up enforcement by the Bush administration are the probable causes of the decrease.
Mexicans account for 62 percent of all illegals in the 2009 DHS data — an estimate that is higher than it was in 2000 (55 percent). An additional 12 percent come from three Central American countries — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The countries outside Latin America from which the most illegals come are the Philippines, India, and South Korea, though these three countries combined make up only 6 percent of the total.
Unsurprisingly, illegal immigrants are disproportionately male (58 percent) and working-age (84 percent). About four of every five illegal immigrants entered within the last 20 years, and one in three came within the last decade. Beyond this information, however, the DHS does not know much about the illegal population. To flesh out the picture, we need to do some more statistical analysis.
Jeffrey Passel and other researchers at the Pew Hispanic Center have developed a technique that makes educated guesses about who may be an illegal immigrant in the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, which collects detailed demographic information. Survey respondents deemed “definitely” legal — e.g., government workers and welfare recipients — are discarded, and the remaining respondents are assigned a probability of being illegal based on several characteristics. If this process yields an illegal-immigrant population that doesn’t match the DHS estimates for illegals’ basic traits (average age, country of origin, etc.), then the researchers adjust the probabilities and start again.
The procedure is inherently imperfect, and it does produce some questionably optimistic results. For example, Pew reports that 35 percent of illegal-immigrant households own their own homes — this is only half the native rate, but it still sounds too high. Nevertheless, given the available data, Pew’s approach provides the best possible picture of illegal immigration.
The picture is not always a pretty one. In today’s economy, a high-school diploma is essentially the minimum educational standard, something achieved by over 90 percent of natives. However, nearly a third of illegal-immigrant adults have less than a ninth-grade education, and only slightly more than half graduated from high school. In fact, more than one of every five adult high-school dropouts in the U.S. is an illegal immigrant.
The lack of skills translates to low incomes and high poverty rates. The median income for illegal-immigrant-headed households is about $36,000. The poverty rate for illegal-immigrant adults is 21 percent, twice the native average. And compared with natives, more than four times as many illegals (59 percent) lacked health insurance in 2007.
When Pew compared illegals who had been in the U.S. for less than ten years with those who had stayed ten years or more, the latter group earned only $3,000 more annually. Perhaps legalization could improve economic mobility for immigrants over time, but their educational deficit is a daunting obstacle.
Legalization would add to our citizenry millions of people, most of them poor and less-educated, whose prospects for advancement are decidedly low. How one feels about this situation depends on several factors. From an economic perspective, low-skill immigrants offer cheap labor — a remarkable 94 percent of working-age male illegals are in the labor force. That makes goods and services less expensive for everyone, but it also depresses wages for the low-skill natives who have to compete with illegal immigrants for work.
The effect on our government’s fiscal situation is likewise a double-edged sword. Adding younger people to the workforce is a “bailout” of sorts for Medicare and Social Security, which rely on workers to fund retirees. As with most bailouts, however, low-skill immigration creates even worse problems over the long term; the benefits eventually owed to low-earning immigrants will be much greater than what they paid in.
Legalization will also have substantial cultural effects. Whether the U.S. can assimilate such a large number of poor and unskilled residents is an open question. Unlike newcomers from Europe a century ago, more recent low-skill immigrants have not joined the middle class in large numbers, even after several generations in the U.S. While the children of Hispanic immigrants do much better economically than their parents, progress abruptly stalls after the second generation, and third- and fourth-generation Hispanics make only about 80 percent of the average annual income earned by white Americans.
A middle-class lifestyle depends also on savings and investment. Families with a high net worth can own their homes, save for college, and cushion themselves against the ups and downs of the economy. According to Pew, the median net worth for white households in 2002 was $88,650. For U.S.-born Hispanic households, it was just $10,430.
Especially in our world of multiculturalism, La Raza, and ethnic studies, a large and persistent economic deficit between ethnic groups could easily fuel resentment and division. The extent to which people feel connected to their neighbors and communities is one of the best predictors of life satisfaction, and we should be careful not to weaken those ties.
When the legalization bill is introduced this summer, Americans should have an accurate understanding of its economic and social implications. We need to weigh the costs and benefits of absorbing a large cohort of low-skill individuals. Everyone, from Arizona to Minnesota, has a stake in this debate.
Georgia GOP solidly in favor of Arizona lawGeorgia now has a GOP governor so this is significant
It was a debate to see who might represent Georgia as the state’s next governor. But there sure was a lot of talk about Arizona Saturday night as the top four GOP candidates for governor squared off in Gwinnett County in a tea party-tinged debate.
At the top of the agenda was immigration and Arizona’s recent legislation that cracks down on illegal immigrants. Each candidate — Nathan Deal, Eric Johnson, Karen Handel and John Oxendine — supported what Arizona did and said that if elected, they would follow suit.
“It is the duty for all law enforcement and elected officials to enforce the law,” said Insurance Commissioner Oxendine. “That is what Arizona has done and that is what Georgia needs to do. This state is for American citizens and good, honest immigrants who want to come here and sign the guest book.”
Deal said that when he was a congressman, he was a leader in immigration reform and will continue as governor. “I will do what I have done on the federal level and we will take our stand and do what Arizona has done,” Deal said. “We will take a stand to correct that problem at the state level.”
With Arizona’s law becoming the nation’s hot-button issue, coupled with a White House visit this week by the president of Mexico, immigration has become a major campaign issue nationwide. But even locally, the case of the Kennesaw State University student — who faces deportation because she is an illegal immigrant — has become political fodder.
The candidates agreed that she beat a broken system. “I have demanded that the Board of Regents change their policy,” Johnson said, about the lack of requiring citizenship papers for students. “She is using a tax-subsidized spot that could go to a Georgian.”
Handel called the whole situation “absolutely unacceptable.” “We need new legislation,” Handel said. “Under no circumstances will illegal immigrants be able to benefit from, or use, state services.”
Saturday’s debate, sponsored by FreedomWorks, was a crucial forum for the candidates looking to break out and establish momentum. Two other candidates, Jeff Chapman and Ray McBerry, who are trailing in the polls, were not invited to participate in the debate.
23 May, 2010
On immigration, Obama backs Mexico, not Arizona">On immigration, Obama backs Mexico, not ArizonaA patriotic American President would have asked Calderon whether Arizona should simply have adopted Mexico’s laws against illegal immigration. The Mexican laws are much harsher than anything in Arizona
When President Obama discussed the new Arizona immigration law with Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the White House Wednesday, he was doing something he has never done with the governor of Arizona. Although Obama has repeatedly criticized the law, he has not once talked about it with Gov. Jan Brewer, nor is any such discussion in the works.
If they did talk, Brewer might ask Obama why he took a foreign leader’s side against a U.S. state on the issue of illegal immigration. In a Rose Garden appearance, Calderon called the Arizona law “discriminatory” and said it will lead to immigrants being “treated as criminals.” Obama echoed Calderon’s remarks, saying the Arizona law “has the potential of being applied in a discriminatory fashion” and creates the “possibility” that immigrants will be “harassed or arrested.”
The scene left some in Arizona, and all around the country, slack-jawed. “It is unfortunate and disappointing,” says Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, “that the president of Mexico chose to criticize the state of Arizona by weighing in on a U.S. domestic policy issue during a trip that was meant to reaffirm the unique relationship between our two countries.” Far more distressing to some was the fact that Obama took Calderon’s side.
Of course, so did many in the president’s party. When Calderon spoke before Congress and declared, “I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in Arizona,” most Democrats — joined by a few Republicans — gave him a standing ovation.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder continues work on plans to sue Arizona over the law. But if Holder goes ahead, he’ll have to get in line. A total of five such lawsuits have already been filed in federal court.
There’s one from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund. There’s one from the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders. There are two filed by police officers in Arizona, and one filed by a man who lives in Washington, D.C., but says he plans to visit Arizona in the fall and fears he will be discriminated against, even though he is an American citizen.
“It’s almost like they are competing with each other to see who will be the plaintiff,” says Kris Kobach, the law professor and former Bush Justice Department official who helped write the law. The lawsuits are also good fundraising tools for groups like the ACLU.
A suit by Holder would immediately capture all the media attention, but it would not mean the other suits go away. “This illustrates how completely farcical it would be if the Justice Department were to file suit,” says Kobach. “You have not one but five lawsuits already pending on the subject, the issue is already in the federal courts for adjudication, so a Justice Department lawsuit would be completely unnecessary as well as unprecedented and would not in any way advance the issue.”
Arizona officials are working on their defense strategy, which could be quite complicated. Some suits name Brewer as the sole defendant. Others add the state attorney general. The ACLU suit names every Arizona county attorney and sheriff as defendants.
Among other things, Arizona will likely set up a legal defense fund for people who want to help. The state, of course, has the resources to defend itself, but there have been lots of offers of assistance from around the country, so Arizona may reduce the cost to its taxpayers by accepting contributions for its legal defense.
As it turns out, Arizona might be fighting Washington not only in court but also inside the federal bureaucracy. This week John Morton, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told the Chicago Tribune his bureau might refuse to act in the cases of illegal immigrants found under the Arizona law because the statute is not “good government.”
The bottom line is that Obama, the Justice Department, and the entire executive branch are on Mexico’s side in this dispute. On the other hand, the majority of the American people are with Arizona; a recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 64 percent of Americans support the law.
The issue will play out not only in court but at the ballot box. A few months ago, in another context, Obama said that when political disputes can’t be solved by other means, then “that’s what elections are for.” He’s right.
A Major Cost of Illegal Immigration: CrimeThis 2006 study by Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin is often referred to and quoted in part but her methodology is often not given. I include that in my excerpt below as an aid towards evaluating her conclusions. Her study is limited to sex crimes and murders committed by illegals from South of the border but is alarming enough even within that limited remit
Introduction:
After conducting a 12 month in-depth study of illegal immigrants who committed sex crimes and murders for the time period of January 1999 through April 2006, it is clear that the U.S. public faces a dangerous threat from sex predators who cross the U.S. borders illegally.
There were 1500 cases analyzed in depth. They included: serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides, and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants. Police reports, public records, interviews with police, and media accounts were all included. Offenders were located in 36 states, but it is clear, that the most of the offenders were located in states with the highest numbers of illegal immigrants. California was number one, followed by Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, and Florida.
Based on population numbers of 12,000,000 illegal immigrants and the fact that young males make up more of this population than the general U.S. population, sex offenders in the illegal immigrant group make up a higher percentage. When examining ICE reports and public records, it is consistent to find sex offenders comprising 2% of illegals apprehended. Based on this 2% figure, which is conservative, there are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States.
This translates to 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sexual offenders coming across U.S. borders illegally per day. The 1500 offenders in this study had a total of 5,999 victims. Each sex offender averaged 4 victims. This places the estimate for victimization numbers around 960,000 for the 88 months examined in this study.
Offenders:
The average age of illegal immigrants who were sex offenders was 27, but they ranged in age from 16-69. Child molesters tended to be older, averaging age 32. The average age of rapists was 26, and murderers averaged age 28. There is a trend that these offenders are becoming younger. For example, in 2006, the average age of sex offender illegal immigrants was 20. The highest number came from Mexico. El Salvador was the original home to the next highest number of sexual offenders. Other countries of origin included: Brazil, China, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico*, Russia, and Vietnam.
They averaged 4 victims per offender. Nearly 63% had been deported on another offense prior to the sex crime. There was an average of 3 years of committing crimes such as DUI, assaults, or drug related offenses prior to being apprehended for a sexual offense.
Alcohol and drug use seemingly played a large role in these crimes. In fact, 81% of offenders were drinking or using drugs prior to offending. Rapists and killers were more likely to use alcohol and drugs consistently than child molesters.
Offenders had the use of a vehicle in 78% of the cases. However, the vehicles were only owned by those offenders 54% of the time. In the other instances, the offenders either borrowed or stole the vehicle.
Many offenders were unkempt in appearance and worked with their hands. They were transient in that they went where work took them. Therefore, only 25% were stable within a community. Further, in 31% of the crimes, the offenders entered into the communities where they offended within 2 months of the commission of their sex offenses. However, many, 79%, had been in the U.S. for more than one year before being arrested for a sex crime, and they were typically known to the Criminal Justice system for prior, less serious offenses before they molested, raped, or murdered.
There was a trend to be single while offending, as only 23% were married at the time of their crimes. Most were known to date quite a bit and have derogatory views of females. Domestic violence was common as well, as nearly half of those with spouses or significant others had a history of domestic abuse.
Nearly 35% were considered religious and even more, 59% had been raised in a religious home. Their work consisted of manual labor in industries such as agriculture, construction, restaurant, and tourism. Residences were rented and usually shared with several other illegal immigrants. Many were partially bi-lingual with a preference for their native languages.
Education levels were typically low. Only 22% had graduated high school. As such, there was a pattern of irresponsible, impulsive behavior in offender backgrounds. Solutions to their problems entailed moving, i.e. running away. Most simply ran to the southern U.S. border after being connected with their sex offenses.
Conclusions:
Illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes first cross the U.S. border illegally. Then they gradually commit worse crimes and are continually released back into society or deported. Those who were deported simply returned illegally again. Only 2% of the offenders in this study has no history of criminal behavior, beyond crossing the border illegally.
There is a clear pattern of criminal escalation. From misdemeanors such as assault or DUI, to drug offenses, illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes break U.S. laws repeatedly. They are highly mobile, work in low skilled jobs with their hands, use drugs and alcohol, are generally promiscuous, have little family stability, and choose victims who are easy to attack. Their attacks are particularly brutal, and they use a hands-on method of controlling and/or killing their victims.
Note: Nearly 30% of the victims were illegal immigrants themselves.The remainder were U.S. citizens.
More HERE
22 May, 2010
Sarah Palin Takes Stand on ImmigrationPalin Enters Immigration Debate, After Endorsing Arizona Illegal Immigration Law
Sarah Palin had been heretofore fairly silent on the issue of immigration. This week for the first time, however, she has been outspoken, making at least five recent public statements on the issue and coming out in full support of Arizona’s controversial new immigration law. She even encouraged other states to adopt similar laws.
“I think every other state on the border should emulate what Arizona has done,” she said on FOX News Wednesday night. “Jan Brewer, the governor of Arizona, has taken upon herself, her state government, to do what the feds should have been doing all along and say, ‘No, we’re going to secure this border.’
“From there, then, once that is taken care of, we can deal with those who are here illegally and we can figure out all that immigration reform that needs to take place. Yes, other states should do what Arizona is doing,” she said.
She posted on her Facebook page Tuesday about immigration for the second time in a week. “Arizonans have the courage to do what the Obama administration has failed to do in its first year and a half in office, namely secure our border and enforce our federal laws,” she wrote. “And as a result, Arizonans have been subjected to a campaign of baseless accusations by the same people who freely admit they haven’t a clue about what they’re actually campaigning against.”
The former Alaska governor sparked controversy Saturday with her comments at a campaign event for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.
“Now this state has enacted a law — it mirrors the federal law — which allows police to ask those they otherwise have stopped to provide a driver’s license or other verification of legal presence. I think for most American people the reaction to this would be, ‘Why haven’t the police already been doing that?’” Palin asked the crowd.
She encouraged the Highland Park High School girls basketball team the week before to “go rogue” after school administrators canceled its participation in an Arizona tournament, citing safety concerns and the state’s new immigration law.
She later posted on Facebook: “These boycotts of Arizona will not help the state or lead to positive change. Economic and political boycotts of our nation’s 48th state will hurt all Arizonans, including all members of the Hispanic community.”
Palin’s back-to-back flurry of comments marked her public entry into an issue that had not previously been a prominent part of her conservative mix of issues, which included energy, fiscal conservatism and small government.
“She had actually been fairly positive about immigration reform as a vice presidential candidate,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voices, a liberal-leaning immigration reform group that immediately criticized Palin. “When she decided to embrace the Arizona show-me-your-papers law, we thought it justified criticizing her for embracing a law that institutionalized racial and ethnic discrimination,” Sharry said.
A Palin Change of Heart?
As a vice-presidential candidate, Palin told Spanish-language television network Univision during an interview Oct. 26, 2008, “There is no way that in the U.S. we would roundup every illegal immigrant … there are about 12 million of the illegal immigrants. … Not only economically is that just an impossibility but that’s not a humane way anyway to deal with the issue.”
Her GOP presidential running mate, Sen. John McCain, had taken a similar stance, arguing for a comprehensive immigration plan, a multi-faceted approach that includes border patrol, a crackdown on illegal hiring, legalizing immigrants already in the United States and creating a more flexible immigration system. The Arizona law and its more stringent provisions were not part of the national debate at the time.
But Palin came out last Saturday in clear support of Arizona’s new law, which would be the most robust in the nation in terms of targeting people suspected of being illegal immigrants. The law is set to take effect July 29, barring any successful legal challenges.
Sharry said Palin’s comments risk alienating Latino voters, the fastest-growing group of voters, from the Republican Party. Latino voter registration grew 54 percent and turnout grew 64 percent from 2000 to 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Republican President George W. Bush and Republican political strategist Karl Rove had made inroads with Latinos in 2000 and 2004 in key states such as Florida, Sharry said, where Latino voters [Cubans!] backed Bush over Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts by a 12 point margin in 2004….
More HERE
British Leftists getting tougher on immigration
They think that the flood of immigrants they let into Britain during their term in office alienated working class voters and lost them a lot of votes — and they are surely correct about that. But even with all the repentance in the world, they will find it hard to detach themselves from that tar-baby.The article below is from the Leftist “Guardian” so expect much bitterness as well as factual reporting
One week into the Labour leadership contest, all is atonement and apology. Andy Burnham reckons the last 16 years found his party being “too cautious and controlling”. Ed Balls offers a reductive version of a conversation he endlessly heard on his campaign rounds: “You have lost touch with us, you are not our side, you are not in it for us.” David Miliband says much the same, while his brother builds a modest bonfire of New Labour vanities: “The New Labour combination of free markets plus redistribution got us a long way, then reached its limits a few years back,” he reckons. “Saying globalisation is good for you … is a good answer for economists but it is no answer for the people of Britain.”
One element of New Labour theology, however, remains securely in place. You hear it in the pronouncements of the supposed leading candidates, and in anxious chatter around Westminster. The C2s – skilled manual workers, whose loyalties play a crucial role in so many marginals – have deserted Labour in droves, particularly men. Their key complaints are about supposed welfare malingerers, and new arrivals from abroad; and this is where Labour must focus that time-honoured ritual known as “listening and learning”. So it is that the future of centre-left politics occasionally threatens to come down to kicking the dispossessed, and parroting the early summer’s big Labour mantra: immigration, immigration, immigration.
All this is currently a matter of broad-brush rhetoric (strange how men so steeped in the forensic stuff of policy seem so hesitant about coming up with ideas of their own), but the signs are clear. When announcing his leadership bid on Wednesday, Ed Balls mentioned the “I” word endlessly, and praised a politician whose sour countenance and self-styled toughness have long embodied the most dried-up school of Labour politics: Phil Woolas, this week heard bemoaning the fact that Labour failed to make more of the policy whereby benefits are refused to those seeking indefinite leave to remain (which would have made for very uplifting posters).
As well as obligingly claiming that Labour has been deaf to worries about immigration, Andy Burnham has admiringly cited voters who thought that “money and help was going to people who were not, like them, trying to do the right things” – and he didn’t mean your Bob Diamonds and Fred the Shreds. The Milibands, to their credit, have been much quieter on this stuff, though Ed saw fit to leaven his first leadership bid speech with the obligatory mention of an unidentified working-class voter who thought his benefit-claiming neighbours were swinging the lead. “We have hard thinking to do,” he concluded, ominously.
Elsewhere, plenty of Labour people are truly ablaze. At a meeting of the parliamentary party at the end of last week, voices who last had their chance when Hazel Blears made her doomed bid for the deputy leadership reportedly piped up, talking about benefit claimants getting “something for nothing” and the need to sound strong notes on immigration controls. One myth is already doing the rounds: that Margaret Hodge’s victory over the BNP in Barking was down to her strident line on somehow putting “indigenous” people ahead of new arrivals in the queue for public services, whereas Jon Cruddas’s failure to romp home in Dagenham and Rainham came from his refusal to do anything similar. In fact, Cruddas’s narrow margin of victory was down to boundary changes. Moreover, Cruddas’s is actually the whiter of the two seats, which makes his achievement all the more remarkable.
Whatever, all this ugliness has a long and lamentable Labour pedigree. For a flavour of how the party responds to defeat, think back to the Crewe byelection, its witless class warfare and its maligning of the Tory victor as someone who opposed “making foreign nationals carry an ID card”. Now, with Clegg and Cameron looking like the embodiment of bourgeois bleeding-hearts – all “Big Society” promises and strong talk on civil liberties – some Labour people seem to have come to a truly stupid conclusion: that the Con-Dem coalition has to be outflanked on the right, because the proles demand it. This takes us to what might prove the biggest problem of all: that four ex-wonks with limited life experience may not be the best people to divine what exactly it is that the fabled white working class is after.
This much is clear. After so many years of ever tightening welfare entitlements, and with the City elite seemingly as untouchable as ever, to focus any argument about distributional justice on welfare claimants is borderline obscene. And before any former minister starts to hold forth about the damaging effects of immigration on the social fabric, we could do with contrition that goes deeper than a new drive to “listen”, or fuzzy matters of philosophy.
Immigration and welfare have become hot-button issues largely because of the insecurities made worse by New Labour’s recurrent refusal to depart from the usual neoliberal script. What of the Blair and Brown governments’ long history of resisting European moves on the white-hot issue of agency workers? To securely propel the workless back into employment, what about some meaningful moves on low pay? Why did Labour fail so miserably on social housing? To be fair, some of this may be stirring in the debate: Ed Miliband’s claim that “immigration is a class issue” demands real follow-through, as does Burnham’s claim that Labour was “in denial” about the impact of immigration on wages and housing. Unfortunately, the latter has also seen fit to talk up immigration’s effect on antisocial behaviour: more dog-whistle stuff, and all the more miserable for it.
Yesterday, one more leadership candidate came up with a no-brainer quote, though this one cut to the heart of this week’s unpleasantness. “One of the things that made me run was hearing candidate after candidate saying that immigration lost us the election,” said Diane Abbott, who is starting to take on a very unlikely air of saintliness. “Rather than wringing our hands about the white working class and immigration, we need to deal with the underlying issues that make white and black people hostile to immigration: things like housing and job security. We need to be careful about scapegoating immigrants in a recession. We know where that leads.”
We certainly do. And on these most fundamental of issues, Labour’s danger is not that long-imagined lurch to the left, but an ugly and reactionary step in the opposite direction.
21 May, 2010
America’s founders had a realistic recipe for immigrationWith his thick Austrian accent, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger quipped in his commencement address at Emory University this past week: “I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend. But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me.”
It seems that the whole country is taking sides in the battle over the border in Arizona. Yet it truly remains the tip of the iceberg of our immigration troubles. Spurred on by the national debate, at least 10 other states are seeking to enact tougher immigration laws.
Now more than ever, we must protect our borders and sovereignty, by providing genuine solutions to the dangers of American boundary fluidity. With estimates showing that by 2060 America will add 167 million people (37 million immigrants today will multiply into 105 million then), it is imperative for us to do more to solve this crisis. Now is the time to beat the doors of change and save the boundaries and future of America.
But the federal government has failed miserably to produce a viable solution to the illegal immigration crisis. Amnesty is not the answer. And immigration laws aren’t effective if we continue to dodge or ignore them. Furthermore, globalization efforts have only confused security matters, further endangering our borders and national identity — our sovereignty. And the question that keeps coming to my mind is: How is it that we can secure borders in the Middle East but can’t secure our own?
From America’s birth, our Founders struggled, too, with international enemies and border troubles, from the sea of Tripoli to the western frontier. While welcoming the poor, downtrodden and persecuted from every country, they also had to protect the sacred soil they called home from unwanted intruders.
America’s Founders also were concerned with properly assimilating immigrants so that their presence would be positive upon the culture. George Washington wrote, “By an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people.” Thomas Jefferson, hailed as one of the most inclusive among the Founders, worried that some immigrants would leave more restrictive governments and not be able to handle American freedoms, leading to cultural corruption and “an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”
And Alexander Hamilton insisted that “the safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on the love of country, which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.”
According to the Declaration of Independence, “obstructing the Laws for the Naturalization of Foreigners” was one of the objections leveled against Britain that warranted the American colonists’ seceding. Yet even the Founders themselves believed that a total open-door policy for immigrants would only lead to complete community and cultural chaos.
We are discussing and debating new ways to resolve the social crisis we call illegal immigration, but our Founders pointed the way more than 200 years ago. Like enrolling in an Ivy League school, American citizenship was considered and promoted by them as a high honor. James Madison shared the collective sentiment back then when he stated, “I do not wish that any man should acquire the privilege, but such as would be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States.” Hence, they processed applicants and selected only the ones who would contribute to the building up and advancement of their grand experiment called America.
Therefore, our Founders enforced four basic requirements for “enrollment and acceptance” into American citizenry. We still utilize them (at least in policy) to this day, but we desperately need to enforce them. The Heritage Foundation summarizes: “Key criteria for citizenship of the Naturalization Act of 1795 remain part of American law. These include (1) five years of (lawful) residence within the United States; (2) a ‘good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States’; (3) the taking of a formal oath to support the Constitution and to renounce any foreign allegiance; and (4) the renunciation of any hereditary titles.”
Just think if such immigration tenets were taught in schools such as Live Oak High School, in Northern California, where kids are confused about allegiances to flags and countries. And just think if the federal government actually enforced such tenets! Arizona and the 10 other states following suit wouldn’t even need to go out on a limb and create their own immigration laws as states did prior to our Constitution. If we held citizenship in the same high esteem as our Founders and simply enforced the laws we already have, we wouldn’t be in this illegal immigration pickle today.
Arizona threatens to cut off LA electricity supplyArizona could cut off electricity supplies to Los Angeles in protest at an economic boycott over the state’s controversial immigration law. Los Angeles receives about 25 per cent of its power from Arizona, meaning a quarter of America’s second largest city could be plunged into darkness.
Politicians in the city voted last week to impose a boycott on Arizona which will affect about $8 million worth of contracts with the state. City officials will also stop travelling to Arizona.
In response an Arizona utility commissioner raised the prospect of the state’s utility companies cutting Los Angeles off.
In a letter to the city Arizona Corporation Commission member Gary Pierce said: “If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation. “I am confident that Arizona’s utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands.
“If, however, you find that the City Council lacks the strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycott Arizona power, please reconsider the wisdom of attempting to harm Arizona’s economy.” Mr Pierce said if Los Angeles was “serious” about its boycott and not just “posturing” then it would have to consider supplying its own power.
The electricity comes from coal-fired power plants in northern Arizona, a nuclear power plant outside Phoenix, and two hydroelectric plants on the Colorado River.
A statement issued on behalf of Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said: “The mayor stands strongly behind the city council and he will not respond to threats from the state that has isolated itself from an America that values freedom, liberty and basic civil rights.” Mr Villaraigosa was in Washington for a meeting between President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, which was overshadowed by the Arizona law.
At a press conference President Obama stepped up his criticism of the law, calling it “misdirected” and warning that it has the potential to be applied in a discriminatory fashion.
He said the law, which makes it a crime under state law to be in the US illegally, came about because of “frustration over our broken immigration system.” President Calderon said it criminalised migration. He has already issued a travel warning for Mexicans travelling to Arizona.
He called for the US and Mexico to work together to solve the immigration issue. “In the United States of America, no law-abiding person – be they an American citizen, a legal immigrant, or a visitor or tourist from Mexico – should ever be subject to suspicion simply because of what they look like,” he said.
President Calderon said: “We can do so if we create a safer border, a border that will unite us instead of dividing us, uniting our people. We can do so with a community that will promote a dignified life in an orderly way for both our countries.” Almost twice as many Americans support the Arizona law as those who oppose it, according to a recent poll.
He added that many immigrant workers “live in the shadows, and at times, as in Arizona, confront patterns of discrimination.”
20 May, 2010
Cost of Illegal Immigration Rising Rapidly in Arizona, Study FindsArizona’s illegal immigrant population is costing the state’s taxpayers even more than once thought — a whopping $2.7 billion in 2009, according to researchers at the public interest group that helped write the state’s new immigration law.
Researchers at FAIR – The Federation for American Immigration Reform — released data exclusively to FoxNews.com that show a steady cost climb in multiple areas, including incarceration, education and health, in the last five years.
FAIR’s cost estimates – compiled for a comprehensive national immigration report it plans to release next month – include several new cost areas, including welfare and the justice system, that weren’t in previous reports.
FAIR admits that the cost to implement the new law in some of those categories, such as incarceration, will add to the economic strain on the state. But overall, it says, the loss of immigrants either from the deterrent effect of the law, voluntary exodus or from mass deportations, will help the state financially.
Also, the savings to the state will far overwhelm any fallout from boycotts (estimated at between $7 million and $52 million) being threatened in the wake of the law’s passage, according to FAIR spokesman Bob Dane.
FAIR’s new breakdown shows that illegal immigrants take $1.6 billion from Arizona’s education system, $694.8 million from health care services, $339.7 million in law enforcement and court costs, $85.5 million in welfare costs and $155.4 million in other general costs.
The organization concedes that enforcing Arizona SB1070, the new law that allows local police to ask for immigration documents and arrest those who don’t have them, will increase the state’s incarceration costs, police training budgets and prosecution expenses — but it says those numbers can’t yet be estimated with certainty. Also, it says, some of those costs will be offset by revenues from fines levied against businesses charged with knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, as well as from immigrants themselves who might be charged with minor crimes and fined before being deported.
But the Immigration Policy Center, a major opponent of the new law, says FAIR’s data do not accurately portray SB1070′s potential outcome. “They count the costs and don’t look at the benefits. We tend to look at the benefits more closely,” said Council spokeswoman Wendy Sefsaf.
“It is like having a roommate and counting how much they cost in toilet paper and incidentals without looking at the benefits of having help with the rent,” she said.
“Overall, every comprehensive study has shown that immigrants are a net benefit to states. If you add their children, they are a very great benefit.”
The Center’s cost crunching found that “if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product and approximately 140,324 jobs,” — a disaster for the Grand Canyon State.
But FAIR’s numbers tell a far different story.
(Because of the polarizing nature of the debate and the lack of solid figures on everything from the number of illegal immigrants in the state to how to accurately figure their share of the costs, there are no numbers either side agrees on or has not challenged.)
Jack Martin, the chief researcher on the report, says his data, in fact, do include benefits like the estimated $142.8 million in taxes paid by an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants, and he says the Council’s numbers are unrealistic.
“They assume every illegal alien will leave right away,” Martin said. “That is not going to happen.”
He said FAIR’S new estimates far exceed the report he wrote in 2004, which helped gain support for the passage of the Arizona law. In 2004, he said, he estimated that illegal immigrants cost the state $1.3 billion — less than half the new estimate.
He said the new numbers put a reliable cost estimate on the economic impact of illegal immigration — not just in Arizona, because the debate there largely ended with the passage of the immigration law, but nationally, as the debate spreads across the country.
”The numbers just keep growing,” Dane said.
Both Dane and Martin said that among FAIR’s most important findings was an estimate that tax revenues to the state will actually increase if illegal immigrants leave.
“We discovered after looking at places where big raids were made that salaries went up after the raids because employers now had to pay competitive wages to Americans.” Martin said. “And that will mean more money for the state.”
Immigrant crossings into Arizona on the riseThe migrants walk for days through miles of mesquite scrub, running low on food and sometimes water, paying armed drug thug “guides” and dodging U.S. law enforcement officers along the way. And still they keep coming.
The latest figures show that Arizona, which is about to put into effect the nation’s toughest immigration law, also is the only border state where illegal crossings are on the rise.
While tightened security and daunting fences in Texas and California have made Arizona a busy crossing corridor for years, migrant smugglers now are finding new ways through the state’s treacherous deserts.
Carmen Gonzalez, 27, recalled seven days and six nights of walking with her husband in the desert and being accosted by Mexican thugs with AK-47s, who demanded $100 bribes. They were later arrested at a safe house in Arizona.
“It was so hard and so ugly,” Gonzalez said at a shelter in this Mexican border town, where she, her husband and her brother were staying after being deported. “I won’t try again because we went through too much suffering in the desert.”
Arrests on Ariz. border up 6 percent
New U.S. Border Patrol statistics show arrests on the Arizona border were up 6 percent — by about 10,000 — from October to April, even as apprehension of illegals dropped 9 percent overall. The agency uses arrests to gauge the flow of migrants; there are no precise figures on the number of illegal crossings.
Statistics from the Mexican side also show a rise in illegal crossings through Arizona.
Grupo Beta, a Mexican government-sponsored group that aids migrants, helped 5,279 people from January to April in the area across the border from Douglas, Ariz., compared to 3,767 in the same period last year, said agent Carlos Oasaya.
That’s the same area where Arizona rancher Robert Krentz was fatally shot in March as he surveyed his property in an all-terrain vehicle. Authorities suspect an illegal immigrant who was headed back to Mexico and worked as a scout for drug smugglers.
The killing helped fuel the emotion around the Arizona law, which will empower police to question and arrest anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. It takes effect in July.
Immigration is likely to be at the top of the agenda Wednesday when Mexican President Felipe Calderon visits Washington and attends a state dinner at the White House. Calderon has condemned Arizona’s law; President Barack Obama has called it “misguided” and promised to begin tackling an immigration overhaul.
Supporters of the Arizona law said Tuesday that the growth in arrests at the border didn’t spur its passing.
Instead, it was a series of factors, including the discovery of a growing numbers of immigrant safe houses and a rise in crime by illegal immigrants who have injured and killed police officers, said state Rep. John Kavanagh.
19 May, 2010
Groups file new challenge to Ariz. immigration law
This will undoubtedly end up before the Supreme Court — a most unpredictabke bodyThe developing legal fight over Arizona’s sweeping immigration law escalated Monday as major civil rights groups filed a lawsuit challenging the measure’s constitutionality.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were among groups that filed the latest challenge.
They filed the case in U.S. District Court on behalf of plaintiffs that include labor unions, a Tucson church, social-service organizations and numerous individuals.
The new suit, the fifth legal challenge filed since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the legislation, asks a federal judge to declare the measure unconstitutional and block it from taking effect in late July. The cases could be consolidated, and no court hearings have been scheduled.
Key provisions of the law include requiring police enforcing other laws to verify a person’s immigration status if there’s “reasonable suspicion” of illegal presence in the United States. It also makes being in the country illegally a state crime and prohibits seeking day-labor work at roadside.
The lawsuit alleges that the law is unconstitutional because the federal government has responsibility to regulate immigration, and because enforcement of the law will violate protections for due process and equal treatment under the law.
The suit argues that enforcing the law will subject U.S. citizens and others to racial profiling and other harassment, interfere with delivery of social services, and deter people from approaching law enforcement to report crimes. “This law is shameful and un-American and will undermine public safety,” said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. County attorneys and sheriffs in Arizona’s 15 counties were named as defendants.
The Maricopa County attorney’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit. In Tucson, Pima County lawyers were studying the law and County Attorney Barbara LaWall has not made a decision on the law’s constitutionality and a possible defense, Chief Deputy Amelia Cramer said.
The office of Attorney General Terry Goddard, who is responsible for defending state laws from legal challenges, was also studying the case and had not made any decisions, spokeswoman Molly Edwards said.
Brewer, who signed the legislation into law on April 23 and follow-up legislation one week later, expects that the lawsuits will be consolidated and her views “will be well represented,” spokesman Paul Senseman said. The law prohibits racial profiling, is constitutional and will be upheld, Senseman said.
Brewer has said that the federal government has failed to close the border to illegal crossings, and that requires state action. Other supporters of the law have argued that it will prompt illegal immigrants to leave the state on their own.
Arizona is the nation’s busiest gateway for illegal border crossings, and the federal government has estimated that 460,000 illegal immigrants live in the state.
The four earlier lawsuits contain similar arguments as the new challenge. Those lawsuits were filed on behalf of individuals, including Phoenix and Tucson police officers, and a group representing Latino clergy.
At least three Arizona cities — Flagstaff, Tucson and San Luis — have authorized a legal challenge to the law but have not filed a lawsuit.
Federal courts upheld a 2007 Arizona law that allows the state to impose licensing sanctions against employers who knowingly employ illegal immigrants. The rulings rejected a challenge’s argument that the state’s authority was pre-empted by federal authority over immigration.
But the new law “is a greater and more explicit intrusion into the regulation of immigration,” said Linton Joaquin, general counsel of the National Immigration Law Center, another group supporting the challenge. “It leads to the racial profiling that is inevitable.”
Citing a provision that requires legal immigrants to have documents on their immigration status, supporters of the state law say it mirrors federal law.
However, the new state crimes and the requirement for police questioning are inconsistent with federal law, said Nina Perales, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
The Washington, D.C.-based American Center for Law and Justice said it would file a court brief to help defend Arizona’s law. Immigration is part of America, “but immigration must be lawful, and the Arizona law is clearly designed to protect and secure its borders without putting at risk the constitutional protections afforded to American citizens,” said chief counsel Jay Sekulow.
The Arizona law also drew support from U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who is a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee.
“When you peel back the inflammatory rhetoric and the baseless accusations made by those who filed this lawsuit, you find that Arizona has taken a reasonable, constitutional approach to dealing with a problem that the federal government hasn’t,” Smith said.
Al-Qaeda operative cannot be deported from Britain, court rulesThe leader of a terrorist cell planning an attack on Easter shoppers in Manchester cannot be deported back to Pakistan in case he is tortured, a tribunal has ruled.
Police did not find any explosives when they swooped on the cell in April last year, but MI5 has maintained that the men, all students from Pakistan, were “members of a UK based network linked to al-Qaeda involved in attack planning.”
The Special Immigration and Appeals Commission said it was satisfied Abid Naseer, the alleged ring-leader, was behind an “imminent” al-Qaeda backed plot but said he risked being tortured if he was returned to Pakistan.
The arrests had to be brought forward by 24 hours after Assistant Chief Constable Bob Quick, then Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, was photographed entering Downing Street with plans for the raids under his arm.
The men were never charged but the Home Office attempted to deport Naseer and nine others on national security grounds.
Eight of the ten men, who had all arrived in Britain on student visas, chose to return to Pakistan. The two remaining men, including Naseer, have now won their attempt to remain in Britain.
The Home Office said it was not planning to appeal but it is thought the men are likely to be placed under control orders on their release from prison at huge expense to the public purse.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said: “We are disappointed that the court has ruled that Abid Naseer and Ahmad Faraz Khan should not be deported to Pakistan, which we were seeking on national security grounds.
“As the court agreed, they are a security risk to the UK. We are now taking all possible measures to ensure they do not engage in terrorist activity.”
The Special Immigration and Appeals Commission said it was “satisfied that Naseer was an al-Qaeda operative who posed and still poses a serious threat to the national security of the United Kingdom and that…it is conducive to the public good that he should be deported.”
Nevertheless, it said Pakistan had a “long and well-documented history of disappearances, illegal detention and of the torture and ill-treatment of those detained, usually to produce information, a confession or compliance.”
The panel noted that “No open assurances were given by the Pakistani authorities” and as a result they could not find there was a “sufficient safeguard against prohibited ill-treatment of any of the appellants.”
SIAC said it had heard a “substantial volume of closed material” and that it was “satisfied to the criminal standard” that Naseer was in email contact with an “al-Qaeda associate” in Pakistan.
The commission panel, headed by a High Court Judge, Mr Justice Mitting, said it believed the emails, which referred to girls and cars, was actually code for “different ingredients of explosives, their properties and availability.”
Naseer’s explanation, that he was actually writing about girlfriends, was “utterly implausible” they said.
The panel said the closed material they had considered included “pointers to an imminent attack” and that Naseer had stated his intention to do so between April 15 and 20, although it was unclear whether he would have been able to pull it off.
One of the suspects, Tariq ur-Rehman, was found with a large number of photographs of the exits from the Arndale Centre in Manchester.
But the panel said Naseer, who was suspected of belonging to al-Qaeda. would therefore be “at risk” at the hands of Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence directorate (ISI).
It add that although the country’s supreme court had “displayed a genuine interest in those whoa have been made to disappear” it had “not held a single military official accountable for abuses.”
Despite being assessed as a risk to national security, Naseer and his associate Ahmad Faraz Khan won their appeals against deportation on the grounds it was unsafe to return them to Pakistan.
Two other men, Tariq ur-Rehman and Abdul Wahab Khan, lost their appeals on the grounds they had already returned to Pakistan.
A fifth man, Shoiab Khan, was “not a knowing party” to the plans and should not be excluded from returning to the United Kingdom, the panel said.
18 May, 2010
Arizonans strike back
San Diego tourism leaders and hoteliers fear they could lose a sizable chunk of business this summer from valued “Zonies” who are so angered by elected leaders’ recent censure of Arizona for its illegal-immigration law that they’re mounting an informal boycott of their own.
The San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau and several hotels report receiving e-mails and letters from Arizona visitors saying they intend to change their plans to travel here in light of local outcry over their home state’s anti-illegal-immigration stance.
Tourism officials are striking back. In an open letter, they urge Arizona residents to overlook local politics and come to San Diego just as they always have for its mild climate, beaches and attractions. The visitors bureau, in conjunction with the San Diego County Hotel-Motel Association, plans to circulate the letter to media outlets and in advertising this weekend in The Arizona Republic.
The bureau says it has received about 25 to 30 e-mails from Arizona residents reacting to resolutions passed last month by the San Diego City Council and school board, which were little more than symbolic protests aimed at the neighboring state’s lawmakers.
Still struggling from the prolonged economic downturn, San Diego’s visitor industry can ill afford to lose any of the 2 million Arizonans it counts on annually, said ConVis President Joe Terzi.
“We’re in a very tough environment already because of everything else going on, and we don’t need another negative impact to our industry,” Terzi said. “This affects all the hardworking men and women who count on tourism for their livelihoods, so we’re saying, don’t do something that hurts their livelihoods.”
Although the summer months typically are an economic bonanza for the San Diego visitor industry, the recession and continued high unemployment have eaten away at lodging revenue as hotels have steeply discounted rates to fill their rooms. The Convention & Visitors Bureau spent $9 million last year promoting the region for the spring and summer months and is dedicating $7 million toward that effort this year.
“I’ve been approached by a number of hotels who are very concerned because they’ve received cancellations from Arizona guests,” said Namara Mercer, executive director of the county Hotel-Motel Association. “It’s a huge piece of business for not just the hotels but for all of San Diego. Everybody’s excited because they think occupancies will be stronger this summer, and now this.”
In some cases, it appears that Arizona residents misconstrued the votes taken by San Diego’s elected leaders as calls for an actual boycott of Arizona as opposed to statements of opposition.
In one letter received by the Sofia Hotel in downtown San Diego, a “boycott” was cited as the reason for canceling a planned trip to the city.
“Nothing against the Sofia; however, wanted to let you know that we were planning on coming out in August and staying for 10-14 nights,” read the letter. “Since San Diego decided to boycott AZ, we decided to do our part and vacation elsewhere. Really sorry since we truly like staying at your place and will miss it.”
In many of the e-mails to the visitors bureau, Arizonans bluntly expressed their displeasure with San Diego’s stance on the illegal-immigration law and said that staying away was the best way of registering their protest.
“So you see when people in government start to boycott it goes both ways,” said one e-mail. “You just lost our visits to our favorite places in your city and the $3,500 we had in our budget to spend there.”
In a draft letter yet to be approved by visitors bureau and hotel association leaders, Terzi sought to clarify the city’s position on the immigration law while stressing the respect the region has for Arizona’s visitors.
More HERE
New from the Center for Immigration Studies
1. A Drought of Summer Jobs: Immigration and the Long-Term Decline in Employment Among U.S.-Born Teenagers
Excerpt: The share of U.S.-born teenagers (16 to 19) in the labor force — working or looking for work — during the summer has been declining for more than a decade, long before the current recession. In 1994, nearly two-thirds of U.S.-born teenagers were in the summer labor force; by 2007 it was less than half. At the same time, the overall number of immigrants (legal and illegal) holding a job doubled. The evidence indicates that immigration accounts for a significant share of the decline in teen labor force participation. The decline in teen work is worrisome because research shows that those who do not hold jobs as teenagers often fail to develop the work habits necessary to function in the labor market, creating significant negative consequences for them later in life.
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2. Faisal Shahzad: So Easy, Anyone Can Do It
Excerpt: Below is a synopsis of the information that has been released on Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad’s immigration history. It reveals a familiar pattern of a terrorist easily taking advantage of weak spots in America’s immigration system. Shahzad was admitted long before 9/11, but the openings he exploited are still in place today. Until policymakers move to shrink them, they offer a sobering guarantee of job security for counter-terrorism and security personnel for the foreseeable future. The Center for Immigration Studies also offers several policy recommendations that would reduce the risks inherent in U.S. visa and immigration programs.
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3. Arizona’s SB 1070 and the Hypocrisy of Mexico’s Governors and State Legislators
Excerpt: Mexico’s whiny governors and state legislators have turned hypocrisy from an art form into an exact science by lambasting their Arizona counterparts’ gambit to curb illegal immigration — a move supported by 70 percent of the Grand Canyon state’s citizens. Epithets such as “Hitlerism,” “Racism,” and “Xenophobia” flood the air around Mexico’s statehouses. Talk abounds of “asphyxiating” Arizona with a boycott of its businesses and products. Yet the very same Mexican officials who excoriate Gov. Jan Brewer for signing Senate Bill 1070 recklessly squander public funds that should be used to create jobs at home for their countrymen who have crossed unlawfully into the United States. This Memorandum begins with a brief analysis of the changing role of Mexico’s governors in recent years before examining the chasm between the rhetoric of these individuals and their acutely irresponsible behavior.
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4. More Adventures for the H-1B Program
Excerpt: The wage-depressing H-1B program, for high-tech nonimmigrant workers, had another interesting week. This was on top of the smallest set of applications for the program in recent memory – there were just 19,100 petitions filed in early April for the annual limit of 85,000 slots, as noted in a previous blog.
In addition to the sharp decline in applications there was the news that the would-be Times Square bomber had been a (badly paid) H-1B visa holder, as mentioned in another blog.
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5. Amnesty Preview in Vermont
Excerpt: A story in Saturday's New York Times on the recent influx of illegal Haitian migrants coming into the United States from Canada offers us a micro-preview of what might unfold if illegal immigrants in the U.S. are granted an amnesty. Ever since the Obama Administration unveiled its mini-amnesty for all Haitians in the U.S. at the time of the January 12 earthquake, Haitians, many of whom have been previously deported, have been coming to the U.S. to try to take advantage of the new (limited time only, cannot be combined with other coupons) 'Temporary Protected Status' offer. (Void where prohibited, and see Mark Krikorian's blog on how 'temporary' status is never temporary.)
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6. Hysteria in the Heartland
Excerpt: Here in Chicago, we have two $100 million-plus baseball teams that can't hit, and a hockey team on the brink of its first Stanley Cup title in nearly 50 years. But the team that's been in the headlines is one that isn't even allowed to play. Of course, I'm referring to the girl's high school basketball team from north suburban Highland Park which won’t be competing in a tournament in Arizona in December because school officials claim that 'students' safety or liberty might be placed at risk because of state immigration law.'
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7. Who Will Reform the Reformers?
Excerpt: I read Sen. Reid's call to address the 'challenge of fixing our broken immigration system' with great amusement.
Sen. Reid correctly notes that, 'We have to replace this broken system with one that works.'
The paradox, one that I have noted here previously, is that fixing the immigration system must be done by the same folks that broke it in the first place: Congress.
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8. Refugee Resettlement Under Review
Excerpt: A non-profit nation of hundreds of taxpayer funded 501(c)(3)s has grown up around refugee resettlement in the U.S. A recent government-sponsored study finds 'U.S. resettlement communities are awash with ECBOs that exist in name only but provide little meaningful assistance.' ('Practitioner Lessons from Ethnic Community Self-Help Programs,' ISED Solutions, August 2009) Some of the ECBOs (Ethnic Community Based Organizations) apparently exist only to bring in grants and contracts for themselves.
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9. Court Rejects Chutzpah, Ejects Illegal Alien, But it Takes 10 Years
Excerpt: Sometimes it is useful to review one of those legal battles in which a clearly illegal alien delays his well-deserved deportation – in this case, for nearly 10 full years.
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10. 287(g) Gossip
Excerpt: Sources inside and outside ICE report that Suzie Barr, the Napolitano crony who is now ICE Chief of Staff, has chosen the controversial former Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt to head up ICE's Office of State and Local Cooperation, pending completion of the background check. This is an interesting pick, because Hurtt is well-known as an outspoken critic of ICE/local partnerships who kept Houston as a sanctuary city, even as several of his officers lost their lives to illegal alien criminals who cycled repeatedly in and out of HPD custody without being reported to ICE. For more on Hurtt's background, see my previous blog on him.
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11. New Green Card, CIS Study Discussed at Senate Hearing
Excerpt: The issuance of a new, more secure green card and a study by CIS Director Research Steven Camarota were among the topics discussed at this morning's hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
The sole witness was Alejandro Mayorkas, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), in the Department of Homeland Security.
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12. Yahoo's Sad Mismatching of Immigration Stories
Excerpt: When millions of Americans signed on to Yahoo this morning, they had a chance to see a pair of starkly contrasting Associated Press stories on immigration.
One of them, a profile of activist attorney Kris Kobach – an architect of the new Arizona law targeting illegal immigrants – was an example of solid, professional reporting. It offered a nuanced view of a controversial figure, giving voice both to supporters and to detractors as well as to Kobach himself.
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13. Following the Money
Excerpt: I have finished reading Moving Millions: How Coyote Capitalism Fuels Global Immigration by Jeffrey Kaye. This book documents the economic forces that drive immigration. For those who are not intimately involved in the issues of employment-based immigration, this book is likely to be an eye-opener.
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14. GOP Convention Deals Blow to Utah's Illegal Immigration Advocates
Excerpt: Utah's Republican Party conventions have not been good to elected officials who have consistently sided with the advocates for illegal aliens.
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15. Canadian Province Says 'No' to H-1B-Type Foreign Workers
Excerpt: While USCIS encourages corporations to hire more foreign H-1B workers on its website, Alberta, the oil-rich Canadian province, has done the reverse and, citing the economic slowdown, has closed its borders to the same kind of high-tech foreign workers.
Provinces in Canada play a much more central role in immigration policy than American states.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
17 May, 2010
Palin joins Arizona gov. to defend immigration law
As calls spread for an economic boycott of Arizona, the state's governor enlisted the help of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday to defend a new law cracking down on illegal immigration.
Jan Brewer and Palin blamed President Barack Obama for the state law, saying the measure is Arizona's attempt to enforce immigration laws because the federal government won't do it.
"It's time for Americans across this great country to stand up and say, 'We're all Arizonans now,'" Palin said. "And in clear unison we say, 'Mr. President: Do your job. Secure our border.'"
The former Alaska governor appeared with Brewer at a brief news conference on Saturday. The event launched a website that Brewer said was an effort to educate America about border security and discourage an economic boycott of the state.
The site, funded by Brewer's re-election campaign, shows pictures of Brewer and Palin and invites visitors to sign a petition opposing boycotts. It includes a list of politicians and organizations calling for the boycotts and asks visitors to call or e-mail to "let them know that you support Arizona."
"Our purpose today is to help the rest of the nation understand the crisis which confronts our state," Brewer said, citing the presence of human and drug smugglers.
The immigration law takes effect July 29 unless blocked by pending court challenges. It requires police enforcing another law to ask a person about his or her immigration status if there's "reasonable suspicion" that the person is in the country illegally. Being in the country illegally would become a state crime.
"I think for most American people the reaction to this would be, 'Why haven't the police already been doing that?'" Palin said.
Obama and some city, state and foreign governments have condemned the law, which critics say will lead to racial profiling of Hispanics. Brewer on Saturday reiterated her assertion that profiling is illegal and will not be tolerated.
"The president apparently considers it a wonderful opportunity to divide people along racial lines for his personal political convenience," Brewer said.
Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson said Brewer's the one who has divided people, which she's done by signing controversial bills, and "puts her political survival first every single day."
"Every word she said today was crafted with her Republican primary in mind," Johnson said. "Arizona is just an afterthought."
Brewer automatically became governor last year after former Gov. Janet Napolitano was appointed U.S. Homeland Security secretary. She's found herself rapidly thrust into an international spotlight, the subject of ridicule on the left and praised by anti-illegal immigration activists on the right.
Arizona's law is considered the nation's toughest crackdown on illicit border crossers. It was pushed by illegal immigration hard-liners in the state Legislature, but Brewer has become the public face of the law since she signed it April 23.
Her decision to sign it, announced in a nationally televised press conference, has given Brewer traction in this year's crowded GOP primary for governor.
Some of Brewer's opponents say she's not a true conservative and have hit her hard for demanding a temporary increase in the state sales tax. Her campaign has seized on the immigration bill to bolster her conservative credentials.
Brewer and Palin refused to say whether they'd support a guest worker program that would allow unskilled workers to temporarily work legally in the United States.
Palin is in Phoenix for a previously scheduled speech to a hunters group. She has defended the law on national television and spoken out against boycotts.
This week she railed against a suburban Chicago high school for skipping a girls' basketball tournament in Arizona because of concerns over the new law.
Palin said Wednesday night that people should help the Highland Park team get to Arizona even if the girls have to "go rogue."
SOURCE
An Arizona joke
It had to come
A Mexican, an Arab, and an Arizona girl are in the same bar.
When the Mexican finishes his beer, he throws his glass in the air, pulls out his pistol, and shoots the glass to pieces. He says,'In Mexico , our glasses are so cheap we don't need to drink with the same one twice.'
The Arab, obviously impressed by this, drinks non-alcohol beer ('cuz he's a Muslim), throws it into the air, pulls out his AK-47, and shoots the glass to pieces. He says, 'In the Arab World, we have so much sand to make glasses that we don't need to drink with the same one twice either.'
The Arizona girl, cool as a cucumber, picks up her beer, downs it in one gulp, throws the glass into the air, whips out her 45, and shoots the Mexican and the Arab.
Catching her glass, setting it on the bar, and calling for a refill, she says, 'In Arizona , we have so many illegal aliens that we don't have to drink with the same ones twice.'
God Bless Arizona !!!!
16 May, 2010
Florida's GOP candidates respond to the polls about Arizona's immigration law
The polls are not mentioned below but they are so heavily in favor of the Arizona law that democracy is having its proper effect
The Republican Party's front-runner for governor, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, threw his support Thursday behind a tough new immigration law in Arizona that he criticized as "far out" just two weeks ago.
The law makes it a crime for immigrants not to carry legal papers and gives local police the power to question people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
Passed in a capitol 1,600 miles away from Tallahassee, the law is nevertheless emerging as a campaign issue in Florida as candidates jockey for the conservative voters who dominate Republican primaries.
By coming out in favor of the law, McCollum joined U.S. Senate contender Marco Rubio in abandoning his previous opposition to the toughest crackdown on illegal immigration in the nation. Both have said they changed positions in light of amendments that aimed to outlaw ethnic and racial profiling by the police.
"I support Arizona's law as amended, and if the federal government fails to secure our borders and solve the problem of illegal immigration, I would support a similar law for Florida," McCollum said in a statement Thursday.
SOURCE
An Attorney General who gets his legal opinions off TV
Another bottom of the barrel appointment from Obama -- but he's the right color, I guess
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has said that Arizona's tough new immigration law could drive a wedge between police and immigrant communities. He has expressed concerns it could lead to racial profiling, and he has made it clear that his Justice Department is considering a lawsuit to block the legislation from taking effect.
But what Holder has not done, as least as of Thursday, is read the law: an admission that continued to draw criticism Friday from some talk-radio hosts and conservative Web sites.
The fuss began with a simple question from Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.) at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday. "Have you read the Arizona law?" Poe asked.
"I have not had a chance. I grant that I have not read it," Holder acknowledged.
Poe, after helpfully pointing out that the 10-page law is "a lot shorter than" the Obama administration's health-care overhaul bill, said he couldn't understand "how you would have concerns about something being unconstitutional if you haven't even read the law. It seems like you wouldn't make a judgment about whether it violates civil right statutes, whether it violate federal preemption concepts, if you haven't read the law."
Holder said he based his public comments about the legislation on reading news reports, watching television and talking to Justice Department lawyers who are reviewing it. "I've not reached any conclusions as yet" about the law's constitutionality, he said, adding that he will soon "spend a good evening reading that law."
"Holder's 2-faced Lie On AZ Immigration Law,'' the conservative Townhall.com headlined a video clip of the exchange, while Andrew McCarthy, a former federal terrorism prosecutor, blogged on NationalReview.com that the attorney general "hasn't read the Arizona immigration law, even though reading the law is the basic duty of any lawyer (let alone the U.S. Attorney General) who is called on to assess a legal situation."
Holder's spokesman, Matthew Miller, said Friday that his boss "has been thoroughly briefed on the law, which has already been amended since the initial version passed, and has heard concerns from a range of law enforcement and community officials. He and the Department will continue to review it in detail to determine what options are available to the federal government."
SOURCE
15 May, 2010
Jewish group denounces comparisons of Arizona to Nazi GermanySimon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles says invoking imagery and the use of language about the Holocaust is ‘inappropriate and iresponsible.’
But Leftists called the mild and centrist George Bush a Nazi too so, in the absence of precise comparisons, the slur is so devalued as to have no real impact other than to show that the utterer is angry. The comparison might have had some force if Arizona had required EVERYONE to carry ID papers but that is not so.
The “slippery slope” argument is absurd too. I occasionally have a glass of wine with dinner. Does that mean that I am in danger of becoming an alcoholic? I am 66 and I have not become one yet! — JR
A leading Jewish human rights organization says that comparing Arizona’s tough new immigration law with Nazi Germany is “inappropriate and irresponsible.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles issued a statement this week expressing its opposition to the Arizona law but denouncing the use of language about the Holocaust, saying there was no need to “demonize opponents, even when they are mistaken, to those whose actions led to history’s most notorious crime.”
“We don’t need on top of everything else invoking imagery that is inappropriate,” the center’s associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said Thursday in a phone interview from Jerusalem. “This type of language is toxic, is not accurate and makes the whole issue more difficult, not less difficult, to resolve.”
Before the Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to boycott most city travel to Arizona and future contracts with companies there, Councilman Paul Koretz compared the environment in Arizona now to Germany in the 1930s. “This is very frightening stuff,” he said. “If this was being proposed at the federal level, I would think we’re absolutely at the very beginnings of what went on in Nazi Germany.”…
More HERE
America’s Busted Deportation System Strikes AgainWouldn’t it be grand if the Obama administration cared more about policing our borders than about policing our refrigerators? How about fixing our deportation system instead of fixing our junk-food diets?
First Lady Michelle Obama argued this week that obesity is a “national security” issue. But her husband allows far greater threats to go unabated. The FBI’s arrests of two Boston-area men tied to the Times Square bombing attempt — both held on immigration violations — underscore the continuing homeland security lapses.
FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents say two men of Pakistani descent were taken into custody during a series of New England-, New York- and New Jersey-based raids on Thursday. Federal officials believe the individuals may have provided cash to Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad. One was here on an expired visa. The other was on the loose while an immigration court adjudicated his deportation and removal order. He had reportedly been ordered deported in 2002, yet managed to embed himself in American society for more than seven years. But for the ability to detain potential illegal aliens on “administrative” charges, the men most likely would have remained free.
(How convenient that the White House can choose to enforce immigration laws in the interest of public safety and then threaten to sue Arizona for stepping in and doing the same when the feds refuse to enforce those laws consistently.)
Failure to crack down on visa overstayers and failure to stop the deportation revolving door are two key security vulnerabilities that lawmakers vowed to address after 9/11.
There are currently more than 2 million illegal alien visa overstayers in the country, along with an estimated 500,000 illegal alien absconders who have ignored orders from immigration judges to leave the country. Voluntary departure policies — granting illegal aliens the privilege of deporting themselves on an honor system — have allowed countless law-breakers to remain in the country. There are federal laws mandating up to 20 years in jail for those who re-enter the U.S. illegally after being deported, but the provisions are enforced sporadically.
The endless immigration litigation system lets known deportation fugitives stay in the country pending endless appeals (just ask President Obama’s illegal alien absconder aunt Zeituni Onyango, whose 2002 asylum request was rejected and yet who remains here in taxpayer-subsidized public housing while awaiting the outcome of a second immigration hearing).
Just two months ago, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner reported on lingering obstacles to enforcement and deportation of visa overstayers and absconders, including insufficient detention capacity; limitations of its immigration database; and insufficient staffing. “While most visitors leave by the time their visas expire, many thousands remain in the United States illegally,” Skinner testified before Congress. “Overstays perpetuate the illegal immigration problem by using the visa process to break the law to remain in the United States. Moreover, some overstays represent a very real national security risk to the nation.”
Indeed, they do. The Nationwide Visa Overstayers Club includes dozens of jihadists, including 9/11 hijackers Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Satam al-Suqami; 1997 New York subway bomber Lafi Khalil; 1993 World Trade Center bombers Mahmud and Mohammed Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh and Eyad Ismoil; and 1993 New York landmark bombing and conspirator Fadil Abdelgani.
Before 9/11, no comprehensive foreign visitor entry-exit tracking system existed. Open-borders lobbyists, the travel industry, civil rights absolutists and ethnic grievance groups have lobbied hard ever since to stall full implementation of coordinated databases.
The rallying cries of the May Day illegal alien marches this month implored President Obama to “Stop the raids!” and “Stop the deportations!” While their underlings launch select counterterrorism and immigration raids to track down the global network of “lone wolves,” Attorney General Eric Holder and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have been all too happy to threaten punitive measures against local and state officials who understand that reckless immigration enforcement moratoriums carry grave domestic security consequences.
Last time I checked, the government’s fundamental duty “to provide for the common defense” did not include the qualifier “when it’s politically expedient.” Or “as long as special-interest feelings are not hurt.” Or “only after catastrophic security breaches force us to do so.” Which version of the U.S. Constitution is Team Obama reading?
14 May, 2010
Report: Immigration History of Times Square Bomber
Center for Immigration Studies Offers Analysis, Recommendations
The Center for Immigration Studies has prepared a synopsis of the information that has been released on Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad’s immigration history, plus policy recommendations that would reduce the risks inherent in U.S. visa and immigration programs. The report, written by Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, reveals a familiar pattern of a terrorist easily taking advantage of weak spots in America’s immigration system. Shahzad was admitted long before 9/11, but the openings he exploited are still in place today.
Contrary to what some news media have stated, it is not completely clear that Shahzad always maintained legal status. In addition, there are aspects of his immigration history that indicate his awareness of how to work our system and that he was planning to engage in terrorism for some time. Moreover, Shahzad was born in Pakistan, traveled there often and received his terrorist training there. Thus, it seems inaccurate to describe him a “home grown” terrorist as some reporters have done. Nor does it seem accurate to describe his terrorism as simply a case of “a legal immigrant’s failed American Dream”, as suggested by CBS news.
* June 30, 1979 – Born in Pakistan.
* December 22, 1998 – Issued student visa in Islamabad. It is difficult to justify the issuance of this student visa. Shahzad certainly failed to demonstrate that he had “sufficient academic preparation to pursue the intended course of study” at the University of Bridgeport, as the regulations required. He was applying as a transfer student, and his transcript from his correspondence course with Southeastern University, a now defunct fourth-rate academic program, showed a GPA of 2.78, including several D’s and an F (in statistics).
Moreover, during the 1990s, the University of Bridgeport was financially and academically troubled, with its accreditation and reputation in serious jeopardy, and actively seeking foreign students to compensate for plummeting U.S. enrollment. Not only was the visa a mistake, but the visa officer appears to have erred in giving Shahzad a four-year visa when two would have sufficed to complete the program that Shahzad reportedly told officials he wanted to complete.
Many news accounts have asserted that Shahzad underwent a “criminal background check” in order to qualify for the visa. Not exactly – in 1998 this would have been a check of CLASS, the consular database with information on prior refusals, ineligibilities, and derogatory information such as federal arrest warrants, and TIPOFF, which was a watchlist of known and suspected terrorists.
Today’s watchlists and databases are far more comprehensive, but would not have provided grounds for refusal, as Shahzad apparently had no serious criminal history. But under the law the mere absence of a criminal or terrorist history is not enough by itself to qualify for a U.S. visa. For more on temporary visas, see Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounders 'Shortcuts to Immigration' and 'No Coyote Needed,' online at www.cis.org.
* Fall 2000 – Graduates from University of Bridgeport, Conn. Several media reports have noted that Shahzad was flagged by border officials for carrying large sums of cash into the United States and for his repeated visits home to Pakistan. Even though foreign students are supposed to pay their own way, private papers uncovered by an intrepid local newspaper reporter revealed that Shahzad had been awarded a grant of $6,700 from the University of Bridgeport to help cover his tuition.
* 2001 – Begins working for a temporary staffing agency. Shahzad entered on a student visa, which does not include permission to work. It has been reported that he was granted Optional Practical Training status, which allows foreign students to stay and work after graduating (the “training” label is really a work permit). If so, there would be an application and a work permit on file with the school and with USCIS. The details are a little sketchy; it is not clear from the timing of his employment that this was feasible. The fact that any foreign student can get approval to remain here after graduating to work at a temporary staffing agency under the guise of “practical training” is an illustration of just how absurd our immigration system has become.
* 2002 – Issued H-1B visa. Shahzad was sponsored by Elizabeth Arden to work in a low level accounting job under the H-1B visa program. This would seem to support the argument that the visa program brings in primarily ordinary workers, not the best and the brightest as its defenders claim.
* 2004 – Obtains mortgage with Huma Anif Mian (U.S. citizen and future spouse).
* 2004 – Comes under scrutiny of the local Joint Terrorism Task Force. The JTTFs are local, multi-agency units that investigate cases related to national security. No information has been released as to why the JTTF was interested in Shahzad. Some media have reported suspicions that he had ties to Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Muslim cleric who inspired several of the 9/11 hijackers, the Ft. Hood murderer, and the Christmas Day underwear bomber.
* February 2005 – U.S. citizen wife files green card petition. Neighbors of Shahzad’s bride have told reporters that he had visited her in Colorado just once before she left to marry him.
* January 2006 – Green card approved. USCIS was apparently unconcerned about either the suddenness of the marriage or the JTTF investigation. Immigration benefits adjudicators have little time or incentive to review cases closely. This case demonstrates the basic reality that the green card application process is firmly rigged in the alien’s favor, with few applications refused or challenged, especially those involving marriage to a U.S. citizen. Marriage to a U.S. citizen is one of the easiest and most popular ways for illegal aliens (and terrorists) to obtain a green card. See the Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder 'Hello, I Love You, Won’t You Tell Me Your Name: Inside the Green Card Marriage Phenomenon.'
* October 2008 – Applies for citizenship. Shahzad wasted no time applying for U.S. citizenship, which can happen after three years of marriage to a U.S. citizen, compared with five years of residency for other legal immigrants. Shahzad’s alacrity in submitting his citizenship application is very unusual. The average immigrant waits six to ten years before applying, according to DHS statistics. For one thing, the process is expensive ($675) and includes a lot of paperwork and passing a test. His U.S. citizenship makes travel abroad much easier as U.S. citizens face less scrutiny than foreign nationals when coming and going from the country and, unlike green card-holders, citizens can stay overseas indefinitely without losing status. Becoming a U.S. citizen did not require Shahzad to give up his Pakistani passport, this can be useful in concealing long periods of travel to countries like Pakistan without drawing the attention of immigration inspectors at U.S. ports of entry upon return.
* April 17, 2009 – Sworn in as a U.S. citizen. Again, it appears that USCIS was untroubled by or unaware of the previous JTTF investigation.
* June 2, 2009 – Departs for Pakistan.
* February 3, 2010 – Returns to the United States.
* May 1, 2010 – Attempts to set off bomb in Times Square.
Center for Immigration Studies Policy Recommendations
It will always be difficult for visa and immigration officers to identify or predict which applicants pose a security or safety threat. But experience has shown that more effective application of the laws would enhance the integrity of the system overall and make it more difficult for illegitimate visitors to gain access, thus limiting the risk inherent in every visa or immigration program. It is possible to accomplish this without interfering with the flow of legitimate visitors.
1. The State Department should withdraw the current guidance for consular officers that encourages lenience in student visa issuances and develop new guidance that encourages strict application of the law in terms of applicant qualifications, funding, and requiring the applicant to demonstrate a strong likelihood of returning home. This would result in fewer unqualified student visa issuances and reinforce the public diplomacy goals of the student visa program – that foreign students put their U.S. education and positive experience in America to good use back home, thus strengthening ties between the two nations.
2. The State Department and DHS need to move more quickly to post additional DHS Visa Security officers in consulates overseas to help review cases.
3. The State Department should create a corps of consular specialists to supplement the new junior officers now relied upon to adjudicate visas.
4. DHS should review more frequently and more strictly the qualifications of educational institutions that are permitted to host foreign students. Schools whose academic accreditation is non-existent or at risk should not be allowed to admit new foreign students.
5. Congress should eliminate the Optional Practical Training provision because it lacks the oversight necessary to ensure that it provides bona fide training and is not used merely to prolong U.S. residence. In addition, OPT undercuts the public diplomacy aspects of the student visa program by encouraging students to remain here, and it reduces job opportunities for U.S. graduates.
6. The H-1B program should be reformed, switching it from a cheap labor program that provides a back door to green card status to one that enables U.S. companies to hire only uniquely qualified and well-compensated foreign nationals.
7. The USCIS national security and fraud detection office needs to be transformed from a unit that emphasizes studying security risks and fraud to one that works to identify and deny risky applicants and to prevent, detect, and prosecute fraud.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Jessica Vaughan, (202) 466-8185, jmv@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Backfiring Boycotts Make Immigration the Surprise Issue of 2010
No one has been more startled than this pollster that immigration has burst onto the scene as an issue more significant to most Americans than health care, financial bailouts and the economy.
So maybe I'm a better pollster than prognosticator. But I do have enough horse sense to trace the trajectory of a new issue once it gets to be headline news.
Arizona's new illegal-immigration law requires that state residents have on their persons proof of legal residency -- but now they can only be asked for this proof under carefully restricted circumstances.
The law immediately ignited a firestorm of passionate opposition. Most critics hailed from states besides Arizona that have large illegal populations -- or from Americans who don't believe it's so important to determine people's legal status in the country. Actual and threatened boycotts against Arizona started to make the news.
Based on a series of recent public opinion polls, it appears to me that all this noisy outrage over the Arizona law is backfiring against opponents of the law. Consensus public opinion seems to be shifting in favor of a strict interpretation of what constitutes legal residency in the United States, and for stricter enforcement of the relevant laws.
It's my firm belief that if someone is in America illegally, they should be treated as such and deported. I also see cases that fall into a grayer area, such as that of a 21-year-old who is nearing graduation at a Georgia university. Through no choice of her own, she came to this country when she was 16. Now she is fighting to keep from being deported, at least until she finishes school.
Somewhere on the way to getting the immigration situation solved there must be room for compassion and empathy for our fellow humans of all backgrounds, ethnicities and circumstances. But it's important to note that this column isn't primarily about my opinions.
Here is a cold, hard fact for those who seek to oppose the Arizona immigration law through boycotts of the state or its products, services or even its sports teams: You're cooked. Your indignation is only hardening the resolve of those who've adopted a zero-tolerance stance toward people living here illegally.
Nor are many Americans being swayed by media stories, including a recent network TV segment, that seem to suggest the U.S. is deliberately, or at least negligently, making it dangerous for Mexicans to cross the border illegally.
Again, the results of public opinion polls are clear. Americans are frustrated with the nation's high unemployment rate. Mostly low-paying jobs that a few years ago they were content to leave to illegal residents and others, they now feel possessive of.
Think of the construction industry. When the economy was robust for so long, there appeared to be a belief across the country that denying these low-paying jobs to illegals might put a brake on the good times by unnecessarily driving up labor costs. Such reasoning was a poorly hidden justification for "compromise" legislation that winked at illegal immigration.
Now many local governments are fighting for revenue. Voters have little interest in supporting a workforce of illegal immigrants. And for many, there is no gray area or willingness to consider exceptions such as the one I noted above.
Politicians take note: Tea party fervor could have a synergistic effect with anti-immigration sentiment in stoking a huge voter turnout this year, both in contested primaries -- especially Republican ones -- and in November.
Immigration debate also provides context to otherwise anecdotal events. The Web is rife with outraged discussion about the high school students in California who were sent home for wearing clothes decorated with American flags on Cinco de Mayo.
Now throw in the boycotts of Arizona by various governments and organizations. Many Americans are not only annoyed, but also puzzled, by these actions. To them, the Arizona law is common sense. Now illegal immigration may move from being just another news story to a dominant political theme. America's mood in this election year is getting surly. We shall see.
SOURCE
13 May, 2010
Enforcing the Nation's Immigration Laws Would Be a Bargain
by Byron York
Even as the Obama administration plans to challenge and undermine Arizona's new immigration law, the White House still wants state residents to know that it feels their pain. "It's really a cry of frustration from Arizona," Homeland Security Secretary -- and former Arizona governor -- Janet Napolitano said recently. "It's a frustration ultimately that will only be solved with comprehensive immigration reform."
But for the majority of Arizonans, the source of frustration is not the absence of comprehensive reform. It is the federal government's halfhearted enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. And what is seldom discussed in the current controversy is how little -- in relative terms -- better enforcement would cost.
On April 19, the same day the Arizona Legislature passed the immigration measure, the state's two Republican senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, unveiled a new plan to secure the U.S. border with Mexico. It's a combination of completing and improving the border fence, adding new Border Patrol agents, expanding a policy of briefly jailing illegal border crossers and several other programs already in existence. Although there is not yet an estimate of how much it would cost, the price would be vastly less than the sums going to bailouts, the stimulus and the planned national healthcare system.
"When you are talking about national security and laying the foundation for comprehensive immigration reform, it's a relatively small investment," says Kyl.
Start with the fence. The Secure Fence Act, passed by Congress in 2006, specified 700 miles of the Southwest border to be secured with double-layered, reinforced fencing and other physical barriers. The Customs and Border Protection agency says 646 miles of fencing have been finished. For them, the job is essentially done.
But it's not, and the situation in Arizona shows why. The state's border with Mexico is 375 miles long. As it stands today, there are 123 miles of pedestrian fence, that is, high fence meant to stop people from climbing over. However, all but 10 miles of that is single-layered fence, which is easier to cut and get through than a double-layered fence, especially one with a road or other space between the barriers.
In addition, there are 182 miles of vehicle fencing -- bollards or steel beams designed to stop smugglers in cars and trucks. But illegals can easily climb over these, and sometimes smugglers can drive over them using their own ramps.
The Kyl-McCain plan would require double- and even triple-layer fencing in several areas of the border and beefed-up barriers in others. "According to the Border Patrol, it would have a very significant positive effect," McCain says. "Just as it has had a positive effect in San Diego and Texas."
How much would it cost? Given that much of the basic structure already exists, perhaps $1 million per mile. Revamp the whole 700 miles, and it's $700 million.
Kyl and McCain would add 3,000 new Border Patrol agents. A back-of-the-envelope cost estimate is about $100 million per 1,000 new agents, so the plan would cost about $300 million. The proposal also calls for hiring more U.S. marshals, clerks and administrative staff, which would mean more costs.
Then there is the jailing program, called Operation Streamline, which sends all illegal crossers to jail for a period of 15 to 60 days. When it has been tried selected areas, it has caused the illegal crossing rates to plummet. "Very effective," says McCain. "A huge deterrent," says Kyl.
The senators are waiting for an estimate of how much a bigger an expanded Operation Streamline would cost, but so far, the Obama administration has not come up with a number.
There are other expenses. For example, McCain and Kyl want to send a few thousand National Guard troops to the border. When this was done in 2007 and 2008, it cost a total of $1 billion.
There is little doubt such moves would work. In one part of the Arizona-Mexico border where authorities installed double-layered fencing and implemented Operation Streamline, the yearly number of illegal crossers went from 118,000 to 8,000.
Total cost? It's hard to say, but it seems fair to guess that for a relatively low price -- perhaps $5 billion? -- the nation could radically increase the security of the Southwest border. The columnist George Will recently called the cost of securing the border "a rounding error on the ($50 billion) GM bailout." He's right.
As Kyl and McCain see it, Napolitano has things totally turned around. Today's problem won't be solved by comprehensive immigration reform. Instead, solving the problem would make comprehensive reform possible -- and a bargain, too.
SOURCE
Immigration vs. Teen Employment
Study Finds Immigrant Competition Contributes to Decline in Work
The summer of 2010 is shaping up to be worst summer ever for the employment of U.S.-born teenagers (16 to 19 years old). But even before the current recession, the share of U.S.-born teens in the labor force – working or looking for work – was declining. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies finds that competition with immigrants (legal and illegal) explains a significant share of this decline. The fall in teen employment is worrisome because a large body of research shows that those who do not hold jobs as teenagers often fail to develop the work habits necessary to function in the labor market, creating significant negative consequences for them later in life.
The report, 'A Drought of Summer Jobs: Immigration and the Long-Term Decline in Employment Among U.S.-Born Teenagers.' Among the findings:
* The summer of 2009 was the worst summer ever experienced by U.S.-born teenagers (16-19) since citizenship data was first collected in 1994. Just 45 percent were in the labor force, which means they worked or were looking for work. Only one-third actually held a job.
* Between the summers of 1994 and 2000, a period of significant economic expansion, the labor force participation of U.S.-born teens actually declined from 64 percent to 61 percent. By the summer of 2007, before the current recession, it was down to 48 percent.
* The number of U.S.-born teenagers not in the labor force increased from 4.7 million in 1994 to 8.1 million in 2007. In the summer of 2009 it stood at 8.8 million.
* The severity of the decline is similar for U.S.-born black, Hispanic, and white teens. The fall-off is also similar for teenagers from both high- and low-income households.
* Immigrants and teenagers often do the same kind of work. In the summer of 2007, in the 10 occupations employing the most U.S.-born teenagers, one in five workers was an immigrant.
* Comparisons across states in 2007 show that in the 10 states where immigrants are the largest share of workers, just 45 percent of U.S.-born teens were in the summer labor force, compared to 58 percent in the 10 states where immigrants are the smallest share of workers.
* Looking at change over time shows that a 10 percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of a state's work force from 1994 to 2007 reduced the labor force participation rate of U.S.-born teenagers by 7.9 percentage points.
* Among the states with high immigration and low teen labor force participation are Nevada, New Jersey, Georgia, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, California, and New York.
* The most likely reason immigrants displace U.S.-born teenagers is that the vast majority of immigrants are fully developed adults – relatively few people migrate before age 20. This gives immigrants a significant advantage over U.S.-born teenagers, who typically have much less work experience.
* Summer is the focus of this report; however, the decline in the employment of U.S.-born teenagers is year-round, including a decline during the other peak period of seasonal employment at Christmas.
* Although there is good evidence that immigration is reducing teenage labor market participation, other factors have likely also contributed to this problem.
* One factor that does not explain the decline is an increase in unpaid internships among U.S.-born teenagers. High-income and college-bound teens are the most likely to be in internships, yet teenage high school dropouts and those from the lowest income families show the same decline. Moreover, there are only about 100,000 internships (paid and unpaid) in the country. The increase in U.S.-born teenagers not in the labor force was 3.4 million between 1994 and 2007.
Discussion: The primary reason to be concerned about the decline in teenage employment is that research shows consistently that it is as a young person that workers develop the skills and habits necessary to function in the labor market. Poor work habits and weak labor force attachment developed as a teenager can follow a person throughout life. As a result, those who do not work as teenagers earn less and work less often later in life than those who were employed in their teenage years, especially those who do not go on to college.
Businesses have repeatedly argued that there are not enough seasonal workers. If seasonal workers were truly in short supply, the share of teenagers in the labor force would have increased significantly, not fallen dramatically. There is good evidence that immigration accounts for a significant share of the decline in teenage summer labor force participation. In many of the occupations where teenage employment declined the most, immigrants made significant job gains. Comparisons across states in 2007 show a strong relationship between the growth in the immigrant population and the decline in teenage employment. The finding that immigration is reducing labor force participation of teenagers parallels the conclusion of newly published working paper from the Washington, D.C., Federal Reserve, 'The Impact of Low-Skilled Immigration on the Youth Labor Market.'
The decision to allow in large numbers of legal immigrants (temporary and permanent) and to tolerate large-scale illegal immigration and to turn away from employing U.S.-born teenagers may be seen as desirable by some businesses. However, this policy choice may have significant long-term consequences for American workers as they enter adulthood. The potential impact of continued large-scale immigration on teenagers is something that should be considered when formulating immigration policy in the future.
The report can be found online here
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Steven A. Camarota, (202) 466-8185, sac@cis.org The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.
12 May, 2010
New from the Center for Immigration Studies
1. Obama Won’t Enforce Existing Immigration Laws
Excerpt: President Obama criticized Arizona's new immigration law, saying it was caused by inaction in Washington—specifically, the unwillingness of Congress to pass an amnesty law. He's right about the geographic location of the problem, but not about how to start fixing it.
The chief culprit right now is the President himself, not Congress. While there are numerous changes to the law that should be made, the most urgent task before us is to enforce the laws already on the books.
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2. Goodbye Bob Bennett
Excerpt: For those of us who support the principle that American citizenship should have value and that American workers should not be replaced by foreign workers in their own country, good news came on Saturday: Sen. Bob Bennett has lost his re-nomination fight in Utah.
As expected, the utterly clueless the Washington Establishment is lamenting Bennett's defeat. The failure of an incumbent to secure the nomination of his party is being blamed on a poisonous atmosphere.
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3. At DHS, Perps Have Rights That Citizens Don't
Excerpt: The Department of Homeland Security has some interesting rules about what is private and what is public in its record-keeping systems. Let's look at three imagined scenarios:
#1. You are an illegal alien actively engaged in human smuggling. One of your coyote colleagues was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is in jail somewhere. You want to keep him sweet, so that he does not reveal your name. You want to find where he is and you want to make sure he has plenty of money to buy stuff at the facility commissary and to use the phone.
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4. Times Square Bomber Highlights Need for Exclusion Policy
Excerpt: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, not a good friend of immigration controls, actually has cracked the door slightly to keeping out foreign extremists.
On NPR’s“All Things Considered” radio program May 5, Secretary Napolitano was asked by host Robert Siegel about Times Square would-be bomber Faisal Shahzad and his apprehension. The interesting part of the interview, from an immigration policy standpoint, was this:
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5. Faisal Shahzad: So Easy, Anyone Can Do It
Excerpt: A review of the information that has been released on Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad's immigration history reveals a familiar pattern of a terrorist easily taking advantage of weak spots in America’s immigration system. Shahzad was admitted long before 9/11, but the openings he exploited are still in place today. Until policymakers move to shrink them, they offer a sobering guarantee of job security for counter-terrorism and security personnel for the foreseeable future.
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6. Legalization by the Littles – Central American Division
Excerpt: Once upon a time – back in 1998 – there was a big wind, a really big wind, in Central America. It was called Hurricane Mitch, a category five storm.
People in the U.S. from Honduras, and to a lesser extent, Nicaragua, who were in the U.S. at the time, legally or illegally, who did not want to return to their storm-damaged countries were granted the right to stay legally in the U.S., and to work here on the grounds that those two countries, at least temporarily, were prevented from 'adequately handling the return of [their] nationals.' The government's term is Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
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7. Ex-H1-Bs Revealed as Times Square Bomber and, Probably, Wall St. Schemer
Excerpt: It has been revealed that the Times Square bomber was once an H-1B nonimmigrant worker at one point in his immigration history, and it is likely that the main schemer in the Goldman Sachs mortgage scandal was one, too.
These are just two more blows to a once-mighty foreign worker program that has fallen on multiple hard times. Applications for the program – presumably depressed by the recession – have dropped to all-time lows and it appears that USCIS has started to run an ad on its website to drum up more business.
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8. 'Temporary' Status Means Never Having to Go Home
Excerpt: Well, knock me over with a feather! The 'Temporary' Protected Status for a total of about 70,000 Honduran and Nicaraguan illegal aliens, which was set to expire in July, has been extended til January of 2012. You know when they were first given this 'temporary' amnesty? Almost 11 years ago. Only in Washington, where $1 billion is chump change and terrorism is a 'man-caused disaster,' would 11 years be considered temporary.
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9. Ignoring Their Betters
Excerpt: Despite (or maybe because of) the sustained elite attack on the Arizona law, public support is holding steady. A new poll from Investors Business Daily finds 2 to 1 support for the bill nationwide, about the same as the NYT/CBS poll (combining the 51 percent who said it was about right and the 9 percent who said it didn't go far enough) and Rasmussen.
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10. Immigration Lobbyist Skewered in 'Casino Jack' Movie
Excerpt: How often does a nefarious immigration lobbyist get featured in a movie?
Not often, but the exception, Jack Abramoff, plays the lead role in an about-to-be released documentary, 'Casino Jack and the United States of Money,' shown in a preview last night on the campus of George Washington University, here in the District of Columbia.
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11. Why the Tea Party Movement Must Oppose Illegal Immigration and Amnesty
Excerpt: While I was working on legislation designed to address the problems associated with illegal alien driven, child identity theft in Utah, a supporter of the 'Tea Party' movement asked me why I was so concerned about illegal immigration. 'After all, aren't illegal immigrants just good, hard working people who are trying to make a better life for themselves and their families,' he asked.
I responded that illegal immigration is a direct to threat to constitutionally limited government, the rule of law, free markets, private property, individual freedom, and fiscal responsibility.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.
Australian Federal Government defends move to accomodate asylum seekers in motel
The Federal Government is defending a decision to house 79 asylum seekers in a four-star Queensland motel, saying they are vulnerable families with children. "We don't think they should ever be put behind razor wire," Small Business Minister Craig Emerson told Sky News today.
The Palms Motel in suburban Brisbane reportedly has been awarded a $1.2 million government contract for at least six months to accommodate the group. A private security guard has been employed to protect them and other guests, Channel 9 said.
"These are very vulnerable families with children and it's something that needs to be done on a short-term basis," Dr Emerson said. The measure did not happen all the time, but it had occurred under the previous Howard government, he said. "Let's just have a little bit of space."
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison acknowledged the practice was not new, but said the latest move was due to an upsurge in boat arrivals. "It happens when all of your detention centres are full," he said. "That's why people are in motels."
The Government's asylum-seeker policy was out of control, Mr Morrison said, adding 16 boats had arrived since Labor announced it was suspending new claims by Sri Lankan and Afghan boat arrivals.
Family First senator Steve Fielding says the move will only encourage more unauthorised boat arrivals. "First it was Hotel Christmas Island, now it's Hotel Queensland," he said in a statement. "There is no way we should be detaining asylum seekers in hotels because it just gives the people smugglers an extra selling point."
The immigration department says the group is under 24-hour "monitoring and guarding". "They're not allowed to come and go," spokesman Sandy Logan said. "They've all been through full security and health checks before being transferred from Christmas Island."
SOURCE
11 May, 2010
Other states taking cue from Arizona law
Legislators call feds 'AWOL' on 'invaders'
A controversial law passed in Arizona giving state and local police the right to arrest anyone reasonably suspected of being an illegal immigrant is catching on nationwide, with lawmakers and others in several states considering similar legislation.
Concerned about the federal government's failure to secure the nation's borders, legislators and political candidates from Georgia to Colorado have introduced bills to beef up local immigration enforcement, have promised to do so or said they would support such legislation if offered.
"With the federal government currently AWOL in fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities to protect American lives, property and jobs against the clear and present dangers of illegal-alien invaders, state lawmakers … are left with no choice but to take individual action to address this critical economic and national security epidemic," said Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe.
Mr. Metcalfe, a Republican who introduced legislation last week modeled on the Arizona law, said his bill would give "every illegal alien residing in Pennsylvania two options: Leave immediately or go to jail."
His bill would, among other things, give state and local law enforcement officials full authority to apprehend Pennsylvania's estimated 140,000 illegal immigrants and require law enforcement officers to attempt to verify the immigration status of suspected illegal immigrants. It also would make it a criminal offense for illegal immigrants to fail to register as foreigners or to have proof that they did.
South Carolina state Rep. Eric Bedingfield, a Republican, has sponsored a bill in that state allowing the verification of a person's immigration status and providing for the "warrantless arrest of persons suspected of being present in the United States unlawfully."
Mr. Bedingfield's bill also would target illegal immigrants who fail to complete or carry legal registration documents and would criminalize "hiring and picking up workers at different locations while impeding traffic."
He said his constituents are concerned about illegal immigration and that he had received numerous communications from constituents asking when South Carolina would take the additional step as lawmakers did in Arizona. The bill, he said, has 20 to 30 co-sponsors and is pending in the House, but it might be difficult to get it to the Senate floor before the end of the session June 1.
In Oklahoma, state Rep. Randy Terrill said he and some other lawmakers still hope to pass a bill similar to Arizona's new law this session and "go beyond it." Mr. Terrill, a longtime advocate for tougher immigration laws, said his group also would like the legislation to include tougher penalties for illegal immigrants caught with firearms.
Mr. Terrill, a Republican, said Oklahoma used to have the toughest laws against illegal immigrants but that Arizona is now No. 1.
More HERE
Illegal Immigrant Receives $145K "Deport Gift" From NY Taxpayers
An illegal immigrant with a long rap sheet got a $145,000 parting gift from New York City taxpayers before he was deported, after city lawyers decided his civil rights had been violated when he was held too long on Rikers Island.
Federal rules allow local law enforcement to detain suspected illegal immigrants for 48 hours after their criminal cases are resolved, to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement a chance to pick them up and move them to federal facilities.
Former Brooklyn resident Cecil Harvey, 55 -- backed by an immigration-rights advocacy group -- argued that his rights were violated when he spent more than a month in a Rikers holding pen before being transferred to ICE.
Harvey was shipped to his native Barbados in October 2007; the city settled his civil suit late last year.
The landmark settlement has prompted the Correction Department to dump scores of illegal immigrants on the streets, since federal officials often fail to pick them up within the required two-day window.
SOURCE
10 May, 2010
Arizona Law Also Happens To Be Good Politics
Critics of Arizona's tough new immigration law, which makes illegal immigration a state crime, have called supporters of the bill "racist," "mean-spirited" and "un-American." Here's the newsflash: The measure is also good politics, not only in Arizona, but nationally.
Usually after a measure like this has passed, the news media respond with stories about how the measure will hurt the GOP among Latino voters. This time, not so much.
A New York Times/CBS poll found that 51 percent of Americans see the Arizona law as "about right" and 9 percent said it does not go far enough; 36 percent support the measure. Note the poll didn't ask a phony amorphous question, like whether voters support "immigration reform" -- the usual fodder that provides the rationale for said stories.
President Obama called the Arizona law "misguided" and said he favors "common-sense comprehensive immigration reform." It's all lip service. Obama reneged on his 2008 campaign pledge to push immigration reform -- with a path to citizenship for undocumented aliens -- during his first year in office because, well, it's political poison.
At a Cinco de Mayo event last week, Obama had a new promise -- "to begin work this year" on an immigration bill. In Spanish, that translates into: Adios, amigos.
Of course, not all Latino voters want to relax immigration laws, but to the extent that they do, they have guaranteed that the Democratic Party will take their votes for granted.
Meanwhile, why should Republicans stick their necks out for a demographic that abandoned John McCain in the 2008 presidential election? He risked his political ambitions by pushing for a federal bill with a pathway to citizenship in 2007 and then, according to an Edison/Mitofsky exit poll, McCain won a lousy 31 percent of the Latino vote -- down from George W. Bush's 44 percent in the 2004 presidential contest.
Obama helped kill that bill, and he won 67 percent of the demographic. When it's in their interests, Democrats ditch their pro-illegal immigration corner. In 2003, the Democratic California Legislature passed a bill to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. Voters revolted and recalled Gov. Gray Davis, who signed the measure. In a craven act of cowardice, the Legislature quickly voted to rescind the bill it had passed.
In 2009, the Obama administration deported 5 percent more illegal immigrants than the Bush administration deported in 2008. As part of his immigration reform proposal, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, is pushing for a national ID card for all American workers -- the very type of documentation that critics of the Arizona law have said will turn Arizona into the "Your papers, please" state.
Hector Barajas, a former California Republican Party spokesman, said of Democrats, "They'll attend an immigration march and march with you, but on the back end, they'll say they want more agents to deport you. It's become a racket."
Back to Arizona. The Arizona legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer amended the law so that local and state authorities can only question individuals on their immigration status after they've been stopped for a non-immigration offense. This change was designed to address critics' very real concern -- also expressed in this column -- that the law would lead to racial profiling.
It's not what's in the bill, Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book and a former GOP consultant, told me; it's the tone of the debate: "It's not what you say, it's how you say it; it's the shrillness of it." And: California Democratic Sens. "Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein talk about securing the borders, but we (Republicans) get shrill."
Hoffenblum prefers the take of Republican pols from Latino-rich states -- like Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Florida Senate hopeful Marco Rubio -- who rejected the Arizona law. I agree with Hoffenblum. It is important for Republicans to show empathy for the plight of people who come to this country looking for work and a better way of life. But GOP pols also have to listen to the voters.
GOP gubernatorial hopeful Steve Poizner and the Senate GOP candidates -- Tom Campbell, Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina -- have supported the Arizona law. Hoffenblum sees this as risky, but I think it can't hurt them in November.
In 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187, which sought to deny health and welfare benefits and public education to illegal immigrants, by a whopping 59 percent of the vote. Then there's the driver's license bill fiasco. And by the way, a 2006 Los Angeles Times poll found that 38 percent of the state's Latino voters opposed driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.
Most of those voters, I think, simply believe that everyone should play by the same rules -- and they don't want the government to reward people who flout the law.
As GOP Senate candidate Campbell told The Chronicle editorial board last month, the Arizona law essentially upholds existing law; its provisions "in a nonpolitical environment would be noncontroversial."
Barajas doesn't buy the racist-baiting. "I think, in reality, what's happening in Arizona and across the country," he said, "I think people are sick and tired of feeling like they're being overrun and nothing's happening."
SOURCE
Arizona law gaining traction in Florida
Leading Republican Senate candidate Rubio now likes it. He is however a bit behind the Independant Crist in the polls. The Democrat is nowhere. Rubio's new position might help him overhaul Crist
The writer below trots out the usual open borders boilerplate about "papers" and "reasonable suspicion" -- ignoring as usual that the carrying papers requirement has been Federal law since the 1930s and that "reasonable suspicion" is a conventional requirement of police in many aspects of law enforcement
Facing a media throng recently in West Miami that included Spanish-language television, U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio left no doubt where he stood on a contentious new immigration law in Arizona.
The law makes it a crime for immigrants not to carry their legal papers and gives police sweeping powers to detain people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally. Critics say that without legal criteria for "reasonable suspicion," Hispanics and others will fall prey to racial and ethnic profiling.
"I think the law has potential unintended consequences, and it's one of the reasons why I think immigration needs to be a federal issue, not a state one," Rubio said at the April 27 event, where he signed the official papers to be on the 2010 ballot. "That's how I felt when I was in the Florida House."
(About a half-dozen bills aimed at curbing illegal immigration foundered when Rubio was House speaker and had the power to make or break legislation.)
Rubio added at the West Miami event: "Everyone is concerned with the prospect of the reasonable suspicion provisions where individuals could be pulled over because someone suspects they may not be legal in this country," he said. "I think over time people will grow uncomfortable with that."
Asked specifically about immigrants being required to produce documents at a moment's notice, the son of Cuban exiles said, "That's not really something that Americans are comfortable with, the notion of a police state."
But a few tweaks was all it took for Rubio to get comfortable with a law viewed as the harshest crackdown on illegal immigration in the country.
Nine days later -- after his position stirred a blogospheric storm among Tea Partiers and after a poll found most Florida voters support the law -- the conservative website Human Events posted an interview in which Rubio said he would have voted for the amended version. "The second one that passed hit the right note. Yes," he said.
"I mean no one is in favor of a bill that would force American citizens to have to interact with law enforcement in a way that wasn't appropriate. And the first bill I thought held that door open. Since then, the changes that have been made to the bill I think greatly improve it."
What changed? A couple of days after Rubio balked at the law in West Miami, Arizona lawmakers limited police to investigating the legal status of a person who is stopped, detained or arrested because of another offense, like speeding, as opposed to a person who is just asking for directions.
At the same time, the law was expanded to require police to determine legal status when they come across local violations, meaning a dark-skinned homeowner with an accent and an old car propped up on cement blocks would potentially be subject to questioning.
The law was also reworded to say that police "may not consider race, color or national origin" in an effort to address concerns about racial profiling.
"Marco's position has been consistent. It's the law that has changed since his first comments on it," said campaign spokesman Alex Burgos.
But the changes don't appear to have eliminated the shortcomings Rubio laid out in West Miami. Not carrying immigration papers -- the provision that Rubio said evoked a "police state" -- remains a crime. Rubio's concern about the police questioning someone based on a "reasonable suspicion" of illegal status? Still there. And still no explanation of what an illegal immigrant is supposed to look like.
The law's prominent opponents -- including Rubio's political mentor and one of his most important backers, former Gov. Jeb Bush -- remain prominent opponents.
In contrast, Rubio said one thing to a bilingual group of reporters in West Miami and something different to a Washington website where one regular columnist asked recently, "What's Wrong With Racial Profiling Anyway?"
Even Senate rival Charlie Crist, a frequent practitioner of the art of flip-flopping, hasn't backed down from his reservations about the immigration law. The leading Democratic candidate in the race, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami, also came out against the law.
SOURCE
9 May, 2010
Sheriff Joe defends Arizona’s new immigration law
Joe Arpaio, the freewheeling sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, visited Las Vegas on Friday, defending his state’s tough new immigration law, saying that it will not, as critics have charged, lead to widespread racial profiling.
In fact, he said the law, which makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally and directs police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they’re illegal immigrants, adds little more than a small degree of cover for the aggressive immigration programs that have earned him the label of “America’s toughest sheriff.”
“We’ve been doing almost the same as that new law,” he told reporters at a roundtable discussion organized by the Nevada News Bureau. “Now, law enforcement won’t have any problems.”
The issue is relevant here because Republican Assemblyman Chad Christensen, a long-shot candidate for U.S. Senate, is drafting a ballot initiative that would replicate the Arizona law in Nevada. Immigration is also a flashpoint in the governor’s race, with former federal Judge Brian Sandoval supporting the Arizona law and Gov. Jim Gibbons opposing it.
As a result of the law, Arpaio said, officers have more flexibility to ask people about their immigration status during workplace raids. “Everything else, we’ve been doing it anyway, and we’ve been doing a good job without much controversy, outside of the demonstrators,” he said. “Let’s give the new law a chance.”
Arpaio has taken heat for turning the sheriff’s office into a sort of freelance immigration-enforcement agency. He has he set up a hot line for the public to report immigration violations, conducts crime and immigration sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods and frequently raids workplaces for people in the U.S. illegally.
Many in the Latino community consider him and his policies to be racist, a charge he denied with vigor. “I’m not a racist, like people say I am,” he said. “I have never gone on the street corner and grabbed someone because they look like they’re from another country. We don’t do that.” Officers ask about immigration status only if people have been detained for a crime, such as speeding, he said.
Arpaio portrayed himself as a victim, lamenting activists who have pictured him alongside Adolph Hitler and smashed pinatas with his image. He said Arizona’s immigration law is widely misunderstood, even as many groups have organized a business boycott of the state.
Addressing another criticism, he said the law protects victims and witnesses who are here illegally from deportation, noting that most of his office’s crime tips come from illegal immigrants. “I think the panic and the hype and the misinformation is causing people to feel it’s worse that it is,” he said.
Arpaio said President Barack Obama has misunderstood the new law, saying perhaps the controversy called for a “beer summit” similar to when the president met with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley to calm tensions after a racially-tinged arrest. “Why doesn’t he invite me to the White House so I can have some wine?” Arpaio asked. [LOL]
Still, the Obama administration has had its sights on Arpaio. He’s the target of a Justice Department investigation into discriminatory conduct. A federal grand jury met this week to explore allegations of abuses of power and prosecutorial authority, according to the Arizona Republic.
On Friday, Arpaio taunted federal investigators. “They’ve been at it for a year and a half,” he said. “I feel very comfortable they are not going to find anything on racial profiling.” He also said controversy helps his poll numbers.
Arpaio said that his aggressive immigration enforcement has contributed to a reduction in the crime rate. “Everybody is moving out of town. That’s a good thing,” he said. “Let them move to Nevada and California. I think our program is working as a deterrent.”
He said that 18 percent of inmates who go through the county jail system are found to be undocumented. Stepped-up enforcement is needed because of escalating violence on the border, he said. “The violence has increased,” he said. “It’s volatile and it’s getting worse. It seems like the president can’t get a hold on it. I presume he’s doing the best he can. But people feel this violence is going to cross our borders. ... We have a 2,000-mile border that doesn’t seem secure, and there’s always that chance a terrorist could come across.”
For all his detractors, Arpaio had no apologies or regrets. “I’m not really sorry about anything I did in my life,” he said, before adding, “Maybe I should have run for governor — not now — years ago. Maybe that would have given me a chance to run for president.”
After an hour of jousting, he was off to speak to a group of conservatives at Stoney’s Rockin’ Country bar in Las Vegas, where pro-immigration groups planned to protest his appearance. “The more the merrier,” Arpaio said. “They follow me everywhere. I hope they spend some money in your casinos.”
SOURCE
Why Isn’t Obama Supporting the Visa Security Program?
Within a span of almost 6 months, there have been two near-miss terror attacks on U.S. soil—the Christmas Day plot and Saturday’s Times Square attempted bombing. The Obama Administration had emphasized, in its review of the Christmas Day terror plot that: "…despite several opportunities that might have allowed the CT community to put these pieces together in this case, and despite the tireless effort and best intentions of individuals at every level of the CT community, that was not done."
Despite this admission, the Obama Administration continues to drag its feet on beefing up the Visa Security Program—which puts homeland security officers at U.S. consulate offices to perform background checks on visa applicants. In fact the Administration has only deployed officers at 14 high risk countries (out of 57 likely candidates).
Tackling visa security is the right kind of lesson to be learned from plots like Times Square and Christmas Day. More often than not, jurisdictional disputes between the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security have interfered with this process. Tearing down these walls is important; as my colleague, James Carafano, has emphasizes, “visas…are part of a layered international security system for fighting transnational terrorism.”
Considering such a program would have likely caught the Christmas Day bomber before he ever even boarded a plane for the U.S. (his dad conveyed information to consulate authorities that he was up to no good), it seems unspeakable that this simple reform hasn’t taken place. And what’s worse is that this problem isn’t likely to change in the near future. The Administration has proposed on freeze on the program’s budget for FY2011.
Time and time again, the U.S. has successful since 9/11 in stopping terror plots—31 times to be exact—building on this success requires an understanding that (1) terrorists won’t give up and (2) the U.S. needs a full arsenal of tools at its disposal to get the job done. If Obama doesn’t learn these lessons—next time, we might not be so lucky.
SOURCE
8 May, 2010
Is Arizona Law Still Wrong If It Works?
If affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics isn't racial profiling, what is?
What if Arizona's "racial profiling" law worked perfectly? In other words, what if Arizona police were always right? What if they could take a look at someone and, using race or ethnicity as just one of many factors (no advocate of profiling has ever suggested that race be the sole criterion), could pick out illegal immigrants from the crowd every time? Would that make it OK?
The reason I ask is that, to listen to opponents of the law from the president on down, the chief objection is that legal immigrants and citizens will be mistakenly singled out by law enforcement.
Here's President Obama on the law's ramifications: "You can imagine, if you are a Hispanic-American in Arizona -- your great grandparents may have been there before Arizona was even a state. But now, suddenly, if you don't have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you're going to be harassed. That's something that could potentially happen. That's not the right way to go."
Never mind that this is a grotesque distortion of the law. Police have to have a reason other than suspicion of being an illegal immigrant -- a traffic violation, disorderly conduct, etc. -- to ask for your "papers" in the first place. Taking your kid to get ice cream isn't legal grounds for the cops to stop you.
But forget that. Aside from the concern that Hispanic-Americans buying ice cream will be harassed, the other main objection is that legal immigrants will need to carry their "papers."
As many others have observed, this is pretty thin gruel. Legal immigrants have been required under federal law to carry their papers for generations. If you're for that in theory but against it in practice, you're against enforcing any kind of immigration policy at all.
Which brings us back to racial profiling. Obama is just one of many leading liberals who favor affirmative action for certain groups. Their argument goes like this: Certain historically disadvantaged minorities such as blacks and Hispanics -- but not Asians or Jews -- need extra help in college admissions and in hiring. These preferred minorities can be sized up as deserving simply by looking at their skin color and maybe their last name.
Liberals insist that in such cases race is just one factor among many, though studies suggest race is often the key factor since so many of these decisions are made at the margin.
In other words, when you have two equally qualified candidates, race trumps everything. In fact, often when you have two candidates and, say, the Asian kid is much more qualified, race still decides the issue.
Many have pointed out the inconsistency of conservatives who support law-enforcement profiling while opposing admissions quotas, and of liberals who support quotas but loathe profiling.
The problem is that the two positions aren't that analogous. Which brings us back to that Arizona ice cream parlor. In the president's (flawed) scenario, that hypothetical Hispanic citizen will be "harassed." What does that mean? It means he will be asked to prove his citizenship, which he will obviously be able to do. He won't be tried, convicted and deported; he will be inconvenienced. Indeed, under the more realistic scenario, he will be pulled over for a traffic violation and asked to offer his driver's license (his "papers"). And that will be it.
Meanwhile, imagine you're an American kid of Chinese ancestry. Given your SAT scores and GPA, you should be able to get into, say, the University of Michigan. But because of Michigan's race-based policies, you're turned down because you're not black or Hispanic. That's not just inconvenient, that's a lifetime loss. You'll never be able to go to that school. Period. Similarly, being turned down for a job you deserve because of your skin color is a real loss. Being questioned for a few minutes about your immigration status may be inconvenient, or even feel insulting. But, beyond ruining your day, you'll be fine.
Opponents of Arizona's law believe government officials -- i.e., cops -- lack the judgment to enforce Arizona's law. But at the same time, they believe other officials can make a snap judgment about who deserves a job or a superior education based on skin color.
Given this inconsistency, one has to wonder: Is the objection to the law that it won't work, or that it will?
SOURCE
The Decline in Summer Youth Employment
New Study Examines Immigration's Impact on U.S.-born Teens
While this summer is shaping up as one the worst ever for teen employment, a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that American teenagers (16-19 years old) have been leaving the labor force for some time, starting long before the current recession. The findings show that competition with immigrants accounts for a significant share of the decline in teen employment. The decline is worrisome because a large body of research shows that those who do not hold a job as teenagers often fail to develop the work habits necessary to function in the labor market, creating significant negative consequence for them later in life.
Many of the states where immigrants are the largest share of workers are also those with the lowest teenage labor force participation, including California, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Florida, Hawaii, Texas, and Arizona.
CIS will release the report, 'A Drought of Summer Jobs: Immigration and the Long-Term Decline in Employment Among U.S.-Born Teenagers,' at a panel discussion Wednesday, May 12, at 9:30 a.m. in the Zenger Room of the National Press Club, 14th & F streets NW.
The panel will include:
* Steven Camarota, lead author of 'A Drought of Summer Jobs: Immigration and the Long-Term Decline in Employment Among U.S.-Born Teenagers.' Dr. Camarota is Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies.
* B. Lindsay Lowell, Director of Policy Studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. He was previously Director of Research at congressionally appointed U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.
* Daryl Scott, Professor and former Chair of the History Department at Howard University. Dr Scott is author of 'Immigrant Indigestion: A. Philip Randolph Radical and Restrictionist.” In 2009 he helped draft a detailed proposal to overhaul the nation's immigration system, sponsored by the Brookings Institution and Duke University.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Steven Camarota, sac@cis.org, 202-466-8185. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.
7 May, 2010
Napolitano acknowledges holes in border
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday the U.S.-Mexico border is not as secure as it could be, though she contended that the Obama administration has shown an "absolute laserlike focus on that border."
The border's status has become a critical issue as Democrats push for a broad immigration bill that would include legalizing illegal immigrants, and Republicans push back, arguing voters want to see more work done to secure the border first.
Miss Napolitano, who last year kicked off the immigration debate by saying the border was secure enough and it was time to turn to legalization, said Tuesday there's still more work to be done.
"It is as safe and secure as it's ever been, but it can be more safe and more secure," she said at a joint event with Mexico's interior minister at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
But she also said the immigration situation won't be solved until Congress and voters get beyond a focus on the border and address future flows of immigrants and temporary workers, as well as the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S.
The U.S. Border Patrol has staffed up dramatically, doubling in size from about 10,000 in 2004 to more than 20,000 now, and the government began a major infrastructure-building effort in 2006, including new fencing and vehicle barriers along nearly 650 miles of the border. Six miles of pedestrian fencing still needs to be finished to meet the goal set by Congress and Homeland Security during the George W. Bush administration.
Homeland Security Department officials say those moves have led to fewer illegal immigrants trying to cross the border.
Last week, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Miss Napolitano said it was an "unfair question" to ask if she could certify that the border was secure.
That drew a strong rebuke from Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who recently broke off efforts to fashion a bipartisan immigration bill, saying more needs to be done on security.
"If it's unfair to ask a simple question 'Is the border secure?', then we're never going to have the confidence to get it secure, because it is a fair question," Mr. Graham said. "I'll give you my answer: I don't think it is."
For his part, Mexican Interior Minister Fernando Gomez-Mont said Mexico is now committed to a secure border as well, and said early signs point to an economic recovery in Mexico that should help stem the flow of illegal immigrants north.
Mr. Gomez-Mont said there has been a spike in border-region violence, but said it's a sign that the government's efforts to regain control of areas from drug cartels are working.
"We're going to overcome this," he said.
Homeland Security demographers estimate Mexico accounts for 6.7 million of the estimated 10.8 million illegal immigrants that were in the country in January 2009.
SOURCE
Immigration concern in Massachusetts too
Last week the House narrowly defeated a state budget amendment that would have required proof of legal status to be eligible for a broad swath of public benefits. Angry voters clogged the Web, demanding the heads of those 82 state representatives who voted against the measure.
Actually, the 82 only voted for further study of the issue — usually a death knell for legislation but not such a bad idea in this case. Even the amendment’s sponsor, Representative Jeff Perry of Sandwich, admitted during debate that he didn’t know whether applicants for public housing, for example, needed to prove their citizenship.
(For the record, they don’t, under a 1977 federal consent decree in Weeks v. Public Housing Authority of Waltham. Judge Frank H. Freedman ruled that an alien status test for public housing violated the equal protection clause of the US Constitution. The ruling does not apply to other benefits.)
Perry, a Republican, is running for Congress, and critics called the amendment a grandstand play. But Perry also offered the measure last year, and the fact that it garnered more support this time — including from 59 Democrats — caught the attention of The New York Times, which featured it as an example of how “the heat from Arizona’s new immigration law burns far from its borders.’’
On Tuesday, gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker announced he could save the state $10 million to $25 million by requiring applicants for all benefits to prove their legal status. Baker stoutly insisted his “show me your papers’’ rule would apply to any social service agency that receives state funds. So I asked Baker at his press conference: if a homeless person comes to the Pine Street Inn, would he be required to prove his legal status to get a bed? “We should require it for everything,’’ Baker said.
Now Baker is saying this gaffe was misinterpreted, and that he intended his plan to model Perry’s, which makes certain exceptions for emergency care. But what part of “everything’’ does he not understand?
Baker and Perry want the state to clear applicants for public benefits through a federal database. In fact, the state Department of Transitional Assistance already uses the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, according to commissioner Julia Kehoe. “No illegal immigrant is eligible to receive cash assistance or SNAP’’ — the acronym for food stamps — she says.
Still, confusion over the current rules is understandable. Under a 1997 state law passed in response to President Clinton’s welfare reform, state agencies may adopt different policies, and many do. It’s one more reason a legislative study — a thorough and independent study —of Perry’s amendment makes sense.
It’s undeniable that the Arizona law has set off a contagion of tough responses to immigration in other states. But even last year, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported that a record 1,500 immigration bills were considered in all 50 states. It’s a clear reflection of local frustration with federal paralysis on comprehensive immigration reform.
SOURCE
6 May, 2010
The EU migration lie: Official statistics expose huge gap between British PM's figures and truth
Labour was rocked yesterday by explosive new claims about its ‘disastrous’ policy on EU workers. Figures showed almost four times more EU citizens working here than Britons taking jobs on the continent.
Opposition parties said the figures destroyed the claim by Gordon Brown – who promised ‘British jobs for British workers’ – that there had been equal numbers travelling in each direction.
The Prime Minister made the claim only last week, during his encounter with Rochdale pensioner Gillian Duffy. But the EU’s own statistics authority, Eurostat, says there were just 287,600 UK nationals filling jobs elsewhere in the European Union in autumn 2008.
Some 1,020,000 citizens from other Euro countries are taking posts in the economy here – more than 500,000 from Poland and other Eastern European nations granted ‘open door’ access by the Government.
The revelations were put to immigration minister Phil Woolas during a live TV debate. Initially, he said he was surprised his opponents, the anti-EU UKIP party, ‘trusted’ figures from the EU’s official statistical body. He added: ‘You can bandy around figures as long as you want’, before insisting: ‘There are around 2.2million British people who live and work in the European Union.’
Critics pointed out Mr Woolas was not comparing like for like as he was counting Britons who simply live abroad, and may have retired.
In any case, his argument flatly contradicted figures given by the Prime Minister less than a week ago. In his exchange with Mrs Duffy, Mr Brown had insisted: ‘A million people come from Europe but a million British people have gone into Europe. ‘You know, there’s a lot of British people staying in Europe as well.’
Labour had the option of imposing transitional controls on Eastern European migrants in 2004, but chose not to. More than a million arrived – compared to the Government’s own estimate of 13,000 a year.
Around half are believed to have since gone home. Tory spokesman Damian Green said last night: ‘This Government is determined to mislead the British people about the effect of its immigration policy to the end. It is clear that the failure to put transitional controls on when the EU expanded was one of many disastrous decisions they have taken.
‘Ministers are simply in denial about why the British people are so angry about their failures of immigration policy.’
UKIP spokesman Nigel Farage, who produced the Eurostat figures, said: ‘These figures destroy the argument that we have a mutually beneficial open door with the EU’.
During heated exchanges, Mr Woolas repeatedly refused to say whether the two million increase in the migrant population under Labour had been a deliberate policy or an ‘accident’. But he insisted: ‘The benefits to our economy are clear for all to see.’
The Lib Dems also endured a torrid time during the BBC Politics Show debate. Spokesman Tom Brake confirmed the party planned an ‘amnesty’ for illegal immigrants who have been here for ten years or more, even though his leader Nick Clegg said last week that it should not be called ‘amnesty’.
Mr Brake also risked ridicule by saying the hugely controversial regional immigration policy, confining migrants to one area, would be piloted in Scotland, raising the prospect of controls on the border with England.
SOURCE
Australian conservatives say public cooling on immigration because of illegals
The high numbers of asylum seekers reaching Australia by boat is eroding public support for immigration, says the federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.
"Any perception that the Government has outsourced even a component of migrant selection to people smugglers threatens Australians' sometimes fragile support for immigration," Mr Abbott said in a speech to the Menzies Research Centre in Melbourne. "The danger, when the immigration program is under question, is that millions of Australians feel less secure in their own country."
This was a particular risk because migrants and their children comprised 40 per cent of the population, he said.
Citing research by an ANU academic, Katharine Betts, that found Australians were more comfortable with migration when tough political rhetoric created an impression it was under control, Mr Abbott said the former government had more than doubled the migration intake.
"Rebuilding majority support for Australia's immigration program was one of John Howard's important but undervalued achievements," he said.
However, the Refugee Council of Australia said any recent concerns over immigration had been stoked by fear-mongering, not by the 5400 people who had sailed to Australia under the Rudd government.
The 50th boat to be intercepted this year was detected on Monday night, west of Ashmore Island.
Public attention continued to rest on the minority of asylum seekers who arrived by boat, when far larger numbers flew, said a spokeswoman for the council, Kate Gauthier. "If the public knew the truth about the numbers and the horrible situations they were fleeing, Australians would react with open arms and compassion."
On April 9 the government froze all processing of Sri Lankan and Afghan refugee claims in toughened measures to deter future boat ventures. Yesterday Mr Abbott said this change had not worked.
He reiterated a Coalition plan for the Productivity Commission to do an annual, independent review of Australia's infrastructure needs, considering short-, medium- and long-term population projections. "This should help to sustain public support for a significant immigration program."
However, a similar policy already exists. In February the government employed independent experts to advise on optimum levels of net overseas migration and the ability of infrastructure to cope. Professor Sue Richardson of Flinders University was commissioned to examine the relationships between migration and the built and natural environments.
Another professor, Peter McDonald of ANU, was commissioned to advise on net overseas migration factoring in the needs of the labour market.
Similarly, the federal government has also already announced changes to the skilled migration program to better meet Australia's long-term "economic and demographic goals".
Yesterday the Opposition spokesman on immigration, Scott Morrison, joined his leader in criticising the processing costs of asylum seekers on Christmas Island.
Each asylum seeker cost taxpayers almost $82,000, Mr Morrison said. "We are barely four months into 2010 and already Kevin Rudd has racked up a half-century of boats, with more than 2400 people on board."
The Minister for Population, Tony Burke, was travelling and unavailable for comment.
SOURCE
5 May, 2010
Popular support for Arizona law
A wail from the NYT below
The overwhelming majority of Americans think the country’s immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled. And despite protests against Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, a majority of Americans support it, even though they say it may lead to racial profiling.
With the signing of the Arizona law on April 23 and reports of renewed efforts in Washington to rethink immigration, there has been an uptick in the number of Americans who describe illegal immigration as a serious problem.
But the poll — conducted April 28 through May 2 with 1,079 adults, and with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points — suggests that Americans remain deeply divided about what to do.
The public broadly agrees, across party lines, that the United States could be doing more along its border to keep illegal immigrants out. The view was shared by 78 percent of the respondents.
That unity, however, fractures on the question of what to do with illegal immigrants who are already here and the role of states in enforcing immigration law, normally a federal responsibility.
A majority of the people polled, 57 percent, said the federal government should determine the laws addressing illegal immigration. But 51 percent said the Arizona law was “about right” in its approach to the problem. Thirty-six percent said it went too far and 9 percent said it did not go far enough.
The law has recharged the national debate over securing the border and what to do about the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country.
The Arizona law gives local police officers broad power to detain people they suspect are in the country illegally and check their legal status. Lawsuits have already been filed on several grounds, including the argument that it will lead to the racial profiling of legal residents and that the state has unconstitutionally intruded on federal authority.
Under a torrent of criticism, the Arizona Legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer made changes to the law on Friday that they say explicitly ban the police from racial profiling and allow officers to inquire about immigration status only of people they stop, detain or arrest in enforcing existing state law. But the new immigration law also now includes civil violations of municipal codes as grounds to check papers, and opponents were not mollified by the changes.
In follow-up interviews, poll respondents who embraced the thrust of the Arizona law still called for a national solution.
“The Arizona law is fine, but the federal government has to step in and come up with something — and they’re not doing it,” said Pat Turkos, 64, a library worker and Republican from Baltimore.
She said: “I don’t think they should be stopped just walking down the street, only if they’re stopped for speeding, for example. I believe everybody has the right to come here, but I think they have to be made legal citizens.”
Although the respondents broadly agreed that the Arizona law would result in racial profiling, overburden local and state law enforcement agencies and decrease the willingness of illegal immigrants to report crimes for fear of deportation, large majorities said it would reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the state, deter illegal border crossings and, to a lesser extent, reduce crime.
Some attitudes about immigration have remained stable among the public. Most still say illegal immigrants weaken the nation’s economy rather than strengthen it, and public opinion remains divided over how the United States should handle illegal immigrants currently in the country.
But American attitudes toward the law and whether illegal immigrants already here should have a path to citizenship differed markedly across regions and parties. Westerners and Northeasterners, for example, are significantly more likely than those in other regions to say the recent law in Arizona goes too far. And Democrats are much more likely than Republicans or independents to support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants now in the country.
Just 8 percent of Americans said the immigration system needed only minor changes. The vast majority said it needed reworking, including 44 percent who said it needed to be completely rebuilt and 45 percent who said it needed fundamental changes.
Three quarters said that, over all, illegal immigrants were a drain on the economy because they did not all pay taxes but used public services like hospitals and schools. Nearly 2 in 10 said the immigrants strengthened the economy by providing low-cost labor and buying goods and services, a chief argument among many of their advocates.
“I do think the federal government should deal with it, because illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes and don’t contribute to our government,” said Deborah Adams, 53, a Democrat from Ephrata, Pa., and a paramedic who called the Arizona law a “necessary evil.”
“They take jobs from American citizens who need to work and pay into Social Security,” Ms. Adams said.
In fact, many illegal immigrants do pay taxes into the Social Security system, but never see a return on their contributions.
At immigration rallies in several cities on Saturday, demonstrators pressed the case for overhauling immigration law.
So far no bill has been introduced in Congress. President Obama, while supportive of the idea of immigration reform, has questioned whether lawmakers have the appetite for a divisive battle over it after a year of other political fights and in the middle of a campaign.
A delegation of Arizonans opposed to the law, including Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix, plans to meet with Justice Department officials on Tuesday to urge them to step into the brewing legal battle over the law.
On Monday, one of the law’s staunchest advocates, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in the Phoenix area, announced that after toying with the idea, he would not run for governor.
SOURCE
CIS roundup
1. Mark Krikorian Discusses New Arizona Law
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2. Center for Immigration Studies on the New Arizona Immigration Law, SB1070
Excerpt: The new law recently signed by the governor of Arizona, SB 1070, makes it a crime to violate some federal immigration statutes. While the law is extremely popular in the state, with 70 percent of Arizona voters approving of it and just 23 percent opposed, it has raised controversy. Below is a brief summary of the relevant information on illegal immigration in Arizona, followed by a short analysis of SB 1070’s major provisions.
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3. The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good
Excerpt: The mass-immigration crowd's latest argument against the E-Verify system is that it's just not tough enough, dammit! A piece in the Washington Post over the weekend argued that I specifically, and restrictionists in general, back E-Verify precisely because it doesn't work perfectly — the intent being, if I can divine the true nature of the conspiracy, to prevent amnesty by preventing a solution to illegal immigration. Or, as the authors write
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4. Center of Debate Moves Toward Immigration Hawks
Excerpt: Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post had an analysis piece yesterday making the argument that the Reid-Schumer-Menendez amnesty outline shows how much the immigration debate has moved 'to the right' (obviously not the proper adverb, given Grover Norquist, Linda Chavez, Dick Armey, et al., but you get the idea). Hsu clearly has a point; the Senate Democrats' proposal leads off with a long discussion of enforcement, calling for more Border Patrol agents and ICE officers, higher fines for employers of illegals, a new biometric Social Security card to be used for employment, and so on. As one of Hsu's interviewees says, 'Ideas that were hotly contested in ill-fated Senate debates in 2006 and 2007 seem now to be taken for granted.'
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5. Psssst: Want Some Purloined Immigration Policy Research?
Excerpt: Immigration policy research is rarely thought of as sexy.
Beautiful women do not come up to you at a party and say, breathily, 'That's a wonderful piece of analysis.'
But there is a sort of cloak-and-dagger romance in the way that the August Congressional Research Service, an arm of the Library of Congress, more or less releases its studies.
It distributes the reports to its sponsor, the Congress, for congressional use only.
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6. Seeking Investors: Immigration for Profit
Excerpt: Reading the Reid-Schumer-Menendez 'Conceptual Proposal for Immigration Reform' drives home the inherent paradox of fixing the immigration system:
The same group that broke it in the first place -- Congress -- would have to do the fixing.
Reid-Schumer-Menendez demonstrate they are not up to the task.
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7. Nonimmigrant Admissions Down 8% in FY 09: Some Thoughts
Excerpt: Presumably reacting to the recession, the flow of nonimmigrants into the United States fell 8 percent in FY 2009 from the previous year's total. The drop was from 39.4 million to 36.2 million, according to data just released by the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics.
Nonimmigrants are aliens coming to the U.S. temporarily, such as tourists, visiting business people, short-term workers, foreign students and others. The measure used by DHS is the number of admissions – a count of border crossings, rather than the population counts of a census. A foreign student, for instance, might enter a port of entry once in a year, or a dozen times; in the latter instance that would count as 12 admissions.
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8. Finding Bargains in a Boycott?
Excerpt: Individuals and groups around the country – including the usual suspects like the city of San Francisco, Al Sharpton, and immigration attorneys – are promising to boycott Arizona in the wake of the passage of the controversial immigration bill S.B. 1070. But will ordinary American tourists and business people boycott the state in any kind of significant way?
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9. Progressives Debate Arizona's New Immigration Law
Excerpt: This past Friday, Arizona's governor signed Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the strongest bill to reduce illegal immigration in the nation, by far. According to news accounts, the bill does four main things.
First, it makes remaining in the United States illegally (technically, not registering with the government as a foreigner), currently a federal crime, an Arizona state crime as well, punishable by fines and imprisonment.
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10. Holier than Thou
Excerpt: The Arizona immigration law is catnip for Michael Gerson's brand of moral preening. In his column today he writes, 'It sorts Republicans according to their political and moral seriousness.' (I'm in the morally unserious camp, in case you're keeping score, along with George Will, whose column ran right below Gerson's.)
He sees the bill as an attempt by Arizona 'to take control of American immigration policy,' which is funny, since it's more an example of plugging existing American immigration law into Arizona's own statutes. He didn't invoke the Nazis (though you know he wanted to), but he did write this
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11. Grassley Raises H-1B and L-1 Issues at Senate Committee Hearing
Excerpt: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) raised the issue of abuses in the H-1B and L-1 nonimmigrant worker programs at yesterday's hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Grassley thanked the witness at the hearing, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, for taking steps to tighten the rules of the H-1B program, as they related to intermediate employers called 'job shops' and urged her to pay attention to a DHS Inspector General's report of abuses within the L-1 program.
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12. Too Good to Check
Excerpt: I have pity on Linda Greenhouse's students at Yale Law School. The former New York Times Supreme Court correspondent has a column on the Arizona immigration law in her old paper peddling all the usual cliches about Nazism, apartheid, blah, blah, blah. But what's hilarious is that Greenhouse, the 'Senior Research Scholar in Law, Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence, and Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law,' based her whole column on the wrong version of the bill.
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13. What Does America’s 48th State Have in Common with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Apartheid-Era South Africa?
Excerpt: Opponents appear be divided on Arizona's controversial new immigration law, S.B. 1070. Some liken it to the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2, others, including Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles, compare the legislation to the tactics of Nazi Germany. The bill reportedly 'reminded' Hispanic Federation President Lillian Rodríguez Lopez of South African apartheid, while Robert Creamer, blogging for the Huffington Post, couldn't decided between the Nazis, the Soviets, or merely the Deep South before the civil rights era.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.
4 May, 2010
Immigration crackdown championed: Boycott being opposed
Not everyone is down on Arizona
While leading immigration rights groups have staged protests and called for boycotting Arizona businesses over the state's new immigration law, some outside groups are coming to the state's defense and organizing countermoves to buy Arizona goods and keep travel and tourism in the state humming.
Numbers USA, which favors lower immigration numbers, said Friday it is asking its 960,000 members and other workers to urge their employers not to cancel conferences or smaller meetings in Arizona, whose economy depends largely upon tourism and business travel to its many resorts and natural wonders, including the Grand Canyon.
Separately, the U.S. Travel Association also came out against a boycott of Arizona goods and services because of the immigration law.
"It is inappropriate to punish the men and women of our industry who have done no harm to others," said Roger Dow, the nonprofit group's president and chief executive officer. "The situation in Arizona further highlights the need for federal action on immigration reform."
Numbers USA President Roy Beck said his group has a cross-section of members "from liberal environmentalists to tea partiers," and a mission to show each faction that everybody will benefit from less immigration.
"Our members really disagree with each other on a lot of stuff," he said. "But without reducing the number of immigrants, you cannot reduces this country's carbon footprint nor can you shrink government."
Tourism is the No. 2 industry in Arizona behind microelectronics, said Kiva Couchon, spokeswoman for the state tourism office. She pointed out that tourism generates $18.5 billion and attracts 37.4 million people annually, according to the most-recent numbers.
The groups support for Arizona follows calls to boycotts since Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed the state Senate legislation into law April 24.
The law -- considered the most stringent in the U.S. -- makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and requires state law enforcement officials to question people about their immigration status during lawful contact if they have suspicion they are in the country illegally.
The law is scheduled to take effect in August but faces possible legal challenges, including possibly by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. who has said the Obama administration is considering going to court over the issue.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome has imposed an immediate moratorium on city employee traveling to Arizona for official business.
Among the biggest and most recent calls for a boycott is the one by Rep. Jose E. Serrano, New York Democrat, who plans to ask Major League Baseball to move the 2011 All-Star game out of Phoenix, which would cost the state millions in lost revenue.
"This anti-immigrant law is unjust, wrong-headed, mean-spirited, and unconstitutional," he said. "MLB has a very loud megaphone and their rejection of Arizona's action would be an important demonstration to Arizona that we do not tolerate such displays of intolerance in our nation."
Mr. Beck said another part of his group's help-Arizona plan is to target those calling for the boycotts, but perhaps not in this case.
"We don't want to punish New York," he said. "But we will demand the All-Star game goes as planned."
SOURCE
Immigration Issue Reveals the Prejudice of the Leaders towards the led
Last week, the immigration issue told voters a lot about the men leading Great Britain and its erstwhile colony, the United States. Unfortunately, most of it wasn’t very good.
Hapless British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s re-election campaign was shaken to its roots when a live microphone broadcast him calling Gillian Duffy, one of his constituents, a “bigoted woman.” The basis for Brown’s claim? The grandmotherly Duffy had asked him, “You can’t say anything about the immigrants, because you’re saying that you’re… but all these Eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they all flocking from?” That was all.
Here in the United States, President Obama has been lucky enough to evade open microphones. Even so, he’s made his views clear when it comes to those who favor stemming the tide of illegal immigrants into the Southwest. After Arizona passed a law empowering state and local police to determine people's immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" they are in the United States illegally, Obama immediately denounced the law as “misguided” and slammed the “irresponsibility” of the Arizona legislature.
He went on to assert that the law will not only “undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans,” but that it might also mean that “if you are a Hispanic American in Arizona . . . suddenly if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed.” Not to put too fine a point on it, the President clearly believes that the people who passed the law (and those who will enforce it) are . . . bigoted.
It’s worth noting that Brown and Obama lead political parties – Labour and Democrat, respectively – that take pride in characterizing themselves as representatives of “the common man.” Why, then, are they so quick to impugn the characters of regular, everyday people who simply disagree with them on immigration issues?
Of course, fingering others as mindlessly prejudiced flatters the moral vanity of the accuser, who condemns from Olympian heights of tolerance and large-heartedness. But there’s more to it than that.
Being able to dismiss as ignorance or bigotry the wishes and opinions of one’s constituents relieves a leader of responsibility for acting. That’s convenient, especially in the immigration debate – where “inclusiveness,” that Holy Grail of political correctness, can conflict with hard truths on the ground.
In fact, an influx of Eastern Europeans into northern Britain has placed severe economic pressure on working class people like Gillian Duffy. The high-tax, growth-suppressing policies embraced by Brown’s Labour Party certainly don’t do much to solve the problem. Paul Waugh, deputy political editor of the London Evening Standard – and a native of the same town as Brown’s interlocutor – characterized the entire exchange between Brown and Duffy as “a cry for help from working class Britain.”
In many ways, the Arizona law reflects the same kind of desperation. My hairstylist’s sister-in-law bought what she thought was a wonderful new house in Arizona – only to find that, every morning, her front yard is a well-traveled byway for illegal immigrants entering this country. In southwestern states, overcrowded schools, jam-packed emergency rooms, teeming prisons and congested highways have become the norm, all as a result of the federal government’s ongoing refusal to enforce the immigration laws on the books. It’s unreasonable – and unfair – to believe that everyone who objects does so only for invidious reasons.
Ultimately, perhaps the greatest failing of Brown and Obama – and those in the governing classes more generally – is one of imagination. As governments in both countries grow by leaps and bounds, every new layer of bureaucracy further insulates and isolates the rulers from the everyday existences of those they rule. If the Prime Minister and the President honestly can’t discern any reason but bigotry for their fellow citizens’ concerns about immigration, perhaps it means they’ve been living a life of privilege, courtesy of the taxpayers, for just a little too long.
SOURCE
3 May, 2010
How Mexico Treats Illegal Aliens
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has accused Arizona of opening the door "to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement." But Arizona has nothing on Mexico when it comes to cracking down on illegal aliens. While open-borders activists decry new enforcement measures signed into law in "Nazi-zona" last week, they remain deaf, dumb or willfully blind to the unapologetically restrictionist policies of our neighbors to the south.
The Arizona law bans sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws, stiffens penalties against illegal alien day laborers and their employers, makes it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to complete and carry an alien registration document, and allows the police to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving they are in the U.S. legally. If those rules constitute the racist, fascist, xenophobic, inhumane regime that the National Council of La Raza, Al Sharpton, Catholic bishops and their grievance-mongering followers claim, then what about these regulations and restrictions imposed on foreigners?
-- The Mexican government will bar foreigners if they upset "the equilibrium of the national demographics." How's that for racial and ethnic profiling?
-- If outsiders do not enhance the country's "economic or national interests" or are "not found to be physically or mentally healthy," they are not welcome. Neither are those who show "contempt against national sovereignty or security." They must not be economic burdens on society and must have clean criminal histories. Those seeking to obtain Mexican citizenship must show a birth certificate, provide a bank statement proving economic independence, pass an exam and prove they can provide their own health care.
-- Illegal entry into the country is equivalent to a felony punishable by two years' imprisonment. Document fraud is subject to fine and imprisonment; so is alien marriage fraud. Evading deportation is a serious crime; illegal re-entry after deportation is punishable by ten years' imprisonment. Foreigners may be kicked out of the country without due process and the endless bites at the litigation apple that illegal aliens are afforded in our country (see, for example, President Obama's illegal alien aunt -- a fugitive from deportation for eight years who is awaiting a second decision on her previously rejected asylum claim).
-- Law enforcement officials at all levels -- by national mandate -- must cooperate to enforce immigration laws, including illegal alien arrests and deportations. The Mexican military is also required to assist in immigration enforcement operations. Native-born Mexicans are empowered to make citizens' arrests of illegal aliens and turn them in to authorities.
-- Ready to show your papers? Mexico's National Catalog of Foreigners tracks all outside tourists and foreign nationals. A National Population Registry tracks and verifies the identity of every member of the population, who must carry a citizens' identity card. Visitors who do not possess proper documents and identification are subject to arrest as illegal aliens.
All of these provisions are enshrined in Mexico's Ley General de Población (General Law of the Population) and were spotlighted in a 2006 research paper published by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy. There's been no public clamor for "comprehensive immigration reform" in Mexico, however, because pro-illegal alien speech by outsiders is prohibited.
Consider: Open-borders protesters marched freely at the Capitol building in Arizona, comparing GOP Gov. Jan Brewer to Hitler, waving Mexican flags, advocating that demonstrators "Smash the State," and holding signs that proclaimed "No human is illegal" and "We have rights."
But under the Mexican constitution, such political speech by foreigners is banned. Noncitizens cannot "in any way participate in the political affairs of the country." In fact, a plethora of Mexican statutes enacted by its congress limit the participation of foreign nationals and companies in everything from investment, education, mining and civil aviation to electric energy and firearms. Foreigners have severely limited private property and employment rights (if any).
As for abuse, the Mexican government is notorious for its abuse of Central American illegal aliens who attempt to violate Mexico's southern border. The Red Cross has protested rampant Mexican police corruption, intimidation and bribery schemes targeting illegal aliens there for years. Mexico didn't respond by granting mass amnesty to illegal aliens, as it is demanding that we do. It clamped down on its borders even further. In late 2008, the Mexican government launched an aggressive deportation plan to curtain illegal Cuban immigration and human trafficking through Cancun.
Meanwhile, Mexican consular offices in the United States have coordinated with left-wing social justice groups and the Catholic Church leadership to demand a moratorium on all deportations and a freeze on all employment raids across America.
Mexico is doing the job Arizona is now doing -- a job the U.S. government has failed miserably to do: putting its people first. Here's the proper rejoinder to all the hysterical demagogues in Mexico (and their sympathizers here on American soil) now calling for boycotts and invoking Jim Crow laws, apartheid and the Holocaust because Arizona has taken its sovereignty into its own hands:
Hipócritas.
SOURCE
Immigration lies from Britain's Leftist PM
Gordon Brown was under fire this evening over a series of ‘misleading’ claims about Labour’s record on immigration.
In a highly embarrassing development the independent statistics watchdog, Sir Michael Scholar, has ordered an inquiry into the use of figures supposedly showing that Labour’s new points-based system has reduced the level of immigration.
Mr Brown has also been forced to admit that Labour has not banned low-skilled chefs and care assistants entering the country from abroad, as he has repeatedly claimed during the campaign.
The revelations came as a new study revealed that more than a one million extra immigrants are set to enter Britain over the coming five years.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: ‘This government doesn’t seem to know how to be straight with the public about their record on immigration. 'For the Prime Minister to be rebuked like this twice is a real sign that he just won't face up to the consequences of his mismanagement of our immigration system.’
The intervention from Sir Michael came after the Prime Minister used unpublished Home Office figures to suggest that the points-based immigration system had cut the number of migrants from outside the EU.
Mr Brown boasted that the number of IT workers and engineers coming to Britain had been cut by 20,000 following the introduction of the scheme. But he failed to mention accompanying figures showing the number of foreign students rose by 65,000 during the same period.
In a further blow to Mr Brown’s credibility on the issue he was forced to admit he had exaggerated the scope of the points-based system, which is designed to ensure that only migrants with skills needed by the British economy are allowed to enter from outside the EU.
During the leaders’ debates Mr Brown has repeatedly suggested that low-skilled chefs and care assistants have been excluded from the scheme. In the first debate he said: ‘No care assistants come in from outside the EU.’ In fact, both categories of workers can still come to work in Britain.
Confronted on the issue during an interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman, Mr Brown admitted that the ban had not been implemented, but insisted it would be brought in within the next ‘year or two’.
Meanwhile, a new report from the think tank Migrationwatch found that 2.5million immigrants are set to enter Britain over the next decade, with one million expected in the next five years. The study is based on projections from the Office for National Statistics.
A YouGov poll commissioned by the organisation yesterday also showed that the majority of voters are opposed to Liberal Democrat plans for an amnesty for up to 600,000 immigrants who have been here illegally for more than 10 years.
The poll found 54per cent of people opposed to the idea, with only 30per cent in support. Opposition was even stronger among those considering voting Lib Dem.
SOURCE
2 May, 2010
Bigotry label for thee, not me
Liberals bash Arizonans from the back seat of their limos
By Mark Steyn
As I write, I have my papers on me - and not just because I'm in Arizona. I'm an immigrant, and it is a condition of my admission to this great land that I carry documentary proof of my residency status with me at all times and be prepared to produce it to law enforcement officials, whether on a business trip to Tucson or taking a 20-minute stroll in the woods back at my pad in New Hampshire.
Who would impose such an outrageous Nazi fascist discriminatory law? Er, well, that would be Franklin D. Roosevelt.
But don't let the fine print of the New Deal prevent you from going into full-scale meltdown. "Boycott Arizona-stan!" urges MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, surely a trifle Islamophobically: What has some blameless Central Asian basket case done to deserve being compared with a hellhole like Phoenix?
Boycott Arizona Iced Tea, jests Travis Nichols of Chicago. It is "the drink of fascists." Just as regular tea is the drink of racists, according to Newsweek's in-depth and apparently nonsatirical poll analysis of anti-Obama protests. At San Francisco's City Hall, where bottled water is banned as the drink of climate denialists, Mayor Gavin Newsom is boycotting for real: All official visits to Arizona have been canceled indefinitely. You couldn't get sanctions like these imposed at the U.N. Security Council, but then, unlike Arizona, Iran is not a universally reviled pariah.
Will a full-scale economic embargo devastate the Copper State? Who knows? It's not clear to me what San Francisco imports from Arizona. Chaps? But, at any rate, like the bottled-water ban, it sends a strong signal that this kind of hate will not be tolerated.
The same day that Mr. Newsom took his bold stand, I saw a phalanx of police officers doing the full Robocop - black body armor, helmets and visors - as they marched down the street. Goosestepping? No, it's actually quite hard to goosestep in those steel-reinforced kneepads. So just regular marching.
Naturally, I assumed they were Arizona state troopers performing a routine traffic stop. In fact, they were the police department of Quincy, Ill., facing down a group of genial Tea Party grandmas in sun hats and American-flag T-shirts. They were acting at the behest of President Obama's Secret Service, which rightly recognized a polite knot of citizens singing "God Bless America" as a clear and present danger to the republic.
If I were a member of the Quincy PD, I'd wear a full-face visor, too, because I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror. It's a tough job making yourself a paramilitary laughingstock. Yet the coastal frothers denouncing Arizona as the Third Reich or, at best, apartheid South Africa, seem entirely relaxed about the ludicrous and embarrassing sight of peaceful protesters being menaced by camp storm troopers from either a dinner-theater space opera or uniforms night at Mr. Newsom's re-election campaign.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the flailing Prime Minister Gordon Brown was on the stump in northern England and met an actual voter, one Gillian Duffy. Alas, she made the mistake of expressing very mild misgivings about immigration. Not the black, brown and yellow kind, but only the faintly swarthy Balkan blokes from Eastern Europe. And actually all she said about immigrants was that "you can't say anything about the immigrants." The prime minister brushed it aside blandly, made some chitchat about her grandkids and got back in his limo, forgetting that he was still miked. "That was a disaster," he sighed. "Should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? ... She's just a sort of bigoted woman."
After the broadcast of his "gaffe" and the sight of Mr. Brown slumped with his head in his hands as a radio interviewer replayed the remarks to him, the prime minister found himself going round to Mrs. Duffy's home to abase himself before her. Most of the initial commentary focused on what the incident revealed about Mr. Brown's character, but the larger point is what it says about the governing elites and their own voters. Mrs. Duffy is a lifelong supporter of Mr. Brown's Labor Party, but she represents the old working class the party no longer has much time for. Travis Nichols may be joking about "the drink of fascists," but, in the same way as Gavin Newsom and Keith Olbermann, Gordon Brown genuinely believes Gillian Duffy has drunk deeply from the drink of bigots for so much as raising the subject of immigration. How dare she, ungrateful bigot!
Mrs. Duffy lives in the world Mr. Brown has created. He, on the other hand, gets into his chauffeured limo and is whisked far away from it.
That's Arizona. To the coastal commentariat, "undocumented immigrants" are the people who mow your lawn while you're at work and clean your office while you're at home. (That, for the benefit of The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse, is the real apartheid: the acceptance of a permanent "undocumented" servant class by far too many "documented" Americans who assuage their guilt by pathetic sentimentalization of immigration.) But in border states, illegal immigration is life and death. I spoke to a lady this week who has a camp of illegals on the edge of her land. She lies awake at night, fearful for her children and alert to strange noises in the yard.
President Obama, shooting from his lip, attacked the new law as an offense against "fairness." Where's the fairness for this woman's family? Because her home is in Arizona rather than Hyde Park, Chicago, she's just supposed to get used to living under siege? Like Mrs. Duffy in northern England, this lady has to live there, while the political class that created this situation climbs back into the limo and gets driven far away.
Almost every claim made for the benefits of mass immigration is false. Europeans were told that they needed immigrants to help prop up their otherwise unaffordable social entitlements: In reality, Turks in Germany have three times the rate of welfare dependency as ethnic Germans, and their average retirement age is 50. Two-thirds of French imams are on the dole.
But wait: What about the broader economic benefits? The World Bank calculated that if rich countries increased their work forces by a mere 3 percent by admitting an extra 14 million people from developing countries, it would benefit the populations of those rich countries by $139 billion. Wow.
In his book "Reflections on the Revolution In Europe," Christopher Caldwell points out, "The aggregate gross domestic product of the advanced economies for the year 2008 is estimated by the International Monetary Fund at close to $40 trillion." So an extra $139 billion works out to a spectacular 0.0035 percent. Mr. Caldwell compares the World Bank argument to Austin Powers' nemesis, Dr. Evil, holding the world hostage for 1 million dollars. "Sacrificing 0.0035 of your economy would be a pittance to pay for starting to get your country back." A dependence on mass immigration is not a gold mine nor an opportunity to flaunt your multicultural bona fides, but a structural weakness, and it should be addressed as such.
The majority of Arizona's schoolchildren are already Hispanic. So, even if you sealed the border today, the state's future is as a Hispanic society - that's a given. Maybe it'll all work out swell. The citizenry never voted for it, but they got it anyway. Because all the smart guys in the limos bemoaning the bigots knew what was best for them.
SOURCE
Axing British immigration staff 'could see Dover overrun'
Fears were raised last night that the key port of Dover could be overrun by illegal immigrants after it emerged Labour is to axe a whole tier of senior border staff. All 24 staff with the title immigration officer - responsible for deciding whether migrants should be let into the country - will lose their jobs. They have been credited with 40 per cent of all the removals of illegal immigrants from Kent last year.
But the UK Border Agency plans to use cheaper junior staff who will not have the same powers to challenge those suspected of being illegal immigrants or potential visa over-stayers.
In another blow, proposals are also being made to shut down the 60-bed Dover detention centre. The facility is used to detain offenders before deportation and to hold immigrants awaiting interview.
Sue Kendal, branch secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: 'Dover is losing its entire immigration officer team and we are in danger of reverting to the bad old days of mass influxes.
'We risk leaving the door open for a free-for-all, including people who want to harm the UK. The Government talks tough but in reality it is cutting front-line officers.'
Two chief immigration officers will also be axed, leaving just five, and assistant officers will decrease from 23 to 21. Further cuts in nearby Folkestone take the job losses to 30, according to unions.
The cuts, revealed in a leaked email, do not affect immigration officers on the Continent who check passports before travellers set off for the UK.
Mrs Kendal said: 'Immigration officers do what we call "challenging interviews", meaning they can challenge the answers given. This is a crucial stage but soon it will have gone. Assistant immigration officers have far fewer powers and can't do this, but of course they're much cheaper to employ. 'They also won't be operating for 24-hours-a-day any more. Kent is the UK's frontline for immigration but some posts are being moved to Croydon, which is hardly a hotbed of illegal entry activity.'
In the job cuts memo regional deputy director Graham Ralph wrote: 'The budget for Kent - including Dover, will be reduced by £1.5million annually. 'This is a difficult and uncertain time for everyone. I urge staff to work together to get through this restructure.'
A spokesman for UKBA said: 'We are consulting with unions and staff over the planned restructure of our Kent immigration team. 'It is anticipated there will be fewer full-time equivalent positions in Kent, with some of these positions transferring to Sussex. It is not proposed the restructure will result in compulsory job losses.' All remaining staff will have to reapply for their jobs.
Last night shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: 'Yet again Gordon Brown and his ministers are being completely hypocritical. 'With an election due they have been trying to talk tough on immigration while behind the scenes they have been cutting our border controls. Things have to change.'
SOURCE
1 May, 2010
Both Left and Right hit 'amnesty' for illegals in Britain
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Conservative Party challenger, David Cameron, on Thursday opposed giving amnesty to illegal immigrants, saying that would send the wrong message to people looking to sneak into Britain.
A question on immigration turned into a flashpoint in the third and final televised debate among Mr. Brown, Mr. Cameron and Liberal Democratic candidate Nick Clegg in Birmingham.
Mr. Brown's Labor Party slipped in the polls this week after the prime minister was caught on an open microphone describing a longtime party supporter as "bigoted" after she expressed concern about the influx of Eastern European immigrants.
In a bid to recover from the gaffe, Mr. Brown referred good-naturedly to the incident in his opening remarks. "There is a lot to this job, and as you saw yesterday - I don't get all of it right," he said. A former chancellor of the exchequer, he played up his economic credentials, adding, "But I do know how to run the economy in good times and in bad."
On Wednesday, Mr. Brown had been critical of the Labor Party worker's question on immigrants, but a day later, he said he was opposed to a proposal from Mr. Clegg's party to provide amnesty to illegal immigrants.
"I can't see how you send out anything but the worst possible message by giving amnesty to people who have come to this country illegally. ... It encourages other people to come here illegally," Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Cameron described immigration in Britain as "too high for too long."
The Conservative leader proposed a cap on immigration, saying one of the benefits of stemming the flow would be allowing those already in the country to better integrate.
Describing the Liberal Democrats' amnesty as a "complete mistake," Mr. Cameron said, "We should be trying to reward people for doing the right thing."
Mr. Clegg accused Mr. Cameron of mischaracterizing his amnesty plan. The proposal is to give amnesty to illegal immigrants who have been in the country for 10 years, provided they meet certain conditions.
More HERE
Australian conservatives get tough on immigration
OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has vowed to keep population growth in Australia to below 30 million by 2050 and will more than halve the current immigration rate to achieve it.
And future population targets would be tied to a target range, much like the inflation rate settings determined by the Reserve Bank, set by Cabinet on the advice of an independent commission.
Releasing the Coalition's draft population policy, the federal Opposition Leader yesterday issued a direct challenge to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's "big Australia" policy, claiming it has set a target of 36 million by 2050.
Mr Abbott said he would also, for the first time, make it Liberal Party policy to restrict migrant intake to Australia to a two-thirds ratio of skilled workers to non-skilled workers.
Blog with Tony at midday Friday: Rudd's wrong population target
The Coalition believes it is on an election winner when it comes to immigration and population issues and Mr Abbott yesterday chose the hot point of anti-immigration sentiment in western Sydney to make the point.
"The current immigration numbers are utterly unsustainable," Mr Abbott said. "What we are saying with certainty is that we cannot continue to take 300,000 people a year."
Mr Abbott said that, if elected, the Coalition would also relax the red tape for skilled migrant visas - the 457 visa system - and also would apply a critical skills test to industries to determine if and where real occupational needs existed.
Mr Abbott told The Daily Telegraph his policy discussion paper was a formal rejection of Mr Rudd's "target" of 36 million people by 2050.
That is the predicted size of the Australian population at an annual net migration rate of 180,000.
However, at the current 300,000 figure, Australia's population would be closer to 43 million people.
To achieve a population target of fewer than 36 million people, the current migration rates would have to be virtually halved.
And the Coalition policy would give an expanded role to the Productivity Commission, which would be tasked with setting a population target range that would cover the short, medium and long term.
Population Minister Tony Burke responded to Mr Abbott's policy, claiming the Government did not have a target of 36 million.
"It's a lie," he said. "It's merely a projection from Treasury. It was not a target. Not an ambition. Not a policy."
SOURCE
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: You usually CAN buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
