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31 October, 2007

Why was this menace still in the USA?

Court records show that a Durham man who is accused of going the wrong way on Interstate 540 Thursday morning was convicted of driving while impaired in 2006 - at the first of at least five appearances in court that year. Authorities on Friday charged Eblin Fabiel Ocampo Cruz, 22, of U.S. Highway 70 West, with one count each of DWI, reckless driving, failure to reduce speed and possession of a revoked license. He also faces charges involving driving the wrong way on the highway. "We're dealing with a person who's got some serious issues going on," Lt. Everett Clendenin, spokesman for the state Highway Patrol, said.

Authorities said Cruz was driving westbound on eastbound I-540 between Creedmoor and Six Forks roads around 2:45 a.m. when he collided head-on with a Ford Mustang. Both drivers had to be removed from their vehicles and remained hospitalized on Friday evening. The driver of the other vehicle, Bettie Coates, 42, of Wake County, was listed in serious condition Friday afternoon, troopers said.

Cruz was wanted by the Department of Correction for probation violations, and had been listed, as of Oct. 8, as an absconder. "He had not reported to his probation officer and was not complying with the terms of his probation," said Keith Acree, a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Correction. "In fact, we lost track of him. We didn't know where he was and had a warrant out for his arrest." Court records show Cruz was on probation for several different offenses. In February 2006, he was convicted in Durham of DWI. A month later, he was convicted of misdemeanor unauthorized use of a vehicle and misdemeanor breaking and entering. In May 2006, Cruz pleaded pleaded guilty to reckless driving and passing an emergency vehicle. "That's why he shouldn't be out on the highway. He should be behind bars, from what I'm hearing," Clendenin said.

Charges continued to follow Cruz: resisting an officer in October 2006 and possession of stolen goods in December 2006. Officials said they belive he may also be behind some more serious crimes. Cruz went by several names, and one of those aliases is wanted for second-degree kidnapping and assault on a female in Orange County. "It's putting people in danger," Clendenin said.

Immigration agents said they are investigating the status of Cruz, who was born in Honduras. Troopers said they will be waiting when Cruz is released from the hospital, where he is being treated for internal bleeding and a fractured leg. "He's being monitored, and when it comes time for him to be released, there will be a trooper there to take custody of him," Clendenin said.

Source



300,000 invisible people in Britain suddenly revealed

Peter Hain was forced to apologise last night after admitting that the number of foreign citizens working in Britain had increased by 300,000 more than he told MPs earlier this month. Mr Hain, the Welfare Secretary, also admitted that a claim that Britons had taken 2 million of the extra 2.7 million jobs created since Labour came to power could not be proved by official statistics.

In a letter to the Speaker and other MPs, Mr Hain said that the errors had been made in good faith. The upward revisions are certain to further fuel the debate about the Government’s ability, and willingness, to assess levels of migration accurately. Mr Hain told MPs on October 8 that 800,000 extra foreign nationals were working in Britain in comparison with ten years ago. “Following further careful analysis of the Labour Force Survey, this figure has been revised upwards by 0.3 million. This revised analysis shows that there are an extra 1.1 million foreign nationals in employment in the UK since 1997,” Mr Hain states in his letter of apology. He continues that his claims on the number of new jobs being taken by British citizens is also not technically accurate.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said that the revision had been made partly because of “a more rigourous definition of foreign national workers to include, among other things, those who were in the country before 1997 who have subsequently taken up jobs”. The spokesman also claimed that about half the new jobs had been taken by EU nationals. The Home Office will confirm tomorrow that restrictions on low-skilled workers from Bulgaria and Romania will stay in place.

Ministers admitted recently that the Government was revising estimates for the net number of migrants to Britain from 145,000 a year to 190,000. It emerged that the 25-year projections included estimates of up to 240,000 in the initial years, close to record levels.

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Welfare Secretary, described the statistical revisions as farcical. “It is difficult to see how we are supposed to have confidence in Labour’s policies if they cannot have confidence in their own figures,” he said.

Source





30 October, 2007

British Conservatives to cut immigration

Tory leader David Cameron pledged to cut net immigration into the UK, to ward off "unsustainable" pressure on the country's public services and infrastructure. In his first major speech on immigration, Mr Cameron set out his "modern Conservative population strategy" to slow the rate of growth in the numbers of people living in the UK. A Tory administration would set annual limits on economic migration from outside the EU "substantially lower" than the current rate, set up a Border Police Force with powers to track down and remove illegal migrants, and impose transitional controls on the right of nationals of new EU states to work in the UK.

And Mr Cameron said he would raise the minimum age for spouses coming to Britain to 21 and demand that they are able to speak English. A failure to reduce net immigration would "make it more difficult for a Conservative government to deliver its vision of opportunity, responsibility and security", he warned.

The Conservative leader also cautioned: "The promises that Gordon Brown makes - whether on improving the NHS, the education system or housing provision - will quite simply be overwhelmed by his failure to deal with the root causes of our demographic challenge."

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest, on current trends, the UK's population will rise from 60.6 million to more than 71 million by 2031, increasing pressure on housing, healthcare, schools, the transport system, energy and water supplies. Some of the increased pressure comes from Britain's ageing population, as well as the "atomisation" of society through divorce, family break-up and later marriage, which means more single-person households, said Mr Cameron. But with 190,000 more people coming to the UK from abroad than leave the country each year, the bulk of the population rise - around 70% - is driven by immigration.

"Of course we should recognise that in an advanced, open economy there will be high levels of both emigration and immigration," said Mr Cameron in his speech in central London. "But what matters is the net figure, which I believe is currently too high... It is time for change. We need policy to reduce the level of net immigration. And we need policy to strengthen society and combat atomisation."

Immigration minister Liam Byrne accused Mr Cameron of "rehashing platitudes". "He talks of a limit on immigration numbers but nowhere does he say what this would be," he said.

Source



A "three-tier license system" that fingers lawbreakers?

Post below lifted from Dinocrat. See the original for links

Newsday reports that New York is about to adopt a three-tier driver's license scheme, the lowest tier of which virtually identifies the holder as being in the United States illegally:

The Bush administration and New York cut a deal Saturday to create a new generation of super-secure driver's licenses for U.S. citizens, but also allow illegal immigrants to get a version.The deal comes about one month after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced a plan whereby illegal immigrants with a valid foreign passport could obtain a license. Saturday's agreement with the Homeland Security Department will create a three-tier license system in New York.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he was not happy that New York intended to issue IDs to illegal immigrants. But he said there was nothing he could do to stop it. "I don't endorse giving licenses to people who are not here legally, but federal law does allow states to make that choice," Chertoff said. "It's going to be a big deal up in Buffalo, it's going to be a big deal on the Canadian side of the border," Chertoff said. The governor made clear he is going forward with his plan allowing licenses for illegal immigrants.

Under the compromise, New York will produce an "enhanced driver's license" that will be as secure as a passport. It is intended for people who soon will need to meet such ID requirements, even for a short drive to Canada. A second version of the license will meet new federal standards of the Real ID Act. That law is designed to make it much harder for illegal immigrants or would-be terrorists to obtain licenses. A third type of license will be available to undocumented immigrants. Spitzer has said this ID will make the state more secure by bringing those people "out of the shadows" and into American society, and will lower auto insurance rates.

Those licenses will be clearly marked to show they are not valid federal ID. Officials, however, would not say whether that meant local law enforcement could use such a license as probable cause to detain someone they suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.

Perhaps we're missing something, but this sounds even zanier than Spitzer's first harebrained scheme to "allow illegal immigrants to obtain the same kind of driver's licenses as other New Yorkers." The new third-tier driver's license would appear to specifically identify the holder as a person in the United States illegally.

Therefore, the likely outcomes are that (a) illegal aliens will not apply for the license; and (b) advocacy groups will file suit and take other measures to ensure that a card that screams that the holder is a lawbreaker must be ignored by authorities. Is that an intended or unintended consequence of this nutty scheme?





29 October, 2007

Spitzer backs down -- partly

In a dramatic move to quiet opposition, Gov. Spitzer is expected to announce a major revision - but not an abandonment - of his plan to let illegal immigrants obtain driver's licenses. Spitzer will appear Saturday morning with Homeland Security officials in Washington to discuss his new plan, sources said. His original plan had sparked criticism that it would not comply with the federal Real ID Act. His new plan will set up two types of licenses - a Real ID-compliant license available to U.S. citizens and others legally in the country, and another license both illegal immigrants and citizens would be eligible to get, sources said.

Spitzer has faced enormous opposition to his plan from Republican opponents, the electorate, and even county clerks upstate who have vowed not to grant the licenses. A Siena College poll this month found an extraordinary 72% of New Yorkers opposed licenses for undocumented immigrants.

Spitzer had hinted at possible flexibility during an appearance earlier this month at NYU Law School. He noted that some states had opted out of Real ID, but that he did not see New York doing so. When Real ID takes full effect in 2013, that will be an issue critical not just for security but for the convenience of any New Yorker who uses a driver's license as proof of identity to board an airplane. Real ID was passed after the attacks of Sept. 11 and intended to provide a uniform, secure form of identification for U.S. citizens and those living here legally.

Spitzer said at NYU that because of Real ID, "People in many states will have a two-tiered structure, where there will be a license that will satisfy" federal law. The other document available under such arrangements would be a no-frills state license, he said then.

Spitzer's opponents, including Republican legislators in both the state Senate and Assembly, say giving illegal immigrants licenses opens a door to terrorism. Opponents also argue that noncitizens shouldn't get citizen privileges, and may use the documents to gain other privileges, like trying to vote.

Source



Immigration reform: Not with a bang

Open borders advocates and immigration amnesty enthusiasts long have argued that draconian raids and inhumane mass deportations are the only alternative, should America take seriously national sovereignty and the rule of law. The straw man vision of convoys of thousands of busses being necessary to convey illegal immigrants out of the country, along with the expectation that restaurants, construction, agriculture being crippled owing to the rule of law has convinced many to oppose actual enforcement of existing laws.

Such a vision betrays a mind accustomed to thinking that nothing ever happens unless some government official takes action and requires it to happen. The old command and control mentality at work. There is accumulating anecdotal evidence that, owing to better law enforcement and a downturn in the construction industry, large numbers of illegals are self-deporting. On October 19, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit noted:

You don't seem to see as many Mexicans around Knoxville as a few months ago, and I noticed that the landscaping outfit that does the common areas in my neighborhood -- whose workers were all Mexican as recently as this summer -- became kind of scarce for a few weeks and is now back with workers who are all quite obviously non-Mexican. Could this be related to the jailing of a local businessman for immigration violations? See here. Probably. It suggests that even modest enforcement efforts might have a real impact.

Elisabeth Malkin of the International Herald Tribune writes an article headlined, "Mexicans miss money from relatives up north."

For years, millions of Mexican migrants working in the United States have sent money back home to villages like this one, money that allows families to pay medical bills and school fees, build houses and buy clothes or, if they save enough, maybe start a tiny business. But after years of strong increases, the amount of migrant money flowing to Mexico has stagnated. From 2000 to 2006, remittances grew to nearly $24 billion a year from $6.6 billion, rising more than 20 percent some years. In 2007, the increase so far has been less than 2 percent.

Migrants and migration experts say a flagging American economy and an enforcement campaign against illegal workers in the United States have persuaded some migrants not to try to cross the border illegally to look for work. Others have decided to return to Mexico. And many of those who are staying in the United States are sending less money home.

In the rest of the world, remittances are rising, up as much as 10 percent a year, according to Donald Terry of the Inter-American Development Bank. Last year, migrant workers worldwide sent more than $300 billion to developing countries - almost twice the amount of foreign direct investment. But in Mexico, families are feeling squeezed.

Sound inhumane? Dig a little deeper into the article, and the victim-centered prose that charafcterizes a New York Times-owned publication begins to be supplanted by some data that confirms the power of ordinary people reacting to incentives:

Some of the men are back and need cash for seeds and fertilizer to plow long-neglected fields. At the microcredit association operated by a local nonprofit group, the Baj¡o Women's Network, loans for agriculture, which barely existed last year, now account for 11 percent of all borrowing.

Imagine! Able and hard-working Mexicans, unable to violate our borders with impunity, are instead reinvigorating the moribund local economy. To be sure, the corruption and heavy hand of government in Mexico may well stifle these efforts, but if easy escape to the El Norte is no longer an alternative, perhaps there might be more interest in reforming Mexico, a country many have remarked is blessed with abundant natural resources, two long and beautiful coastlines, and a hard-working populace.

There is no reason beyond bad governance why Mexico must be poor. American open borders offer a safety valve relieving pressure for reform in Mexico!

Meanwhile, the grape harvest here in California is in, and there were no reports of fruit rotting on the vines for lack of picking crews. Similarly, I have spotted no fast food restaurants closed for lack of help, and no construction sites closed down for lack of labor.

Simple measures, like getting serious of about enforcement at the border combined with employer sanctions, provide the signals individuals need in order to make their plans. As one Mexican interviewed by Ms. Malkin put it:

"It's really tough to go back," he said. "Now they lock you up. Before, they grabbed you and sent you back. The laws were never this tough."

Source





28 October, 2007

Thompson: Immigration stance defines me

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson today discussed his new immigration proposal which, he said, distinguished him from his key rivals on the hot-button issue. “This does draw a distinction between myself and others,” Thompson said in a Des Moines Register interview before attending the Iowa GOP’s annual Ronald Reagan dinner in Des Moines.

Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, said he would end the policy of sanctuary cities, where illegal immigrants can obtain government benefits without fear of deportation. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who also is seeking the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, has been criticized by some Republican candidates for New York’s status as such a city during Giuliani’s term in office.

Thompson also appeared to be subtly criticizing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has been critical of bipartisan legislation in Congress to allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country. But Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has not proposed an immigration plan. And his promise to allow no amnesty was a shot at Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate who led the failed effort on the bipartisan bill last year.

Thompson’s plan also would double the number of immigration agents, increase border patrols to 25,000, prosecute illegal workers and their employers, and make English the official language of the United States. “It’s strong on enforcement and it basically addresses what needs to be our commitment and that is to secure the borders and enforce the law,” Thompson said.

Iowa Republicans rate immigration as a top priority. A Des Moines Register poll in May showed 27 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers considered immigration extremely important, closely behind the war in Iraq. Fighting terrorism and values were the only two issues to rank higher.

Thompson had previously said rounding up the estimated 12 million people in the country illegally was unrealistic. He said Saturday the number could shrink quickly through enforcement of existing law. “I think that we would have attrition if we had enforcement,” he said. “Over a period of time, we would begin to see the system rectify itself.”

Source



That evil bureaucracy again

Some of you may have noticed the absence of Rick Giles from this forum for the last month or so. He is not on vacation; he has not given up, or left in a huff. He is in jail, and has been since the 26th or 27th of September. He has been in prison, without arrest, without trial, without legal recourse or appeal, for almost a month. And why? What heinous crime, you might ask, warrants being thrown into jail with no rights, no information, and no idea how long he’ll be incarcerated? Well, the combined crimes of not being a US citizen and misreading the date on his tourist visa.

Rick was asking directions to the bus station, as pedestrians aren’t allowed to cross the border into Canada, on the 26th of last month. Instead of helping, the policeman took his ID, checked his visa, and found that instead of expiring on the 27th, as Rick believed, it expired on the 20th. He was taken into custody, and has been there ever since.

The INS, which is supposed to notify the New Zealand embassy whenever a NZ citizen is arrested, did not. His social worker, whom he requested get the address and phone number of the NZ consulate, got him the contact information for the embassy in New Zealand. If he hadn’t written my phone number on his arm during the few moments he had alone with his stuff, nobody would have any idea where he is. He used his one phone-call to call me, and I have harassed, begged, and bluffed my way to getting his address, inmate number, and all the information I can get, which is woefully little.

I have made contact with the NZ consulate in Chicago, and the Embassy in Washington DC. I informed them that one of their citizens had been summarily tossed into prison for the smallest offense imaginable. You’ll be glad to know that they are using their full diplomatic might on his behalf. They are making a file. They faxed him a letter informing him of his rights, which amount to nothing. They are very friendly and courteous, and try to be helpful. However, unless the US starts to torture Rick, there’s nothing they can do. Apparently the US government can hold him as long as they want, for whatever reason (or lack thereof) they choose.

This is a plea, dear SOLOists, from me. If anyone has any experience with dealing with the INS, or with the US Justice system… if anyone knows anything or anyone who can help, or even give advice, please contact me. I have done everything I can think of, and he’s still there, no court date, no rights, and no expectation of release. I can write letters to him, and send him books, writing materials, and stamps. However, I don’t even know where to begin to get him free.

Source





27 October, 2007

Britain: A country wrecked by unlimited immigration

One of the most telling points in the excellent piece in yesterday's Daily Telegraph by my colleague Jeff Randall, on the dishonesty of government statistics, was to do with immigration. Slough says it has so many immigrants it needs more money: the Government says it hasn't. For decades, bare-faced lies have been told by our rulers about immigration.

When Enoch Powell was vilified in the late 1960s for drawing attention to the problem, the then social services secretary, Dick Crossman, ordered officials to conceal what he and they knew to be the true figures. Is this deceit still going on? Perhaps. But - and this may be even worse - the difference between the statistics and reality may be down to sheer incompetence. The truth is that we have no idea how many people are in this country. That is a scandal.

We have no idea because this Government decided, when it came to power in 1997, that it would be a good idea to stop proper enforcement of border controls. Jack Straw, our smug so-called Justice Secretary, was home secretary at the time, and was responsible for this. His successor, David Blunkett, boasted continually about getting tough on illegal immigrants, promising round-ups and deportations of those with no right to be here. It never happened.

The result is that parts of the country, notably in and around London, are suffering from terrible overcrowding. Coupled with the Government's insane decision to allow unfettered rights of access to Britain by the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004, this has put a crippling strain on housing, the health service, schools and the police.

Immigration is not a racial problem: it is a problem of numbers, and one the Government not only refuses to admit, but will not even attempt to quantify. This week, we were told there were 11,000 foreigners in our prisons - one in seven of those inside - and the Government, with typical incompetence, is struggling to negotiate deals to have these people serve their sentences back home.

Yesterday, an independent body called the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit said that the Government's plans to build three million new homes by 2020 were not nearly adequate. Of course they are not, because of the state's determination to allow unlimited immigration and, with it, the end of the indigenous cultural identity. The tensions of what used to be called "multi-culturalism" are dangerous enough: but so are the practical issues.

Large parts of England will be concreted over to accommodate all these new people. There will have to be new roads, railways and airports. And since we are already full up, and our public services buckling, where are we going to put everyone?

Labour has covered up its failure to control our borders by saying that our economy needs immigrants. Well, if you are determined to have a welfare state that tolerates about eight million economically unproductive people of working age - the unemployed, those in "training" and those on various benefits because they believe they are unfit for work - then of course you will. It is time someone got serious.

The present Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has hardly put her head above the parapet on this one. Between now and the next census in 2011, she might like to do a little housekeeping. That means locating and deporting all those with no right to be here. It would not be that difficult.

More here



Va: Local legislation working

Supporters of the anti-illegal immigration measure adopted in Prince William County last week have argued that its most important purpose is to send a powerful signal to the county's mostly Latino illegal immigrants that they are no longer welcome. It appears the message has already been received: Terrified that new policies will lead to mass deportations, illegal immigrants and the many legal immigrant relatives and friends who live with them have been moving out of Prince William ever since July, when county supervisors first approved the plan's outline.

The size of the migration is difficult to measure, particularly during a year when slumping housing prices and skyrocketing foreclosures have led many residents to move for purely economic reasons. Still, signs of the growing climate of fear are everywhere. At the Freetown Market, a convenience store in a heavily Latino section of Woodbridge that offers U-Haul trucks for hire, one-way rentals have jumped from between 10 and 20 a month just before July to about 40 a month today.

In the same strip mall, at a money-transfer store where the customer line to pay utility bills once snaked out the door, business has slowed so dramatically the past three months that one clerk has been let go and the remaining one spends most of her time on the computer, e-mailing gloomy updates to relatives back home in Guatemala.

A few doors down, staff workers at the IMA English language academy will soon be taking the American flag decorations off the walls and moving to a smaller space, because the number of students has plummeted from 350 to about 60 since July. "There is a mass panic," said the academy's owner, Roberto Catacora. "Those who haven't already moved away don't dare step outside their houses."

Although one of the new measures directs county police to check the immigration status of only criminal suspects, many immigrants think that all Latinos will be subject to random sweeps, Catacora added. The effect on his once-bustling academy was palpable on a recent weeknight, when all but one of the six classrooms were deserted. Among the absent students was Jose Luis Pubeac, 42, a day laborer who sneaked into the country 18 months ago. He was busy preparing for his flight back to El Salvador on Saturday. "I was already thinking of going home, because I was having such a hard time finding work," said Pubeac, speaking on his cellphone as he raced around picking up presents for his five children back home. "But this law convinced me it was time. [They] hate us so much here."

More here





26 October, 2007

French crackdown approved

The French Parliament has passed a bill that will make immigration laws tougher for foreigners hoping to join their family members working in France. The controversial law requires prospective immigrants to pass tests in French and respect what it calls ''the values of the republic''.

What is causing a furore is that the law allows DNA tests to prove family links. Critics say the use of genetics for the selective immigration policy of the Sarkozy government stirs up memories of the Nazi occupation. ''What is serious is that this law is trying to say that immigrants can't have basic rights and the right to have a family life has been criminalised with this law that supports DNA tests,'' said Moulud Aounit, President, Movement Against Racism.

Most immigrants fear that this law will add fuel to the anti-immigrant sentiment making it even harder for them to find jobs and housing. Presuming that most immigrants provide fraudulent documents, the DNA tests, they feel, are a derogatory way to ask for proof of their family links. ''It's ok to ask immigrants to be well integrated and law abiding but these conditions are not human,'' said an immigrant.

While some have gone to the extent of calling this law xenophobic propaganda, others feel it's just an additional bureaucratic procedure. The fact that the law has already been passed in Parliament proves that even though the French have broad notions of how a family can be composed, for immigrants waiting to unite with their families the laws of genetics and descent will rule.

Source



Rudy Giuliani vows to curb illegal immigration in 3 years

If elected president, Rudy Giuliani wants to do for illegal immigration what he did for crime in New York City - reduce it dramatically within as little as three years. "It can be done. It is not impossible," Giuliani told an Iowa town hall-style meeting on Wednesday night. "You can do this, you can stop them at the border." To get the job done, Giuliani said he would boost the number of border patrol agents to 18,000 from the current 12,000 - much like he increased the size of the NYPD as mayor - and build a physical and "technological" border along the U.S.-Mexico border. "If you do this for two or three years, you'll change behavior," Giuliani said. "If people come to the border and figure they can't get in, they'll stop."

Giuliani has been touting his illegal immigration plans since last summer, but his pledge to put a time-limit on dealing with the problem - considered among the most complex on the domestic front - is a more recent addition. It comes as immigration continues capture the attention of GOP voters - and roil the Republican field - in ways few other issues have this election.

Rival Sen. John McCain supported a failed immigration bill that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. That stance cost him backing of party conservatives who view that as granting amnesty.

On Tuesday, rival Fred Thompson proposed stripping some federal grant money from cities and states that do not report illegal immigrants to federal authorities. Thompson also called for stronger border security.

Giuliani said the nation needs first to stop illegal immigration before it can turn its attention to the legal immigration it needs to fill certain jobs. His plan includes issuing tamper-proof ID cards to all non-citizen workers and students, and a national data-base that would track the arrival and departure of every foreign visitor. Giuliani - who as mayor was considered among the most immigrant-friendly executives in the country - has stopped short of calling for the deportation of all illegal immigrants, saying deporting 12 million people is an unrealistic goal. But he has called for the immediate deportation of all illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

Source





25 October, 2007

Big effort halts DREAM bill -- fails cloture

But Reid says he will try again soon -- maybe just bluster. Senators were flooded with faxes and calls against this deceptive bill

Legislation to give some children of illegal immigrants a path toward legality failed a crucial Senate vote Wednesday, probably dooming any chance of major changes to the immigration system this year. Supporters needed 60 votes to advance the proposal, but the tally was 52-44. The measure would have allowed illegal immigrants who plan to attend college or join the military, and who came to the United States with their families before they turned 16, to move toward legality.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act _ DREAM Act for short _ was a popular part of a broad immigration plan that would have legalized as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants and fortified the border. That larger bill failed in the Senate in June. But proponents of the DREAM Act wanted to see if it would pass on its own. "Children should not be penalized for the actions of their parents," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "What crime did these children commit?" added Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the Senate's No. 2 Democrat. "They committed the crime of obeying their parents and following their parents to this country. Do you think there was a vote in the household about their future? I don't think so." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said by blocking the bill, "Senate Republicans prevented a critical first step to address our nation's broken immigration system."

But Republican opponents of the bill said the plan was the first step to amnesty, which they said the Senate rejected in June. "I do not believe we should reward illegal behavior," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said. "This would be the wrong direction," added Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. "This would be to signal that once again we're focused on rewarding illegality rather than taking the steps necessary to create a lawful system."

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., saw a different problem. "I have grave reservations about seeing a part of comprehensive immigration reform going forward, because it weakens our position to get a comprehensive bill," he said. The White House opposes the legislation, but did not threaten to veto it. While sympathetic to children brought into the country illegally by their parents, the White House said in a statement the bill falls short by "creating a special path to citizenship that is unavailable to other prospective immigrants _ including young people whose parents respected the nation's immigration laws."

The immigration issue brings out passion from those on both sides of the issue. On Tuesday, GOP Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado called for an immigration raid on Durbin's news conference in the Capitol. Tancredo, who opposes the bill, said he suspected there might be illegal immigrants at the senator's news conference in favor of the bill. No one from immigration showed up, Durbin said later. There were no illegal immigrants there anyway, he said.

Source



GOP Finds Hot Button in Illegal Immigration

Special Election in Massachusetts Could Be Indicative of Democratic Weak Spot

When Republican Jim Ogonowski launched his long-shot bid for Congress, he prepared for an upbeat campaign in his Democratic, working-class district of Massachusetts, based on a winning r¨sum¨: affable hay farmer, former Air Force lieutenant colonel, and brother of an American Airlines pilot whose hijacked plane slammed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. But by last month, although opinion polling showed that he was well liked, he was still running 10 points behind Democrat Niki Tsongas with just weeks to go before a special election. The campaign needed a way to go beyond biography, to persuade Northern Massachusetts to vote Republican. They found it in illegal immigration.

On Tuesday, Ogonowski still fell short, but Tsongas's 51 to 45 percent victory was a shocker in a district where both John F. Kerry and Al Gore took 57 percent of the vote, and where liberal Democratic Rep. Martin T. Meehan served comfortably for eight terms. The underwhelming victory of the wife of deceased former senator Paul Tsongas has rekindled Democratic concerns about an immigration issue they had hoped had been put to rest. "This issue has real implications for the country. It captures all the American people's anger and frustration not only with immigration, but with the economy," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and an architect of the Democratic congressional victories of 2006. "It's self-evident. This is a big problem."

Republicans, sensing a major vulnerability, have been hammering Democrats, forcing Congress to face the question of illegal immigration on every bill they can find, from agriculture spending and housing assistance to the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). House Democrats are so concerned that they have resumed talks on a new legislative push, even though the collapse of an immigration deal in the Senate this spring has left virtually no chance that a final bill can be passed in this Congress.

But even in the early stages of this renewed effort, negotiations have only underscored the party's problems. Some Democratic leaders want what they call a "mini bill," emphasizing border control, penalties on firms that employ illegal immigrants and stronger efforts to deny illegal immigrants government benefits. But Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), the point man on the bill, said he will never accept a measure that does not include a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented workers in the country. "I think the Democrats are on the wrong side of this issue, and if they continue down this path, they are going to lose a lot of seats," said Matt Wylie, a strategist for the Ogonowski campaign.

The issue has shifted since concerns about illegal immigrants triggered angry calls for border fences and deportation two years ago. Now, voter anger appears to revolve around the belief that illegal immigrants are unfairly consuming government benefits, a fear that stems more from economic uncertainty than culture clashes, Democratic and Republican pollsters say. Those concerns are not everywhere. But they are glaring in some of the white, working-class districts in Kansas, Indiana, North Carolina and New Hampshire that gave the Democrats control of the House last year. And they were on clear display in Lowell, Mass.

"Immigration played into the economic issue," said Francis Talty, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell who followed the Tsongas-Ogonowski contest. "Do you want illegal immigrants to get in-state [university] tuition? Do you want them to get driver's licenses? Do you want their children to get benefits under SCHIP? It was the benefit side that has real resonance, not the deportation thing."

A new national poll for National Public Radio, conducted by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, found that voters are more likely to side with Democrats than Republicans on war, taxes and spending, the economy, health care and health insurance for children, often by wide margins. On immigration, the Republicans hold a 49 to 44 percent lead.

More here





24 October, 2007

DREAM Act Offers Amnesty to 2.1 Million

New Estimate Shows Another 1.4 Million Family Members Could Also Stay

The Senate is currently considering the DREAM Act (S.2205). Some have argued that only 60,000 illegal immigrants would be granted amnesty annually under the Act, but a new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of 2007 Census Bureau data shows millions of potential beneficiaries.

# An estimated 800,000 illegal immigrants under age 17 have been here long enough to qualify for legalization under the DREAM Act. There are a total of 1.7 million illegal aliens estimated to be under age 17.

# There are an estimated 900,000 parents of illegal aliens under age 17 who qualify. It is unclear whether the government would deport these parents.

# The DREAM Act is also unclear as to what will happen to the siblings of legalized illegals who are themselves illegal, but do not meet the Act's requirements. There are an estimated 500,000 of these siblings.

# The DREAM Act also allows illegal aliens ages 18 to 29 to legalize if they claim to have arrived prior to age 16. We estimate 1.3 million meet this requirement. There are a total of 4.4 million illegal aliens in this age group.

# Thus the total number of potential amnesty beneficiaries is 2.1 million (assuming no fraud). This does not include 1.4 million siblings and parents of qualifying illegals who may end up receiving a de facto amnesty.

# Prior legalization programs have been plagued by fraud. One-fourth (700,000) of those legalized in the 1986 amnesty are estimated to have done so fraudulently.

# Given the difficultly in determining whether an applicant meets the DREAM Act's amnesty requirements, coupled with the overworked nature of the immigration bureaucracy, fraud could be a significant problem.

Methodology: These estimates are based on a Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the March 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS) collected by the Census Bureau. No estimate is definitive, of course, but the Urban Institute, the Pew Hispanic Center, and the INS have all used the March CPS to estimate the size of the illegal population. We estimated that the survey included more than 11 million illegals in 2007. This is entirely consistent with prior research. The above numbers do NOT include those illegal aliens missed by the Census Bureau's survey. The Department of Homeland Security and other researchers have estimated that 10 percent of illegals are likely missed in Census Bureau surveys of this kind. Thus, the actual number of potential beneficiaries is almost certainly higher than the numbers discussed above.

We use the demographic characteristics of respondents to distinguish legal and illegal immigrants in the survey. We combine this with the estimated number of legal immigrants in the country. This method is based on some very well-established facts about the characteristics of the legal and illegal population and is consistent with other research that employs the same approach to estimate the illegal population.

Source



Background to the recent Swiss vote

The crime rate in cases of bodily harm, serious injury, and rape has risen by multiples over the past two decades. At the end of 2005, in which 29,952 convictions were made, only 48.8% of convictions were of Swiss nationals while the rest were foreign residents or illegal aliens, despite comprising only 20% of the population. And by the end of 2006, with 5888 people being interned in Swiss prisons, a whopping 69% were foreigners, mostly young males. Yet I have not seen these figures cited by such institutions of credibility like Reuters, unless used in a quote by an official who they've spent an entire article actively trying to discredit.

Violent crime is so rare in Switzerland that when it occurs, the community is shocked. It's simply un-Swiss. This is not to say that violent Swiss don't exist, but when the majority of such crimes are committed by immigrants while they only represent 20% of the population, the effect can only be magnified. A Turkish man who stabbed his wife to death in public a few years ago in Basel totally rocked the city.

What the SVP aims to do is introduce by either legislation or referendum a law that would deport immigrants who commit such serious offenses after they've served their jail terms. After all, they aren't Swiss citizens who have integrated into Swiss society, who obviously do not represent or profess their loyalty to the nation or its values, so why should they be allowed to stay? One of the more radical measures they aim to introduce is the deportation of an entire immigrant family for the most grievous crimes that a minor, under the wing of his parents, can commit. Yet this is not a one-size-fits-all formula; it would only apply in the most horrible of situations and would have to be approved by the judiciary. Things like murder, not traffic violations, would see this rule used.

The American press especially seems to look at the election in terms of its own majoritarian politics. Just because the SVP won the most seats with 29% of the votes doesn't mean anything in Swiss politics. The Federal Council, the country's executive branch, is made up of seven cabinet ministers who are chosen by the parliament. For decades, the Federal Assembly has used a "magic formula" to choose the ministers, assigning two portfolios to the three biggest parties and one to the fourth. This ensures that decisions are made by deliberation and consensus among all the parties, so with the SVP's only marginally better showing, this formula will likely not change. This ensures that any policy initiatives the SVP brings to the table will be watered down or met with opposition.

All in all, this Sunday didn't change Switzerland very much. The major difference was that rather than walking by the Rhein, voters brought their dogs to the voting booths instead. And like before, what they voted for above all else was a vote for Switzerland and Swiss-ness. If the press and international NGOs consider that to be abhorrent and xenophobic, well, who cares what they think? Switzerland is a patriotic nation even more so than just a country, and that nation wants its newcomers to fit in, not break the law, and be just as proud of being Swiss as they are.

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23 October, 2007

Immigration to increase British population from 60 to 75 milion

The number of people living in the UK is likely to exceed 75 million by the middle of this century, a population expert said. Oxford University professor of demography David Coleman has predicted the population will expand by at least 15 million by 2051, up from last year's figure of 60 million. Prof Coleman, who based his calculations on an updated model for counting migration adopted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said even that figure was likely to be an "underestimate". His projections are expected to be confirmed by Government population experts this week.

The ONS said last month their estimates for the number of people migrating to the UK had increased to 190,000 a year compared with 145,000 in calculations issued two years ago. It was thought the review was mainly due to higher numbers of eastern Europeans coming to Britain since their countries joined the EU.

Prof Coleman's calculations, disclosed in a memo to the House of Lords economic affairs committee, predict the UK population will reach 69 million in 2031 and 75 million in 2051. He has also told peers that the proportion of the UK population classed as non-white was on course to grow from 9% at the last census in 2001 to 29% in 2051.

The projection on population figures represents a significant adjustment to figures released in 2005 predicting the UK population increasing to 69 million by 2051. He said he used the updated ONS model for his calculations but did not factor in improvement in survival "so my figures are probably underestimates by one or two million".

He said: "The absent-minded commitment into which we have drifted, to house a further 15 million people, must be the biggest unintended consequence of government policy of almost any century. As it is by no means unavoidable, being almost entirely dependent upon continued immigration, it might be thought worthy of discussion. In official circles, there has been none."

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Swiss approve immigrant crackdown

A self-made billionaire who compares himself to a legendary hero who was impaled while repelling unwanted invaders led his right-wing party to victory in Swiss elections last night after a campaign marred by rows over racism. Christoph Blocher, the 67-year-old leader of the Swiss People's Party (SVP), is likely to push for a turn as president in the next four-year parliament after his strident anti-immigrant tone won widespread support in the Alpine republic.

As the votes were counted into the night, Mr Blocher's party and the left-wing Greens were the significant winners of an election that polarised normally consensual Switzerland and may threaten to shatter its cosy style of coalition government. An early exit poll predicted that the SVP will have the highest number of MPs, mainly because of a big drop in support for the Socialist Party. The SVP were put on 61 seats, up six, and the Socialists 43, down nine. The forecast gave the SVP 28.6 per cent of the vote, up two points on its 2003 showing.

Mr Blocher made an estimated SwFr3 billion (1.2 billion pounds) fortune by reviving a flagging chemicals company and is equally reviled and admired by the country's 7.5 million inhabitants. His fervently nationalistic speeches are peppered with references to heroes of Swiss history. Mr Blocher likens himself to Arnold Von Winkelried, a knight who reputedly threw himself on Austrian lances to create a hole in their defences, the crucial turning point in the 1386 Battle of Sempach. "Winkelried sacrificed himself for the community. A good politician must also be prepared to sacrifice himself for his country," Mr Blocher said.

Born into a poor family in Schaffhausen, in the north, Mr Blocher was the son of a Protestant pastor. His humble roots made him an outsider in the secretive world of Swiss banking and industry but being shunned by the Establishment seemed to spur his ambitions. Taking control of a struggling company that made plastics for the car industry, he turned it into a multi-national giant. As his business profile rose, so did his political career.

Mr Blocher made his name fighting proposals by successive Swiss governments that were put to the country under its referendum system for major national decisions. He said "no" to everything, campaigning successfully against United Nations membership in 1986, abolition of the Swiss Army in 1989, sending Swiss troops on armed peacekeeping missions in 1994 and EU membership in 2001. But he could not block a second vote on UN membership, which was carried in 2002.

His chosen political vehicle was the Swiss People's Party. Zurich, in the German-speaking sector of Switzerland, became the party's powerbase and criticism of immigration has been a constant theme. The main talking point of the election - a poster showing three white sheep booting a black sheep off a Swiss flag - was withdrawn before polling day. The SVP maintains that it was illustrating its policy of ejecting foreign criminals, while political rivals described it as clearly racist.

But there are signs of a backlash from within Mr Blocher's party. Adolf Ogi, the popular former President, said that the personality cult around the party leader was "completely unSwiss". "You do not solve the problems of the future with polarisation and naysayers," he said on the eve of polling.

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22 October, 2007

Immigrant crackdown coming in Switzerland?

The right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) is set to consolidate its position as the alpine nation's most popular grouping in a parliamentary election on Sunday, outstripping its rivals after a provocative campaign. Polling booths in Switzerland are due to close around midday (11 a.m. British time). A large proportion of Swiss ballots are cast by mail in advance of election day. The first estimated national result is due at around 1900 local time (6 p.m. British time).

According to the last opinion poll conducted before the election, the People's Party are expected to win 27.3 percent of the vote, a slight increase over 2003 when they raced to the top of the polls amid accusations of xenophobia. The SVP has again run a controversial campaign calling for the extradition of foreigners who commit serious crimes. It has been criticised by opponents and has ruffled the usually smooth waters of Switzerland's consensus-based politics.

Opposition to the SVP's campaign, which used posters calling for the "black sheep" of Swiss society to be booted out, spilled over into a rare outburst of violence on the streets of Berne earlier this month when police and left-wing activists clashed.

The SVP's nearest rivals, the Social Democrats, are expected to take around 21.7 percent of the vote, a decline from 2003, with the Christian Democrats seen winning 15.4 percent and the Free Democrats on 15.5 percent....

The country's approximately 4.5 million voters cast their ballots to fill 200 seats in the National Council, the lower house, on a proportional basis. They also elect 46 cantonal representatives to the Council of States, the upper house.

Analysts do not rule out the SVP and its pugnacious leader Christoph Blocher using its showing in Sunday's election to justify calls for a change in the composition of the Federal Council, the seven-seat National Executive. This would upset the so-called "magic formula" which in the past has given the three largest parties two seats each, with one for the smallest. This has traditionally ensured decisions are made by consensus. Those with two seats on the Council, which is elected by parliament, are the SVP, the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats. The Christian Democrats have one seat.

Source



The British National Party solution to high immigration into Britain is non-racial

Despite the common Leftist accusation that they are "Nazis"

Are you happy with the way London is changing? Are you happy about the increase in violent crime, or the shortage of affordable housing, or the congestion, or the shortage of doctors and dentists and the long hospital waiting lists, or the Muslim terrorists, or the change in London's population, or the failing schools, or the falling living standards, or the increases in taxation or the discrimination faced daily by the indigenous, white, British people? These are the changes brought to you, to London and to Britain as a whole, by the Labour and Conservative parties. These are the reasons that more and more people are turning to the British National Party as their only hope for a decent future for them and their children.

The BNP's message - that immigration is out of control and is damaging British society - is now becoming accepted by everyone. Even the government's own report has recently had to admit to the tip of the iceberg. But only the BNP has the courage and the honesty to propose solutions that are sensible, fair and workable. The other parties will make mealy-mouthed weasel-worded promises at election time but they will do nothing.

Excessive immigration is responsible for the housing shortage that has resulted in council housing not being available for British families, while immigrants are allowed to jump the queue because they are deemed to be in greater need; the politically correct politicians seem to have missed the point that these immigrants could have stayed at home in their own countries rather than coming here in the first place.

Immigration has also caused a greater demand for rental accommodation, which has pushed up rents and house prices. It was recently reported that four out of ten homes built in the last 10 years are needed just to house the most recent wave of immigrants.

Excessive immigration has led to increased crime levels. In February a police study identified 169 different gangs operating in London. Some of these gangs have over 100 members. In August it was reported that the number of gangs had increased to over 250! The police have admitted that the largest number of gangs are those made up of Afro-Caribbeans, followed by those made up of members who are Asian. Scotland Yard has also admitted that immigration is fuelling gang crime in London. Gun and knife crime have become daily occurrences. So far this year almost 20 teenagers - some as young as 14 - have been shot or stabbed to death on the streets of London.

Excessive immigration has placed a strain on the health service. The increase in AIDS and TB in Britain is due to immigration, and health tourists cost the NHS up to 2 billion pounds per year. Of course there are lots of doctors and nurses who have come from abroad, but there are also lots of British doctors and nurses, trained at public expense, who cannot get jobs. We do not need to import foreign medical staff - many of whom are poorly trained or cannot communicate easily in English. The pretence that we do is simply designed to con the public. It is also very unfair on those poor third world countries where these staff are genuinely needed.

Excessive immigration is damaging education standards in our schools. The flood of children who do not speak English is placing schools under enormous strain and means that teachers are diverted from teachers native children. Larger class sizes and more disruptive behaviour also reduce the quality of education to British children.

Excessive immigration reduces our quality of life. Congestion on the roads, buses and tubes is increased, homes are built over green land, our neighbourhoods are changed and our traditions are lost.

Excessive immigration increases our taxes. Britain is now officially recognised as one of the highest taxed countries in the world. Are you happy at having to pay ever more income tax, council tax, excise duties and stealth taxes? The pro-immigration fanatics in the LibLabCon parties and in the media realise that the British people are fed up of unrestricted, unlimited immigration and now try to pretend that immigration is good for the economy. We are told that migrant workers add up to œ6 billion to Britain's GDP (Gross Domestic Product), but this is utterly misleading garbage. Let's look at the truth.

Immigrants and ethnic minority communities send vast amounts of money back to their families in their home countries. These monies are known as `remittances' and are estimated to amount to around œ5 billion a year. This is money sucked out of our economy and lost. This means there is less money for local businesses and less money for local workers. These remittances are never included in the government's lies about the `value' of immigration.

The government says that immigration increases GDP, but in any normal economy an increase in population will always lead to an increase in GDP - this is meaningless. It is like saying that Africa's GDP is greater than that of Switzerland, so Africans must be better off - of course they're not! Official figures show that foreign workers make up over 12% of the workforce, but if they only add 6 billion pounds to GDP that means they are only increasing our GDP by less than 0.5%! [The UK's GDP is around 1,250 billion pounds].

Anyway, even if they do increase GDP by 6 billion, this doesn't take into account the cost to the taxpayer of immigration. A quick tally by one newspaper estimated the cost of immigration in terms of crime, healthcare, education and administration as over 8 billion pounds. Since this estimate was produced using official statistics it is likely that the true costs are much higher.

Furthermore, the use of GDP as a measure of economic or national well-being is utterly barmy. Consider this: crime increases GDP - is crime a good thing? If a criminal scumbag smashes your car window and steals your stereo you must then spend money on repairing your car and replacing your stereo. You are therefore injecting money into the economy, employing workers and raising manufacturing output. But has this improved your quality of life? Of course not! GDP is an extremely crude economic measuring tool, and it is next to worthless in telling us about our quality of life.

Excessive immigration increases unemployment and reduces wage levels. There are now over 5 million people in Britain receiving benefits instead of working, and the normal laws of supply and demand result in wages being depressed by the availability of more workers willing to do the jobs for less.

Of course we don't blame or hate the immigrants themselves and we hope nobody does, but the fact is that the current flood of uncontrolled immigration is BAD for Britain, BAD for London and BAD for YOU. Just think about it and you will see this is true. How has the vast number of immigrants flooding into Britain improved YOUR life?

Only the BNP will STOP all further immigration

Only the BNP will stop all further immigration - regardless of race. Only the BNP will target the TWO MILLION illegals in Britain and deport them - regardless of race. Only the BNP will deport all foreign criminals - regardless of race. Only the BNP will make sure that those granted British citizenship in recent years obtained this legitimately - regardless of race. And only the BNP will offer financial help to those immigrants here legally who want to make a better life for themselves in their home countries - regardless of race. These policies are fair, sensible and workable. These policies will improve the quality of life for everyone in Britain.

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21 October, 2007

One third of 'Londoners' born abroad

One in three people living in London was born abroad and at least another 10,000 foreign-born citizens are settling in the capital each month. Figures released today show that out of a total Greater London population of 7.4 million, about five million were born in Britain. The number of foreign-born Londoners increased from 2.3 million in June last year to almost 2.5 million 12 months later.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics, show the biggest foreign-born communities include Indians (almost 200,000), Bangladeshis (115,000), Irish (113,000) and Jamaicans (108,000). There are now just over 100,000 Poles living in London and there are also large Nigerian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan populations.

Merrick Cockell, chairman of London Councils, said the true figures could be even higher and called for more funding to help pay for essential services. "London boroughs are struggling to meet the increasing population's demands for services such as social care and waste, while central government reaps all the economic benefits from international migration," he said. "The Government must distribute these benefits in a fairer way." Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Jeremy Browne stressed cultural diversity brought huge benefits to the capital.

"London is a truly international city with a constantly evolving population," he said. "The success of our financial markets and business climate are attracting a wide range of entrepreneurs and workers. "That is creating a social vibrancy but the Government needs to respond to legitimate concerns about pressure on public services in some areas."

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said the amount of foreigners moving to Britain was "completely unacceptable" and called for an annual limit on the number of non-European Union migrants.

A Home Office spokesman said: "We know migration added about œ6billion to our economy last year and London has shared in the benefits." He said the independent Migration Impacts Forum would advise the Government on how migration affects public services and communities, both impact and benefits. A new points system, based on the Australia model, for immigration will be introduced next year.

Source



UK whites a minority in London classrooms

White British-born children are now the minority in many London schools, official figures showed today. In Tower Hamlets, 15 per cent of primary school pupils are classed as white British, while 63 per cent of their classmates come from Bangladeshi families. Tories said the figures, released by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, showed the changes were putting pressure on schools, which had to make sure those who did not speak English learned as soon as possible. Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green said: "If they can't, and they are being taught in overcrowded classrooms, this makes it much harder for teachers to do their job."

While Asians now make up the majority of young children in several areas of London, others remain overwhelmingly white. In Newham, just under 12 per cent of primary pupils are white British, while the figure in Brent's secondaries is seven per cent, compared with 36 per cent who are classed as Asian, and 24 per cent black. Outside London, areas with the highest concentrations of ethnic minority pupils included Bradford, where 53 per cent of the primary school children are classed as white British.

In Blackburn and Manchester, less than 60 per cent of primary pupils were white British and in Birmingham the figure was 43 per cent. In Leicester, 41 per cent were white British, compared with 38 per cent of primary pupils who were Asian. Nationally, 21.9 per cent of primary school children were from ethnic minority backgrounds, up from 20.6 per cent last year. There was a similar rise in secondary schools.

In rural areas, the school population was almost entirely white. In Devon, 95 per cent of primary pupils were white British. The number of primary school pupils who do not speak English as their first language increased by about seven per cent on last year's figures to 447,000, or about one child in seven. Figures at secondary level showed a similar rise in pupils not speaking English as their first language to 342,000 in total.

When special schools are included, 798,110 pupils in England's state schools do not speak English as their first language. This is out of a total of 7.3 million children attending state schools. Schools minister Jim Knight said teachers were being given help to cope with children whose first language is not English.

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20 October, 2007

Thompson Raps Rivals on Immigration

Fred Thompson accused Republican campaign rivals Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney of being soft on illegal immigration Thursday, dismissing them as latecomers to the issue as they strive for the presidency. "I was walking the walk when others weren't even talking the talk yet," Thompson said at an appearance with supporters in Georgia.

He said he voted in 1996 to outlaw sanctuary cities, where city employees are not required to report illegal immigrants to federal authorities. "Along about that same time, Mayor Giuliani was supporting the concept of sanctuary cities," Thompson said. "Governor Romney certainly didn't say anything against sanctuary cities until recently."

Romney, who was campaigning in South Carolina, answered back, arguing that as Massachusetts governor he authorized state police to enforce federal immigration law and threatened to veto a measure allowing undocumented immigrant students to pay the same in-state tuition at state colleges as residents. "I've been running for president a lot longer than he has," Romney said derisively of Thompson. "I've been talking about sanctuary cities and illegal immigration from the very beginning. I welcome Fred Thompson into the race, but he needs to get in a little longer and look at the records of those of us who have been talking about these issues for some time."

Thompson, who has spent little time on the campaign trail since a GOP debate in Michigan Oct. 9, is planned a four-day trip to Florida beginning Saturday. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, he acknowledged he was caught off guard during his last visit to Florida when he responded to a question about oil drilling in the Everglades by saying, in part, "I'm not going to start out by taking this, that or the other off the table." His answer prompted Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to later say, "I wasn't completely overjoyed" with what Thompson had to say about Florida issues.

Thompson said, "I didn't think there was a serious proposal out there with regard to the Everglades and I probably treated it as such, but it's certainly not something that I would be for." In 2002, when Thompson was in the Senate, President Bush agreed to spend $120 million to buy oil and gas rights on 390,396 acres of federally protected land in the Everglades. The move prevented drilling on the land. "It's a national treasure and it's not to be messed with and I can't imagine anybody doing so," Thompson said.

In Georgia, Thompson said that to know where he would be on bedrock conservative issues, people need only look at his record. "I was a conservative then, I am a conservative today and I will be a conservative tomorrow," he said. The Giuliani camp responded by saying Thompson had voted as a senator against a stricter employment verification system and a measure that would have blocked illegal immigrants from receiving certain benefits. "Senator Thompson's missing a few pages from his screenplay," Giuliani spokesman Elliot Bundy said, a reference to Thompson's career as an actor as well as his years as a senator from Tennessee. Giuliani is a former mayor of New York.

Source



Securing the U.S. border is patriotism, not racism

By AL GARZA

I am Hispanic. I am an American. I am a Minuteman. These terms are not contradictory. During my youth, I served this country proudly in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, along with some great Americans. I now have that opportunity once again to serve my country with other great Americans, through my role with the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. We are a volunteer organization filled with patriots who stand watch on our nation's borders in support of the brave men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol.

We are motivated by the rule of law and the need to secure the borders of the United States for the sake of our children and our grandchildren. Like our Founding Fathers, we are willing to sacrifice our lives and fortunes "in order to form a more perfect union," even when we are discouraged by the actions of our elected leaders in Washington. Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteers do not engage in hate speech, bigotry, violence, vigilantism or launch unjust personal attacks against law-abiding citizens. In fact, we are commissioned to witness to the injustice of the "we hate America crowd" led by the National Council of La Raza, which has exposed its true motives when it threatens Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser for refusing to fire Frances Semler from her appointed post on the park board without cause.

I urge the citizens of Kansas City to question the actions of the National Council of La Raza, a group that claims to stand for civil rights but extorts your mayor with threats of defamation and boycott if their demands are not met - demands that a grandmotherly civic leader be terminated for her affiliation with a patriotic organization. I find their actions demeaning to all Hispanic Americans, and undermining of our civil liberty and patriotism.

Our Minuteman mission is peaceful and responsible for saving the lives of hundreds who entered our country illegally and were left to die in the desert, be forced into prostitution or otherwise exploited for their cheap labor.

Securing the borders is pro-immigrant. Minutemen volunteers are showing the national security effectiveness that will result from the construction of a double-layered physical fence, and a simple increase in the number of Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops on our borders.

As citizens, we have a moral obligation to provide immigrants a safe passage - by our rules - while also protecting the citizens of the United States from invasion, disease and criminal behavior. The immigration problems we face can be resolved when employers, elected officials, the judicial system and law enforcement agencies at the local, state and national levels work together to enforce all immigration laws.

Minuteman activities are inclusive, conducted by men and women, naturalized as well as native-born citizens, college students and members of the Granny Brigade, who fill a void on a mission that continues to receive strong support from millions of Americans.

Our volunteers will travel from all over America to the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canadian borders next month for our national muster. They will observe and report illegal activity to the proper authorities. Furthermore, they will call, write and fax their members of Congress to voice their opposition to the ongoing lobbying campaigns advancing amnesty legislation.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps conducts our activities for the "general welfare" of all legal citizens of the United States and the protection of all innocent human life. Can La Raza really claim it does the same thing?

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19 October, 2007

Britain: Veteran Leftist slates 'open door' immigration

The economic benefit of immigration is miniscule compared to the cost argues Frank Field as he lays into Labour's 'open door' policy

The Government's open door policy on immigration has led to an unprecedented level of new arrivals. Over the last three years alone, something like two million newcomers have moved to these shores. Two reports out yesterday showed that the economic benefits are small, compared with the extra costs imposed on social services. While there is no doubt that most recent migrants have come here to work, the beneficial effects on the economy are less certain. A report by the Home Office claims that migrants add 6 billion pounds a year to the nation's income.

But, as MigrationWatch point out, the benefit is miniscule when you consider that this amounts to half a percent of total production and that new arrivals add at least half a percent to the population. So the effect on GDP per head is tiny. Importantly, the Home Office report didn't focus on the effect migration is having on the Government's welfare to work programme. The drive to get British unemployed into work is clearly being hampered by migration. What else can account for the fact that while three million new jobs have been created since 1997, the number of British people on out of work benefits has only fallen from 5.65 to 5.4 million? Most of the new jobs have been taken by immigrant workers. Why should a business bother to recruit and train the young British unemployed when they can get cheap and already qualified labour from abroad?

The second report from the Migration Impacts Forum, established to look at the social costs of migration, re-stated what everybody from the Local Government Association to the Head of Cambridgeshire police have said time and again. Eight different regions took part in a consultation and of these, five reported increased difficulties on crime, six experienced growing pressures with health services and seven drew attention to growing housing problems resulting from immigration.

Everybody is now agreed, after years of mis-management, that the level and rate of immigration needs to be checked and brought in line, not only with the particular business needs, but also with the resources available to deliver high quality social services. The open door policy on immigration should be over. But the Government will be unable to make this work under current EU agreements because new members of the EU have full rights to travel and reside in this country, and apart from temporary restrictions imposed on Bulgaria and Romania, to work here too.

Given that living standards in the old Eastern block are around one third of our own, it is no surprise they want to come here in large numbers. They will continue to do so until their economies catch up. But this will take decades. The Government must therefore begin talks on renegotiating the free movement of labour in the EU.

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An evil immigration bureaucracy

Almost bad enough to justify illegal immigration. What sort of bureaucracy admits that it "did not understand" what it was doing? "Don't care" would be more accurate. They had all the data they needed to understand. All they needed to do was look at it. Are they deliberately trying to discredit immigration control?

Three days after a 24-year-old college graduate spoke out on her immigration plight in USA TODAY, U.S. agents arrested her family - including her father, a Vietnamese man who once was confined to a "re-education" camp in his home country for anti-communist activities.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who chairs the House immigration subcommittee, on Tuesday accused federal officials of "witness intimidation" for staging a pre-dawn raid on the home of Tuan Ngoc Tran. The agents arrested Tran, his wife and son, charging them with being fugitives from justice even though the family's attorneys said the Trans have been reporting to immigration officials annually to obtain work permits.

Lofgren said she believes the family was targeted because Tran's eldest child, Tam Tran, testified before Lofgren's panel earlier this spring in support of legislation that would help the children of illegal immigrants. On Oct. 8, Tam Tran was quoted in USA TODAY. Her parents and brother were taken into custody Thursday. The family was released to house arrest after Lofgren intervened. "Would she and her family have been arrested if she hadn't spoken out?" Lofgren said of Tran, who was not at home for the raid but has been asked to report to Immigration and Customs officials next week. "I don't think so.

Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the Tran family's arrest "absolutely, unequivocally had nothing to do" with Tam Tran's advocacy. She said ICE agents began working on the case Sept. 28 and will now try to send the family to Germany, where the Trans lived for several years before coming to the United States. In the past, the German government refused the family's permission to return; Nantel said the U.S. government will now make an official request.

The raid marked the latest chapter in the Tran family's complex immigration odyssey. The family arrived in the USA 18 years ago from Germany, where the elder Trans ended up after the German navy rescued them at sea when they were escaping Vietnam. Both Tam Tran and her brother, Thien, 21, were born in Germany, but they have lived in the USA since they were young. Tam Tran received a bachelor's degree with honors in American literature and culture in December from UCLA. She has lobbied for the DREAM Act, which would give children of illegal immigrants a chance to obtain citizenship if they earn a high school degree and complete two years of postsecondary education or two years of military service.

In 2001, the Board of Immigration Appeals said the Tran family could not be deported to Vietnam because Tam's father had been persecuted there for his political beliefs. The board left open the possibility that the family could be sent to Germany, but German authorities wouldn't give them a visa.

Nantel said there are more than 324,000 people living in the USA who have been ordered deported but who can't be sent away because no country will accept them. It's ICE's job to find ways "to effect the judge's order," she said.

Bo Cooper, a Washington-based immigration attorney who this week agreed to take the Tran family's case free of charge, said he's puzzled that "the U.S. government would go and try to deport someone who doesn't have a criminal record and who has been given formal protection" because of his treatment at the hands of the Vietnamese government.

Nantel acknowledged the Tran family had been reporting to immigration officials regularly. Asked why they were arrested and charged with being fugitives, she said agents "did not understand the complexity of the case." She said ICE agents removed the family's electronic ankle bracelets Tuesday.

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18 October, 2007

Va. County OKs Immigration Crackdown

One of the nation's toughest local crackdowns on illegal immigration was unanimously approved by Prince William County lawmakers early Wednesday after a 12-hour hearing marked by emotional testimony and scuffles. The measures would deny certain county services to illegal immigrants, including business licenses, drug counseling, housing assistance and some services for the elderly. The county Board of Supervisors also gave police some funding to help them check the immigration status of anyone accused of breaking a law if an officer suspects the person is an illegal immigrant.

A group of 22 plaintiffs has already filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the measures. They claim the measures violate equal protection laws and that immigration enforcement is a federal matter.

Nearly 400 residents and immigrants spoke for and against the measures during the 12-hour session that extended past 2 a.m. Wednesday. Supporters and opponents scuffled in the street before the meeting began Tuesday afternoon. More than 1,200 people crowded into the county government center for the emotional hearing. Some children of immigrants asked board members not to hurt their parents, and one woman ran out of the hearing in tears, saying the policy would separate her from her daughter.

The supervisors added a resolution with provisions addressing cost, fairness and public confusion on the issue. The resolution calls for the county to implement a public education campaign for immigrant communities and directs it to partner with a university or consulting group to study the fairness of the measures. "We don't want to be the kind of community that even allows the image that racial profiling is taking place," said Republican Supervisor Martin E. Nohe, who said he was concerned the measure would invite discrimination.

Supporters of the measure said illegal immigrants are breaking the law. "Where do you get off demanding services, rights and mandatory citizenship?" said Manassas resident Robert Stephens. "Who invited you? You cry for your rights? You have none."

Source



Migrant workers earn more than British

As a group, the Brits are a conspicuously lazy lot by U.S. or Australian standards so it would not be hard to work harder than them and earn more money. What the report below ignores, of course, is WHICH group earns the big money. At a guess I would put Australians, Americans and Germans at the top and Arabs and Africans way down

Immigrant workers are both higher paid and more reliable than their British counterparts and contributed £6 billion to economic growth last year, a Government study said yesterday.

However, a separate paper issued together with the study by the Home Office admitted there were complaints about the impact of immigration on housing and other public services. Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, said the research showed that ''in the long run, our country and Exchequer are better off with immigration rather than without it".

The report found that in 2006, record immigration pushed the number of foreign workers up to 12.5 per cent – or one eighth – of the labour force, compared to 7.4 per cent a decade ago. Since average output growth over this period was 2.7 per cent a year and migration contributed an estimated 15 to 20 per cent of this, the study estimated a contribution of 6 billion pounds from foreign workers – or 700,000 a day.

However, the figure does not take account of the costs of a growing population, for instance the impact on public services such as health, education and transport. But the overwhelmingly positive findings were last night challenged by academics.

Robert Rowthorn, an emeritus professor of economics at Cambridge University, warned that as well as putting pressure on services, large-scale migration would "undermine the labour market position of the most vulnerable sections of the local workforce". The study, the first official attempt to establish the economic and fiscal impact of the record levels of immigration seen in recent years, states that ''in the long run, it is likely that the net fiscal contribution of an immigrant will be greater than that of a non-immigrant". It also claims there is no evidence of foreign workers pushing British people out of jobs, although it presents no firm evidence for this.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: ''Labour are being disingenuous again. "They are equating the effect of migration on aggregate GDP with its effect on GDP per head. They are also ignoring the fact that relying on immigration to boost the economy is a short-term answer. "What will they do for the million economically inactive under-25s in the country?" [Cut off their government dole?]

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17 October, 2007

Spitzer's Plan to Give Driver's Licenses to Illegal Aliens Compromises Homeland Security and Burdens New Yorkers

Charges FAIR in Testimony to the New York State Senate

In testimony submitted to the Standing Committee on Veterans, Homeland Security and Military Affairs and the Standing Committee on Transportation, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), urges legislators to reject Gov. Eliot Spitzer's proposal to grant driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Stein charges that the governor's political pandering to vocal interest groups and cheap labor employers would endanger the security of all Americans, while adding to the already significant burden that New Yorkers bear as a result of mass illegal immigration.

FAIR, the nation's leading immigration reform organization, represents some 12,000 members across New York State. Gov. Spitzer's plan, according to polls, is strongly opposed by a large majority of New Yorkers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and by county many county clerks who run local DMV offices.

"No Americans have suffered more and paid a greater price than the people of New York for lax attention to homeland security," says Stein. "All but one of the 9/11 terrorists who killed thousands of Americans -- the majority on the southern tip of Manhattan -- boarded flights without drawing unwelcome attention using valid U.S. driver's licenses. Investigators, including the 9/11 Commission, have all concluded that obtaining valid driver's licenses was critical to the terrorists' ability to carry out their mission. If Gov. Spitzer's plan is implemented, future terrorists in need of a valid U.S. identity document will be able to get one simply by proving that they can parallel park."

Stein dismisses Gov. Spitzer's contention that giving illegal aliens driver's licenses is necessary to ensure road safety in New York. "Gov. Spitzer's rationalization is essentially the same one President Bush used in seeking amnesty for illegal aliens," says Stein. "Rather than enforce laws against illegal immigrants, President Bush argued that we must give in to them and grant them legal status. Similarly, rather than enforce laws that New York uses punish other people for driving without licenses or without auto insurance, Gov. Spitzer is seeking to reward illegal alien scofflaws with the privilege of driving and a U.S. identity document. The American public rejected the idea of amnesty for illegal aliens, and New Yorkers firmly reject the notion of licenses for people who have no right to be in the country."

Issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens is likely to serve as a magnet for illegal aliens, warns FAIR. According to a 2006 report by FAIR, The Costs of Illegal Immigrants to New Yorkers, the state spends $5.1 billion annually to provide education and health care to illegal aliens, and to incarcerate criminal illegal aliens. "We have seen evidence of illegal aliens leaving states that have elected to enforce laws against illegal immigration in recent years," observes Stein. "If New York begins issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens, we are likely to see the reverse phenomenon as illegal aliens flock to New York. Greater risk to security and even heavier burdens on taxpayers is not most New Yorkers' idea of sound public policy."

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Time to Bring an End to the DREAM Act

The American people rose up out of their usual apathy and soundly defeated the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 that would have given amnesty to illegal immigrants. Now, some senators are trying to get Congress to pass a backdoor amnesty by calling it the DREAM Act, and it's really a nightmare for Americans. The cutesy title DREAM, which is meant to be a double-entendre, is an acronym for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors.

The DREAM Act would allow any illegal immigrant of any age who entered the United States before age 16 and has a high school diploma or equivalent to enroll in any state university and pay only the in-state tuition rate. Being an illegal immigrant is the prerequisite to getting this preferential treatment, which is denied to legal aliens with valid student visas.

In-state tuition can amount to a taxpayer subsidy of up to $20,000 a year, depending on what the university charges students from the other 49 states. The illegal immigrant also becomes eligible for taxpayer-paid federal student loans and federal work-study programs, for which lawful foreign students are ineligible. There is no upper age limit; any illegal immigrant is eligible for this preference by declaring he entered the U.S. illegally before his 16th birthday. The illegal immigrant doesn't have to prove when he entered the U.S.; he can simply make a sworn statement.

But that's not all. The illegal immigrant would be rewarded with conditional lawful permanent resident, green card, status, which can be converted to a non-conditional green card. The immigrant can use his new legal status to seek green cards for the parents who brought him into the United States. The student has six years to convert his green card from conditional to non-conditional. He just needs to complete two years of study at a college or serve two years in the military, and if he has already had two years of college, he can convert his green card to non-conditional immediately.

The illegal immigrant who applies for the DREAM Act can count his years under conditional green card status toward the five years needed to attain citizenship. That's a fast track to citizenship that is not available to aliens who are lawfully present in the United States.

Section 4(f) provides that, once an illegal immigrant files an application, the government cannot deport him. A federal officer who shares with another federal agency any information on the illegal immigrant's application, such as admission of illegal entry, can be fined $10,000.

Giving in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants is so unpopular with many Americans that the only way a Congressman could support this bill is by hoping it passes before the public discovers how bad it is. Arizona's Proposition 300, which specifically bars Arizona universities from giving in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants, passed in 2006 with a majority of 71.4 percent. Support for in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants was the No. 1 issue that caused the upset defeat of former U.S. Rep. Tom Osborne, R-Neb. (the former University of Nebraska football coach) in his campaign for governor of Nebraska in 2006. He fumbled and endorsed in-state tuition for illegal immigrants while his opponent, Republican Gov. Dave Heineman, vetoed it and ran campaign ads against it.

The DREAM Act would give amnesty not only to illegal immigrants, but also give amnesty to 10 states that have been flagrantly violating federal law. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act expressly forbids a state to give in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants unless that subsidy is also granted to all U.S. citizens nationwide. The DREAM Act would retroactively repeal that law, thereby saving the 10 states from punishment and equal-protection lawsuits filed by out-of-state U.S. citizens and law-abiding foreign students. The 10 states that have been engaging in a 21st century use of the 19th century theory called nullification, defying a federal law the state doesn't like, are California, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Washington.

We are indebted to professor Kris W. Kobach of the University of Missouri-Kansas City for publicizing how the DREAM Act treats illegal immigrants more favorably than U.S. citizens and legal aliens. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has not been successful in attaching it to a defense authorization bill, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says he will bring it up in November. Tell your U.S. senators the DREAM Act must be defeated.

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16 October, 2007

States' Immigrant Policies Diverge

In Differences, Some See Obstacles For a National Law

In New York, state officials are about to offer driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and already have extended limited medical coverage to those battling cancer. In Illinois, the state legislature just passed a law forbidding businesses there from using a federal database to check the legal status of employees.

Oklahoma, meanwhile, recently passed some of the toughest immigration laws in the nation, including one making it a felony to "transport" or "harbor" an illegal immigrant -- leading some to fear that people such as school bus drivers and church pastors may be at risk of doing time. Tennessee's legislature this year revoked laws granting illegal immigrants "driving certificates" and voted to allow law enforcement officers to effectively act as a state immigration police.

As the Bush administration and Congress sit gridlocked on an immigration overhaul, states are jumping into the debate as never before. In the process, they are creating a national patchwork of incongruous immigration laws that some observers fear will make it far more difficult to enact any comprehensive, federally mandated bill down the line.

The number of states passing immigration-related bills has skyrocketed this year. No fewer than 1,404 pieces of immigration-related legislation were introduced in legislatures during the first half of 2007, with 182 bills becoming law in 43 states. That is more than double the number of immigration-related state laws enacted during all of 2006, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Some observers are alarmed by the trend, calling the widely divergent laws further evidence of America's cultural divide and saying they could pose new hurdles in reaching a national consensus on immigration. Piecemeal policymaking is opening the door to a flurry of legal battles -- the Department of Homeland Security, for instance, is suing Illinois for banning businesses there from confirming an employee's legal status through the federal E-Verify database, which state officials have called flawed and unreliable.

Others argue that the inability to reach a national solution has left states no choice. Governors are grappling with cities and towns that, in the absence of a national or state policy, have taken it upon themselves to pass local immigration laws either protecting or cracking down on illegal immigrants. This has occasionally lead to radically different regulations within individual states.

Still others assert that the rush of state activism has created an unforeseen opportunity. By viewing states as laboratories and studying the successes and failures of their various policies, Americans may find useful information, even a road map, for developing a national strategy. Perhaps the most compelling current example is Oklahoma, where a package of tough new laws will not only make it a crime to transport or harbor illegal immigrants, but will also strip such immigrants of any right to receive most health care, welfare, scholarships or other government assistance; penalize employers who hire illegal workers; and force businesses to verify the legal status of new hires.

That "comports with my philosophy that illegal aliens will not come to Oklahoma or any other state if there are no jobs waiting for them," said Randy Terrill, a Republican state legislator and the author of the bill. "They will not stay here if they know they will get no taxpayer subsidy, and they will not stay here if they know if they ever come into contact with one of our fine law enforcement officers, they will stay in custody until they are physically deported."

Hispanic business groups, citing school enrollment losses and church parish figures, say the laws, which start going into effect later this year, have caused as many as 25,000 undocumented workers to flee the state in recent months. The loss is being decried by the Oklahoma State Home Builders Association. "In major metro areas we are seeing people leave based on the perception that things are going to get bad for them and that this state doesn't want them here," said Mike Means, executive vice president of the association. "Now we're looking at a labor shortage. I've got builders who are being forced to slow down jobs because they don't have the crews. And it's not like these people are going back to Mexico. They're going to Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Arkansas, anywhere where the laws aren't against them."

Means said that while construction wages haven't yet gone up in Oklahoma, they are likely to do so if the shortage worsens. Advocates of such laws say that is precisely how strict regulations on illegal immigration can help American workers -- by forcing wages higher. But construction industry leaders counter that a wage increase in Oklahoma, where builders are already paying $15 to $20 an hour for labor in a state with low unemployment, would lead to a net loss of jobs as some businesses are forced to close, particularly if other states allow less stringent hiring practices.

More here



A need to tell the whole story about Mexican illegals

Post below lifted from Van der Galien. See the original for links

Ruben Navarrette says that Americans cannot blame immigration on Mexico and that country's economic policies.

Oh, it's true that the United States is a country of immigrants. But in this case, what matters is that this also happens to be a country full of people who hire illegal immigrants. There is only one reason why so many Mexicans want to come to the United States: because there are so many jobs waiting for them here. Some Americans still prefer to blame Mexico for illegal immigration. Of course, why wouldn't they? That sure beats taking their share of responsibility for it.

This is a great point. Like drugs, the other illegal import problem the U.S. has with its southern neighbors, the demand for labor creates the northward flow, at least when viewed from a simplistic economic model. More:

These people are here illegally, and yet you hire them to clean your toilets, reserving the right to bellyache about them and what they're costing you. It's the first act - hiring illegal immigrants - that sets the rest of the story in motion. I have a solution: Clean your own toilets, or at least make sure that those who clean them for you are in the country legally. Or, shut up already.

Strong medicine, tastes bad. And this would be good advice except for one little detail - the Bush administration's new plan to require employers to verify their workers' Social Security numbers was recently blocked by Federal Judge Charles Breyer of California, a ruling that caused a justifiably exasperated California congressman to wonder:

"What part of `illegal' does Judge Breyer not understand? " asked Representative Brian P. Bilbray, Republican of California and chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. "Using a Social Security number that does not belong to you is a felony. Judge Breyer is compromising the rule of law principles that he took an oath to uphold."

Navarette is correct in saying it's not that simple, especially when a judge like Bilbray decides to take the law into his own hands. How are we supposed to enforce the laws of the land with lawbreakers like this individual sitting on the bench? While feeling sympathy for the plight of illegal aliens - many of whom have given up everything for the chance at success here - is admirable, it is inappropriate for the judiciary branch to dictate immigration policy with the gavel. Breyer's justification for his ruling?

Judge Breyer chastised the Department of Homeland Security for making a policy change with "massive ramifications" for employers, without giving any legal explanation or conducting a required survey of the costs and impact for small businesses.

His concern is for American business' compliance costs? Right. The ruling makes me suspect that Judge Breyer's sympathies are more closely aligned with those of former Mexican President Vincente Fox than the American people's. Fox, who is currently traveling the U.S. to promote his memoirs, said:

"The xenophoblics, the racists, those who feel they are a superior race.they are deciding the future of this country [the United States].".. "What I perceive here is fear in this nation."

So it has nothing to do with the fact illegal workers driving down wages and creating communities of non-citizens that cannot integrate with American society? It's all about race? Hardly.

And when queried about what Lou Dobbs says are the 50% of Mexicans who live in poverty - a number disputed by Fox - and why Mexico has a policy of exporting workers, Fox denied that Mexico has such a policy, saying: "We need that talent, that productivity in Mexico."

That's very true, as I've said before. But that talent has to have opportunity and hope in order to flourish. Mexico's corrupt leadership and high tax rates are a bad combination that make entrepreneurs' lives miserable. Defending Fox, Navarrette said:

It's not that simple. Mexico has now had just seven years of democracy under the rule of Fox's National Action Party - following on the heels of more than 70 years of corrupt governance at the hands of the Institutional Revolution Party. The United States has had more than 200 years to get democracy right, and it still has to work out the kinks now and then.

Also true. What Navarrette leaves unsaid is that the PRI's corruption is still alive and well in Mexico. Until this feature of the government is rooted out Mexico will be unable to provide real economic opportunities for its people.

All of this brings us back to Navarrette's assertion that illegal immigration is caused by the U.S.'s demand for low cost labor. This is true, of course. But it's not so simple, Ruben. Mexico's failure to create a functional economy means the pay rate in Mexico is unbelievably low (even Fox admits that 18% of Mexicans subsist on < $2 per day). This fact forces Mexican workers to flee their homelands and brave the unknown here in the U.S. in spite of the hazards involved. Both supply and demand create the problem and it's time that Mexico's leaders tell the truth about that.





15 October, 2007

Denmark allowing increased LEGAL immigration

The need for opening up for foreign working power is turning the Danish Immigration Service upside down. Today the agency, that used to be a brake block for immigration, is to help qualified foreign labour entering the Danish labour market as quick as possible.

Labour is in short supply in Danish companies. "I am afraid that some companies give up trying recruiting from abroad because they think that it will be to difficult to get a work permit and that it takes to long. That is an image that we want to get rid of by explaining how easy it actually is, states managing director Henrik Grunnet the Danish Immigration Service.

"We no longer focus so much on stopping immigration. There is another need and we have another mission today. We simply have to centre of attention more on service," he says.

Head of department Erling Brandstrup from the Business Office at the Danish Immigration Service explains that the Service will pay a visit to a number of business organisations in order to inform about the regulations on recruiting from abroad: i. e. the time schedule for the casework, and the aims of the Service.

Source



The changing Irish scene

After more than a century and a half of emigration, Ireland began to become a nation of immigrants in the mid-1990s. Its ongoing economic boom triggered the influx of people from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, as well as the return of former Irish emigrants. Now, 10 percent of the Irish population was born elsewhere, including actor Bisi Adigun, the founder of Arambe Productions, Ireland's first African theater company.

Now, it's very common to see people of different creeds and ethnicities," he says by telephone from his home in Dublin, where he has lived for 11 years. "Things have changed very quickly in the last decade, culturally, politically." ...

"Without any doubt, the discourse about immigration has been going on for 10 years," Adigun says. "There were Irish who said, 'They will dilute our culture.' Others said, 'Don't forget, we're travelers, too.' People left their family for a better life elsewhere."

That was the case with Adigun, who left Nigeria when he was 25. "I was in my prime," he says. "I had just finished my degree, but I didn't think I could fulfill my dreams. ... People immigrate because they have to." Adigun left Nigeria in 1993 and moved to London for three years and then to Dublin in 1996.

"I just fell in love with it, really, and I've been here since," he says. "Basically, the hustle and bustle of London was too much for me. I was very busy, and London is a very big city. I had a very isolated feeling." In Ireland, Adigun says, he found a sense of humanity in the people and the way life is lived. "I found London very regimental," he says. "I liked the looseness (of Dublin). Things have changed, of course."

Source





14 October, 2007

Texas city thrust into U.S. spotlight by many ICE arrests

Mayor calls it 'example' for others; opponents see racial profiling

Irving's Heritage District, City Hall and police headquarters are getting a lot of national face time these days. All for a federal program that's not new and far from unique to the richly diverse city. But ever since the Mexican consul warned immigrants to avoid Irving, city officials haven't been able to keep the satellite trucks away. In recent weeks, national networks and news shows such as CNN, Good Morning America and ABC World News have used the city as the backdrop for one of the nation's most divisive topics - illegal immigration. "I would characterize us as being held up as an example for other cities to follow," Mayor Herbert Gears said. "This national debate is raging on all over the country."

Other cities have previously found themselves in the national spotlight on illegal immigration - Farmers Branch, Hazleton, Pa., and Riverside, N.J., among them. But unlike those cities, Irving isn't getting recognition for drafting ordinances aimed at keeping illegal immigrants away. The attention is focused on Irving's use of the Criminal Alien Program, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiative that's long been open to any municipality wishing to participate.

And Irving isn't the only city in the nation - or even in North Texas - using the program. But Mr. Gears said his city - which has turned over more than 1,600 arrestees since last year - leads the nation in the number of people in jail on whom ICE places detainers under CAP. Local ICE officials said the agency does not track numbers nationally by individual law enforcement agencies.

A recent spike in the number of detainers placed on Irving arrestees has drawn the ire of the Mexican consul and former Mexican President Vicente Fox and sparked a City Hall protest. "Immigration as a domestic issue is one of the hot topics of the day," said Carl Rusnok, spokesman for ICE in Dallas.

Irving's use of the program has divided Hispanic and community activists over how best to voice their concerns with city officials. And groups on opposite sides of the debate will converge at City Hall today in dueling rallies. But the program has also united a City Council that a year ago quarreled over how to combat illegal immigration. "It has been a tumultuous year of pretty heavy debate," council member Beth Van Duyne said. "But now I think we're all on the same page and supporting each other. And I'm really proud that we're doing that."

Irving police began using CAP last year. Its purpose is to detain illegal immigrants who have been accused of a crime. The program provides for around-the-clock communication with federal authorities. Supporters call the program a reasonable way to deal with a problem created by decades of lax enforcement and federal attention. Opponents say police are racially profiling in their arrests, and effectively handing over for deportation people who have committed minor traffic offenses.

Ms. Van Duyne said that with their unproven claims of wrongful arrests, activists unfairly drag police through the mud and shift blame to those who uphold the law rather than those who break it. "It's deplorable," she said of the claims. Police "are following the law. They are enforcing the law. That's their job."

The heightened attention to Irving has surprised many residents and officials. "That's the biggest shock about the news media - we didn't start something new. We're just enforcing the laws we already have," council member Allan Meagher said.

But to Irving resident Dar Hackbarth, it's not surprising that a city with Irving's demographic makeup would be in this position. Mr. Hackbarth moved to the city in 1999 because it was home to the Dallas Cowboys and Las Colinas, a leading urban center with corporate goliaths. But he also fell in love with Irving's diversity - one-third of the city's population is foreign-born, and nearly two-thirds are minorities. "One of the reasons this makes such an interesting news story is because we are a diverse community," he said. "We have residents of many cultures who have been here for many years. You have an interesting mix of opinions."

Anthony Bond, a minority leader and member of the new activist group Irving Forward, said the publicity is creating false impressions about Irving. "It's giving the city a black eye," he said. "It's making us seem like a community full of hate, and that's the furthest thing from the truth." Jan Killen has lived in the city for more than 40 years. She hopes outsiders will see Irving as a city grappling with a divisive issue that the entire nation faces. "If we can continue to tweak this CAP program and do it well and try to get dialogue going - and I know there already is some of that - we can maybe start being an example of a city that's working through this," she said. "Because it's not easy."

Source



US Chamber of Commerce CEO calls for increased legal immigration

I don't think many Americans would deny that immigration can be beneficial -- as long as America gets the choice about who comes. LEGAL immigration is the way to go

The president and chief executive officer of the US Chamber of Commerce has called for an increase to legal American immigration to keep the economy growing, reports the Arizona Republic newspaper. In a conference speech to business leaders in Phoenix, Thomas Donohue insisted the US Congress must readdress the issue after failing to pass immigration reforms earlier this year.

The president and chief executive officer of the US Chamber of Commerce has called for an increase to legal American immigration to keep the economy growing, reports the Arizona Republic newspaper. In a conference speech to business leaders in Phoenix, Thomas Donohue insisted the US Congress must readdress the issue after failing to pass immigration reforms earlier this year.

"If we take a hard look at the reality of immigration on our economy, we can reach consensus. We don't have any choice. The US is creating more jobs than workers, and we need immigrants to balance the equation. "We can either force companies to move offshore. We can either make the US dependent on other countries for our food supply, just like we are for oil or we can have a system of bringing the workers into our country," he explained.

Anyone applying for an American visa should begin by taking the American Visa Bureau's online American visa application to see if they meet the basic legislative requirements.

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13 October, 2007

Gang Members Illegally in U.S. Are Arrested in Federal Sweep

About 1,300 violent gang members who are in this country illegally were arrested in a three-month summer crackdown, federal officials announced Tuesday. "We've arrested quite a number of very serious criminals - individuals who frankly have worn out their welcome by coming into this country illegally and committing more crimes when they got here," said Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security for immigration and customs enforcement.

Of the 1,313 individuals arrested this summer, 939 will be charged with immigration violations, and 374 were detained for criminal prosecution in federal, state or local courts. The operation also led to the arrests of 261 people who officials say were not affiliated with gangs but were in the country illegally. "If we can't prosecute them criminally, or they are here in the country illegally, we will have them deported," Ms. Myers said.

There were 205 arrests in New York City and Long Island, and 27 in Newark. Agents also arrested 160 people in Miami, 128 in San Diego and 121 in Dallas. The crackdown, led by federal agents from the immigration and customs agency, is part of a larger program called Operation Community Shield that was begun in February 2005 to dismantle street gangs. The Department of Homeland Security said the program had led to about 7,500 arrests involving violent gangs, including Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, whose members are from El Salvador, Honduras and other Central American countries.

The announcement on Tuesday of the arrests followed a request last week by a Long Island official, Thomas R. Suozzi, asking Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, to investigate "serious allegations of misconduct and malfeasance" by federal agents in executing arrest warrants in several raids in Nassau County on Sept. 24 and 26. That complaint by Mr. Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, said the agents did not properly inform local law enforcement agencies of their suspects, relied on outdated addresses and engaged in undisciplined conduct.

Ms. Myers said Tuesday that agents worked with the "best available evidence" to identify gang members and were cooperating with the government of El Salvador to share intelligence.

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California landlords must not ask about immigration status

California has become the first state to prohibit landlords from asking tenants about their immigration status, drawing sighs of relief from property owners who were concerned they might have to be "de-facto immigration cops." The law signed this week by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger prevents cities from punishing landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. More than 90 communities nationwide have tried to curb illegal immigration by proposing crackdowns on property owners who rent to them or businesses that employ them, among other measures.

Supporters of tighter immigration control said the California law would prevent local governments from acting on an issue where the federal government has failed. "It's clear that Washington, D.C., doesn't want to deal with this problem," said Rick Oltman of Californians for Population Stabilization. "You have cities that want to deal with the problem and this bill would stop them."

California's law "certainly adds salt to the wound for mayors who are trying to protect their legal residents and their budgets from the burden of illegal immigration," said Mayor Lou Barletta of Hazleton, Pa., which passed an ordinance last year penalizing landlords and employers who do business with illegal immigrants. The rule was struck down in federal court as unconstitutional. The city is appealing.

California, which has more immigrants than any other state, is home to as many as 2.8 million illegal immigrants, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Landlords were concerned that, without the law, they could be forced to take on the cost and liability of enforcing federal immigration laws. "We have huge anti-discrimination obligations," said Nancy Ahlswede, executive director of the Apartment Association, California Southern Cities. "We understand the frustration, but that burden shouldn't be placed on landlords." If the law had failed, she said, property owners were worried they might have to serve essentially as immigration agents, policing their properties for illegal tenants.

Immigrant-advocacy organizations argued that any rule requiring landlords to pry into their tenants' immigration status would infringe on privacy and the federal government's authority. "If the federal government wants to go after someone, they can do that, but a city can't," said Kristina Campbell, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who helped sue Escondido, Calif., after it passed an ordinance punishing landlords who rent to undocumented immigrants. The lawsuit was later settled out of court, city officials said.

Advocates also said any proposition that orders landlords not trained in immigration law to determine a tenant's immigration status could risk discrimination. A property owner trying to hazard a guess about someone's immigration status could rely on that person's appearance or accent, said Reshma Shamasunder, director of the California Immigrant Policy Center. Greg McConnell, who has two rental properties and helped organize landlords in Berkeley to support the bill, said he's just glad to be out of the "bitter and inflammatory" immigration debate. "It's not a question of where landlords stand on the immigration issue. It's a question of who's to enforce those laws," he said.

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12 October, 2007

Judge delays key attack on illegal immigration

A federal judge in San Francisco ordered an indefinite delay yesterday of a central measure of the Bush administration's new strategy to curb illegal immigration. The judge, Charles R. Breyer of the Northern District of California, said the government had failed to follow proper procedures for issuing a new rule that would have forced employers to fire workers if their Social Security numbers could not be verified within three months.

Judge Breyer chastised the Department of Homeland Security for making a policy change with "massive ramifications" for employers, without giving any legal explanation or conducting a required survey of the costs and impact for small businesses.

Under the rule issued by the department, which had been scheduled to take effect last month, employers would have to fire workers within 90 days after receiving a notice from the Social Security Administration that an employee's identity information did not match the agency's records. Illegal immigrants often present false Social Security information when applying for jobs. The rule, announced with fanfare in August by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, was the linchpin of the administration's effort to crack down on illegal immigration by denying jobs to the immigrants. It is part of a campaign of stepped-up enforcement since broader immigration legislation favored by President Bush was rejected by Congress in June.

If allowed to take effect, the judge found, the rule could lead to the firing of many thousands of legally authorized workers, resulting in "irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers."

The decision brought a sense of relief to the unusual coalition behind the lawsuit, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the United States Chamber of Commerce, often adversaries. They had feared that the measure would bring mass layoffs in low-wage industries, sweeping up both illegal and legal workers and disrupting the labor force.

Judge Breyer's decision was an awkward disappointment for Mr. Chertoff, a former federal judge, who was relying on the rule as an enforcement tool since Congress left him with few other options. "We will continue to aggressively enforce our immigration laws while reviewing all legal options available to us in response to this ruling," Mr. Chertoff said yesterday in a statement. Mr. Chertoff said the administration was doing "as much administratively as we can, within the boundaries of existing law" to crack down on illegal immigration, but he called on Congress to revisit legislation to give legal status to illegal immigrants and to impose even tougher enforcement measures.

Some conservative lawmakers who argue for vigorous enforcement of the immigration laws as a priority said they were outraged by the judge's ruling. "What part of `illegal' does Judge Breyer not understand?" asked Representative Brian P. Bilbray, Republican of California and chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. "Using a Social Security number that does not belong to you is a felony. Judge Breyer is compromising the rule of law principles that he took an oath to uphold."

The rule establishes steps an employer must follow after receiving a notice from the Social Security Administration, known as a no-match letter, reporting that an employee's identity information does not match the agency's records. If the employee could not clarify the mismatch by providing valid information within 90 days, employers would be required to fire the worker or risk prosecution for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. The rule was set to take effect Sept. 14, but was held up temporarily on Aug. 31 by another judge in the San Francisco court, Maxine M. Chesney, who was sitting in for Judge Breyer at the time. Yesterday, Judge Breyer ordered a halt to the rule until the court could reach a final decision in the case, which could take many months. He made it clear he was skeptical of many of the government's arguments.

The decision also bars the Social Security Administration from sending out about 141,000 no-match letters, covering more than eight million employees, which include notices from the Homeland Security Department explaining the new rule.

Other groups bringing the lawsuit include the American Civil Liberties Union, the San Francisco Labor Council and several national and local small-business associations.

Judge Breyer found that the Social Security database that the rule would draw upon was laden with errors not related to a worker's immigration status, which could result in no-match letters being sent to legally authorized workers. "There is a strong likelihood that employers may simply fire employees who are unable to resolve the discrepancy within 90 days," even if they are legal, he wrote.

Lucas Guttentag, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the government had demonstrated "a callous disregard for legal workers and citizens by adopting a rule that punished innocent workers and employers under the guise of immigration enforcement." A.F.L.-C.I.O officials had estimated that some 600,000 of their members could receive the letters and be vulnerable to unjust dismissal.

In a December 2006 report cited in the court documents, the inspector general of the Social Security Administration estimated that 17.8 million of the agency's 435 million individual records contained discrepancies that could result in a no-match letter being sent to a legally authorized worker. Of those records with errors, 12.7 million belonged to native-born Americans, the report found.

In a Sept. 18 letter to Mr. Chertoff, the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration supported a claim in the suit that federal officials had failed to carry out a required analysis of the impact on small businesses before announcing the new rule. The office is independent from the Small Business Administration, which supported the rule.

Judge Breyer is the brother of Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court and was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1997.

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Blunt asks for faster authorization for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents

Gov. Matt Blunt today asked Missouri's Congressional Delegation to help expedite his request for authority to allow state law enforcement officers to help enforce immigration laws as federally deputized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

'As you well know, the fight against illegal immigration is important to Missouri as a whole, and to individual Missouri families,' Blunt wrote in a letter to Missouri's senators and representatives. 'This designation will enable specially trained law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws, under the supervision of ICE, commensurate with their day-to-day law enforcement duties. Missourians rightfully expect and deserve to have federal immigration laws enforced.'

Blunt's administration is currently working with ICE for authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to help enforce immigration laws. The governor is asking for Missouri's representatives in Washington to stand behind his call to help step up law enforcement in the state. Under the agreement, participating state troopers, capitol police and water patrol officers would receive appropriate training from ICE and function in the field under the supervision of ICE officers. Missouri would be one of only seven states to have taken this important step to empower state law enforcement to effectively fight illegal immigration.

Blunt directed his staff to examine the costs related to expenses from the training and implementation. He plans to seek funding in next year's budget to help state and local law enforcement agencies pursue the cooperative agreement and help enhance public safety.

The governor also directed all state law enforcement agencies to immediately take the steps necessary to verify the immigration status of every criminal presented for incarceration. Since Blunt's directive, state law enforcement have conducted 978 background checks and detained 61 illegal immigrants.

In addition, Blunt took significant steps to shield taxpayers' money from supporting building projects that employ illegal workers including:

'Conducting random on-site inspections of all projects accompanied by the tax credit recipient to monitor and retrieve documentation regarding the legal status of all workers on the job. The inspections will include direct employees of the tax credit recipient, contracted or subcontracted agents and both general contractors and their subcontractors.

'Performing a Compliance By Written Demand action for all tax credit recipients that requires all workers' proof of legal status including contractors and subcontractors to be submitted within 30 days of the date of the recipient of the written request.

Blunt is a strong advocate for protecting Missouri from illegal activity. He recently issued a letter to the Missouri Housing Development Commission outlining principles for the commission to consider regarding illegal immigration that include possible sanctions of up to a lifetime ban of contractors and developers who knowingly employ illegal immigrants in violation of federal law.

The letter follows the governor's tough stand against illegal immigration. Earlier this year, Blunt ousted a state contractor who hired illegal workers and ordered state agencies to enact a no tolerance policy through tough new contract protections. Blunt canceled the state's contract with Sam's Janitorial Services and barred them from doing further business with the state after local and federal law enforcement agencies identified dozens of illegal immigrants working under falsified documents.

Blunt also authored the state's first directive to audit all contractors to ensure that the contract employees are legally eligible to work in the U.S. and to terminate contracts if it is determined a contractor employs illegal immigrants. He added tough provisions in state contracts to allow the state to immediately cancel contracts if it determines the contractor knowingly has employees not eligible to work in the U.S. and to require contractors to certify that all their employees meet state and federal employment eligibility requirements.

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11 October, 2007

Immigrants a big issue in Swiss elections

One cartoon image has come to crystallise a bitter debate raging at the heart of the most divisive election campaign in the postwar history of Switzerland. In posters displayed across the Alpine republic by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), a white sheep is shown kicking a black sheep off the red pastures of the Swiss flag. The caption states: "For greater security."



Each side in this election - in which there have been riots on the streets of Berne, the capital - accused the other of using the image to deflect attention away from the real issues facing a country that has some of the toughest naturalisation policies in the world but is still unsure how to deal with rising immigration.

The SVP defended its election material, saying that "black sheep" was a common phrase in German, French and English for an undesirable character who did not play by the rules. Its poster, therefore, illustrated perfectly one of the party's key policies, to reintroduce a law expelling foreign criminals once they have completed their sentence for crimes committed in Switzerland.

Senior figures have made light of the row, with Roman Jaggi, an SVP spokesman, saying: "It is a very nice poster and we receive a lot of requests from children who want to cut out the pictures of the sheep." For their main poll rivals, the left-wing Social Democratic Party (SPS), the poster revealed the true racist intent of an expulsion law that by definition could apply only to immigrants and non-naturalised residents, such as the children of migrants who are often denied full citizenship.

Switzerland is run by a seven-member federal council, currently containing two representatives from the SVP and two from the SPS, as well as a parliament where the Social Democrats have 52 MPs compared with 55 for the People's Party. Polls indicate that the People's Party is likely to win elections due on October 21. The party is bankrolled by Christoph Blocher, the billionaire chemicals industrialist who is a lifelong campaigner against immigration and membership of the European Union.

However, his political opponents accuse him of stoking xenophobia. Claudine Godat, spokeswoman for the SPS, said: "It is completely clear that colour is being highlighted here and that it is a racist poster. They pretend it is just a saying but it is a campaign to exclude foreign people, more precisely black people. The racist message is there." Her party retaliated with a similar election poster, but the black sheep being kicked into touch in the leftist version is Mr Blocher himself.

The SPS does not dispute that a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by ethnic minorities in Switzerland. Police figures indicate that half of murders were committed by "foreigners" last year. Ms Godat said: "We have about 20 per cent foreigners in the country and in the statistics around 40 per cent of crime . Crime is linked to social position and many foreigners are at a low social level - they work in construction or cleaning - and people are more at risk of criminality at a lower social level."

The Social Democrat solution is to make it easier for foreigners to become Swiss citizens, to give them a leg up the social ladder. The SVP wants to get tougher and has begun a debate on expelling the whole family of a teenage criminal, although it has now put this policy on the backburner. Three years ago it led a campaign to block liberalisation of the citizenship process with a poster showing dark hands reaching for Swiss passports.

Matthias Mueller, a spokesman for the SVP, said: "The figures show that we have a severe problem with some immigrants. The increase of crime is caused by the lack of political will of our opponents. In order to cover their failure they try not to discuss the facts but to focus on a wrong interpretation of our campaign." Growing international criticism of his party's approach showed a "deep misunderstanding" of Swiss politics, he added. "We are not a racist party but we try to make clear that what is going on in Switzerland is a very dangerous tendency." The tension raised by the election campaign burst on to the streets at the weekend, when Berne was hit by rioting as left-wing protesters halted an SVP rally.

The climate of hostility towards migrants has attracted criticism from Doudou Diene, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Racism, whose office is in Switzerland. In a report issued this year, he concluded that there was "a dynamic of racism and xenophobia" in the country.

The underlying causes were a "deep-rooted cultural resistance within Swiss society to the multiculturalisation process" and "the growing prevalence of racist and xenophobic stances in political programmes and discourse, particularly during elections and various votes". Mr Diene's office yesterday said that he continued to monitor the Swiss election campaign but was unavailable for comment on the sheep poster.

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Arizona: Police union calls for change in Phoenix's immigration policy

A union for police officers broke with leaders of the Phoenix Police Department on Monday in calling for an end to an immigration policy that the union says makes streets in the nation's fifth largest city more dangerous. The policy prevents police officers from asking federal immigration authorities for assistance in situations where illegal immigrants commit civil traffic violations.

The restriction and other city rules for handling illegal immigrants have long been criticized by advocates for tough border enforcement, who reject the long-held notion that immigration is a sole responsibility of the federal government. But such criticism has never surfaced publicly from the officers themselves. "If we allow a little bit of lawlessness, what prevents more lawlessness from occurring," asked Mark Spencer, president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, which represents more than 2,200 officers and detectives in the Phoenix Police Department.

Spencer said the call for a change was based on frustrations that officers feel in seeing crimes tied to illegal immigration and wasn't inspired by last month's death of a police officer at the hands of an illegal immigrant.

After his release from prison and subsequent deportation, the immigrant sneaked into the country again and was arrested for misdemeanor assault in Scottsdale but wasn't reported to federal immigration authorities. The immigrant was fatally shot by police as he pointed a gun at a carjacking victim's head.

Spencer, whose group isn't advocating local immigration enforcement, said criminal threats can sometimes be eliminated when officers confront people committing minor violations.

Jack Harris, who leads the city's police department, said he was open to the union's suggestion, but that he must consider whether such a change would be in Phoenix's best interest. Harris said the policy centers on immigrants who haven't committed a crime and are suspected only of entering the country illegally.

While few local law enforcement agencies in Arizona enforce immigration law, many local police have arrested illegal immigrants who violate state crimes.

Phoenix's policies for handling illegal immigrants are frequently cited by some state lawmakers who have pushed unsuccessful proposals that would have done away with those practices. Under the policy, the Phoenix Police Department can call federal immigration authorities in cases where immigrant smuggling vehicles are pulled over or scores of illegal immigrants are found hidden in houses run by smugglers. But officers aren't allowed to stop people for the sole purpose of determining their immigration status. Also, Phoenix police aren't to arrest people whose only violation is an infraction of federal immigration law.

The union was requesting changes only to the prohibition on calling federal immigration authorities for those with civil traffic violations.

Harris and other police bosses in Arizona held a news conference Monday to renew their opposition to suggestions that local police conduct day-to-day immigration enforcement. The police bosses said local immigration enforce would jeopardize the trust that police officers have built with immigrant communities and detract from their traditional roles in cracking down on thefts, violence and other crimes. "Immigration enforcement poses a tremendous responsibility that will compete with other priorities," said Ralph Tranter, executive director of the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police. "It's going to be very difficult to balance those resources."

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10 October, 2007

The latest from CIS

1. The Immigration Debate

EXCERPT from Mark Krikorian: More generally, this whole discussion among John, Joe, Linda, Clint, and me has, I think, been quite illuminating. The substantive, documented critiques by John and me, and the glib, breezy responses by Linda and Clint, really highlight the unbridgeable divide on the Right over immigration. On one side is the majority of conservatives, who, despite many differing views on the specifics of immigration policy, nonetheless give first priority to Americanization, borders, sovereignty, and national cohesion. On the other side is a small but vocal group that places first priority on continued high levels of immigration, without any preconditions regarding assimilation or sovereignty. This faction is part of an odd-bedfellows coalition of business lobbyists, libertarian ideologues, racial-chauvinist groups, and left-wing open-borders activists that have been very successful over the years in preventing consistent, across-the-board enforcement of our immigration laws.

It’s long past time to establish the first of these two competing views as the consensus position of the Right: Assimilation first; Secure borders first; Sovereignty first. Those who disagree should either keep their own counsel or find a different political home.

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2. Point/Counterpoint: No Need for Immigrants Here

EXCERPT: There are two questions to consider when deciding whether to stop welcoming illegal aliens. First, do we even need the flow of labor that illegal immigration represents? And second, whatever immigration policy we do adopt, can it be enforced if we make it easy to live here illegally, as we do now?

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3. Attrition by enforcement is the best course of action

EXCERPT: Probably the most important part of making it hard to be an illegal immigrant is to make it harder for illegal immigrants to find jobs. This was the point to the big 1986 immigration law, which for the first time ever prohibited the employment of illegal aliens, but it was never seriously enforced, and employers were able to claim (often sincerely) that they had no idea whether the people they hired were really legal.

But there is now a solution. The federal government has a voluntary online tool called 'E-Verify' to help employers determine whether the people they hire really are who they say they are. Nearly 20,000 employers are currently participating.

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4. Federal leaders need to rein in cities that go against policy

EXCERPT: At the state level, some legislatures have passed laws giving in-state tuition subsidies to illegal immigrants that are not offered to out-of-state Americans. The governor of Illinois last month signed a bill barring employers in the state from using a federal online system to verify a new hire's legal status. And just this month New York announced that it would start issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

In none of these cases can the city or state governments claim they're simply dealing with local concerns, leaving immigration to the federal government. Every policy that makes it more attractive to live here in violation of federal law promotes illegal immigration. And even in a simple physical sense, immigration is a national issue; once an illegal immigrant gets established in San Francisco or New York, there's little to stop him from traveling to Alabama or Michigan.

Because the federal government is, indeed, in charge of immigration, Washington needs to act to rein in those states and cities that are attempting to nullify federal policy. An encouraging example happened Monday, as federal lawyers filed suit against Illinois, claiming the state's ban on the use of the verification system is a 'direct assault on the federal law,' in the words of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

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5. Fewer migrants mean more benefits

As immigration enforcement takes hold, jobs begin to open up to less-skilled Americans

EXCERPT: Immigration hawks have been on a winning streak lately. An unprecedented surge of public outrage at the prospect of amnesty for illegal immigrants led to the defeat in June of the Senate immigration bill and the probable end of President Bush's dream for comprehensive immigration reform. And that was merely the latest in a series of victories for supporters of tighter controls, including the Real ID Act of 2005, the Secure Fence Act of 2006, proliferating enforcement efforts at the state and local levels and a new package of modest but meaningful enforcement measures announced last month by the Department of Homeland Security.

What of the results? Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told The Times that 'there will be some unhappy consequences for the economy out of doing this.' While the enforcement climate is still too new to show results in government data one way or the other, Chertoff's prediction doesn't appear to be playing out. On the contrary, there is extensive anecdotal evidence that enforcement is actually having its desired effects: More illegal aliens are going home, leading to improved conditions for American workers and communities.

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6. Take back the streets from immigrant gangs

EXCERPT: For a long time, gangs in Massachusetts were strictly a local affair. In recent years, however, national gangs such as Crips and Bloods have entered the scene, as well as the transnational MS-13, which originated among the large illegal alien communities of El Salvadorans in southern California. It began aggressively expanding its franchises in the early 1990s, migrating eastward. Its membership is now believed to number 10,000 in the United States, and possibly 50,000 more in Central America and Mexico.....

Immigration law enforcement is uniquely well suited to address the problem of transnational gangs. Federal agencies estimate that 80-90 percent of MS-13 members are illegal aliens. This lack of status presents a glaring vulnerability that local police must not hesitate to exploit in their efforts to disrupt the gang's criminal activity. We are stuck with native-born criminals, but need not accept the fiscal and social burden of criminals who have no permission to be here in the first place.

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7. Professional Guestworker Visas and Employment Opportunities for U.S. Workers

EXCERPT: Our research has shown that continued heavy reliance on the H-1B and L-1 guestworker programs by employers in certain sectors – especially information technology, but also higher education, nursing, teaching, and other professional jobs – diminishes opportunities for U.S. workers in those fields, and may be discouraging young people from considering some of those careers. In some of the job sectors where guestworkers are prevalent, such as information technology and higher education, the availability of guestworkers means that employers have little incentive to improve compensation or boost representation of women, blacks, and Hispanics, who are already noticeably less numerous in those occupations.

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8. Immigration-Related Dissertations 2006

EXCERPT: It is the mission of the Center for Immigration Studies to inform, examine, and critique American immigration policy. In the pursuit of this goal, the Center seeks to provide the latest immigration news and research for all involved in the debate of this complex issue. In addition to its e-mail news services, papers, books, and monthly publications, the Center disseminates an annual list of doctoral dissertations and theses inspecting some aspect of immigration in order to keep those involved abreast of the most recent developments in emerging immigration scholarship. This compilation contains dissertations completed in 2006. Abstracts of these dissertations can be viewed for free though the end of this year at ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Full copies may be obtained for a fee.





9 October, 2007

"Guestworker" program via regulation?

With a nationwide farmworker shortage threatening to leave unharvested fruits and vegetables rotting in fields, the Bush administration has begun quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers that restrict how foreign laborers can legally be brought into the country. The effort, urgently underway at the departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor, is meant to rescue farm owners caught in a vise between a complex process to hire legal guest workers and stepped-up enforcement that has reduced the number of illegal planters, pickers and middle managers crossing the border. "It is important for the farm sector to have access to labor to stay competitive," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "As the southern border has tightened, some producers have a more difficult time finding a workforce, and that is a factor of what is going on today."

The push to speedily rewrite the regulations is also the Bush administration's attempt to step into a breach left when Congress did not pass an immigration overhaul in June that might have helped American farms. Almost three-quarters of farmworkers are thought to be illegal immigrants. On all sides of the farm industry, the administration's behind-the-scenes initiative to revamp H-2A farmworker visas is fraught with anxiety. Advocates for immigrants fear the changes will come at the expense of worker protections because the administration has received and is reportedly acting on extensive input from farm lobbyists. And farmers in areas such as the San Joaquin Valley, which is experiencing a 20% labor shortfall, worry the administration's changes will not happen soon enough for the 2008 growing season.

"It's like a ticking time bomb that's going to go off," said Luawanna Hallstrom, chief operating officer of Harry Singh & Sons, a third-generation family farm in Oceanside that grows tomatoes. "I'm looking at my fellow farmers and saying, 'Oh my God, what's going on?' "

Officials at the three federal agencies are scrutinizing the regulations to see whether they can adjust the farmworker program, an unwieldy system used by less than 2% of American farms to bring in foreign workers. They are considering a series of changes, including lengthening the time workers can stay, expanding the types of work they can do, simplifying how their applications are processed, and redefining terms such as "temporary." Administration sources said they were moving aggressively. They declined to discuss details of the proposals. The agencies are also working on possible changes to a separate visa program, H-2B, which brings in seasonal workers for resorts, clam-shucking operations and horse stables, among other businesses.

The administration has pursued the project discreetly. The issue of immigration has generated friction between President Bush and the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has strongly opposed many of the initiatives that Bush has pursued.

The changes to the H-2A visa program comprise one of more than two dozen initiatives the administration announced in August. Most of the initiatives dealt with increased enforcement, the most prominent being a measure that would force employers to either fire workers for whom they've received "no match" notification (indicating their W-2 data don't match Social Security Administration records) or face punitive action from the Department of Homeland Security. When Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the enforcement push, he also acknowledged the problems that agriculture reported. "Even putting aside no-match letters, just our increased work at the border was actually causing a drop in the number of workers coming across," Chertoff said.

David James, an assistant secretary of Labor, said Bush asked his department, which has jurisdiction over most H-2A rules, to review the entire program. The agency "is now in the process of identifying ways the program can be improved to provide farmers with an orderly and timely flow of legal workers while protecting the rights of both U.S. workers and foreign temporary workers," James said. The current program, managed by all three agencies, is famously dysfunctional. Farmers have to apply for workers about a month in advance, but the agencies often fail to coordinate their response in time for the harvest, which farmers can't always predict. At Hallstrom's farm, where tidy rows of tomato plants run almost to the ocean's edge, half of the 1,000 workers are in the H-2A program. (Nationally, about 60,000 H-2A applications a year are usually filed, compared with more than 3 million farm jobs to be filled. There is no cap on the number of H-2A workers allowed into the U.S.) She remembers submitting an emergency request for H-2A workers one year and getting the visas 60 days later. She said the laborers spent two weeks pulling rotten fruit off the vines, and the farm lost $2.5 million. "Devastating," Hallstrom said.

Growers also complain about paying for workers' housing, transportation, visas and other fees. Harry Yates, a North Carolina Christmas-tree grower, estimates that his labor costs for H-2A workers are $14 an hour, compared with a competitor whose illegal laborers cost about $7.50 an hour. Like other farmers, Yates said using the H-2A program was an invitation to lawsuits from worker advocates and frequent government investigations. "I understand why so many growers are afraid to use this program. It is too expensive, too complicated, too slow and too likely to land you in court," Yates said.

More here



'GMA' Discourages Enforcement of Immigration Laws

Sawyer offers one-sided account that includes need for Mexican labor, emotional pleas and misleading information

The shortage of labor has some low-skill employers in a bind. According to “Good Morning America” co-host Diane Sawyer, you can thank U.S. immigration officials for doing their job and cracking down on illegal border crossers. “And yet fueled by anger, the U.S. is cracking down, even building a 700-mile fence on the border at an estimated cost of $10 to $50 billion over the next 25 years,” Sawyer said on the October 8 “GMA.” “Will that work?”

But the problem doesn’t stem from the unemployed in Mexico, but those who already had jobs. “They are mostly male, mostly young and scared,” Sawyer said with a sympathetic tone. “[F]our hundred a year die attempting to cross to the United States. And a surprise – most of them, in fact, were employed in Mexico, but came to the U.S. for more money – money they'll send back.”

Sawyer also failed to differentiate Hispanic labor from illegal Mexican labor in her report when she conducted interviews with business leaders that rely on Hispanic labor. “If you took away Hispanic labor from agriculture and from dairying in Wisconsin, we'd be in crisis,” said Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture Rod Nilestuen to Sawyer. “There's just no two ways about that.”

She failed to differentiate between the two when she used the labor force in Las Vegas as an example. “Las Vegas would stop. We would stop in our tracks,” said Donald Taylor of the Las Vegas Culinary Workers Union, responding to her question. “They do everything from cleaning our room to serving a cocktail to cooking a meal to serving a meal to cleaning the casino floor.”

Even using the numbers provided by Sawyer, there is a cost benefit to the American taxpayer to secure the United States-Mexican border rather than opening it up easier immigration as the story advocated. “It's a huge boost to the Mexican economy – $20 billion a year,” Sawyer said. “Another surprise, the majority pay taxes totaling billions. Though it's estimated it still costs American citizens about $60 a year per person to subsidize the illegal's health and schooling.”

With a U.S. Census Bureau estimate of more than 300 million , that’s a taxpayer cost of $18 billion annually versus the $2 billion annually the fence is projected to cost. Still Mexican President Felipe Calderon doubts the effectiveness of the fence. “It's impossible to stop that by decree,” Calderon said to Sawyer on the October 8 “GMA.” “It's impossible to try to stop that with a fence. Why? Because the capital in America needs Mexican workers. And Mexican workers needs opportunity of jobs. Capital and labor are like right shoe and left shoe, and one needs the other.”

However, where there is a fence, statistics show an improvement in slowing the spread of illegal immigration. “[Rep. Duncan] Hunter and other officials credit the existing fence, along with increased security, with discouraging illegal immigrants from trying to enter the USA,” Kevin Johnson of USA Today wrote in the September 17 issue. “As security has been increased along the southwestern border, apprehensions of illegal immigrants have declined during the past three years, from 1,171,396 in 2005 to 889,056 in 2007 with one month remaining in the government's budget year.”

Source





8 October, 2007

Australian policy on troublesome African immigrants defended

Both the conservative government and the Leftist Opposition are defending the big cut in the number of African refugees accepted. No glass jaw over "racism" allegations in evidence in Australia

Colleagues have leapt to the defence of embattled Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews, while Labor admitted to agreeing with the new policy on Sudanese refugees. Mr Andrews' decision to cut the number of Sudanese refugees coming to Australia was not racially based, Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile says. Mr Andrews has been accused of racism while defending the government's decision last week to cut the quota of Sudanese refugees.

Meanwhile, Labor has admitted to agreeing numbers of African refugees should be cut, but also denies its policy is race-based. Mr Andrews said the decision had been made due to concerns that they were failing to integrate and were becoming involved in crime.

Mr Vaile said the government's intake of migrants was greater than any other Australian government and it had a choice of who to accept. "This decision is absolutely not racially based," Mr Vaile told the Nine Network today. "Every government in Australia's history has always had the opportunity to adjust the mix if you like in the immigration policies of the day to benefit the nation and to benefit the migrants coming in and particularly refugees," Mr Vaile said.

He said he respected the view of Victoria' federal member for Mallee John Forrest that there should be more Sudanese refugees accepted into Australia. "He comes from an electorate where historically they've always been stretched in terms of getting a solid unskilled workforce if you like to work in their industries in the Sunraysia," [Fruit picking] Mr Vaile said. However, Mr Andrews' decision took in the interests of the broader community, he said, despite Labor's insistence the decision was born of incompetence.

Mr Andrews drew accusations of racism earlier this week when he declared Australia had reduced its African refugee intake because some, particularly Sudanese people, were failing to integrate and were becoming more involved in crime. His statements were totally at odds with his reasons in August for reducing the African intake - namely that Australia needed to accept more refugees from countries like Burma and Iraq and it had already filled its African quota to July 2008.

Labor agreed with the government's decision to cut back the African intake, but immigration spokesman Tony Burke today said he was mystified as to why Mr Andrews' had used this "new rhetoric". "I don't understand it," Mr Burke told ABC television. "I've got to say I think with Kevin Andrews you can't look past the possibility of incompetence. "I don't think you can discount incompetence in him misrepresenting the reasons that have been given." Asked if he thought the government was playing racist politics, Mr Burke said: "I hope not with something like this, I genuinely hope not. "I hope they're not dealing with it in that way." Mr Burke said police Not police in general. Just one very ideological police chief], who have disputed Mr Andrews' assertion that Sudanese people are over-represented in crime statistics, were a "more reputable source". "(Mr Andrews) has provided anecdotal evidence but he hasn't been willing to put publicly or provide directly to the opposition all of that information, he's just put out snippets of information," Mr Burke said.

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Canadians getting tougher about the spillover from the USA

The coverage below is very biased but it does give some basic information

Cracking down on refugee advocates is unlikely to stop an influx of refugees at the Canadian border, says an American immigration consultant who was arrested last month at the Quebec-New York state border and charged with human smuggling. Janet Hinshaw-Thomas, a 65-year-old refugee advocate from Chester, Pa., says perhaps some humanitarian organizations who previously thought they could operate without fear of legal reprisal will think twice before helping people who are seeking asylum in Canada. But with the current immigration situation in the United States, people will continue making a bee line for the Canadian border, with or without the help of intermediaries.

"I can't believe that people are not going to approach the border, they'll just pay other people to get up there," said Hinshaw-Thomas in an interview last week, between seeing clients at her offices in Lancaster, Pa. "It's not going to stop it, but it's going to stop an orderly process."

There has been a recent influx of Mexican and Haitian refugees in Windsor, Ont., from the United States where the Immigration and Naturalization Service are in the midst of a clampdown on illegal immigrants. "The deportations in the United States of Haitians as well as other people have gone up tremendously and people are living in great fear," Hinshaw-Thomas said.

Hinshaw-Thomas, who was arrested on Sept. 26 in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que. as she helped 12 Haitian nationals cross the border, says a series of miscommunications on both sides led to her arrest. In 19 previous trips by people from her organization, no one had ever been arrested or stopped. Her supporters say Canada is targeting a Good Samaritan, using a provision under Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act designed to stop criminal organizations involved in people smuggling.

Her lawyers are confident they can beat the charges, but there is an underlying issue. "People (humanitarian workers) are very afraid right now and they all think they could be next," said one of Hinshaw-Thomas's Montreal-based lawyers, Mitchell Goldberg. "We don't think it's enough to drop the charges .... we are calling for guidelines to be issued so this never happens again." Hinshaw-Thomas says on one of her trips she was shown the law and her entire understanding of Sec. 117 was that humanitarian workers are allowed to assist the asylum seekers as long as they don't profit from it. "In retrospect, the Canadian law is much more encompassing," said Hinshaw-Thomas. "I didn't have to earn a penny or lose a penny for me to be charged. I certainly did not understand it. It was never my intention to violate Canadian law." The legislation has severe penalties of a maximum of a $1 million fine and/or life in prison.

Hinshaw-Thomas is believed to be the first human rights worker to be charged under the act and is due back in court in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu on Nov. 30. The good-natured grandmother of four admits she's a little daunted by her situation. "It is a bit scary, I don't relish life imprisonment," she said.

Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, says there is a grassroots movement moving towards putting pressure on the government. "I've seen people are more outraged and they are trying to find ways to confront the government on this and to challenge the government on the prosecution of people who are helping refugees on a humanitarian basis," Dench said. "I think most people interpret it as (the government) wanting to send a message. It creates a very confrontational position."

Erik Paradis, a Canada Border Services Agency spokesperson, said profit has nothing to do with the arrest. "The person that was charged was very well aware of the consequence of such activities, she had been notified previously so this why we took this stance and pressed charges," Paradis said. Paradis said officers applied the law as it is laid out. As a safeguard that humanitarian workers aren't abused, there is a provision that states the attorney general's consent must be included on any warrant. "Its up to the court to determine if our officers applied the act correctly," Paradis said. "Maybe we'll have a surprise and realize we shouldn't have, but we really applied the act and the attorney general agrees with us."

Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told The Canadian Press last week he did not personally sign any warrant or authorization calling for the arrest of Hinshaw-Thomas, and as per policy, would not comment on the particular case. "I will say that the law is clear that anyone who aids or abets individuals entering in this country without proper documentation is subject to a charge under the immigration and refugee act and the law is clear," Nicholson said.

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7 October, 2007

Immigration sweep targets Los Angeles area gangs

In an ongoing crackdown, 28 foreign nationals suspected of having ties to street gangs in the San Fernando Valley were arrested by federal immigration agents Friday during early morning sweeps throughout Los Angeles County. More than 200 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fanned out across the Valley, Palmdale and other areas of the county, raiding residences and arresting members of 15 street gangs, officials said.

Among them was Jorge Torres, 31, a reputed member of the Project Boys in Pacoima whose criminal record includes convictions for drug charges as well as battery on a police officer, officials said. Torres, who has been deported five times, has been indicted by the U.S. attorney's office for reentering the United States. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

"The people targeted in these operations are career criminals who often prey on members of the immigrant community," said Robert Schoch, special agent in charge of ICE in Los Angeles. "We want to send a clear message to foreign national gang members that ICE intends to deal strongly with those who ignore our immigration laws and place our neighborhoods at risk."

Friday's sweep was part of the agency's ongoing crackdown on illegal immigrants with suspected gang affiliations in the Valley. Of the 28 people arrested Friday, 21 were undocumented and seven had legal-residency status, which is now being revoked, Schoch said. Those arrested were believed to be linked to gangs including the Canoga Park Alabama, San Fer, Barrio Van Nuys, Vineland Boys, Blythe Street and Project Boys.

Schoch said a squad of agents has been working the Valley since last year. Los Angeles police have identified a hike in gang crime in the Valley and list several area gangs as some of the city's most violent. The San Fernando Valley "is the size of Philadelphia," Schoch said. "From a workload standpoint, we needed to be up there." In September, ICE agents arrested nine reputed gang members suspected of being in the country illegally.

Source



French Senate approves immigration bill

France's Senate passed an immigration bill Friday that would allow consular officers to request DNA samples from immigrants trying to join relatives in France, among other measures to limit arrivals. Some of the proposals, including the one calling for DNA testing, were weakened from an earlier version of the bill approved in the lower house, the National Assembly, two weeks ago. The overnight Senate vote sends the text to a parliamentary committee that will try to work out the differences in the two versions before sending it back to both houses for another round of voting.

The bill, which cleared the Senate in a 188-135 vote, would allow consular officials at French embassies to request DNA tests from applicants seeking long-term visas to join their family members in France. The DNA tests would be voluntary. The measure is aimed at proving family ties in cases where officials have doubts about the authenticity of a marriage certificate, birth certificate or other official document presented. The Senate version would limit the use of DNA tests to applicants seeking to show their relation with their mother -- not the broader use called for under the text in the lower house.

Some opponents of the National Assembly bill said the DNA tests were unfair by requiring applicants to pay up to $420 for them to be conducted. In the Senate version, the state would pay for them. Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy supports DNA tests and favors limiting immigrants through quotas by region. Critics say such tests would be discriminatory and betray France's humanitarian values. Another proposal would require candidates who need it to receive French language training.

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6 October, 2007

Britain: Halt immigration call

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage has put immigration at the heart of his party's policy agenda ahead of a possible November General Election. Mr Farage said he wanted to see all immigration to the UK halted for the next five years in a bid to take the strain off public services. Addressing the Ukip annual conference in Limehouse, east London, he warned that immigration, which he said was an "absolute mess", was leading to an increase in community tension.

Britain had always been "tolerant" and had "easily absorbed" migrations, but the current movement of people, particularly from Eastern Europe, "dwarfed" anything seen previously. And he launched a scathing attack on the political class in the UK, who he said were only interested in "self perpetuation". Those who supported demands for a referendum on the EU Treaty were "fair-weather friends" who would "melt away" over the real issue of Britain remaining in the EU, he claimed.

Mr Farage, in a 22-minute speech delivered in the unscripted style seen from David Cameron in Blackpool, admitted his party was not ready for an autumn poll. He said: "We are not ready to fight a snap General Election, which is why you should...tell us that if you are needed you will put your name down and you will stand for us in that snap General Election." The party had to fight the election because Ukip were the only party that believed that the best people to govern Britain were "the British people themselves."

On the subject of immigration, Mr Farage said "pressure" was being placed on public services and it was "putting an unfair burden on the citizen." To cheers he said: "...we believe that there now needs to be a five-year moratorium on any new immigration to this country. We need that time to assess who is here legally and who is here illegally."

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Chertoff gets serious, Maybe Bush too

It is a new war on illegal immigration that grows increasingly visible and more intense by the day. "I think we're talking about something the American people have never seen before, which is what do we do and what do we see when the government gets serious about using all the legal tools available to make the law work and to enforce the law," Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

"And that's why there has been a tenfold increase or more in the number of absconders [fugitive aliens] that we've rounded up and sent back. And that's why there have been dramatic increases in our removals, [and] we've gone from one or two criminal cases five or six years ago to about 800 criminal cases this past year, because we are really pulling out all the stops," Chertoff continued.

Across the country, federal agents have been raiding businesses and homes in an unprecedented campaign targeting illegal immigrants. Just last month, federal agents conducted work-site raids in seven cities, arresting nearly 200 undocumented workers. Another 2,357 illegal immigrants previously ordered deported were also rounded up. In the last week in California, 1,300 illegal immigrants were arrested -- one of the biggest sweeps in recent memory. On Long Island, authorities rounded up 186 people -- most are believed to be gang members. In Nevada, more that 50 workers at McDonald's restaurants were recently targeted.

But the raids have sparked protests in a frightened and frustrated immigrant community. "They're not criminals. They want to work," said one protestor. "We want to do things right for them and for this country."

The expansion of the government's deportation efforts has been dramatic. According to immigration officials, in 2003, only 1,901 alien absconders -- those who had been ordered by a court to leave the country but remained in the country in defiance of the order -- had been arrested. So far this year, more than 30,000 individuals who've ignored their deportation orders have been arrested.

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5 October, 2007

Some border cities block access to border-fence land

Mayors along the Texas-Mexico border have begun a quiet protest of the federal government's plans to build a fence along the border: Some are refusing access to their land. Mayors in Brownsville, Del Rio and El Paso have denied or limited access to some parts of their city property to Department of Homeland Security workers assigned to begin surveys or other preliminary work on the fence Congress has authorized to keep out illegal immigrants. Eagle Pass has denied a request from federal officials to build a portion of the wall within its city limits.

Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada said Tuesday that he refused two weeks ago to sign documents granting federal workers permission to begin work if it was to be on city property. Del Rio granted limited access and El Paso allowed workers only on its outskirts, said Monica Weisberg Stewart of the Texas Border Coalition, a group that represents local officials. "This is exercising our rights. This is our property," Ahumada said. "We are not going to make it easy for them."

In Eagle Pass, Mayor Chad Foster said his city has refused the U.S. Border Patrol's request to build 1 1/4 miles of fencing as part of a project that includes light towers and a new road for border patrols. But he added that while border communities are at odds with the government, they remain committed to finding solutions to these disagreements. "All of us are in opposition to physical barriers but we want to work with (the Department of Homeland Security) so everybody walks away happy," said Foster, who is also chairman of the Texas Border Coalition. Foster said some cities like El Paso and Del Rio have felt the need for some of the fence in their communities and others like Eagle Pass and Brownsville have not.

Brownsville, a city in South Texas of about 170,000 people across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico, said the city also was considering a lawsuit against the federal government to prevent the fence's construction on city property. City leaders met with attorneys Tuesday night about that possibility but decided to wait two more weeks before making a decision. "If we have to we'll take it all the way up to the Supreme Court," Ahumada said about a potential lawsuit.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Brad Benson said the federal government hasn't yet come up with a response, but said they expected some land owners would refuse. "We will work with everybody. We plan to accommodate any credible concerns with regard to the environment," Benson said. "Our mission at the end of the day is to secure the border."

David Crump, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center, said for now, land owners can keep anybody out of their property for any reason. "But it's subject to being breached by legislation and either the Texas Legislature or Congress can give power to an agency to do it," said Crump, who specializes in real property law. Texas officials, including Republican Gov. Rick Perry, also oppose the fence.

Maps released last month by the federal government show nearly 23 miles of fence would be built in and around Brownsville, including some city property. Ahumada looked out of his office window and pointed to land only three blocks away as potential fenced-in areas. The maps, part of two notices of intent to file an environmental impact study, detailed the proposed locations of about 70 miles of border fencing in South Texas, stretching from Rio Grande City southeast to Fort Brown, next to Brownsville. Maps of fencing being proposed for other parts of the state have not yet been released. Congress has authorized $1.2 billion for about 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. This would include about 330 miles of so-called virtual fence - a network of cameras, high-tech sensors, radar and other technology. The remaining 370 miles, primarily in more urban areas, are expected to have an actual, two-layer fence.

Homeland Security has said it is committed to erecting 370 miles of fencing by the end of 2008. "There are definitely concerns (by border officials) on legal challenges by the federal government," Stewart said. "People are concerned the federal government will come in and take people's lands."

Ahumada said a nearly $40 million dam and reservoir project Brownsville is proposing would provide a natural physical barrier and provide better border security in the area around the city than the fence. If Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff "is determined to build a wall. I wish Mr. Chertoff would build a wall around his house," Ahumada said. "We don't want this wall."

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Global Opinion Favors Immigration Limits

Strong majorities in the U.S. and many Western and developing nations favor tightened restrictions on immigration, a poll of countries around the globe showed Thursday. At the same time, most people in every country surveyed said they think increased trade is good for their nation. Majorities in most countries also expressed favor for free market economies and for the impact that foreign companies are having at home.

The findings came from a poll conducted this spring in 46 countries, plus the Palestinian territories, that was overseen by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, a Washington-based research organization. It included countries from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. Only in South Korea and the Palestinian territories did most people express opposition to tighter immigration policies, while in Japan they were evenly split. Support for stronger restrictions was dominant everywhere else. It generally was greatest in Africa and South Asia, including about nine in 10 in Indonesia, Malaysia, Ivory Coast and South Africa. "In many parts of the world, people see immigration as destabilizing" and a threat to their cultures, said Andrew Kohut, Pew president and director of the study. "And they worry about jobs."

The survey, which sought global opinion on a range of issues and lifestyle questions, also found:

_More than a two-to-one preference in Russia for a strong leader over a democracy. That was the weakest support for democracy in the survey;

_Wide agreement that military force is sometimes needed to maintain order in the world, with majorities disagreeing only in Germany, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Egypt, Jordan and South Korea;

_Strong majorities everywhere, though to a lesser extent in the Muslim world, for educating boys and girls equally;

_Broad acceptance for homosexuality in the Americas and Western Europe, and strong disapproval virtually everywhere else.

In the U.S., 75 percent favored tougher immigration restrictions, though this was 6 percentage points fewer than in 2002.

While majorities in every country looked positively on trade, the 59 percent in the U.S. who agreed was the lowest figure in the survey. That was down from 78 percent five years ago, reflecting concerns about slow wage growth and the quality of jobs, Kohut said, and pointing toward possible campaign-season debates on trade policy.

Widespread acceptance of global trade and free markets was coupled with cautions about the impact of worldwide competition. Majorities everywhere said governments should take care of the poorest people, and most in every nation but Indonesia said they favored protecting the environment even if that slowed economic growth and cost jobs.

The poll involved telephone and face-to-face interviews with 45,239 people in 46 countries plus the Palestinian territories, conducted in April and May. All samples were national except for Bolivia, Brazil, China, India, Ivory Coast, Pakistan, South Africa, and Venezuela, where they were mostly or completely conducted in cities.

The numbers of people interviewed in each country varied from 500 each in Spain, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Kuwait to 3,142 in China. The margin of sampling error in each country ranged from plus or minus 2 percentage points to 4 percentage points.

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4 October, 2007

Church shelters illegal alien, gets $40K bill for police protection during protest

A California-based immigration reform organization is supporting the decision by the mayor of Simi Valley to bill a church almost $40,000 for harboring an illegal alien to cover the cost for police presence during a protest.

For more than a year Mexican national Elvira Arellano made national news as she was holed up inside a Chicago church in order to avoid deportation by immigration authorities. Arellano finally left the church, fled to California, and was deported back to Mexico. Now another illegal, identified only as "Lilliana," has been given sanctuary at United Church of Christ in Simi Valley, California.

In response, an immigration reform group, known as Save Our State, organized a three-day protest outside the church -- forcing the city to send police officers to keep the peace. But instead of billing the protestors, Simi Valley Mayor Paul Miller sent the nearly $40,000 bill to the church, calling the congregation irresponsible for harboring an illegal alien.

Save our State spokeswoman Chelene Nightingale says the mayor made the right call. "This pastor is the one who opted to have this criminal in her church, therefore I personally feel -- as do others -- that she should pay for harboring a criminal. She's aiding and abetting," says Nightingale.

It is unfortunate, says the group spokeswoman, that the American Civil Liberties Union has come to the defense of the church and its illegal alien visitor, prompting the mayor to hold off on the bill. "The ACLU can pose quite a bit of problems for a city," she says. Nightingale says her organization intends to meet with the mayor and return to the church for another protest.

Source



Australia cuts African refugee intake

Note that the Leftist Premier of NSW has confirmed in Parliament the health and crime problems with black African refugees. (See also the full Hansard transcript here). I say more about the policy issues of the matter here

IMMIGRATION Minister Kevin Andrews has for the first time explicitly said that the Government squeezed the African component of the refugee program because "some groups don't seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life". Mr Andrews has previously skirted this issue, including stating in August that recent cuts in the African intake reflected "an improvement in conditions in some countries" in the region.

But questioned yesterday about last week's fatal bashing in Noble Park of Sudanese refugee Liep Gony, 18, and whether better settlement services were needed, he said: "I have been concerned that some groups don't seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life as quickly as we would hope and therefore it makes sense to put the extra money in to provide extra resources, but also to slow down the rate of intake from countries such as Sudan."

It yesterday emerged that Mr Gony's alleged attackers were not African. Two Noble Park men, David Rintoull, 22, and Dylan Sabatino, 19 have been charged with Gony's murder. A girl, 17, is facing other charges. Victorian detectives will seek the trio's extradition when they face court in Adelaide today. Akoch Manheim, of the Lost Boys Association - an advocacy group for Sudanese youth - said the Noble Park incident had "absolutely nothing to with integration".

Other refugee and ethnic representatives were also critical of the latest singling out of the Sudanese. "It almost borders on vilification of Sudanese refugees," said activist Jack Smit. Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia advocate, Voula Messimeri, said all migrants experienced problems in settling and more intensive support was needed, despite a recent $200 million increase over four years announced in this year's budget.

Mr Andrews confirmed Australia's 13,000 refugee allocation - which has been stable since at least the mid-1980s - included 30 per cent reserved for those from Africa. "Last financial year it was 50 per cent of the refugee and humanitarian program and the two previous years it was 70 per cent," he said.

Senior Constable James Waterson, a multicultural liaison officer with Victoria Police, who works closely with Sudanese and other minorities, said labelling a group of people as a gang was not always the reality. He said while the vast majority of Sudanese who settled in Australia were not used to cars, email and other luxuries, "you get them congregating in public areas just as they do back there, which is how they've grown up for the last 15 to 20 years". "Just because these social groups are hanging around railway stations doesn't mean that they're a gang, they're up to no good or that they're carrying weapons." He said cultural training within the police force and the community could make a big difference.

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3 October, 2007

Britain: Muslim immigrants are the chief parasites

Labour's favourite thinktank yesterday named the migrant groups which are a drain on the taxpayer. Immigrants from Somalia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iran are most likely to be out of work and claiming state benefits, it said. There tend to be high numbers of asylum seekers among those groups who have failed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by Britain's open economy, a study found. But immigrants from many countries do better than people born in the UK in terms of the proportion who work, their level of earnings and the school performance of their children.

The report was produced by the Institute for Public Policy Research, which has close links to Downing Street. The institute has always in the past been supportive of Government immigration policy and its work has focused on the benefits rather than the downside of largescale migration. The report's results, which are based on an analysis of government figures, were produced for a Dispatches programme called Immigrants: The Inconvenient Truth. It is being broadcast on Channel 4 at 8pm this evening. They figures show that Somalis in Britain are the worst- off migrant group. Fewer than one in five has a job and four out of five live in subsidised council or housing association homes.

The report also confirms the widespread perception that Polish-immigrants work hard for less money than most British-born workers would accept. Australians are the only nationality in Britain more likely to have a job than the Poles. In the hours they work Poles are second only to the notoriously workaholic Americans. However, Poles earn on average the lowest hourly wage, 7.30 pounds.

The institute report said: 'There are some immigrant communities who rank consistently lower on most indicators than the UK average. "In some cases, these relatively lowranking communities are predominantly made up of people who have come to the UK for non-economic reasons, for example to join family members who are already in the UK or to seek asylum. "These communities may be made up of large numbers of people whose admission into the UK is not based on their potential economic contribution to the UK." The report added: 'Some immigrant communities are clearly faring less well in the UK and are unable to contribute as much as others because of the poor socio-economic situations they find themselves in. "Many in these groups are present in the UK because they are fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries and require our protection."

The institute's latest findings come in the wake of Whitehall's revision of the expected levels of future immigration to almost two million in the next decade and the declaration by a Home Office minister of 'the need for swift and sweeping changes to the immigration system'. Gordon Brown has spoken of 'British jobs for British workers' and is bringing in a points-based immigration system, which will give priority to those with education, skills and high earnings. The institute report said almost all migrant groups have children who spend longer in the education system than the children of British-born parents.

But some migrant groups have failed to turn educational success into economic success. Groups whose children have not done well in school include Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Turks and Somalis. Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Sri Lankan and Iranian children all do better than average in school, the report said.

State statistics over the past 15 years have identified recent migrant groups who have done best in economic and education terms. Generally speaking, Asians who came from East Africa in the 1970s and Chinese are counted the most successful, followed by Indians. Some groups do better than others. For example, black Caribbean girls do well in school and earn more on average than white counterparts, while black Caribbean boys are more likely to fail.

Source



Strange questions in the British citizenship quiz too

Do you know what ESOL is? Do you know how the process of housebuying is different in Scotland than it is in England? Do you know the proportion of British people that say they have a religion, and how many attend religious services? Are you up to speed on the British cultural calendar, such as when saints’ days are celebrated?

These are all questions that immigrants will be asked before they can become full citizens of the United Kingdom. There is a notable gap between life in the UK and Life in the UK – the official government handbook to prepare immigrants for taking their British citizenship test. There is Britain as it is lived, in all the richness of work and play. And then there is this otherworldly version of Britain on which would-be citizens must be tried and tested.

It was in response to this gap between real life and government-imposed testing that a group of Manifesto Club members proposed holding a citizenship test as a pub quiz, that quintessentially British activity. They got the idea after overhearing a chance conversation in a pub:

‘A Japanese woman, who we figured had been living in the UK for about 10 years, presently studying for an MA, was recounting to her British friends some of the questions in the citizenship test she had sat earlier that day. She started recalling some of the questions to see if her friends knew the answers. Nobody seemed to have direct answers, a few guesses were offered, but the main response was further questions: “What’s that got to do with anything?” and “Why would you need to know that?” Towards the end of their conversation, the Japanese woman said, “It’s alright for you, you don’t have to do this...how would you like it?”’

The Life in the UK website tells would-be citizens that the test will ‘give you the practical knowledge you need to live in this country and to take part in society’. The Amazon version of the handbook is sold with the exclusive accolade: ‘Pass the Citizenship Test with Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship - the only official test book and study guide edited by the Home Office and members of the Advisory Board on Naturalisation and Integration.’

The test may be sanctioned at the highest level, but nobody could fail to notice that it contains a strange set of questions, part Trivial Pursuit, part Citizens’ Advice Bureau information. The questions have their origins in the strange political process that was initiated by then home secretary David Blunkett in 2003. This was an elite operation (Blunkett picked his former university tutor Sir Bernard Crick as the test-master), and it was motivated by particular elite concerns: the need to improve ‘social cohesion’, and strengthen people’s sense of connection and loyalty to Britain.

The citizenship discussion is restricted to a very particular group of people. Seminar rooms and political conference halls are alive with deliberation about the meaning of citizenship; the pubs and streets of Britain, however, are not. Politicians and think-tanks are constantly discussing how best to define British identity and how to make Britishness matter, and many will come up with their list of three or four values that they call their ‘British values’. And unluckily for migrants, they have ended up as the guinea pigs in this often quite desperate attempt to define Britishness.

There is something of an aristocratic bent to this fashion for ‘defining British citizenship’, or ‘making citizenship meaningful’. Citizens – as opposed to subjects – were supposed to be free men, a self-constituting body of people who came together in association with one another. Whereas subjects were an extension of the personality of the king or lord, citizens defined themselves. Most citizenship tests – in America, for instance – had their roots in some kind of citizens’ movement. By contrast, the new British citizenship test, full of dull and bizarre questions about buying homes and attending church, has its origins in the elite’s sense of confusion about what its nation stands for today.

Citizenship is increasingly an identity that is defined from above, rather than by your real relationships and contribution to society. So would-be citizens spend their evenings in classes learning about ‘Life in the UK’ according to the Advisory Board on Naturalisation and Integration, when they could be out on the streets really learning about life. Prime minister Gordon Brown recently said that new migrants would have to prove that they could speak English before they could enter the country. Yet surely living in a country is the best way to learn its language, in context and in response to real needs.

Brown is erecting a hurdle that immigrants must leap over in order to prove their commitment to Britain. Yet for decades immigrants have learnt and improved their English-speaking skills while resident in the UK – while building up real relationships of commitment at work, in communities, in social environments. As with the citizenship test, the demand that immigrants learn English before coming here looks like another attempt by our leaders to work out their own angst about what makes a Briton a Briton by imposing arbitrary tests on newcomers to our shores.

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2 October, 2007

Mobilizing U.S. immigration law

Unfortunately, hiring illegal aliens has become so legally tolerated that employers are now blatantly violating the law in plain sight. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has some shady employment practices at her California vineyards that probably include employing illegal aliens. A landscaping company hired to take care of Mitt Romney's Belmont home used illegal Guatemalan immigrants almost exclusively. That's right, employing illegal immigrants has become so acceptable that there's almost nothing scandalous about illegal immigrants picking grapes for the speaker of the House or tending to the lawn of the governor of Massachusetts.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) needs to turn up the heat on law-breaking employers. Enforcing some laws can be difficult, but immigration laws don't have to be. Just let employers know that ICE is watching them and that there will be stiff fines for hiring employees without valid papers.

The employer's incentive to hire illegal immigrants is that illegal labor is far cheaper than American labor. Let them know that the money they are saving by shortchanging American workers can disappear in the blink of an eye if they are caught breaking the law. After a second infraction, ICE should shut the business down indefinitely. I guarantee this approach will get the attention of employers in a hurry.

American liberals are far too quick to throw up their hands and declare the problem so daunting that we shouldn't even bother enforcing the law. When I think about enforcing immigration law, I think about all the many years I have spent working in restaurants, and how scared the owners were of the dreaded Board of Health. The BOH might show up every six months or so, but you never knew when they were coming, so the owners wanted to keep the kitchen respectable at all times. That's how ICE should operate: they should make unannounced inspections every month or two, and always when it's least expected.

I also think of the summer I worked at an amusement park and how seriously the management took child labor laws. If a minor worked one minute past the hour she was legally allowed to work, some supervisor's head would be on the chopping block.

Why is it that employers are scared of the Board of Health, and afraid to violate child labor laws, but hire illegal aliens without fear of legal consequences? It's because legal consequences are so seldom brought to bear on them. This problem is not difficult to solve, and we certainly don't need to grant amnesty to every illegal alien to do it. We simply need to enforce the laws we have now. Without that, we will never have true immigration "reform."

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Australian citizenship test now in operation

Still a bit of fine-tuning to go, I suspect. I am a history buff and yet I would not have a clue about the years in which nine Australians nabbed Nobel prizes.

Ronald Dela Cruz has spent the past week cramming for a test that made him more nervous than any other he has sat before. Although he'd experienced many complicated and lengthy exams in order to obtain an IT degree, this test was for something different, and to Mr Dela Cruz, for something more important - citizenship.

For the 31-year-old, Australian citizenship would demonstrate his commitment to his home of the past two years, and the nation's commitment to him. His head, he said, had been buzzing with recently learned dates ranging from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics to the years in which nine Australians nabbed Nobel prizes. "I was so nervous, especially with all the dates of the Nobel laureates, I tried to squeeze in as much as I could," he said. Yesterday his efforts were rewarded when he became a citizen by passing the Federal Government's controversial new citizenship test with a perfect score of 20 from as many questions.

Mr Dela Cruz, from Chile, and 25 other hopefuls from across Victoria and Brisbane were the first to sit the multiple-choice exam, which included questions covering some of Australia's history, traditions, geography and government. To pass the 45-minute exam, prospective citizens need to answer at least 12 questions correctly, including three mandatory questions about Australian values. Of the 26 who sat the test yesterday at Department of Immigration and Citizenship offices in Victoria and Queensland, all but one person passed. Twelve obtained a perfect score.

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said the computer-based test, in English, was designed to make sure new citizens had a basic knowledge of English and understood the "privilege" of being Australian. "The reason the Government introduced the citizenship test was that we believe the great achievement of Australia has been to balance diversity and integration," he said. Mr Andrews said most Australians would be able to pass the test - and if not, it would be a failing of the country's educational system, not the immigration department.

However, the test has received widespread criticism - including a Democrats video posted on internet site YouTube that mocks the exam. Yesterday Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the test promoted exclusion. "I think the test is about excluding people and getting votes from people who want to see immigrants to this country as 'other' people who are not worthy of the same rights that other Australians have."

Premier John Brumby yesterday broke ranks with Federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd to criticise the test. He said the Federal Government could make better use of taxpayer money by spending the money on education, such as more English classes.

South African migrant Marius van Eeden, his wife Mariette and son Gavin, 20, all sat and passed the test yesterday. Marius van Eeden said he believed it was important to test applicants on their knowledge of Australia, although he joked that "some guys in Canberra" wouldn't know some of the answers. Alejandro Ruvilar, who sat and passed the test yesterday, said it was a good idea and that all citizens should have a basic knowledge of Australian history. The 29-year-old Geelong resident believed some people would be disadvantaged by sitting the test in English.

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1 October, 2007

Some sense in the British Conservative party

Glance at the agenda for this week's Tory conference and debates on the environment, the broken society and public services are advertised in bold. But where is immigration, the issue that once defined the Conservative Party? The answer: nowhere to be seen. Dogged by accusations that Tories have been obsessed for decades with the arrival of foreigners on our shores, David Cameron has tried his best to keep quiet on the topic in his quest to remould the Tories as the embraceable, "nice" party....

The first skirmishes in the war between modernisers and traditionalists for the soul of the Tory party will take place on the fringes of this week's Tory conference. In a sign that a shift back to core Tory values is in the offing and that the omerta on discussing immigration may be on the verge of crumbling, one of Mr Cameron's most trusted lieutenants has broken her silence - in a spectacular fashion.



Sayeeda Warsi, given a peerage by David Cameron to enable her to join his front bench as spokesman on cohesion, has taken on the issue head on, volunteering her view that immigration has been "out of control" and that people feel "uneasy" about the pace of immigration into Britain. Her intervention has outraged black groups who say she is using the language of the BNP. It also threatens to derail Mr Cameron's attempts to shake off the Conservatives' "nasty-party" image, while exposing divisions between left and right.

"What this country has a problem with is not people of different kinds coming into this country and making a contribution, but the problem that nobody knows who is coming in, who is going out - the fact that we don't have a border police; we don't have proper checks; we don't have any idea how many people are here, who are unaccounted for," she says. "It's that lack of control and not knowing that makes people feel uneasy, not the fact that somebody of a different colour or a different religion or a different origin is coming into our country." As her press officer squirms in his chair, she continues: "The control of immigration impacts upon a cohesive Britain."

Warming to her theme, she declares that the decision to house large groups of migrants on estates in the north of England "overnight" has led to tension in local communities. Similar tensions have been found in the London in Barking and Dagenham, where the far right has been making political in-roads. "The pace of change unsettles communities," she says.

Lady Warsi's outspoken intervention is somewhat surprising as she is the daughter of immigrants herself. Her father is a former Labour-supporting mill-worker from Pakistan who, after making a fortune in the bed and mattress trade, switched his allegiance to the Tories. The lawyer, 36, who is married with a nine-year-old daughter, devoted her early career to improving race relations, helping to launch Operation Black Vote in Yorkshire and sitting on various racial justice committees. So her analysis of race relations on the eve of the Tory conference cannot be dismissed as a right-wing rant.

In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, Lady Warsi claims that the conspiracy of silence on the subject of immigration plays into the hands of the far-right British National Party. "The BNP will look at what issue it is locally that they can exploit and the other political parties are not seen to be dealing with and they will play to that," she says. Far from ignoring the issue of immigration, she thinks it should be confronted head on. "I think we need to have the debate. One of the problems why the BNP has been allowed to grow is sometimes certainly the Labour Party took the view that if we ignore them they will just go away," she says.

But while BNP supporters, including the English National Ballet dancer Simone Clarke, have been sharply criticised for backing a racist party, Lady Warsi says that BNP voters should be listened to. "The BNP and what they represent, they clearly have a race agenda; they clearly have a hate agenda. But there are a lot of people out there who are voting for the British National Party and it's those people that we mustn't just write off and say 'well, we won't bother because they are voting BNP or we won't engage with them'," she says. Indeed, she says, people who back the extreme-right party, criticised for its racist and homophobic agenda, may even have a point. "They have some very legitimate views. People who say 'we are concerned about crime and justice in our communities - we are concerned about immigration in our communities'," she said.

Lady Warsi's remarks are bound to embarrass David Cameron and to open up old wounds over race in the Conservative Party that her leader has worked hard to heal. Mr Cameron has been outspoken in his support for a multi-ethnic Britain and has been uncompromising with MPs who have made racially inflammatory comments. He forced Patrick Mercer, a frontbench MP, to resign after he said he had met "a lot" of "idle and useless" ethnic-minority soldiers.

Last night black groups accused her of making a major misjudgement and of using "BNP language" and pandering to far-right views. Operation Black Vote, with whom Lady Warsi used to work, said it was "grotesque" to give credence to the views of people who vote BNP. "Pandering to racist views peddled by the BNP and bought by BNP voters is grotesque," said Simon Woolley, head of OBV. "The fact of the matter is that this country would collapse if it wasn't for migrant workers. This is BNP language she is using."

Lady Warsi's challenge to engage with BNP supporters will be considered all the more surprising because, as a practising Muslim, she became a BNP hate figure when she stood in the Yorkshire target seat of Dewsbury at the last election. Far-right extremists are not the only reactionaries she has done battle with. She was told to put on her headscarf by a radical Islamist during a Newsnight interview. And in her speech to conference she will unveil an uncompromising message for hard-line preachers who want to subvert British values. "We can't allow people to come into our country which will actually divide our country," she says. She also thinks imams should speak in English and not use a "language which is from the Indian subcontinent" that British children may not be able to understand.

But it is her outspoken message on immigration that will prove most resonant. It will chime with many rank-and-file Tories who believe Mr Cameron has been spending too much time with the ueber-modernisers....

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US devises new 100-question test for aspiring citizens

Australia and Britain have also recently announced such tests

If you are an aspiring US citizen, it's just the right time to brush up your knowledge of Amerian history and civics, or else, Uncle Sam may not let you in. A new citizenship test -- asking 100 questions like "What did Susan B Anthony do?", "What territory did the United States buy from France in 1813?" -- is now added to the list of formallities, which must be cleared by immigrants wanting to become citizens of US.

Devised by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the test would be a legal requirement for aspiring Americans post October 2008. The new test released on Friday, after several years and USD 6.5 million in the making, is designed to give would-be Americans a better sense of US history, civics and founding principles, placing less emphasis on memorisation, officials said.

The test will ask in-depth questions like who lived in America before Europeans arrived, what group of people was taken to US and sold as slaves, and name of the state bordering Canada. "It's no longer a test about how many stars are on the flag or how many stripes," said Emilio Gonzalez, director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which unveiled the new questions.

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